Bah. I'M not the one who believes in the unknowable, lurking beyond us, forever a mystery. You throw a blanket between us and the world.

Bah. I'M not the one who believes in the unknowable, lurking beyond us, forever a mystery. You throw a blanket between us and the world. — Ciceronianus

Those are the Kantians. We phenomenologists don’t buy that unknowable stuff. Our motto is ‘To the things themselves!’.

Bah. I'M not the one who believes in the unknowable, lurking beyond us, forever a mystery. You throw a blanket between us and the world. — Ciceronianus

Neuroscientists throw the blanket. Oddly, if you start by assuming direct realism, you'll have to conclude indirect realism.

It's the darnedest thing.

Heraclitus too did the senses an injustice. They lie neither in the way the Eleatics believed, nor as he believed — they do not lie at all. What we make of their testimony, that alone introduces lies; for example, the lie of unity, the lie of thinghood, of substance, of permanence. "Reason" is the reason we falsify the testimony of the senses. Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie. — Twilight of the Idols

(Emphasis is mine.)

"Naive realism" – clearly inadequate yet also indispensible – seems to me more perceptual bias for than reflective engagement with "things". Insofar as we perceive "things as they are", to degrees they are useful to us in various ways or not useful to us at all; the availabilty (i.e. appearance) of a "thing" to us also constitutes (yet doesn't exhaust) its "reality", no? And yet "naive realism" implies that a "thing" is nothing more than a "thing" as it appears to us, which cannot be the case (since almost every "thing" predates appearing to each or any of us). I don't agree either with Kantians or phenomenologists, however; what there is – the world (i.e. things, events, facts, objects, persons, etc) – we are always already entangled with and participating in (i.e. interpreting), which is how the world appears and enables-constrains our perceptions. No doubt, you know all this, Ciceronianus, that "naive realism" is necessarily, at most, but not sufficiently (i.e. pragmatically) realist.

"Entangled with and participating in"--yes. Well put. But I have problems with the use of "interpreting."
I think it implies a degree of intent or reflection that isn't normally present. I think it can also suggest that we misinterpret, i.e. that we're so encumbered by mental, cultural, social, physical, factors that we're incapable of making reasonable judgments regarding our interactions with the rest of the world.

I'M not the one who believes in the unknowable, lurking beyond us, forever a mystery. — Ciceronianus

Yeah, me too. I am quite certain I cannot think the unthinkable, and the unknowable suffices as that to which there is nothing to direct my thinking, for to do so is to immediately contradict myself. To believe in the unknowable is to form at least a minor judgement with respect to it, but without any possible object to which the judgement applies. Also self-contradictory.

But back down here on Mother Earth, where regular folk most often find themselves, here’s a little mind-game for ya: I will think something....any ol’ something....represent it in myself with a single concept, then transmit that to you, which you will receive as a single word, which you will apprehend and judge in accordance with your own standing abilities. At that time, with respect to that particular occasion, would you be one who believes in the unknowable?

The point being, of course, is that to believe in the unknowable is possible iff in relation to that which is already known. In this case, I know what you do not, and never will. Having established the validity of the unknowable, even though only as a condition of things in general under certain conditions, rather than a class of all things as themselves, it remains whether the unknowable is just as reasonable under other conditions.

A naive realist talks about moral issues with the same certainty as he talks about tables and chairs. Do you see any problem with that? — baker

Exactly. The naive realist is confusing properties of the mind with properties of some "external" object - in a sense projecting their mental states (good or bad) onto objects that have no inherent property of good or bad.

In the same way the naive realist projects colors onto objects, as if objects possess color independent of looking at it. The apple is not red, your view of an apple is red. Apples are ripe or rotten and their color is an indication of their ripeness and rotteness.

So the problem of naive realism is determining which properties are actual properties of the object in your view that exist independent of being viewed vs the properties of your mind in viewing the object, as well as the properties of the light when seeing and the properties of the air when hearing. Changing the amount of light and the amount of air can influence the way we see and hear things.

