Banno

So the tree does not have a mass; mass is something we attribute to trees? Edit: How is it that we can reach agreement?

Cool. I wonder, then, if the mass of the tree belongs to the perceived-tree or the collective tree?

Much more agreeable - my apologies that my slowness caused you aggravation. My only qualm is I'm not convinced that the independent existence of the t...

@"Janus" So there is a tree. Ten people see it, and see (perceive, behold, and so on) a different tree each. Then they create a shared tree through va...

And here, again,, @"Michael" The thing about virtual trees is that they are not trees.

Indeed; there are different senses of see. What would be a mistake would be to trade on your distinction, as @"Janus" appears to, here. How many trees...

So would you analyse Game of Thrones in terms of pixels? Yet it is a sequence of computer images. Words are complex, letters simple. And so on and so ...

Sounds fine to me. To perceive a tree one acts, paying attention to one part of the world. I had presumed that @"apokrisis" meant something like this ...

Perception seems to imply some sort of conscious recognition. You feel the floor beneath you feet more often than you perceive it.

You said:(My emphasis) Not sure what the "only" is doing there, unless you meant it to imply that the tree appears different for each individual - wit...

What is complex, what is simple? Depends what you are doing. Think I mentioned that earlier.

Isn't it your hypothesising that makes the difference?

No, it doesn't. It is seen by all the individuals.

But the difference is that one is virtual, the other, not.

Again, even if they did, there would remain a difference between seeing a real tree and seeing a virtual tree; one is real, the other virtual.

Perhaps. Yet still, there would remain a difference between seeing a real tree and seeing a virtual tree; one is real, the other virtual.

While it may well look different to each of us, we do not each see a different tree.

Why?

and by that very fact, it is one tree, not two. Is it so strange that you both look at the same tree and see something different?

@"apokrisis"Does the sun rise, or does the Earth just go around? Which is true? My suspicion is that they mean the same. Towards the end of part three...

I'm going to watch the Rorty/Davidson discussion again. Cheers.

If you like: @"apokrisis" is right, but says it wrong.

I don't see how this conclusion follows. But then, from memory, we disagreed about what direct realism is.

That's not quite how I would say it, but not far from what I would say. I spoke before about how what counts as simple or complex depends on what one ...

SO, back to the OP. Do we behold a mental construct while perceiving? How best to understand the question? "We" could be "I", perhaps; or is it "Do we...

It wasn't I who set the snare - the multiplicity of trees is implicit in the question raised by the OP. I rather see myself as pointing out the snare;...

I don't think Google Cardboard is that good. That is, even in the Matrix, there is a difference between seeing a real tree and seeing a virtual tree. ...

Ah - you already made this point; I agree.

Cheers. One of the problems with this subject/object talk is how it is used to multiply individuals beyond necessity: A subjective tree, an objective ...

I only count one tree.

Do people intend to do evil?

There is both a subjective tree and an objective tree?

I've long argued a direct realist position because it is the obvious response to the absurdity of idealism. In the end it is the dichotomy that is mud...

I'm not denying consciousness. Edit: Why would you conclude that?

I find this so very hard to understand. Antigonish. It's not a public object and yet it is something. Antigonish. Words summon phantoms into conversat...

...but not this. Looks fine to me.

I'm not going to read the whole thread - but thanks for pointing this out to me. I don't see anything objectionable in it. I'm sure Street and I will ...

Not so much.

Yep. The thing that is important about the hallucination is that while one thinks one is seeing a tree, there is no tree to be seen. One does not see ...

I don't see trees in my dreams. I'm usually in my darkened room with my eyes closed. I might occasionally dream of trees. But that is not seeing trees...

Actually, reification is making something abstract more concrete; but what is happening here is making a nothing into a something. Imagining a thing t...

I was applying his notion in a loose way to trees. Discover, not invented. His point was made more abstractly, using a grid of coloured squares; but i...

But that is just naming - "A something". it tells us nothing about it, does nothing to it or about it... Indeed, it looks to me like reification. Is i...

Not so much. You still think of trees as made of wood and needing fertiliser.

In relativistic physics the truths of one inertial frame of reference are deducible in any other, given the appropriate transformations. Analogously, ...

Yes; naming it tells us nothing about it, does nothing to it or about it. But it is a start.

Is there even such a thing as the meaning of the sentence? I doubt it. There is only what we do with the sentence.

"Do we behold a mental construct while perceiving?" No. You see the tree. Saying otherwise involves a separation of oneself from one's seeing. A homun...

The objections to the OP posted by Ciceronianus and Street are quite right; I would add a bit of Wittgenstein, from ?48 if PI. It's part of his reject...

Cheers.