Probably some could say the same of idealism. But if the realist and idealist live the same kind of sane life in terms of action (avoiding crimes, maintaining relationships), what then is the weight of such positions? — ff0

Exactly. If the lives of the Idealist and the Realist are identical in behaviour then they are not functionally different and the distinction is pointless, if they do differ then we should (after at least 2000 years) be able to very simply point to the advantages of one over the other.

My suspicion is the former is the case, that Idealism has no practical implications that can be demonstrated to be of any value, but there's lots of people in the world and I don't claim to know all of their experiences. There may be some non-realists out there living wonderful lives considerably happier and more fulfilled than any Realist, but I've yet to encounter any.

Begging the question is a statement where the conclusion is presumed to some extent in the premise. I haven't provided you with my premise, just my conclusion. — Inter Alia

Your premise was implicit in your conclusion, therefore you’re begging the question.

And I though we were talking about religion here, not science, how can anyone possibly 'know' what they're talking about, there's nothing to 'know' it is entirely made up. — Inter Alia

And again.

Dawkins simply makes arguments from his observation of the way religions act in the world. — Inter Alia

Dawkins never acknowledges the work done by religious charities in amelioration of poverty etc. He only sees and talks about what he thinks is evil in them.

As to the issue around contraception, you still haven't answered the question of what a Skeptic would actually do. — Inter Alia

As skeptics don’t generally defend an ideological position, what they would do would depend on the circumstances, I imagine. That said, there might be skeptics who object to contraception on moral grounds for their own reasons, and others that don’t. It would be hard to generalise.

But do notice that all of your rhetorical efforts are an attempt to frame the issue in terms of what you understand as ‘scientific humanism’ on the one hand, and ‘superstitious religion’ on the other.

If the lives of the Idealist and the Realist are identical in behaviour then they are not functionally different and the distinction is pointless — Inter Alia

Yeah. I think OLP and pragmatism exploded the 'ism' approach to philosophy for me. I see that there's an -ism on the end of pragma- there, but I read it as a sort of anti-ism or trans-ism that tries to get behind merely verbal disputes.

Maybe you've already looked into him, but I think William James is great. Here's a few quotes:

For the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means.
...

The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many?—fated or free?—material or spiritual?—here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle.

...
Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude, but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in a more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed. A pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power. That means the empiricist temper regnant, and the rationalist temper sincerely given up. It means the open air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality and the pretence of finality in truth.
— James

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5116/5116-h/5116-h.htm

Yeah, I'm a big fan of both James and Pierce.

" What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle." basically sums up this discussion for me.

Your premise was implicit in your conclusion, therefore you’re begging the question. — Wayfarer

No, my premise is that no one has yet provided any evidence that materialism causes any harm or can be proven logically impossible. Those two things make it an equally valid choice of world view in my opinion. You may not agree, with either of those premises, you may not agree that they sufficiently and necessarily lead to my conclusion, but it's not begging the question, it's a standard, analytical statement.

Dawkins never acknowledges the work done by religious charities in amelioration of poverty etc. He only sees and talks about what he thinks is evil in them. — Wayfarer

I'm not sure why he might be in any way obliged to do so, he's presenting his conclusion, not his entire thought process. I'm not privy to his analysis, but I'd imagine he has, as have I, looked at the charitable work done by atheists also, and concluded that ridding the world of religion would not diminish charitable work but would diminish a lot of war, persecution and suffering. He may be wrong, but if he is it will be as a result of evidence that religion necessarily leads to charity, but only incidentally leads to war, persecution and suffering. I've seen no such evidence and neither, I suspect, has he.

Right. But my point is that this way of talking about things ('exists unperceived') is (to my mind) something like an artificial game that rests on 'pragmatic' foundations. Why not doubt this theoretical framework itself? What is this framework parasitic upon? Do you assume some kind of Newtonian space? With time as a separate dimension running continuously? What does it mean that something is there, apart from all human purpose? Is it some kind of 'matter' that just endures there in 3-space? And maybe it blinks out when we turn our eyes away? But this assumes the correctness, meaningfulness, and stability of this 3-space and a certain mathematical notion of time.

In a way I'm being skeptical myself here, but about the framework rather than about the objects. I'm skeptical about the usual version of the epistemological game. For me it's as artificial as chess. What's wrong with being artificial? Nothing, really. But I have 'aesthetic' reasons for wanting to get closer to the lived situation, which you may or may not share. I want to be 'objective' in a non-theoretical sense, which is to say that I want theory to be closer to non-philosophical life. — ff0

I don't understand what you mean when you say that the whole thing is 'artificial'. All of us have a clear idea of what it is for something to exist, since, as Descartes pointed out, one has a first hand awareness of one's own existence. Moving on to what it would be for something to exist while perceived by me. The thing which I am looking at right now, for example, exists and I think this is perfectly intelligible, even if I couldn't define 'exists' in terms of anything more basic, except perhaps by saying 'there is something'. If I understand what it is for something to exist while perceived by me, and surely I understand what it is for me not to be perceiving something, it is quite a simple process to arrive at the concept of 'unperceived existence', again even if I couldn't define it in more basic terms, except by saying that 'the thing which I saw a minute ago is still there even though I am no longer perceiving it'.

I find the notions of 'matter' and '3-space' far more difficult than the notions 'existence' and 'perception', since I have an immediate awareness of both my own existence and my ability to perceive, whilst 'matter' and Newtonian '3-Space' are (perhaps correctly) postulated to explain my existence and the things I perceive.

You say that this whole language of 'existence' and 'perception' is artificial, but I don't think it is at all. I'm immediately aware both of my existence and my perceiving, so in what sense is it artificial? Without an answer to that, I can't see what you mean in saying that you desire theory closer to 'non-philosophical life', since it seems to me that the concepts 'existence' and 'perception' can be understood merely by reflection on your own mental life and so they are, as it were, as close to your life as could be!

Quite right. The justification for the assumptions built into the model is the empirical adequacy of the model as a whole. This is a pragmatic rather than a foundationalist approach to justification. Remember, we're just looking for "good reasons", not "deductive proof". — Aaron R

If by 'pragmatic justification' you mean 'its useful to believe it', then that is not the sort of things which we began by looking for. But the argument which you suggest is fortunately not of that kind at all:

For instance, classical models predict that if the planet Jupiter ceased to exist every time that no one was looking at it, then the earth would be displaced from its current orbit with catastrophic consequences for its inhabitants. This obviously doesn't happen. — Aaron R

I think this is a promising argument, perhaps the most promising so far. But there may be some difficulties. The classic model clearly does predict that there will be observable consequences if certain things don't exist while unperceived, but I have two queries and I can only begin to answer one of them. Perhaps you can help further.

First, whilst it is clear that, according to the classic model, an object like Jupiter not existing while unperceived would produce observable consequences, it is less clear that all objects would have such consequences. What about my laptop, for example. I can't think of any observable consequences which could reasonably be expected if it didn't exist while unperceived, certainly not according to the sort of physical theory which predicts the same about Jupiter. And so an issue still remains. While we have a reason to think that Jupiter exists unperceived, there doesn't seem to be one for thinking that the objects closer to home exist unperceived.

What do you think of the following extension of your argument? If we have a reason for thinking that Jupiter and all the other planets exist unperceived, then it would certainly be very strange if more homely objects don't. We would then be in a universe in which some of the largest objects in it exist unperceived but certain objects don't. Certain objects just pop in and out of existence when they are perceived and certain ones are permenant, and there is apparently no good explanation of why this is so. That certainly is a very odd world, and it would be far simpler to suppose that everything in the universe has the same ontological status unless there is some reason to think otherwise. Thus, since there is no apparent difference between my laptop and Jupiter which would explain why they are ontologically different, the simplest explanation is that my laptop also exists unperceived.

This brings us to the second difficulty. The classic model is what gives us a reason to believe that Jupiter exists unperceived. What is the evidence for the classic model? If that evidence ever assumes that anything exists unperceived, the argument will be circular and so fallacious. I suspect, sadly, that the classic model and the evidence for it do presuppose that things exist unperceived. But I do hope I am wrong about that!

I think its clear enough that your use of the word is idiosyncratic, and atypical. — charleton

I am using the word the way it is used in contemporary academic philosophy. I reject the doctrine that there is a 'typical' meaning of the word 'scepticism' outside of philosophy. Indeed I reject the doctrine that there is a 'typical' meaning of most interesting words.