But we disagree with each other! How could we disagree if we all can access the "external world"? — Ciceronianus

Because we often confuse what it is that we are talking about - properties of the world vs properties of ourselves when observing the world.

But I suppose it is the fact that we cannot exist without that portion of the rest of the universe with which we interact which makes me wonder why we're inclined to separate ourselves from the rest of the universe in this fashion and in other respects. — Ciceronianus

Well, using terms like "external" vs "internal" and "direct" vs "indirect" aren't helpful in reuniting humans with the world that they have a firm causal relationship with. Your mind is "external" to other minds and there is no view that is more fundamental than another so deeming one as "internal" vs "external" is just another projection of one's own view and not representative of the world independent of views. We all have "direct" access to our "internal" minds and "indirect" access to the rest of the world, yet we still know about the world. Which do we know more about? Can you really say that you know more about your mind than you do the rest of the world? Some would say that we know less about or own minds than we do the world (the problem of other minds, solipsism vs realism, etc.).

I think that we need to focus our efforts on explaining the mind and it's relationship with the world before we can really make sense of QM and it's implications.

Neuroscientists throw the blanket. Oddly, if you start by assuming direct realism, you'll have to conclude indirect realism. — frank

I don’t think anyone would have a problem with that if they were convinced that “indirect realism” was not “indirect irrealism” or some such thing.

We’re used to the sciences explaining how things work, where ‘work’ takes in both how some mechanism or process is structured and, in the case of biology, how that structure or process gets results, how it is successful. When you explain how fish breathe underwater — which is really cool and seems impossible, but not until you know a little about how breathing works — you don’t end up claiming that as a matter of fact they don’t.

Somehow we’ve gone from “Isn’t it amazing how your brain figures out what the objects in your environment are!” to “Your brain is just making shit up and lying to you about it.”

It is entirely possible that the problem is the preconceptions of cognitive scientists about what they would find, and did not. Imagine trying to explain how a gambler is successful when your working assumption is not that he has a sound grasp of probability, but that he can sometimes see the future. When it turns out he can’t ever see the future, you claim that his ability to place bets intelligently is an illusion, and he’s just lucky. Something like that.

... I have problems with the use of "interpreting."
I think it implies a degree of intent or reflection that isn't normally present. I think it can also suggest that we misinterpret ... — Ciceronianus

Prior to "intent or reflection", perception (i.e. interaction) is perspectival and thereby selective, or approximative (i.e. incomplete but accurate enough in situ). Thus, the notorious 'unreliability of eyewitness testimony', counselor; this is what I mean by interpreting: to be 'entangled with the world' is essentially a hermeneutical process as Gadamer (Merleau-Ponty, Dilthey, Peirce, Nietzsche et al) point out and which is consistent with the findings of embodied cognition researches. "Misinterpretation", I think, only happens via "intent and reflection" at the meta-level (re: meaning) of 'interpreting percepts' (or abstractly generalizing -- de/re-contextualing – the contents of perception) and not at the entangled-participatory level (re: sense) of perceiving: we cannot not interpret pain as discomfort (at minimum), but we can "misinterpret" pain as e.g. a sign (miracle / omen) of divine disfavor or we can (further) interpret pain as e.g. a symptom of distress or injury or illness.

Naive realism — Ciceronianus

There's not much of a difference, is there?, between naïve and foolish (ignorant and/or illogical).

Cartesian systematic doubt (Deus deceptor) & Harman's brain in a vat skeptical scenario (Evil genius) come to mind and given these rather disconcerting possibilities can't be ruled out with certainty, realism needs to be adjusted accordingly and what we leave behind is naïve realism and what get are fancier versions of realism.

I suppose it's only morons that take things at face value. @180 Proof claims that there's no hidden reality and WYSIWYG! It's like a dog/cat, upon seeing itself in the mirror, looking behind the mirror to check - there's nothing there. Is that good or bad?, you decide.

I suppose it's only morons that take things at face value. 180 Proof claims that there's no hidden reality and WYSIWYG! — TheMadFool

This doesn't in any way imply 'infallible' knowing or perceiving – that we cannot be mistaken. You're only a "moron", Fool, to the degree you "take things at face value" when, in fact, there are grounds to do otherwise. But yeah, as I understand things, existence is wholly immanent (Spinoza et al), and that any purported "non-immanent, hidden reality" (e.g. occult mysteries, higher realms, astral planes, etc) is escapist make-believe at best.

