Unless we accept that "you and I and the humans are 'embedded in language'". That is, all the humans, all embedded. Banno's view-from-everywhere requires universal participation. — ZzzoneiroCosm

How would "being embedded in language" aid us in having a view from the spatiotemporal location of, say a particular quark near a particular star in the Andromeda Galaxy?

The "view from everywhere" is available if we accept that you and I and the humans are "embedded in language" - that is, if you accept that we (not 'you' or 'I' in isolation, but we) are making determinations regarding the nature of the real via "a conversation with other folk." A shared language (including shared notions and behaviors, e.g., trusting a map made by a stranger; performing and receiving appendectomies) provides the "view from everywhere." — ZzzoneiroCosm

That would just be a view from a lot of different places (and only if we assume that somehow the language has the views packaged into it and it's not just sounds, text marks, etc., or just meanings for that matter (not that I think that language has meaning objectively embedded into it somehow)).

It's such a common way of thinking, — Banno

It is? Usually no one quite understands what I'm saying.

We do see the same things from different perspectives — Banno

I don't know if you're saying that

"غ sees @ from perspective y (and it's like α) and ظ sees @ from perspective x (and it's like β)--so @ is the same thing," which I'd agree with,

OR

"غ and ظ both experience @ in β way, just from different perspectives (a la different spatiotemporal locations, say)," which I'd not agree with.

because we are embedded in language — Banno

There must be a better way to say that (that maybe I'd agree with)?

we can understand how they look from the perspective of other folk. — Banno

We can do this on my account of what understanding is, sure. But my account of what understanding is is probably very different from how you'd describe it.

This is not the view from nowhere. It's more like the view from everywhere. — Banno

That's not available either.

What we'd agree on is that you can have spatiotemporal perspectives that are combinations of various other spatiotemporal perspectives. No two are going to be identical, though.

You seem to think that you are alone in the world, and can't decide if the camera is telling you what is real and what isn't. — Banno

But I'm not saying anything at all like that.

The perimeter is always from some (set of) spatiotemporal location(s), per some concept of what it is to "measure the perimeter" (since especially for something like coral a number of decisions are going to have to be made about what counts as measuring it versus what details can be ignored).

The spatiotemporal location of the surface of the coral isn't an objectively preferred spatiotemporal location. There are no objectively preferred spatiotemporal locations (or objectively preferred anythings for that matter).

From what I remember, you don't have any prescriptive ethics. — schopenhauer1

I definitely have preferences about what people should or shouldn't do. So in that sense, my ethics is partially prescriptive.

if someone was to steal someone's property and find out that they were happy about this later on, you would be ok with the fact that the thief stole someone else's property. — schopenhauer1

Aside from the fact that it's not stealing if the person is given consent to take the property, it's the height of moralizing in the negative sense (the sense of haughtily, self-righteously telling people what they should be doing) to say that something is a problem when the people involved in the action in question don't have a problem with it.

What makes happiness an automatic justification for procreation of another person? — schopenhauer1

You know this already. These things are about one's preferences, one's dispositions, and that's all they can be about. So what makes happiness an automatic justification for someone is that that's their disposition. It's how they feel about happiness versus other emotional (or situational) modalities.

It depends on the context of our discussion. As I have said countless times, I hold that beliefs are dispositions to act as if, I can therefore hold different beliefs in different contexts, there's no reason why the model I use in one context (where I assume there are such things as Friston and amoebae) should in any way cohere with the model I might use when discussing the way things 'really are'. You're acting like the nerdy child who says in the middle of an game of Star Wars "you're not really Han Solo though are you?". — Isaac

Regardless, you're ALWAYS talking about models that you have, and not observations of the way the world really is, because you do not think you can access the latter. So there's no Friston or amoeba in your view outside of it being a model you have.

Or is this not the case?

We're talking here (using models which we all share) — Isaac

How is there a "we" beyond your personal model?

If you're going to endorse this sort of nonsense, don't expect to not be constantly called out on it.

Yes. Friston has demonstrated active variance reduction in sensory inputs of amoeba, — Isaac

First, there's no Friston or amoeba in the real world in your view, is there?

The looking doesn't come first, the model of comes first, the looking is just to check. — Isaac

I have no idea what you even think you are, exactly. Presumably your model there isn't anything like the standard account of evolution. Unless you think that life had the capacity to create models prior to being able to obtain any sensory data.

is not 'seen' at all, it does not 'look like' anything from any perspective — Isaac

Wrong and wrong. Your model is wrong.

A and B can agree as to the facts, by considering what looks like from the other's point of view. — Banno

Sure, they can, but those facts won't be the same at the same spatiotemporal location, and their agreement is still something nonidentical, at different spatiotemporal locations.

It does leave itself open to skepticism.

What if we said that we directly perceive some aspects of an object, like it's shape and location, but other aspects. such as its reflectivity to visible light are indirect?

