That's a fair sociological observation — no working scientist is going to pack it up because Hart thinks physicalism can't ground intentionality, and ...
I think that’s a fair self-diagnosis. Hart isn’t really targeting “science” so much as the idea that nature is exhaustively describable in terms of ef...
On the dyad: You've reformulated my position as "perceptual act ? correct perceptual act" and then objected that the intentional target of perception ...
Right — phenomenal character is necessary for awareness of the apple. But necessity (or counterfactual dependence) is not mediation. I can’t see the a...
Cheers! :up: My reaction is: I actually think Hart has a real point here. If you grant that intentionality is real — that thoughts are genuinely about...
That’s a totally fair reaction — Hart tends to get very “high altitude” very quickly, which can make his prose rather opaque (being charitable) for th...
Fair enough. I'll address this briefly and then we can leave it at that if you wish. In my view, the transition from sensation to knowledge is not a p...
1. Regarding the dyadic structure of error: I agree that error requires a dyad — something that is wrong and a standard of correctness. You assert tha...
I think there's more agreement between us than the terminological differences might suggest, so let me try to locate the genuine point of divergence. ...
You're raising something I think is genuinely important — the question of what "naturalism" actually commits you to. Hart is at his strongest when he'...
Good question. I don’t deny that sensation is real, or that the external “becomes internal” through the activity of the sensory system. The question i...
I think this is a genuinely distinct argument from the other two, though it shares deep roots with both of them. The first two arguments were essentia...
Your move on the interpretation analogy is well-taken, and I want to engage with it honestly. You're right that interpretation mediates our access to ...
Here's a shot at reconstructing Hart's arguments from normativity and intelligibility respectively. It's worth noting that Hart doesn't explicitly spe...
I think we've actually located the precise point of disagreement, which is progress even if neither of us has convinced the other. I take it that you ...
The money analogy actually makes my point. What distinguishes genuine currency from counterfeits isn't some hidden "moneyness" substance inside genuin...
This is a helpful distinction, but I want to press on it. You say qualitative features are "descriptors" — but descriptors of what? If they describe t...
You're right to flag this, and I want to address it directly rather than paper over it. Over the course of this discussion I've been drawing on two di...
1. Regarding Semantic Direct Realism You keep pointing me toward Semantic Direct Realism as though my position reduces to it, but it doesn't. Semantic...
Yes, there is a difference, and it's important. (1) is a claim about the intentional structure of the perceptual act: what the act is directed toward,...
What I reject is the move from "the sensory character persists" to "therefore what I was aware of all along were qualia, and the apple was only ever i...
Fair enough—but if the BMO is not an object of awareness in any ordinary sense, then I don’t see in what sense it is an epistemic intermediary rather ...
As far as I can tell, you are saying that during the second interval you take the shapes/colours/etc. to be properties of qualia, and then you infer t...
Let’s quickly disambiguate the word “perception.” At minimum we need to distinguish (i) the sensory episode (experience), (ii) the act of grasping/ide...
I think this is exactly the right question. And I agree: the point we’ve converged on (truth not collapsing into warrant) doesn’t automatically refute...
Yep. And as you stated in a previous reply, the temptation to reify experience into an intermediary seems symptomatic of a deeply ingrained grammatica...
Yes, exactly! The causal latency introduces a temporal offset. If the subject is unaware of the offset, their judgment can be mistaken, but that doesn...
I agree that during the second interval I will judge that the apple is still there, and that this judgment will be false. But it doesn’t follow that t...
I think we’re actually quite close on several points. I agree there’s no “view from nowhere” where we can measure our theories against reality as such...
I agree that technological “affordances” matter, and I don’t mean to deny the Kuhnian point that theory change involves sociology, pedagogy, and gener...
Yes—this is the key pressure point. A naturalist can of course say “we trust our models because they keep working,” but that’s a pragmatic entitlement...
I think your reply is clarifying, and I agree that we’re getting down to the core of the disagreement. First, I’m not lumping refraction through the l...
My understanding is that you think the causal/scientific story undercuts naïve realism, and that this is enough to settle the question of whether dist...
That helps, yes — and I agree that in metaphysics/epistemology we’re often clarifying the conceptual norms governing our discourse rather than straigh...
The fourth option is that BMOs belong to the causal implementation of intentionality rather than being the objects of intentionality. They enable us t...
I think your last paragraph is exactly right: warrant concerns justification, whereas truth concerns what is the case. I’m completely on board with th...
I grant the sociological point that we often revise both directions — what gets treated as “warranted” shifts, and what gets treated as “the case” shi...
I see what you mean, but to my mind the function of “actually-the-case” is intrinsically asymmetric in the sense that it can overturn what is warrante...
Perhaps—but I suspect that in this context it would come off as condescension rather than sincerity. These “picture change” issues are hard to address...
I'm curious: how would you cash out the distinction between "warranted-for-us" and "actually-the-case" if the norms of correction are understood as en...
Yes—this is exactly my worry. Once we treat “phenomenal character” as a constituent or item in an inner realm, we’ve already built the indirect realis...
Yes, I agree that norms can be historically situated and yet we can still make true statements. My point is about what makes that success intelligible...
It seems we disagree over whether the causal story is sufficient to cash out intentionality and epistemic normativity sufficient for an adequate theor...
No worries—I’m not conceding that we don’t see apples. Personally, I reject the whole “constituents of experience” framing. From my perspective this f...
Yes—exactly. If intelligibility is reduced to pragmatic usefulness, then “understanding” collapses into successful prediction and control. But then th...
I agree that norms of assertion and justification are socially articulated, and that standards of evidence and demonstration are embedded in communal ...
I think this is the crux of our disagreement. I agree with the causal story. But that story is not yet an account of knowledge. It tells us how experi...
I just want to clarify that I am not assuming that phenomenal qualities belong to the distal object. For instance, I wouldn't say that the redness bel...
I am referring to the problem of perception. I'm simply asking for your positive account of how people come into possession of knowledge of distal obj...
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