This doesn't in any way imply 'infallible' knowing or perceiving – that we cannot be mistaken. You're only a "moron", Fool, to the degree you "take things at face value" when, in fact, there a grounds to do otherwise — 180 Proof

:up: for the qualification!

But yeah, as I understand things, existence is wholly immanent (Spinoza et al), and that any purported "non-immanent, hidden reality" (e.g. occult mysteries, higher realms, astral planes, etc) is escapist make-believe at best. — 180 Proof

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. — Roger Verbal Kint aka Keyser Söze (The Usual Suspects)

Doesn't do anything for you? :chin:

I’ve always wondered how one would observe the effects of Russell’s stone without observing the stone. It seems to me “observing the effects” says more about the way we observe the stone, and utilizing the means with which we observe do not preclude observing the actual stone.

Russell’s stone — NOS4A2

:chin: What that?

I don’t know why I called it “Russell’s stone”. I mean the stone that Russell was speaking about in this quote.

"Scientific scripture, in its most canonical form, is embodied in physics (including physiology). Physics assures us that the occurrences which we call "perceiving objects" are at the end of a long causal chain which starts from the objects, and are not likely to resemble the objects except, at best, in certain very abstract ways. We all start from "naive realism'', i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow, are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we knpw in our own experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. Thus science seems to be at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false naive realism, if true, is false : therefore it is false.”

Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth

Somehow we’ve gone from “Isn’t it amazing how your brain figures out what the objects in your environment are!” to “Your brain is just making shit up and lying to you about it.” — Srap Tasmaner

Science is our brick wall. Arguing with the scientific community is what religious fanatics do, so let's all comport ourselves appropriately and stop trying to apriori our way to the correct conclusions.

Science says we use predictive models. There is a certain amount of making shit up. Accept it or make up your own religion.

When we ask the neuroscientist why she's agreeable to methodological realism that leads to indirect realism and all the loss of confidence in our knowledge of the external world which that entails, she says:

"Practicality."

There's an Ouroborus here. I would think a decent philosopher would stop to smell the weirdness.

Doesn't do anything for you? — TheMadFool

Do anything? Reminds me that "Keyser Söze" had read Baudelaire. :smirk:

"Practicality."

There's an Ouroborus here. I would think a decent philosopher would stop to smell the weirdness. — frank

:fire:

Yes, we need to observe the stone, otherwise we have no data to work with. When we investigate in close detail what this stone is made of, we discover it is made of colourless, odourless, insubstantial particles. So the stone is made of stuff that lacks the qualities we attribute to them in ordinary life.

So close investigation reveals the stone to be a projection, yet without this projection, we wouldn't be able to get to the stuff that makes up the stone.

Hence the paradox. As I understand it.

To tell you frankly, I don't see a problem with physics. What's the difference between a stone and the effects of a stone? They're, in my book, the same thing.

However, I concede that, given the possibility that there could be more senses than the traditional five we're endued with, our picture of what a stone is maybe incomplete. A stone could be so much more than coldness, hardness, heaviness, and so on. In this then what a stone is to us is subjective - we only perceive those properties of a stone we can. What is it like to be a bat?

:grin:

A naive realist talks about moral issues with the same certainty as he talks about tables and chairs.
— baker

That's not the impression I've gleaned. Nor is there any obvious reason a realist would think along these lines. — Banno

His complete epistemic self-confidence is that reason.
Once you see yourself as the arbiter of the truth about other entities, what's there to stop you, except perhaps a little common decency?

(Of course, with the proviso that to a naive realist, "seeing oneself as the arbiter of the truth about other entities" is not an intelligible sentence.)


- - -

Are you saying all moral realists do that? If so, why is that the case? — Ciceronianus

You mean naive realists?
See above.

That may appear to be the case, but appearances in this if not in every case are deceptive. — unenlightened

Then sketch out how it is appearances that deceive us.