We can see this with eating shrimp. We can know things about the shrimp from putting it in our mouth, like size and solidity and that it's an animal, but we don't know about its chemical makeup from the taste, without developing a science of chemistry first. — Marchesk

Well, direct realism isn't saying that you directly access "the complete set of details" of anything (as if "the complete set of details" isn't a ridiculous idea in the first place).

And as I've pointed out a number of times, you can only access what the world is like at a particular spatiotemporal location, where there is no reality for anything "at no particular spatiotemporal location(s)." (Or as it's sometimes more commonly put, there is no "view from nowhere.")

You seem to think that you are alone in the world, and can't decide if the camera is telling you what is real and what isn't. — Banno

I'm saying the exact opposite of that.

I don't know why it's so difficult to communicate that.

Direct realism does not at all posit that we're infallible.

Re fallibility, it posits that we can know that we're fallible when we get things wrong. We can know what's going wrong (because we can know what's right), and we can develop scientific accounts of what's going wrong.

Representationalism can't do this, because per its claims, we can never directly access the world. The best we can ever do is conjecture.

The issue then is whether we can know this or not. — Terrapin Station


We don't just have the photo. — Banno — Banno

There's no us in the analogy.

as opposed to... indirectly taking the picture? — Banno

As opposed to (as I've just explained a couple times) presenting images that are of/generated by the camera itself, where we have no idea how it connects to the outside world.

This definitely has a lot to do with physiology. It's philosophy of perception after all. That's going to involve studying how perception works/being aware of the scientific study of that, etc. You can't do philosophy of x where you simply ignore the study of x by other fields, especially when the target is just as much something that another field studies.

To further your analogy in context of my replies to Banno, if your camera then adds a filter along with some metadata to the picture, then that extra stuff are properties not from the object itself. That information is generated by the camera. — Marchesk

The camera is coloring it, sure. The issue then is whether we can know this or not. Direct realists say we can. Representationalists say we can't know it.

Adding the camera puts me in mind of homunculi. — Banno

Why would you think of homunculi with cameras? You think there are little people inside of cameras or something?

There's not a little person in the camera taking a picture of a tree. The camera takes a picture of the tree.

So per the analogy, the difference we're talking about is whether the camera is directly taking a picture of the tree, or whether (at least we can only know that) the camera is producing an image that's the camera itself, where we have no idea how it connects with other stuff.

Has nothing to do with homunculi.

I understand it to be that since direct realists deny the contention that we're aware of some mental idea or representation when perceiving (instead of the physical object itself), then there isn't some inaccessible mental content that can't be shared. Instead, we're just talking about the objects themselves. — Marchesk

It's important to understand that direct realists are not saying that we're not dealing with perception. Direct realism is a stance in philosophy of perception after all. It's not a stance that essentially says "there is no perception." So we're not actually just talking about the objects themselves. We're still talking about perception, about mental phenomena.

What makes the difference is the character of perception, not whether there's perception or not.

An analogy that's useful is that of a camera. No one is going to say that the camera isn't involved in the camera taking photos, or that the photos aren't a product of the camera. The issue is whether the photo "directly captures" the subject matter, and whether we can know this, in addition to being able to know when something is going wrong because the camera isn't capturing something right, versus whether we're going to claim that all we can know is the camera qua the camera, so that it's presenting images of the camera itself somehow, and we don't know what those images' relationship is with the external world, presuming there is one.

For Terrapin, but for others, too. Einstein developed a set of transformations that allowed the laws of physics to be the same for all observers. — Banno

I'm not a realist on physical laws, but aside from that, the fact that the laws of physics would be the same for all observers is different than the properties that something has relative to a particular spatiotemporal location. For example, something might be round from one spatiotemporal location but oblong from another spatiotemporal location.

And so the problem still presents itself for direct realists — Marchesk

As a direct realist, maybe you can explain what the problem is supposed to be, because it's not clear to me what Wallows was thinking.

I'm not convinced that there is a "what it's like", for bats or otherwise. — Banno

I'm not convinced that anyone isn't convinced of that. I just refers to properties as such. I don't think it's conceivable to think of anything sans properties.

Einstein might disagree. — Banno

More fool him then.

Just so long as we agree that what is true for A is also true for B — Banno

It often won't be (also reading "true" as "what's the case for")

I think it's worth critically examining just how we supposedly know this, too.

For one, the idea of light moving at straight, clean angles and intersecting at a point, where the interaction with the eye seems to be posited as if the eye were more or less a vacuum for light "rays" to travel in seems a bit ridiculous(ly oversimplified).

We still don't even have a really good model of what light is. It doesn't seem to be quite a particle or quite a wave but something that exhibits properties of one or the other in various situations.