Simple, such a belief has been entirely harmless for the (more than I'd care to mention) years of my life so far. Can anyone say the same of Idealism? — Inter Alia

Well many people have been Idealists and lived perfectly decent lives. So it isn't clear to me that Realism has an advantage in that department, but I suspect that that is a person relative issue.

You have asked me to address you argument, but I'm not sure exactly which argument you mean. I'm going to take a guess:

When we see the bent stick, or any other illusion we recognise that we can't trust our initial sense data, but where do we look for an alternative explanation? Do we leap to the conclusion that it must be magic because we're standing in a fairy grove? No, we look back to other, more complicated sense data from experiments with light, we see how this thing we sense as light gets refracted and we presume that's what's happened to the stick, not because it's infallibly right but because we have no better explanation than the one we somehow seem to have entered adulthood with. — Inter Alia

We look at the stick out of water and we perceive a straight stick. Submerge the stick and perceive a bent stick. What we have now are two bits of data: The stick is seen to be bent in one circumstance and seen to be straight in another circumstance. Some how we have arrived at the belief that the straight stick exists while unperceived and the bent stick doesn't - there really is no bent stick, its just an illusion created by the refraction of light. I think its relatively clear to me how we reach the conclusion that the bent stick doesn't exist when unperceived, and you have detailed that well in this quote. But far less clear is why we believe that the straight stick exists when unperceived. It might be that there is 'no better explanation than the one we somehow seem to have entered adulthood with', but if so, why is it the best explanation? Why is it not an equally good explanation to suppose that the straight stick doesn't exist unperceived either? I'm not asking for some infallible guarantee that the stick exists unperceived, but just for any account of why this is a better explanation than the hypothesis that it doesn't exist unperceived? What makes you postulate an unperceived straight stick?

no one has yet provided any evidence that materialism causes any harm or can be proven logically impossible. Those two things make it an equally valid choice of world view in my opinion. — Inter Alia

Excuse me for butting in, but are those really sufficient conditions for a viable choice of worldview? I wonder if this is a little weak. All sorts of speculation is harmless and not demonstrated logically impossible. The Greek pantheon is harmless and not demonstrated logically impossible, as is Leibniz's Monadology, The old Stoic dual aspect theory of nature, The NeoPlatonic doctrine of emanation from God, a Dualistic Christianity - in fact, Creationism seems both harmless and not proven logically impossible. But then, it depends what counts as harmful and what doesn't. Is it harmful if a doctrine contradicts the science of the day? Or is something only harmful if it causes actual physical or emotional harm to people?

PA

I am using the word the way it is used in contemporary academic philosophy. I reject the doctrine that there is a 'typical' meaning of the word 'scepticism' outside of philosophy. Indeed I reject the doctrine that there is a 'typical' meaning of most interesting words. — PossibleAaran

Whilst I agree that there might not be a typical meaning, there is no doubt that yours so flies against the basic definition that it is definitely idiosyncratic to the point of an abuse of language.
Inside and outside philosophy it maintains the meaning of systematic doubt.
You have chosen to characterise that in a negative way, when our entire world of reliable knowledge relies on skeptical enquiry, and always has.
Your view is angst followed by apathy.
Skepticism is literally "enquiry". No knowledge is available without it.

Your view is angst followed by apathy. — charleton

First, it isn't my 'view'. It isn't even how I use the word 'scepticism' most of the time. The definition to which you are referring is the one which the ancient sceptics used. The ancient sceptics of the Pyrrhonian school practiced suspension of judgement about every matter and claimed that this lead to peace of mind. Here is Sextus, our best source on ancient scepticism:

"Scepticism is an ability to place in antithesis, in any manner whatever, appearances and judgements, and thus -- because of the equality of force in the objects and arguments proposed -- to come first of all to a suspension of judgement and then to mental tranquillity.". -- Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism.

Note, he is talking about what 'scepticism' meant to the ancient Pyrrhonain school. Since this is so, your whole claim about how the definition 'flies against' what is ordinarily meant to the point of an abuse of language is just irrelevant. Obviously people today use the word 'scepticism' in a different way to the way it was used roughly 2500 years ago. So what? What I was saying is that the ancients used the word (or their ancient equivalent which is translated 'scepticism') that way.

Pyrrhonian school practiced suspension — PossibleAaran

That's just a point of view from people who had written themselves off from the world.
Its not the most common, nor typical, nor accurate.
Skepticism is the fuel of science and the progress of humanity.
What you are presenting is "giving up."

Since the title of the thread is "What is skepticism" you are failing to offer any useful insight.

I agree that its not the most common use these days, even in academic philosophy. Though if you gloss the Pyrrhonian school as having 'given up' and as full of 'angst' and 'apathy', I can only assume you haven't read the Outlines or any scholarly work on the school, because they had an entirely different attitude from that.

I think we have reached an impasse. From where you see it, my characterization of the issue is just an odd way of talking which creates problems. For me, you are just insisting that things exist unperceived by definition. I will try once more to try to make you see it my way. — PossibleAaran

Hehe, I'm not being obtuse, I assure you. I used to be captivated by all this stuff myself, so I understand its attraction.

Look at your computer. What do you see, literally? — PossibleAaran

A computer.

Describe every property of the thing you are looking at, without adding any property which you can't see. You might say things like 'a black, rectangular, three dimensional thing with letters on it'. — PossibleAaran

Why would I describe it in such peculiar terms? "A black rectangular three dimensional thing with letters on it" could just as easily describe a plaque as a computer. It's a computer, so it's implicitly and necessarily a three-dimensional thing, and has a shape and colour.

The reason I think it's a computer is because I'm familiar with computers and it's very similar to other computers I've seen, and it functions as a computer; not because it's a "black rectangular three-dimensional object." It is those things, but those properties are incidental, they aren't the signifiers of it being a computer, and I don't get anywhere closer to specifying it as a computer just by specifying a comprehensive list of those sorts of properties. The signifiers of it being a computer are more to do with its internal structure and its functionality (use it for email, browse the internet, play videogames, etc.).

Again, you keep denying that you're mistaking experience for object, but this smells very much like you're asking me to reduce my description of my experience to my sensory experiences in abstraction from what they're sensory experiences of, and then somehow build up or infer an idea of what I'm perceiving from there.

No matter how careful and detailed is your description, you will never say 'which exists when I am not perceiving it'. — PossibleAaran

I wouldn't say "which has a motherboard, CPU and RAM inside it" either, but those are also implicit in the thing's being a computer, yet my not seeing those things doesn't mean it's not a computer.

The point is, there's no occasion to add "which exists when I am not perceiving it" because I already know it exists when I'm not perceiving it, because it's a computer.

It's possible that I could be mistaken that it's a computer, but if it is a computer then I can't be mistaken about its persistence while I'm not looking, and that persistence is not something I need to "see" or "infer."

If you did say this, you would no longer be describing, literally, what you can see. You would just be adding a property which you believe the object to have, — PossibleAaran

No, no, no. I already "added the property" (so to speak) when I saw the thing as a computer. The property is implicit in the thing's being a computer. And I can test that property, if I want, by the means I pointed out, just as I can test the computerhood of the object by seeing if I can email with it, etc.

but which you can't see that it is, rather like the amateur artist who draws the human eye as a perfect oval, because that's the shape he believes it has (artists have to work quite hard to learn only to draw what they see and nothing more). — PossibleAaran

Yes, exactly, and the fact that you use this example suggests, again, that you're doing what you say you're not doing. Because the perspectival proportions are not what the artist literally sees, what the artist literally sees is the object, the perspectival vision is precisely the result of training in abstracting away what one knows of what one sees, and sort of beholding one's sensory experience in suspension, as something like a projection on a flat surface with certain proportions of colour and shape. (Amusingly in this context, parsing a photograph is the opposite process.)

Similarly, this tangle you're getting yourself into is the result of you abstracting away what you know of the thing you're experiencing, so that "literally" to you really means a detached, truncated description of some sensory experiences in abstraction.

Sure, you're never going to perceive unperceived persistence that way, but you'd never be able to perceive perceived persistence that way either, because you've already cut yourself off from directly perceiving any object that isn't pure, present sensory experience. You've already turned yourself into a phenomenalist or idealist by choosing the method you've chosen, so the whole exercise is a sham.

If you really weren't doing what you say you aren't doing, then the answer and the tests I've given you would be sufficient. The fact that you still think a camera test is insufficient, and you still think that you need something extra to prove unperceived persistence, over and above the fact that physical objects are by definition things that exist unperceived, and that that persistence can be tested by the use of various kinds of tools and instruments, demonstrates that you are after all painting yourself into the corner of a phenomenalist/idealist stance.

