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Michael

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Of course.
April 20, 2023 at 14:45
If there are non-physical objects then they are as much a part of reality as the physical is. I don't think it's committed to this. It's committed to ...
April 20, 2023 at 14:41
No, because I'm saying that sensation is a type of brain activity. In the case of visual sensation, that brain activity involves the primary visual co...
April 20, 2023 at 14:31
Sensation is the mediation. I am directly aware of feeling pain, which is a sensation, and in being directly aware of that pain I am indirectly aware ...
April 20, 2023 at 14:28
No I don't. I claim that the sensations which constitute conscious experience are brain activity. We know this from the fact that we can stimulate the...
April 20, 2023 at 14:23
Yes
April 20, 2023 at 14:21
That the entities described by our scientific models are real and discovered rather than just instrumentally useful fictions. As I said before, if you...
April 20, 2023 at 14:18
Colour is a type of brain activity. Brain activity is real. Therefore, colour is real. Pain is a type of brain activity. Brain activity is real. There...
April 20, 2023 at 14:16
I'm a scientific realist, not a scientific instrumentalist, if that's what you're getting at.
April 20, 2023 at 14:15
I'm not saying that.
April 20, 2023 at 14:13
I think you're being pedantic here. If string theory is correct then the entities that the theory describes – superstring – are the constituents of al...
April 20, 2023 at 14:12
That's fine. I'm just saying that colours, like pain, are a type of brain activity, not a property of apples. They're still real. They're just not wha...
April 20, 2023 at 14:08
I suppose it is. I'm not a Platonist. If superstring theory is correct.
April 20, 2023 at 14:07
I'm not saying that math is more real than colour. I'm saying that colour is a type of sensation, i.e. brain activity, not a property of apples.
April 20, 2023 at 14:04
Bundles of superstring according to one theory.
April 20, 2023 at 14:02
I don't think it smuggles in naive realism. It accepts scientific realism. But you highlight here the exact point Bertrand Russell made, as I explaine...
April 20, 2023 at 14:01
I don't mean that.
April 20, 2023 at 13:57
There's nothing in principle that stops us from manually activating the occipital lobe in a manner similar to how it ordinarily responds to signals se...
April 20, 2023 at 13:56
Yes. Different things have different properties. Pain is a type of brain activity, and apples don't have brain activity so don't have properties of pa...
April 20, 2023 at 13:27
I feel pain when I put my hand in the fire. The pain I feel is "in my head", not a property of the fire. Do you understand this much? Now just replace...
April 20, 2023 at 13:25
Also on this point, as Bertrand Russell explains, it is in fact direct realism that is incompatible with scientific realism: But then if the direct re...
April 20, 2023 at 13:19
It's not indirectly connected to reality. My conscious experience is as real as everything else.
April 20, 2023 at 13:16
You're asking why I'm a scientific realist rather than a scientific instrumentalist?
April 20, 2023 at 13:04
I've never claimed that. My claim is that things like shapes and colours and tastes and smells are properties of conscious experience, which is restri...
April 20, 2023 at 12:53
I suppose that depends on whether or not you're a dualist. If there is such a thing as a non-physical mind then it is literally meta physics. I think ...
April 19, 2023 at 22:04
Is being a scientific realist question begging? What evidence do you have that external stimuli, when not being seen, are accurately described by our ...
April 19, 2023 at 18:04
Only one accurately describes the independent nature of the external stimulus. The other describes an appearance, which is (at best) only representati...
April 19, 2023 at 17:46
It’s both. What does it mean for it to be red when not being seen?
April 19, 2023 at 17:43
So you’re shifting focus away from perception.
April 19, 2023 at 17:28
I don't think perception has anything to do with metaphysics. Perception has to do with biology and psychology and physics. and so science is the appr...
April 19, 2023 at 17:19
Well, I would say that the scientific evidence proves scientific realism and disproves naive realism. You might think that question begging, but I thi...
April 19, 2023 at 17:14
The point is that them hearing and them making a judgement are two different things. Hearing voices happens when the primary auditory cortex is activa...
April 19, 2023 at 17:00
It's not me joining them in their madness. The primary auditory cortex in their brain really does activate. It's just that it activates without being ...
April 19, 2023 at 16:46
They do hear voices. They mistakenly believe that the voices originate outside their head. You confuse experience itself with our interpretation of ex...
April 19, 2023 at 16:38
No, that's why it fails to address the philosophical disagreement between direct and indirect realism. I've already shown you the SEP articles. There ...
April 19, 2023 at 16:35
That's an impoverished account of what it means for perception to be direct. What does it mean to see an apple? What does it mean so see an image of a...
April 19, 2023 at 16:31
That's precisely why the indirect realist says that there is an epistemological problem of perception. I would argue that our modern scientific unders...
April 19, 2023 at 16:18
But you're not defending direct realism. Direct realism claims that there are mind-independent objects, with mind-independent properties, and that the...
April 19, 2023 at 15:48
Not in the libertarianist sense. Either our decisions are determined by some prior cause or they occur spontaneously, neither of which seem to satisfy...
April 19, 2023 at 14:59
I've said this many times before: antirealism isn't unrealism. Being a realist about something doesn't just mean that you believe that thing is real. ...
April 19, 2023 at 14:07
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-sem-challenge/
April 19, 2023 at 13:59
Then you don't appear to be a realist of any sort, let alone a direct realist.
April 19, 2023 at 13:56
So what does "is red" mean? What is the physical property red?
April 19, 2023 at 13:55
Not in a metaphysical realist sense, unlike (perhaps) the existence of electrons. So when you say that apples are red, are you saying that this is tru...
April 19, 2023 at 13:54
"Best" as in "pragmatic" or "best" as in "true"? We're concerned with what's true. It's a perfectly reasonable question. And direct realists do say th...
April 19, 2023 at 13:42
That's not relevant to the epistemological problem of perception. What matters to this topic is whether or not objects like apples and cats exist even...
April 19, 2023 at 13:36
His reasoning appears question-begging. The world is counterintuitive. Quantum mechanics has shown that. Common sense doesn't trump scientific evidenc...
April 19, 2023 at 13:27
You're right, because I don't know what you're trying to say below: Regardless, I don't think your approach has anything to do with direct realism at ...
April 19, 2023 at 13:26
If it is either fictionalism or antirealism then in no sense is it direct realism. In fact in no sense does it address the epistemological problem of ...
April 19, 2023 at 13:17
So this is either fictionalism or anti realism.
April 19, 2023 at 13:15