Still, whatever... but how about at least a word limit? — bongo fury

That's what I'd like to see. And it's why I prefer chat. (Actually I'd prefer conversations in person, and then via a telephone or video conferencing or something like that.) Something like a 100 or 150 word limit would be plenty. It would encourage conversations rather than people ramblingly "lecturing" at each other.

It's epistemic if you're an indirect realist. — Wallows

How is it epistemic if you're an indirect realist? The issue is whether there's something inherently private and not directly shareable (in the show and tell sense). That has epistemic upshots, but it's an ontological situation. So how do you see it as being an epistemic issue if one is an indirect realist?

Starting from substance, in that order, ending with the mind. — Wallows

What is starting with substance? The world? Someone's theory? Someone's discussion preference?

Are you making any attempt to simplify things in these situations? Stick with short sentences. Don't type or say more than a handful of sentences at a time. Avoid specialized, obscure or idiosyncratic vocabulary. Focus on one idea at a time.

I don't know how you'd see the "beetle in the box" part as an epistemic issue. It has epistemic upshots, but it's an ontological issue.

Substance>Ontological>Epistemic>Perceptual>Mind? — Wallows

Re this question, "Substance>Ontological>Epistemic>Perceptual>Mind?" I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. For one, what are the right arrows symbolizing there?

Just to figure out why you're thinking they'd be incompatible, you're not thinking that direct realism amounts to eliminative materialism, are you? (I need to figure out why you're thinking they'd be incompatible, especially as you didn't understand my earlier explanation of this.)

I'm lost here. Just where did this start and where are we going? — Wallows

You wrote: "One thing, that doesn't make sense is to say that people are direct realists, yet have beetles in boxes, what do you think @Terrapin Station?"

I responded with "It makes sense because . . ." and then I explained.

You asked a clarification question. I answered.

Then you got sidetracked/confused by an issue that I said my response was NOT about--you figured I was saying something about that . . . right after I made sure to explicitly say that the response was NOT about that. And then things seemed to devolve into increasingly weird, incoherent (at least in context) responses.

So you agree or not that it is an epistemic issue? — Wallows

It would be difficult to tell whether I agree from me asking you a question, wouldn't it? How about just addressing the question?

I asked this: "The fact that it's what I've been typing makes it an epistemic issue? "

Because this: "That makes it an epistemic issue, not an ontological one, derp."

Made no sense as a response to this: "Gah! That's what I've been typing. lol "

The fact that it's what I've been typing makes it an epistemic issue?

Let me know why would you think otherwise? — Wallows

Gah! That's what I've been typing. lol

Then please elaborate about ontological commitments in light of private content or whatnot? — Wallows

I'm confused what you're asking about there. I wasn't saying anything about "ontological commitments."

I was explaining how direct realism isn't incompatible with non-shareable mental content.

For one, you're assuming a naive "objective things are just one way" claim. That's not the case. Objective things are all sorts of ways, from different spatio-temporal locations.

My point is that an observer is redundant is God is one and the same with god being nature. — Wallows

Again, what I'm saying is NOT just about perception. It would be the same if no people/no perceivers/observers existed.

That's why I wrote "NOT" in big capital letters--hoping you'd notice it more that way. So you wouldn't think that I'm saying something about perception, etc.

Are you advocating a form of idealism in ontology? — Wallows

If we have no people/no perceivers, how do we have ideas (for idealism)?

I'm not saying anything about the third man argument. You'd have to explain the Spinoza comment.

Yes, of course. Nothing is identical from two different spatiotemporal locations. This is NOT just about perception. It's about ontology (or "the ontic") in general. It would be the case if no people/no perceivers existed.

It makes sense because properties are unique at each spatio-temporal location.

So for example, we have this:

A...............................@......................................B

The properties of @ are different at @, at A and at B (and at every point in between). If A and B are persons with perception, etc., they can directly perceive what @ is like at their spatio-temporal location, but that's not identical to what @ is like at any other spatio-temporal location.

In addition to that, there's also what it's like to have subjective mental content, including qualia, with respect to those perceptions.

Sure. (Although I think my analogy is better. I'm not much of a Wittgenstein fan.)

If there are parts of language that are invisible, — Banno

... to others, sure.

then we can't talk about them. — Banno

You can talk about them, you just can't directly display them.

It would be like if everyone had their own home, but no one was allowed to go into others' homes, there was no way to take pictures of others' homes, etc. The person who lived there would know exactly what it's like inside, but other people wouldn't. That wouldn't stop anyone from talking about what their homes are like inside, however.

One of the outcomes of the behaviorism of the 20th Century was Quine's inscrutability of reference. By way of some reflection on that viewpoint that I could lay out if I really had to, meaning in human communication ends up collapsing altogether. — frank

Behaviorism? I'm not sure what you think behaviorism has to do with it.

Human communication doesn't end up collapsing. There's just always a potential for ambiguity/it's never completely transparent, because parts of it are simply not observable to others.