Michael

I'm not arguing against direct realism. I'm arguing for indirect realism and against naive realism. Much of my time has been spent trying to explain t...

Nobody is questioning the fact that 1/2 + 1/4 + ... = 1. This is an example of a supertask: I write down the first ten natural numbers after 30 second...

Does sensory experience provide us with direct knowledge of distal objects and their mind-independent properties? Naive realists claim that it does be...

And as I said back on page 1: The science does not support naive realism.

And so it is meaningless to claim that such a supertask can complete. The fact that we can sum an infinite series is a red herring.

I haven't said that. I've said that the science of perception supports indirect realism and not naive realism.

Yes there are. A second is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the...

It's not odd at all. We build it to measure the wavelength of light and then program it to output the word "red" if the wavelength measures 700nm. Thi...

As I have said before, I accept that we see cows. But this has nothing to do with the dispute between naive and indirect realists. The dispute between...

I don't know what you mean by "seeing things". All I am saying is that visual experiences occur when there is appropriate activity in the visual corte...

What concerns us is the "conscious 'phenomenal' character of ... experience". I would say that the evidence strongly suggests that the conscious 'phen...

The important part is this: “… where this is understood in a constitutive, rather than merely a causal, sense.” Distal objects like cows are causally ...

I'm going to quote from Naïve Realism: The key parts are in bold. Specifically, I think that "our visual perception of these material objects is not m...

This is where I think there's confusion. Naive realists claim that distal objects are constituents of experience. Indirect realists claim that distal ...

Either naive realism is true or naive realism is false. It's a simple dichotomy.

Not necessarily. I’m undecided between eliminative materialism and property dualism. All I will say is that experience exists inside the brain, distal...

The constituents of visual experience are shapes and colours, the constituents of auditory experience are sounds, the constituents of olfactory experi...

I don’t understand your question. It’s like asking “what counts as a constituent of a portrait of the President if not the President the portrait is o...

The cow I see exists outside my head. My visual experience exists inside my head. Therefore, the cow I see isn’t a constituent of my visual experience...

Yes.

No

In the field I presume.

That we coin the term “X” to refer to some Y isn’t that Y depends on us referring to it using the term “X”. This is where you fail to make a use-menti...

I don't understand this distinction. What is the physical/physiological difference between the two? If you accept that mental "representations" exist ...

I don't know what you mean by "finding a naturally existing, already individuated increment of time", but it is a fact that 60 seconds of time can pas...

I was referring to such things as the projectively extended real line.

No they mustn’t.

An ordinary stopwatch is started. After 30 seconds a white box turns red, after a further 15 seconds it turns blue, after a further 7.5 seconds it tur...

There is a difference between saying that 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ... = 1 and saying that one can write out every 1/2n in order. The latter is not ju...

Take the scenario here: We can sum the geometric series to determine that the limit is 60 seconds. The claim some make is that this then proves that t...

That's precisely the point. The lamp turning on and off and the square changing colours are each examples of an infinite sequence of events. If you cl...

Your "solution" doesn't work, as shown by this alternative: The ball bounces at a rate such that it first strikes the panel after 30 seconds, then aga...

This is just a meaningless hand-wavy rationalisation and is inconsistent with the specific timing intervals: Red after 30 seconds, blue after another ...

Let's move away from numbers as that is clearly causing some confusion. After 30 seconds a white square turns red, after a further 15 seconds it turns...

That the counter doesn't show 0 and doesn't show 1 and doesn't show 2 and doesn't show 3 and doesn't show 4 and doesn't show 5 and doesn't show 6 and ...

And that assumption entails a contradiction, proving the assumption false. No it doesn't.

But the counter only shows the standard 0-9 digits. At no point does it switch from showing some natural number to simply showing the ? symbol. To rep...

Assume the counter counts to infinity. After 30 (or 60) seconds, what is the first digit of the number it shows?

If continuous space and/or time entail that supertasks are possible and if supertasks are not possible then space and/or time are not continuous.

I'll repeat what I said to andrewk above: You seem to take issue with that first paragraph, but your reasoning against it doesn't make any sense. Unle...

The counter stops after 60 seconds.

We can determine whether or not something entails a contradiction. If time is infinitely divisible then supertasks are possible. Supertasks entail a c...

The counter resets to 0 after 9. It will only ever show the digits 0-9.

Because 60 seconds will pass. I don't understand the problem you're having. The passage of time does not depend on what the counter is doing. So to ma...

I wonder if there's such a solution to my variation. And so conversely, if an infinite task may not be completed in a finite amount of time then we mu...

There are some number systems that define division by zero as {a\over0} = \infty.

No it doesn't. The "and so on" refers to repeating this formula: Step 1 occurs after 30 seconds, step 2 occurs after a further 15 seconds, step 3 occu...

That's precisely the argument being made. There are some who claim that a supertask is possible; that if we continually half the time it takes to perf...

We don't directly see cows – according to the naive and indirect realist's meaning of "directly see"1 – but we do indirectly see cows. Given that the ...

By the law of excluded middle and non-contradiction, after 60 seconds the lamp must be either on or off. We're being asked what the lamp "does at 1", ...