If you have never seen the property of unperceived existence, how do you know the object you are looking at has this property? — PossibleAaran

If it's "an object I'm looking at," a physical object, then necessarily it has this property. (If the "object" is just sensory experience in abstraction that I'm sheerly beholding, on the other hand, then necessarily it doesn't.)

Can you infer that property from what you do see? If you can't, then how can you possibly know it? 'Know' is being used here merely in the weak sense of reliably produced true belief. How can you reliably believe it? — PossibleAaran

Some people are incurious and never open up their computers, so they've never seen the motherboard and CPU. So how do they know their computer has a motherboard and CPU if they haven't seen it?

Similarly, I'm incurious about the computer's existing unperceived, so I've never done the camera test. But I could easily do it.

We can be incurious about these things and still know about them because having a motherboard and CPU is a necessary implication of a thing's being a computer, and persisting unperceived is a necessary implication of a thing's being a physical object.

In these examples, the properties (respectively, having a motherboard and CPU, existing unperceived) aren't being directly perceived in sensory experience, nor are they inferred from sensory experience, they're inferred from the things' being what they are, supposing that they truly are those things.

You have said that if you take a picture with a camera then that will prove that things exist unperceived. But how? Since you cannot literally see that things exist unperceived, I took it that you meant to offer an argument for it here, but I think that argument is fallacious. Here is something we ordinarily believe about cameras: you can put a camera up in a room when no one is in it and the camera can get you a picture of the things which exist in that room when no one is there. Equally, you could close your eyes and take a picture of your computer, and the camera would show you what the computer was doing when you weren't looking.

I think once I lay out this ordinary understanding of a camera in this way, you can see immediately that nobody who wasn't already convinced of Realism would accept without further question that any of it is true. Someone who does not believe Realism to be true would not accept that you can put a camera up and leave it to take a picture of what exists unperceived. — PossibleAaran

Yeah, but there's nobody who actually believes that. People who say they don't believe in Realism don't really disbelieve Realism, they just disbelieve Realism in toy examples where they're hypnotizing themselves into artificially shrinking their experience of the world down to the experience of sensory qualities in abstraction. It's a rakish pose.

I understand what you're saying: the camera is on a level with the laptop, and if the laptop's unperceived existence is dubious, so is the camera's, so one can't be used to prove the other.

But neither the laptop nor the camera's unperceived existence is at all dubious - if they're truly laptops and cameras.

Now they might indeed be something else - a laptopX and a cameraX, both of which have all the properties of normal laptops and cameras, with the exception of unperceived existence. But you'd have to demonstrate that's what they are. And you can't demonstrate that with your "let me literally behold only my sensory experiences in abstraction" game, any more than you could demonstrate perceived existence from that stance.

'To all appearances seem like normal physical things' is tantamount to 'to all appearances seem like things which exist unperceived', but as I have pointed out, you never see that something exists unperceived and so, literally, it never seems that way. — PossibleAaran

"You never see that something exists unperceived". Genius :)

But one wouldn't expect the property of unperceived existence to be something one could see.

Fortunately, you don't need to "see that something exists unperceived" to know that the physical thing before you exists unperceived, because as I said, that's already an ironclad implication of things being physical objects.

You have to accept this, unless you're going the phenomenalist/idealist route you deny. It's completely incoherent to say, "This is a physical object, but I can't be sure, from inspection, whether it exists unperceived." Present inspection isn't the sort of thing you could logically expect to reveal that particular property. What you could logically expect to reveal that property would be things like the camera test.

Now, you might say something like this:- "Ha! You think you are perceiving physical objects, but for all you know you might be perceiving something that to all appearances look and behave like physical objects, but lack the property of existing unperceived."

In that case we'd do the camera test. If the camera showed nothing there when I took the picture, that would be a verified example of something blinking out of existence when unpercieved. BUT THEN IT WOULDN'T BE A PHYSICAL OBJECT AS WE UNDERSTAND PHYSICAL OBJECTS It would be something new, something mysterious and interesting, that shares some properties with physical objects, but lacks the property physical objects have, of existing unperceived.

SUMMARY:- We don't "build up" the idea of physical objects from sensory experience, we POSIT such a thing as physical objecthood and then we test with POSSIBLE tests, using perception as the very standard of judgement, whether a thing answers to those properties. (The process is the same throughout all cognition, right up to science: generate-and-test. What would be the logically necessary outcome for sensory experience, for perception, supposing x is true? Test it.)

Unperceived existence is certainly one of those properties, but since seeing the unseen is a logical impossibility it's not a possible test for unperceived existence; but if something passes possible tests for unperceived existence (like using cameras or other instruments), then that is a sufficient test for unperceived existence.

You have asked me to address you argument, but I'm not sure exactly which argument you mean. — PossibleAaran

Sorry, I mean the following;
1. We enter adult life as Realists for whatever reason (evolution or indoctrination). My test with the laptop the if proves this.
2. We have been given no good reason to replace this belief with any other, at the very least they are all equally good, but none is arguably better.

Therefore, logically we should continue with this belief until a better one is presented to us.

...but I appreciated your thoughts on the bent stick anyway.

As to

Well many people have been Idealists and lived perfectly decent lives. — PossibleAaran

I simply don't agree. If you are an idealist, the approaching car is just an idea, not constrained by any external force, entirely a creation of your mind. There is no more need to get out of its way than there is to escape the dragon you dreamt about last night. all you need do is shut your eyes and presume it does not exist. Absolutely everyone who is not notifiabley insane will try to get out of the way of the approaching car, there are no Idealists. there are people who claim to be Idealists in areas where it would conveniently cause them no actual real-life harm to be one, like the soul, heaven, the infallibility of the Pope, but not ever where it matters. You name me one person who, on getting run over, rushes, not the local A&E to get real treatment, but to the nearest crystal therapist to get their chakras re-aligned. It simply doesn't happen. Any time it actually matters people are Realists, they believe in the real world with its laws of physics.

are those really sufficient conditions for a viable choice of worldview? — PossibleAaran

No, but Wayfarer was trying to argue that is was possibly not even a valid option, 'valid' and 'viable' require two very different proofs, but that aside, I still wouldn't be sure what other conditions might be needed, even for viability, any ideas?

You agree with me that nobody who doesn't already accept that Realism is true would accept your argument about cameras. So someone who has no belief about whether anything exists unperceived or not would not be (sensibly) convinced by your argument about cameras. If that is so, what is the point of your argument about cameras? What use is an argument which can only convince people who already believe the conclusion? I have some of your quotes here for ease of exposition:

Quote 1

Yeah, but there's nobody who actually believes that. People who say they don't believe in Realism don't really disbelieve Realism, they just disbelieve Realism in toy examples where they're hypnotizing themselves into artificially shrinking their experience of the world down to the experience of sensory qualities in abstraction. It's a rakish pose. — gurugeorge

Quote 2

I understand what you're saying: the camera is on a level with the laptop, and if the laptop's unperceived existence is dubious, so is the camera's, so one can't be used to prove the other. But neither the laptop nor the camera's unperceived existence is at all dubious - if they're truly laptops and cameras. — gurugeorge

Quote 3

Similarly, this tangle you're getting yourself into is the result of you abstracting away what you know of the thing you're experiencing, so that "literally" to you really means a detached, truncated description of some sensory experiences in abstraction. — gurugeorge

Quote 4

In these examples, the properties (respectively, having a motherboard and CPU, existing unperceived) aren't being directly perceived in sensory experience, nor are they inferred from sensory experience, they're inferred from the things' being what they are, supposing that they truly are those things. — gurugeorge

Quote 5

you are after all painting yourself into the corner of a phenomenalist/idealist stance. — gurugeorge

Quote 6

You have to accept this, unless you're going the phenomenalist/idealist route you deny. It's completely incoherent to say, "This is a physical object, but I can't be sure, from inspection, whether it exists unperceived." — gurugeorge

Quote7

Present inspection isn't the sort of thing you could logically expect to reveal that particular property. What you could logically expect to reveal that property would be things like the camera test. — gurugeorge

Let us begin by distinguishing between perceiving something and perceiving that something is the case. I say that, though you might perceive a laptop - where this is by definition something which exists unperceived - you can never perceive that it is a laptop, since the property of unperceived existence is not something which you can possibly perceive. You agree with this in Quote 4 and Quote 7. But you worry in Quote 3, Quote 5 and Quote 6 that my characterization of sense experience is already committed to Phenomenalism or even that it is incoherent. It isn't. All I am saying is you never perceive that something exists unperceived, since that property is not one which you could perceive. Similarly, I say that if 'laptop' means partly 'a thing which exists unperceived', you can never perceive that something is a laptop, even though you might be perceiving a laptop. Perhaps I did not make this clear before.