But I have problems with the use of "interpreting."
I think it implies a degree of intent or reflection that isn't normally present. I think it can also suggest that we misinterpret, i.e. that we're so encumbered by mental, cultural, social, physical, factors that we're incapable of making reasonable judgments regarding our interactions with the rest of the world. — Ciceronianus

Rather, the salient point is that perception is an active, deliberate process.

Indeed, we normally don't see ourselves that way. We tend to think that perception is something that "just happens" without us having anything to do with it.

Yet already popular phrases like "People see what they want to see" suggest there is a folk understanding that perception isn't the passive, reactive process we generally believe it to be.

The problem with naive realism doesn't apply as long as we talk about tables and chairs (except for the rare cases of optical, auditory and other illusions).

The problem is thst a naive realist takes for granted that the same that goes for observing tables and chairs also goes for humans, for moral/ethical issues. To a naive realist, a sentence like
This chair has four legs
is epistemically the same as
Women are essentially inferior to men
or
Henry is an evil person.
or
Witches should be burnt at the stakes.

A naive realist talks about moral issues with the same certainty as he talks about tables and chairs. Do you see any problem with that? — baker

$\uparrow$ is extremely important.

There's a lie-truth-belief asymmetry.

Suppose there are 3 people X, Y, and Z

1. If X tells the truth, I'd be a fool to assume Y and Z too will tell the truth.

However,

2. If X lies, I'd be a fool not to assume Y and Z too will lie.

Truth-telling is not treated as contagious but lying is. :chin:

indirect realism and all the loss of confidence in our knowledge of the external world which that entails — frank

This part sounds pretty a priori to me.

As I understand it -- and I'm not even an amateur cognitive scientist, so -- there is nothing in our brains that could conceivably correspond to what we take to be our "visual field". Must we *conclude* from that fact, that our visual field is an illusion in some sense?

Here's an analogy, possibly inapposite. Say you're looking at some code that implements a natural merge sort. You can see clearly enough in the code where data is *represented*; that's usually in variables, and they have names they acquire at baptism and everything. But where is the sorting? Is it symbolically represented somewhere? It is not. But it is there, everywhere, in the structure of the code. You would be wrong to conclude it's not there because you can't point at where it is represented symbolically.

I'm only suggesting that expectations about *how* the "external world" is represented, and what we mean when we say that, might lead one to misinterpret what we learn about how the brain works.

Once you see yourself as the arbiter of the truth about other entities, what's there to stop you, except perhaps a little common decency? — baker

You have an odd way of imputing far more into the posts, arguments and positions you find here than can be found in reality.

indirect realism and all the loss of confidence in our knowledge of the external world which that entails
— frank

This part sounds pretty a priori to me. — Srap Tasmaner

Probably. So?

I'm only suggesting that expectations about *how* the "external world" is represented, and what we mean when we say that, might lead one to misinterpret what we learn about how the brain works. — Srap Tasmaner

So again, you're second guessing the scientific community, which you have a right to do. Just note that you aren't on strong ground when you do that.

second guessing the scientific community — frank

Maybe, a little, but that's not really my intention. What I'm trying to quibble with is not the research, and not the usefulness of whatever framework that research is carried out within, but the interpretation of the results.

Let me put it this way: quantum theory has been taken as scientific proof of various sorts of idealism or spiritual whatnot. Now we have the likes of Hoffman peddling the same thing, but now in the name of evolutionary psychology. Cognitive science (which, I feel obligated to say, is an interdisciplinary pursuit philosophy had been involved in from the beginning) is taken too often these days as a license to replace the 'vat' in 'brain in a vat' with 'skull' and leap to whatever philosophical conclusion you like about the external world. That's what I'm pushing back against

Cognitive science (which, I feel obligated to say, is an interdisciplinary pursuit philosophy had been involved in from the beginning) is taken too often these days as a license to replace the 'vat' in 'brain in a vat' with 'skull' and leap to whatever philosophical conclusion you like about the external world. That's what I'm pushing back against — Srap Tasmaner

I see what you're saying.