There's the bit where you say it and the bit where you take it back. — Austin
His target is the idea that we only ever see things indirectly. — Banno
I think Austin is wrong to quibble about the terms “direct” and “indirect”, because both succinctly describe the relationship between perceiver and perceived as it pertains to the arguments for and against realism…. But in terms of realism, “directly” and “indirectly” describe the perceptual relationship between the man and everything he perceives, which includes the periscope, the air, the clouds, etc. — NOS4A2
This talk of “not directly perceiving objects” makes me wonder, not for the first time, who Austin believed he was arguing against. Did he think that Idealism in general, or versions of Kantianism in particular, entailed such a view? I don’t think that’s a very charitable interpretation of what I take Kant and others to be saying — J
The reason is simple: "There is no one kind of thing that we perceive, but many different kinds" — Banno
[Looking at false dichotomies like direct/indirect] is a standard critical tool for Austin, used elsewhere to show philosophical abuse of "real". — Banno
(emphasis added by Nickles)And it is certainly true that we construct the correct shape from a multiplicity of individual "takes." …In Russell's sense of "real" -- a perception that corresponds fortuitously to an actual shape — J
(emphasis added by Nickles)The real table, if there is one, is not immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known. If there are any directly perceived objects at all for Russell, they are sense data, not tables — Jamal
talk of deception only makes sense against a background in which we understand what it is like not to be deceive. — Banno
But notice that the contrast between philosophers and ordinary folk is borrowed from Ayer. — Banno
The real table, if there is one, is not immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known. — Russell
If there are any directly perceived objects at all for Russell, they are sense data, not tables. — Jamal
A quick look at Austin's book ngram shows continuous, perhaps even exponential, growth. — Banno
I really hate being misquoted — Jamal
Cheers. I'm not claiming any expertise here, just an interest and an enjoyment of his style, even recognising its many flaws.good luck — Antony Nickles
[Arguments against Ayer] 4. …it is also implied, even taken for granted, that there is room for doubt and suspicion” - Austin — Austin
For how can I go so far as to try to use language to get between pain and its expression? — Witt, PI 245
Can't we imagine a rule determining the application of a rule, and a doubt which it removes—and so on? But that is not to say that we are in doubt because it is possible for us to imagine a doubt. — Wittgenstein, PI#84
The primary purpose of the argument from illusion is to induce people to accept
'sense-data' as the proper and correct answer to the question what they perceive on certain abnormal, exceptional occasions; but in fact it is usually followed up with another bit of argument intended to establish that they always perceive sense-data. Well, what is the argument? — p.20
A stick or a pencil half immersed in water at an angle appears bent due to refraction of light at the air-water surface. Figure shows a straight stick AO whose lower portion BO is immersed in water. It appears to be bent at point B in the direction BI. A ray of light OC coming from the lower end O passes from water into air at C and gets refracted away from the normal in the direction CX.Another ray OD gets refracted in the direction DY. The two refracted ray CX and DY, when produced backward, appear to meet at point I, nearer to the water surface than O. Similarly each part of the immersed portion of the stick raised. As a result immersed portion of the stick appears to be bent when viewed at an angle from outside. — Discourse
Presumably the "thing" that is supposed not to exist is the body of water...Thus, when a man sees a mirage in the desert, he is not thereby perceiving any material thing , for the oasis which he thinks he IS perceiving does not exist — Ayer, p. 4
Moore might have said "If this is not a real hand then I don't know what is." So either this is a real hand, and we are good, or we have no idea what a real hand might be.I look at a chair a few yards in front of me in broad daylight, my view is that I have (only) as much certainty as I need and can get that there is a chair and that I see it. But in fact the plain man would regard doubt in such a case, not as far-fetched or over- refined or somehow unpractical, but as plain nonsense; he would say, quite correctly, 'Well, if that's not seeing a real chair then I don't know what is.' — S&S p.10
A lame question, but I'm fairly new to the forum: How do I make those arrow+name graphics that mean "view original post"? — J
J why is the shape “correct” and “actual”, and not just roughly? — Antony Nickles
But if no one is telling you that you're drugged and hallucinating, you probably would just take the whatever as real. — frank
How do we know when there is and when there is not a real object?: An argument from the possibility of hallucination" proves that naive realism is wrong, meaning that, "we are never directly acquainted with the fact that a physical object exists..." — Fumerton
Austin will show how Ayer has oversimplified, even misdiagnosed, the case for these abnormal instances, why we should reject 'sense-data' as a solution, and then that generalising to all perceptions is absurd — Banno
Yet, again, it seems that you and me, are the ones who are interested in 'hallucination' regarding this topic, Frank. — javi2541997
In our experience we are, perhaps, directly acquainted with the facts concerning our mental states, but the possibility that experiences are hallucinations proves that we cannot be directly acquainted with the facts concerning physical objects that, beyond our reckoning, may or may not be causes of our experiences.
Do you mean that it would be more accurate to say "roughly correct" or "very good approximation of the actual shape"? — J
Perception is far more than just to say, what I see is "real", and that is it. The aftermath of perception is more complex, deep, rich and meaningful in human perception. — Corvus
Basically, I think that reality does exist objectively. — javi2541997
Yes, I was somewhat concerned not to present Wittgenstein's view. — Banno
It was noted above that the existence of hallucinations is an important datum for the manner in which we conceive of the relation between real and phenomenal. But we are still left without clear criteria to distinguish between veridical perception and hallucinatory perception. How do we know when there is and when there is not a real object? This weakness on the objective side of perception indicates that the relation between subject and object is not one that, even with undecidability, is ontologically symmetrical. The difficulties that have always resulted from this asymmetry merit our most serious consideration. For instance, Richard Fumerton believes that "an argument from the possibility of hallucination" proves that naive realism is wrong, meaning that, "we are never directly acquainted with the fact that a physical object exists..." Otherwise, Fumerton's argument turns on the same point as the argument given above, that a cause is only sufficient to its effect, that we conceive of perceptions as caused, and so that an evidently veridical perception can conceivably be caused by something other than the objects it seems to represent. In our experience we are, perhaps, directly acquainted with the facts concerning our mental states, but the possibility that experiences are hallucinations proves that we cannot be directly acquainted with the facts concerning physical objects that, beyond our reckoning, may or may not be causes of our experiences.
Supposing that we have them at all (see Davidson), do we perceive our world views or do we discover or construct them? — Banno
If we read on, perception is used as a straw man for any problems in the “aftermath of perception”, but “seeing” a table is to identify something as a table, which is judging whether something is a table, or, say, a bench (that we somehow mis-identify as a table) and not a matter “after” perception, but I’m getting ahead of the text. “…our senses are dumb… [they] do not tell us anything, true or false. — Antony Nickles
I don’t know what you are quoting; I was referring to Austin’s lecture, which is what we are reading — Antony Nickles
You need more than just identifying a table as a table in visual perception. — Corvus
(40)If, to take a rather different case, a church were cunningly camouflaged so that it looked like a barn, how could any serious question be raised about what we see when we look at it ? We see, of course, a church that now looks like a barn.
In perception, there is far more going on than just identifying an object as an object i.e. reasoning, intuition, judgement and intentionality can get all involved, and for that they have to be sense data, — Corvus
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