I say that if you cannot perceive that something exists unperceived then, if you are to have any reliable means of establishing it, you need to infer it from the properties that you can perceive (perceive that). This was what I thought you were offering by offering the camera test. I thought you were trying to give an inferential argument that things exist unperceived. Understood that way, the camera test is fallacious. Nobody who did not already accept Realism would accept the ordinary understanding of what the camera can do, even if it is part of the concept 'camera', and that ordinary understanding of what the camera can do is just presupposed by your camera test. You admit this of your camera test in Quote 2, but insist that there is no problem here, because 'neither the laptop nor the camera's unperceived existence is at all dubious - if they're truly laptops and cameras'. I struggle to understand why you have said this. If we are genuinely open about whether Realism or Phenomenalism is true, you have admitted that the camera test won't sensibly convince us of Realism. What use is an argument which can only convince someone who already believes the conclusion? I think such an argument is worthless, which is why I called it fallacious, and using arguments of that sort is not at all truth conductive.

Inferring that the thing which I perceive exists unperceived from the premise that what I perceive is a camera and cameras, by definition, exist unperceived is just as fallacious as arguing that the thing which I mystically perceived must exist because what I mystically perceived was God and God exists by definition. Nobody who doesn't accept the conclusion will accept the premises.

You try to anticipate my reaction to your post here:

Now, you might say something like this:- "Ha! You think you are perceiving physical objects, but for all you know you might be perceiving something that to all appearances look and behave like physical objects, but lack the property of existing unperceived."

In that case we'd do the camera test. If the camera showed nothing there when I took the picture, that would be a verified example of something blinking out of existence when unpercieved. BUT THEN IT WOULDN'T BE A PHYSICAL OBJECT AS WE UNDERSTAND PHYSICAL OBJECTS It would be something new, something mysterious and interesting, that shares some properties with physical objects, but lacks the property physical objects have, of existing unperceived. — gurugeorge

You are right. I would say that, and you would offer me the camera test, to which I would answer: "the camera test could not convince anybody who doesn't already accept Realism. It couldn't convince someone who is open to both Realism or Phenomenalism. So what is the point of the camera test? That it could convince you? But you already believe that things exist unperceived without doing the test!"

So far we have seen that neither sense perception nor inference is a reliable means of establishing that things exist unperceived. You agree that we can never see that something exists unperceived. I am not sure whether you agree that we cannot cogently infer it, but we have seen that if your camera test is supposed to be such an inference, it is fallacious because it presupposes Realism and arguments which assume what they set out to prove are not only incapable of convincing someone who does not believe the conclusion, but are also completely unreliable forms of inference. So if we can't reliably reach the belief that things exist unperceived by sense perception or by inference, how can we do it?

But then, perhaps you weren't offering the camera test as a kind of inference. Perhaps you were saying that the camera test is a reliable method of establishing that things exist unperceived, distinct from sense perception and inference. If that were your suggestion, you would be doing just what I asked various others to do: locate a reliable source for the belief that things exist unperceived even if there is no way to prove that the source is reliable to anyone who didn't believe that it was. That would certainly make a lot of sense of your insistence that 'if the camera is a camera, then it can verify that things exist unperceived'. Before I discuss this suggestion. Is this what you meant to do? If it is, I apologize for having missed it for so long.


, thanks for the clarification.

Sorry, I mean the following;
1. We enter adult life as Realists for whatever reason (evolution or indoctrination). My test with the laptop the if proves this.
2. We have been given no good reason to replace this belief with any other, at the very least they are all equally good, but none is arguably better.

Therefore, logically we should continue with this belief until a better one is presented to us. — Inter Alia

Your argument assumes:

Conservatism. We ought to continue to hold the beliefs we do hold, unless we are given some good reason to replace them.

I can see the merits of Conservatism. It certainly saves time and effort having to constantly worry, in Cartesian fashion, whether what we believe is actually true and whether we can find any reasons for it. It is also much more useful insofar as we can simply build on the beliefs we already have, and that can bear practical fruit.

I have to say that I'm not of that philosophical inclination. I incline towards the 'evidentialist' tradition:

Evidentialism. We ought only accept those beliefs which we can find some reason to think true.

I am happy to construe Evidentialism weakly, so that if a source of belief is in fact reliable, that source can give a good reason for holding the belief, even if there is no way to prove that the source is reliable to anyone who didn't believe that it was. I don't think I have any way to convince you of Evidentialism over Conservatism. I suppose that all I could say is that Evidentialism is a safeguard against wild, unreliable speculation. It consoles us to stick to what we at least have some reliable means of establishing. Conservatism, in contrast, strikes me as an unreliable preference for the dogmas of the day. But I know you will reject this characterization.

PA

I understand your preference for Evidentialism, I just don't see how it applies here. Neither Idealism nor Realism have any more reliable source for the belief than the other. The same is true of Theism and Solopsism, they're all just ways of thinking about the world that only make sense if you accept their axioms. You've cited Plantagina, as your example source for Theism, but have ignored Putnam's 'no miracles' argument for Realism. You've cited Plato, but ignored the Corroboration Argument. There are plenty of sources for the belief in Realism as there are for most other metaphysical views, but each has its counterargument, that's why Evidentialism let's us down.

Though if you gloss the Pyrrhonian school as having 'given up' and as full of 'angst' and 'apathy' — PossibleAaran

I'm not saying that. I am saying that you are saying that about their attitude to skepticism, which is about enquiry or it is about nothing.
What seems to be happening is that Pyrrhonianism is declaring enquiry useless. That is a political position, and one that few who had not given up on could ever aspire to. I assume they are supposed to reject all reason and enquiry and substitute Faith?

I understand your preference for Evidentialism, I just don't see how it applies here. Neither Idealism nor Realism have any more reliable source for the belief than the other. The same is true of Theism and Solopsism, they're all just ways of thinking about the world that only make sense if you accept their axioms. You've cited Plantagina, as your example source for Theism, but have ignored Putnam's 'no miracles' argument for Realism. You've cited Plato, but ignored the Corroboration Argument. There are plenty of sources for the belief in Realism as there are for most other metaphysical views, but each has its counterargument, that's why Evidentialism let's us down. — Inter Alia

I am not defending Idealism as true. I am happy to concede that there is no more a reliable source for Idealism than we seem to have found for Realism.

I did cite Plantinga, but not as a 'source for Theism', if this means that I think Plantinga has an argument for Theism. He doesn't. He just tells a story which, if true, gives us a reliable source for belief in God. I only cited it as an example of the kind of thing which I wanted for Realism: a story which, if true, gives us a reliable source for belief in Realism.

I haven't ignored Putnam's no miracles argument for Realism, nor the Corroboration Argument. I just haven't discussed them because nobody here mentioned them until now, and no one has sketched them as a defence of Realism in this thread. I was just discussing the themes that came up. I'd be happy to discuss them if someone wants to sketch their interpretation of them as a starting point.

I tend to apply Evidentialism in every area. If we can't find reasons, even in the very weak sense of a plausibly reliable source, then I hold that we ought not to believe. I am not sure what you mean by 'Evidentialism let's us down'. How does it do that? Just because it doesn't tell us what to believe when there are both arguments and counter arguments?

I'm not saying that. I am saying that you are saying that about their attitude to skepticism, which is about enquiry or it is about nothing.
What seems to be happening is that Pyrrhonianism is declaring enquiry useless. That is a political position, and one that few who had not given up on could ever aspire to. I assume they are supposed to reject all reason and enquiry and substitute Faith? — charleton

No they don't substitute faith or reject all enquiry. In fact, they often contrast themselves with dogmatists. Dogmatists think that enquiry can be settled once and for all about some matters. Pyrrhonians just keep on enquiring. It isn't that enquiry is useless for the Pyrrhonians. Its just that it has severe limitations which force them to suspend judgement about the real nature of things and 'go along with' the customs and habits of the day, making no claim that those things are true. I have always found the view paradoxical, but it is what they held and even practiced. Some of the ancient Pyrrhonians were early doctors.

PA

How come ataraxia?

How come ataraxia? — charleton

Personally, I liken it to making both emotive and cognitive peace with the epistemic truth that “we have not yet demonstrated any proposition to be perfectly secure from all possible error—not even this one”.

O:)

... but then this can go in as many directions as there are directions to go in.

Edit:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never —”

“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on. — Stephen Crane

Notice that in the deeper truths of this poem, the horizon nevertheless does hold ontic presence.

… to try to add some perspective to the issue of ataraxia, at least as I so far understand it.

I'd be happy to discuss them if someone wants to sketch their interpretation of them as a starting point — PossibleAaran

People have been doing so, though just not by name. gurugeorge's argument about the camera is the corroboration argument, no matter what device we use recording whatever phenomenon (light, sound, radiowaves, time, sonar, radioactive decay) they will all record the laptop as existing when our eyes are shut. They can all be explained away, it's just an argument after all, not proof, but that's basically it. Putman's 'no miracles' argument is basically what I've been saying about harm. If Realism was wrong, gave us the wrong impression of something about the 'real' world, it's pretty remarkable that no-one has yet come to any harm as a result. If we've all been presuming the laptop is there when we shut our eyes and actually it isn't, it's quite astounding that this error has has no effect on us whatsoever despite being perpetrated in every single interaction of every person in the world thousands of time a day. Putnam goes on to defend scientific realism in the same way with the simple incredulity that our scientific prediction could be so reliable if the world was not as they presumed it to be. Again, not foolproof, but certainly as much a contender for reliable source as Plantagina is for Theism.

I am not sure what you mean by 'Evidentialism let's us down'. How does it do that? Just because it doesn't tell us what to believe when there are both arguments and counter arguments? — PossibleAaran

Yes, that's exactly it. Sometimes you have to decide something, contraception, abortion, faith schools, segregation halal meat, the approaching car, catching a ball, the laptop thief, we have to decide one way or another. If Evidentialism isn't going to help, what is?

Let us begin by distinguishing between perceiving something and perceiving that something is the case. I say that, though you might perceive a laptop - where this is by definition something which exists unperceived - you can never perceive that it is a laptop, since the property of unperceived existence is not something which you can possibly perceive. You agree with this in Quote 4 and Quote 7. But you worry in Quote 3, Quote 5 and Quote 6 that my characterization of sense experience is already committed to Phenomenalism or even that it is incoherent. It isn't. All I am saying is you never perceive that something exists unperceived, since that property is not one which you could perceive. Similarly, I say that if 'laptop' means partly 'a thing which exists unperceived', you can never perceive that something is a laptop, even though you might be perceiving a laptop. Perhaps I did not make this clear before. — PossibleAaran

Ah, the perpetual beginning, the perpetual setup of the hypnotic trance! If only you could just get ... behind it, somehow, you could discover something wonderful :)

What's true apriori is that you cannot perceive what you are not perceiving; it doesn't follow, from that, that you can't perceive that something exists unperceived. You can do it easily via a photograph, which reveals that the thing existed while you weren't perceiving it.

I say that if you cannot perceive that something exists unperceived then, if you are to have any reliable means of establishing it, you need to infer it from the properties that you can perceive (perceive that). — PossibleAaran

Not at all, you can perceive it indirectly (e.g. by means of a photograph, or a weight sensor or something like that), you don't have to "infer" it from other properties that you can perceive.

This was what I thought you were offering by offering the camera test. I thought you were trying to give an inferential argument that things exist unperceived. Understood that way, the camera test is fallacious. Nobody who did not already accept Realism would accept the ordinary understanding of what the camera can do, even if it is part of the concept 'camera', and that ordinary understanding of what the camera can do is just presupposed by your camera test. You admit this of your camera test in Quote 2, but insist that there is no problem here, because 'neither the laptop nor the camera's unperceived existence is at all dubious - if they're truly laptops and cameras'. I struggle to understand why you have said this. If we are genuinely open about whether Realism or Phenomenalism is true, you have admitted that the camera test won't sensibly convince us of Realism. What use is an argument which can only convince someone who already believes the conclusion? I think such an argument is worthless, which is why I called it fallacious, and using arguments of that sort is not at all truth conductive. — PossibleAaran

The point is that you don't infer the property of unperceived existence from other, presently-perceived properties of the object, you infer it from the identity you're claiming for the object. As I've said numerous times, IF it's a physical object, then necessarily it exists unperceived, because that's what physical objects do - and you can test that that's what they do by various means, like the camera test, or asking someone else to check if the object disappears when you turn away, etc. Such procedures are the standard by which we check "exists unperceived." There is no other "exists unpercieved" standard, particularly no "exists unperceived" standard that comes from the kinds of reflections you're indulging in.

You haven't seen your friend for years, you ask, "Did you exist while I wasn't perceiving you?" They answer, "Yes". That sort of thing is sufficient, our lives are interwoven with such things constantly, and the mass of such observations and interactions cement the idea of a physical object. There is no other place such an idea could come from - particularly not from staring at one's sensations in the present moment.

If you think the camera is made of ectoplasm or is a cameraX that itself disappears when unperceived, or if you think you're friend is mistaken, then you need to provide separate arguments to that effect.

Now, of course, you might be mistaken in your identification of the object (could be a laptopX and not a laptop, it could be a cameraX and not a camera), but you could only discover that you are mistaken by means of further perceptions that you accept, at some point, as valid identifications. (That's the point re. primacy of truth over doubt again.)

Inferring that the thing which I perceive exists unperceived from the premise that what I perceive is a camera and cameras, by definition, exist unperceived is just as fallacious as arguing that the thing which I mystically perceived must exist because what I mystically perceived was God and God exists by definition. Nobody who doesn't accept the conclusion will accept the premises. — PossibleAaran

But nobody is saying that cameras or laptops exist by definition (whatever that might mean). They may or may not exist, but IF they exist then necessarily they are such things as exist unperceived.

But then, perhaps you weren't offering the camera test as a kind of inference. Perhaps you were saying that the camera test is a reliable method of establishing that things exist unperceived, distinct from sense perception and inference. If that were your suggestion, you would be doing just what I asked various others to do: locate a reliable source for the belief that things exist unperceived even if there is no way to prove that the source is reliable to anyone who didn't believe that it was. That would certainly make a lot of sense of your insistence that 'if the camera is a camera, then it can verify that things exist unperceived'. Before I discuss this suggestion. Is this what you meant to do? If it is, I apologize for having missed it for so long. — PossibleAaran

No, that's not it either.

The camera test is an extension of perception, just as a SWAT mirror is an extension of perception. Again, there's no great mystery about it.

Despite your protestations, and probably unbeknownst to you, you keep doing doing the thing you say you're not doing: proceeding from the kinds of assumptions in terms of which alone the silly debate between Phenomenalism and Realism seems to make some kind of profound, mysterious sense.

One doesn't specify the nature of the thing one is perceiving from the qualities of present sensation, as you keep wanting to do; one specifies a logically possible object apriori and one tests whether the thing one is perceiving answers to those properties, has that identity. But that's a process that takes place in a world that's already accepted as public, already accepted as physical, already accepted as taking place in time and space, and often involves instruments and other people, it's not a sheer beholding of present sensation. But it's from that world that the very concept of "exists unperceived" (and the standards for resolving it) comes; philosophers aren't originating that concept, as if it were some kind of special armchair discovery, they're merely pinching it, detaching it from its normal moorings and making an odd game out of it.

In particular, from the method of sheerly beholding present sensations NOTHING can be securely inferred, so it's no surprise that the quality of physical objects, that they exist unperceived, can't be inferred either.

People have been doing so, though just not by name. gurugeorge's argument about the camera is the corroboration argument, no matter what device we use recording whatever phenomenon (light, sound, radiowaves, time, sonar, radioactive decay) they will all record the laptop as existing when our eyes are shut. They can all be explained away, it's just an argument after all, not proof, but that's basically it. — Inter Alia

But I did discuss this argument with gurugeorge, over many posts. My basic point has been that the argument is circular, since it assumes, without any reason at all, that the recording on the device is a recording of something which existed when not perceived, and no one who doesn't accept Realism will accept this understanding of the device. Now I don't deny that its not meant to be a proof, but is an argument of a more modest kind. But my point is that even as a modest argument trying to show that things probably exist unperceived it fails, because it is fallacious, circular, begs the question, however you want to put it.

Putman's 'no miracles' argument is basically what I've been saying about harm. If Realism was wrong, gave us the wrong impression of something about the 'real' world, it's pretty remarkable that no-one has yet come to any harm as a result. If we've all been presuming the laptop is there when we shut our eyes and actually it isn't, it's quite astounding that this error has has no effect on us whatsoever despite being perpetrated in every single interaction of every person in the world thousands of time a day. Putnam goes on to defend scientific realism in the same way with the simple incredulity that our scientific prediction could be so reliable if the world was not as they presumed it to be — Inter Alia

I'm a fan of Putnam, but I am not sure what harm would result if we made this error. I mean, on Idealism, things exist if and only if they are perceived. Suppose the world were like that and we mistakenly thought things existed even unperceived. What harm might that cause? Could you give an example?

Again, not foolproof, but certainly as much a contender for reliable source as Plantagina is for Theism. — Inter Alia

Plantinga is not supposed to be the reliable source. He says we have a cognitive faculty which reliably produces the belief that God exists. If that were true, we could reliably establish God's existence by use of that faculty. Now, it might not be true, and one might be inclined to doubt it. But my point is that all I wanted from the Realist was some story like this; a story which entails that we can reliably establish that Realism is true by some means, even if people who don't accept Realism are inclined to doubt that we have this faculty. (Note that this is different from the Corroboration Argument, since that is supposed to be a way of inferring that Realism is true from premises using only cogent forms of inference. Circular reasoning, not only fails to convince people who don't accept the conclusion, but is also fallacious, not cogent).

Yes, that's exactly it. Sometimes you have to decide something, contraception, abortion, faith schools, segregation halal meat, the approaching car, catching a ball, the laptop thief, we have to decide one way or another. If Evidentialism isn't going to help, what is? — Inter Alia

It is easier to discuss particular examples. Take the laptop thief. Evidentialism says that unless you have some reliable way of establishing who the laptop thief is, you ought not believe that it is Inter Alia. And this seems to me to make perfect sense. I shouldn't just go accusing you of stealing a laptop without a shred of evidence.

Now take an approaching car. Evidentialism says that unless you have some reliable way of establishing that a car is approaching, you ought not believe that one is. And this seems to me to make perfect sense. What kind of maniac would I be if I just believed, out of the blue, that a car was approaching and dived, screaming and crying, onto the nearest sidewalk. I had never heard the sound of a car or seen one. I just decided one was coming. That would surely be foolish.

Now take abortion. Evidentialism says that unless you have some reliable way of establishing that abortion is right or wrong in this particular case, you should not believe that it is or that it isn't. Moral cases I think are difficult for Evidentialism, since evidently some decision has to be made about whether to abort of not. A non decision is effectively a decision not to abort, and so one has no choice but to make decisions of this kind. I think what the Evidentialist should say is that, insofar as it is possible not to make a decision, one should only make a decision if there is some reliable means of establishing what the right decision is.

Why not see what Conservatism has to say about these cases? Conservatism says about the laptop thief that if I already suspect that Inter Alia stole my laptop, I should believe this unless I have some reason to think otherwise. That sounds quite unfair to you. Conservatism says that if I already believe that a car is approaching, I should continue to believe that one is unless I have some reason to think that it isn't. Never mind that I never heard or saw a car. I just believe this because I have an irrational fear of being run over every time I go near the road. Conservatism says that this belief, produced by my irrational fear, is what I should believe. Conservatism says about abortion that if I already believe that abortion is right in this case, even if I have no means whatsoever of reliably figuring out whether it is or not, I should believe that it is right and do the abortion, unless I find some reason to think it is wrong. That sounds like a dangerous idea to my mind. I have no reliable means at all of figuring out what the right thing to do is, but I still go ahead and terminate a potential human being because I believe, for no particular reason, that abortion is right in this case.

No doubt I have offered a straw man of Conservatism. If I have done so, I have done so with tongue in cheek, to provoke you to defend Conservatism with the rigour I am sure you are capable of.

PA

One doesn't specify the nature of the thing one is perceiving from the qualities of present sensation, as you keep wanting to do; one specifies a logically possible object apriori and one tests whether the thing one is perceiving answers to those properties, has that identity. — gurugeorge

Suppose I do that. Suppose I specify apriori that I want to figure out whether there exists anything which is black, rectangular, has a motherboard and exists even when unperceived- in a word, a laptop. I then look to my perceptions. I perceive that the thing is black and rectangular. I look inside and perceive that it has a motherboard. But I don't perceive that it exists unperceived. I can't. So I find this thing, a camera, and I take a photo with my eyes closed and get a print out. The picture is a picture which looks just like the thing I was earlier looking at. What does this show? That the laptop existed unperceived while I took the picture? Well if the thing I used really was a camera then yes, it shows that. But unless I already believe that things exist unperceived I won't believe that it really was a camera - that is, I won't believe that the picture it took is one of a thing which existed unperceived. And this you already admitted.

But now you add something more:

But that's a process that takes place in a world that's already accepted as public, already acceptd as physical, already accepted as taking place in time and space, and often involves instruments and other people, it's not a sheer beholding of present sensation. — gurugeorge

So, I already have to accept that things exist unperceived before I can use the camera test. Got that. And then:

But it's from that world that the very concept of "exists unperceived" (and the standards for resolving it) comes; philosophers aren't originating that concept, as if it were some kind of special armchair discovery, they're merely pinching it, detaching it from its normal moorings and making an odd game out of it. — gurugeorge

I am not sure about that first part. I'm not even sure what is meant by saying that the concept of unperceived existence 'comes from the world of public physical objects'. What do you mean 'comes from'? Are you saying that I couldn't possibly have that concept unless there were physical objects? Surely I could gain the concept of unperceived existence just by reflection on myself and my experience. The concept of existence I can derive from knowledge of my own existence. The concept of experience I can derive from awareness of my own experience. I can negate the concept of experience to create 'unexperienced' and then put the two ideas together to create 'unperceived existence', and then it is just a matter of imagining a thing which has that property. Why does the concept need to 'come from' the world of physical objects, whatever 'comes from' means here?

I agree that the camera test standard is the ordinary standard for testing whether something exists unperceived, by why can't we question whether that standard is really sufficient? The standard itself presupposes that things exist unperceived and so it is quite a lousy standard if it is intended to establish for the first time that anything exists unperceived, though admittedly it is a good standard once we have accepted that certain things do exist unperceived.

Thus, I don't think philosophers are stealing anything. You can get the concept of unperceived existence in the armchair. I don't know what is meant by 'the concept comes from the public world of physical objects'. The concept comes, like every concept, from experience, and from experience which I can be acquainted with in the armchair.

Incidentally, I thought originally that you were defending Realism. But now it turns out that you think Realism is just as non-sensical as Phenomenalism. Is that right?

At any rate, I think you will agree that a proof of the existence of God which only works if we assume that God exists is absolutely worthless if we are trying to establish God's existence for the first time, without merely assuming it to be true. I think you will agree that it is of no consolation whatsoever to be told that the concept of 'God's existence' is a concept which 'comes from the world in which God exists' and to do anything like question that idea is to take the concept 'God's existence' and make an odd game of it. Is there some difference between your argument and this one? What is it?

PA

So first, I certainly notice you had mounted a robust critique of both proofs, I think I'm failing to grasp quite what it is about Plantagina's argument, which I understand is just an example, that you find acceptable but which is absent from any argument in favour of Realism. As far as I understand it, Plantagina is simply saying we have a faculty which reliably produces a belief in God. Well, what's wrong with "we have a faculty which reliably produces a belief in Realism"?

Suppose the world were like that and we mistakenly thought things existed even unperceived. What harm might that cause? Could you give an example? — PossibleAaran

We mistakenly think the bridge is there even though we can't see it. We mistakenly presume electricity is not in the 240volt wire because we can't see it. It's too easy to come up with thousands of these, I presume I'm missing something?

I will take each of your examples in turn, a couple are not quite what I meant so I might need to clarify first.

The laptop thief - what I meant was someone could steal your laptop whilst you've got your eyes shut. You have to decide do I need to protect my property when I can't see it (because it's really there) or can I continue to have this lovely daydream with my eyes closed (because the laptop isn't really there whilst my eyes are closed and so no-one can steal it)

The approaching car - again not quite what I mean, I meant a car is definitely approaching, you establish that with your own eyes, but the (let's say due to panic, or flying debris) you go both blind and deaf. Is the car still coming? You've got no reason (apart from conservatism) to think it is, there's no longer any evidence of it, do you get out of the way?

The moral cases you seem to have some sympathy with anyway, I'm basically saying that most of life is like that. One moral or necessary decision after another.

Skepticism is only possible when one does not need to decide one way or the other, and in such cases it is basically redundant.

I don't understand what you mean when you say that the whole thing is 'artificial'. All of us have a clear idea of what it is for something to exist, since, as Descartes pointed out, one has a first hand awareness of one's own existence. — PossibleAaran

I find the critics of the Cartesian approach pretty convincing. I'd like to know what you'd make of Heidegger's The Concept of Time. It's a short, early draft of his most famous work. It's about 80 pages of philosophical revolution.

You say that this whole language of 'existence' and 'perception' is artificial, but I don't think it is at all. I'm immediately aware both of my existence and my perceiving, so in what sense is it artificial? Without an answer to that, I can't see what you mean in saying that you desire theory closer to 'non-philosophical life', since it seems to me that the concepts 'existence' and 'perception' can be understood merely by reflection on your own mental life and so they are, as it were, as close to your life as could be! — PossibleAaran

We operate, though, with a lot of inherited metaphysical baggage. It's so familiar that we take it for granted. For instance, are we thinking substances? Do objects in the word exist in physics time, physics space? Or is there a different kind of existential time and existential spatiality that we cover up with what 'should' be there, with what has become an educated common sense that no longer checks itself against the flow of experience. For the most part we 'comport' ourselves nontheoretically in the world. We don't even have a language for this as a general rule, because it's so automatic as to be almost invisible to the theoretical mind.

The theoretical mind just stares at objects. They become concept-organized sensations, perhaps. But the non-theoretical mind uses objects as tools. Or has pillow talk with the wife. The theoretical epistemology-obsessed approach has nothing to do with this kind of living.

Being-in-the-world and being-with-others is something like a pre-theoretical 'sense' or phenomenon that operates as an in-explicit foundation for our theorizing. We 'know' that we are in a shared situation or world in a pre-rational way. I can't prove this. I can only point to the phenomenon. In the same way, I can only define words in terms of other words. We just do grasp language as a whole, as a sort of mysterious condition for the possibility of theoretical talk. The artificiality comes in when this vast background goes unnoticed and we play with a few concepts on the foreground. We don't see that we play on the mere surface of an ocean of dark knowhow.

Suppose I do that. Suppose I specify apriori that I want to figure out whether there exists anything which is black, rectangular, has a motherboard and exists even when unperceived- in a word, a laptop. I then look to my perceptions. I perceive that the thing is black and rectangular. I look inside and perceive that it has a motherboard. But I don't perceive that it exists unperceived. I can't. — PossibleAaran

Yes, you can't directly perceive that it exists unperceived while you're not perceiving it, but you can indirectly verify that it has the property of unperceived existence by virtue of traces of the causal connections it has to the rest of the world while you are not perceiving it, by virtue of the fact that it interacts with the world around it while you're not perceiving it.

So I find this thing, a camera, and I take a photo with my eyes closed and get a print out. The picture is a picture which looks just like the thing I was earlier looking at. What does this show? That the laptop existed unperceived while I took the picture? Well if the thing I used really was a camera then yes, it shows that. But unless I already believe that things exist unperceived I won't believe that it really was a camera - that is, I won't believe that the picture it took is one of a thing which existed unperceived. And this you already admitted. — PossibleAaran

It doesn't even matter if the camera doesn't exist unperceived, so long as it functions in all respects like a camera for the purposes of the test - it could itself be a cameraX (that blinks out of existence when you're not looking at it) for all you know, but that wouldn't matter, because its property of not existing unperceived wouldn't make any difference to the test. (You could easily tighten up the test to take account of the possibility that the thing you're using to test the unperceived existence of the original object is a cameraX - don't let it out of your sight and take the picture backwards.)

You don't have to believe that everything exists unperceived prior to the test. That's something you have no possible way of knowing anyway (even less so if you're just staring at present sensation). You merely have to stipulate a possible kind of thing, that you're going to call "physical," as possessing a logically possible property - unperceived existence - and check whether there's any instance of it. And in order to check whether there's any instance of it, all you need to do is (not attempt the impossible - i.e. perceive that something exists unperceived by the method of directly, in the here and now, perceiving its unperceived existence, but) perceive evidence of the fact that it still interacts with the world around it while you're not perceiving it, which is something that can be done indirectly. A photograph is evidence of that, as would be the readings from a weight sensor, etc., etc., or the testimony of someone else.

I am not sure about that first part. I'm not even sure what is meant by saying that the concept of unperceived existence 'comes from the world of public physical objects'. What do you mean 'comes from'? Are you saying that I couldn't possibly have that concept unless there were physical objects? Surely I could gain the concept of unperceived existence just by reflection on myself and my experience. The concept of existence I can derive from knowledge of my own existence. The concept of experience I can derive from awareness of my own experience. — PossibleAaran

What it means for you to exist, what it means for you to experience, each of these concepts only has meaning in the context of a public world.

Suppose you do restrict yourself to the consideration of present experience without presuppositions, then in that case the "you" that's experiencing isn't a human being with a body, it's something like Descartes' "thinking thing," or the "pure experiencing" of the non-dual mystic, and its object is something like a 3-d cinema show hanging in nothing. So in that scenario, concepts like me and experience, or sensation - their grammar, as ordinarily used, doesn't have any purchase. Those concepts are "built for" (have criteria in terms of) the physical world, and then only secondarily are introjected by the philosopher in course of the peculiar exercise of Cartesian bracketing; but they only have verifiability conditions in a physical world, they have no verifiability conditions in that queer, truncated realm.

IOW "Experience" in ordinary language doesn't mean, "a 3-d cinema show hanging in nothing," it means experience as the usual kind of human being in a world of objects with the usual qualities.
So in essence what you are doing in the course of the Cartesian exercise is re-defining "experience" to mean something like, "a 3-d cinema show hanging in nothing," which is the newly discovered object of your ("you" now as a pure point of perception) exercise in Cartesian bracketing. But in that case you have no standard of verification for your new term, like you would have had when you used the concept normally (you can't presuppose the validity of those tests). You can't even avail yourself of the concept of memory to check things, because memory too lives in the very public world you've temporarily renounced in the course of the exercise.

I can negate the concept of experience to create 'unexperienced' and then put the two ideas together to create 'unperceived existence', and then it is just a matter of imagining a thing which has that property. Why does the concept need to 'come from' the world of physical objects, whatever 'comes from' means here? — PossibleAaran

You can certainly negate "experience" in the normal sense, in which case you end up with things like the camera test to verify the negation. But how would you go about negating "experience" as referring to that "3-d cinema show hanging in nothing" thing?

If you depart from the criteria for concepts as used in the ordinary sense, then you've lost the ability to apply those concepts in the presuppositionless stance too. But then what are you talking about after all? You don't know, you don't know what it is, you don't know the first thing about it. But if you don't know the first thing about it, how can you draw usable criteria from it?

Bracketing presuppositions is an important tool of philosophy, for sure, but bracketing all presuppositions is not definitive of philosophical reflection, and actually doesn't lead anywhere, can't lead anywhere. It's a Chinese finger puzzle for the mind (or Wittgenstein's "fly bottle").

So again, we come back to the thing of truth being prior to doubt, doubt functioning as doubt by using truth as a lever (e.g. the subsequent perception telling you that the previous perception was an illusion).

Incidentally, I thought originally that you were defending Realism. But now it turns out that you think Realism is just as non-sensical as Phenomenalism. Is that right? — PossibleAaran

Yes. It's a non-problem, because the Realist and the Phenomenalist take in each others' washing. Each actually allows some grain of truth in the other's position. The grain of truth that the Realist has to accept from the Phenomenalist is something we already know and are familiar with - that perception can't be "direct" in the Naive Realist sense (although that doesn't mean it can't be direct in other senses - the actual directness is in the fact that there are no such things as mistakes in a casual chain from object to brain). But the Phenomenalist sin is this: you can't reduce experience to something called "sensation," or even "experience," without accepting some elements of the Realist position. For example, as above, the thing you're staring at while exercising Cartesian doubt can't be "sensation" unless some elements of the real world story are accepted. But then if it's not sensation, if it's being thought of truly "without presuppositions," as the 3-d cinema show hovering in nothing, then no conclusion can be drawn from its existence or form whatsoever. It's already a foregone conclusion that it's not going to be able to connect to anything external to it, it's not an interesting discovery that it can't connect to anything external to it.

At any rate, I think you will agree that a proof of the existence of God which only works if we assume that God exists is absolutely worthless if we are trying to establish God's existence for the first time, without merely assuming it to be true. I think you will agree that it is of no consolation whatsoever to be told that the concept of 'God's existence' is a concept which 'comes from the world in which God exists' and to do anything like question that idea is to take the concept 'God's existence' and make an odd game of it. Is there some difference between your argument and this one? What is it?

As I said, no one's claiming that physical cameras and laptops are such things as exist necessarily and couldn't possibly not exist, like God is supposed to be.

Well, what's wrong with "we have a faculty which reliably produces a belief in Realism"? — Inter Alia

You have to say what the faculty is. And the difficulty is, the faculties typically accepted as possessed by humans by Realists don't fit the bill. Sense perception won't do it. Inference won't do it. So which faculty reliably produces belief in Realism?

We mistakenly think the bridge is there even though we can't see it. We mistakenly presume electricity is not in the 240volt wire because we can't see it. It's too easy to come up with thousands of these, I presume I'm missing something? — Inter Alia

I still don't grasp the volt case. If I believe that the volts exist unperceived I won't put my finger on an exposed live wire. As it happens - let's suppose - the volts only exist while perceived. Why should that make any difference to whether I hurt myself or not? My believing - mistakenly - that the volts exist unperceived keeps me perfectly safe because it stops me from putting my finger on a live wire, even though the belief is false. Why is that mysterious?

The bridge example is clearer but manageable. The Idealist holds that there is no bridge when unperceived. Suppose that's true and I walk over where I mistakenly believe there to be a bridge. What will happen is quite simple. I will perceive a floor underneath my feet, and that floor, since it is being perceived, exists. The floor which I feel under my feat is the bridge! Obviously a crude Idealist holds that if I weren't feeling the floor under my feet at that time, the bridge would not exist. But why does this create some mystery about why I don't hurt myself more? I could understand if the Idealist merely said that things don't exist when you aren't looking, since that would imply that if I walk where I believe there to be a bridge but have my eyes closed, I will fall to my death. But even the crudest Idealists will hold that the necessary condition for existence is being perceived, not merely seen.

The laptop thief - what I meant was someone could steal your laptop whilst you've got your eyes shut. You have to decide do I need to protect my property when I can't see it (because it's really there) or can I continue to have this lovely daydream with my eyes closed (because the laptop isn't really there whilst my eyes are closed and so no-one can steal it)

The approaching car - again not quite what I mean, I meant a car is definitely approaching, you establish that with your own eyes, but the (let's say due to panic, or flying debris) you go both blind and deaf. Is the car still coming? You've got no reason (apart from conservatism) to think it is, there's no longer any evidence of it, do you get out of the way?

The moral cases you seem to have some sympathy with anyway, I'm basically saying that most of life is like that. One moral or necessary decision after another.

Skepticism is only possible when one does not need to decide one way or the other, and in such cases it is basically redundant. — Inter Alia

I see, so it isn't Evidentialism as such that let's us down with decision making. Its Evidentialism plus the idea that we have no evidence that Idealism is false. Let's take the examples in turn again.

The Laptop Thief
There are two ways to interpret the scenario. First, it might be that I just have my eyes closed and can still hear the man stealing my laptop. I can hear him unplugging it, rustling the keys, mumbling about how heavy it is, stuffing it in his bag, and so on. In that case I do have reason to think that a man is stealing my laptop don't I? So Evidentialism will yield the satisfying result that we ought to believe the laptop is being stolen and so protect it.

Second, it might be that I cannot perceive my laptop being stolen at the present moment at all. Does that mean that we have no reason to believe that the laptop is being stolen? I can't see that it entails that. Perhaps I remember seeing the laptop being stolen just 1 second ago when I was perceiving it, and that's my evidence. Unless you think that remembering that the laptop was being stolen 1 second ago is not good evidence that it is being stolen now? By contrast Conservatism seems silly here. Perhaps I just believe, willy nilly, that my laptop is being stolen - I'm an incredibly anxious and suspicious person; the sort that constantly expects conspiracy. I haven't seen or heard anything which might suggest this. I am just such a serious conspiracy theorist that I believe it to be. Conservatism entails that the sensible thing for me to do is to continue to believe this and rush to my laptop in its defence. Now, in one sense, it is sensible for me to do that. Given that I believe the laptop is being stolen, it is sensible to rush to its defence. But my belief here is not sensible, since there is no evidence for it, and so my action is all things unconsidered not sensible either.

The Approaching Car

Much the same thing can be said here. Although I am no longer perceiving the car I can remember that it was approaching a moment ago, and I know that a car which was approaching a moment ago will likely still be approaching now. I think I know what you are getting at with these two cases, and that's that although my response here is fine, an Idealist cannot make it. He simply cannot say that the car is likely still approaching while unperceived because it was approaching a moment ago, since that refutes his thesis. Right, but the Idealist can simply say that an experienced car was approaching a moment ago, and he knows from past experience that if you perceive a car approaching at one moment and you do not move, you will, shortly after, experience a car hitting you. He need not postulate a car which exists unperceived; just a car which approaches and a car which hits him.

What it means for you to exist, what it means for you to experience, each of these concepts only has meaning in the context of a public world. — gurugeorge

What do you mean 'a public world'? What's a 'public world', and why does the concept 'experience' only have meaning 'in that context'?

Suppose you do restrict yourself to the consideration of present experience without presuppositions, then in that case the "you" that's experiencing isn't a human being with a body, it's something like Descartes' "thinking thing," or the "pure experiencing" of the non-dual mystic, and its object is something like a 3-d cinema show hanging in nothing. So in that scenario, concepts like me and experience, or sensation - their grammar, as ordinarily used, doesn't have any purchase. Those concepts are "built for" (have criteria in terms of) the physical world, and then only secondarily are introjected by the philosopher in course of the peculiar exercise of Cartesian bracketing; but they only have verifiability conditions in a physical world, they have no verifiability conditions in that queer, truncated realm. — gurugeorge

There is a lot here to discuss. The characterization '3-d cinema show hanging in nothing' is both uncharitable and difficult to understand. What is meant by 'hanging in nothing'. If you mean here that experience is the presentation of images which are pictures of the world, and the phrase 'hanging in nothing' is supposed to indicate that we are bracketing the issue of whether the pictures really are of the world, that is not at all what I meant to do. That obviously presupposes a veil of perception, which I reject. What I mean to restrict us to at the outset is simply what can be seen. Now, in one sense, when I look in front of me at the moment, what I can see is a laptop, and as you said, the laptop exists unperceived. But in another sense, that isn't what I see at all. What is available or given to my consciousness at this moment? Not the property of existing unperceived. Only certain patches of colour of a certain size and shape. Now, I am not saying that all I experience, in the ordinary sense of experience, is patches of colour. What I am saying is that that is the only part of my present experience which is indisputable; it is the only part of my experience for which there is a clear answer why I should believe it to be there. On the basis of this experience alone, there is no answer as to why I should believe that anything exists unperceived. You are right that this is a non-ordinary concept of experience. It is one tailored for the purpose of building an indisputable system of philosophy - not one which is certain, just one where there is a sensible answer as to why each part should be accepted. You don't even have to call this concept experience if you don't want. Call it schmexperience for all it matters. What I schmexperience is only certain colour patches of a certain size and shape. These things are given to me in such a way that it is simply indisputable that they are there. I cannot sensibly doubt that there are these patches of colour before me at this moment. There is an obvious reason why I should believe it. With that said, I am happy to concede that the ordinary concept of 'experience' cannot be meaningfully applied here.

So in essence what you are doing in the course of the Cartesian exercise is re-defining "experience" to mean something like, "a 3-d cinema show hanging in nothing," which is the newly discovered object of your ("you" now as a pure point of perception) exercise in Cartesian bracketing. — gurugeorge

As I said, the concept of 'experience' implicit in my remarks is the concept of 'what is indisputably before my consciousness'. I don't want to 're-define' anything. I am happy not to use the word 'experience' if it is so troubling, although to drop that word represents a departure from traditional ways of discussing the issue.

If you depart from the criteria for concepts as used in the ordinary sense, then you've lost the ability to apply those concepts in the presuppositionless stance too. But then what are you talking about after all? You don't know, you don't know what it is, you don't know the first thing about it. But if you don't know the first thing about it, how can you draw usable criteria from it? — gurugeorge

Does the concept which I have explicated above have no meaning? It seems to me that I understand it perfectly well. Perhaps you are worried because the concept is not 'ordinary', but I don't see any reason to think that if a concept is 'not ordinary' then it must be meaningless. What is so magical about 'ordinary concepts' that they get to have meaning but 'non-ordinary' concepts don't.

Bracketing presuppositions is an important tool of philosophy, for sure, but bracketing all presuppositions is not definitive of philosophical reflection, and actually doesn't lead anywhere, can't lead anywhere. It's a Chinese finger puzzle for the mind (or Wittgenstein's "fly bottle"). — gurugeorge

This is just the suggestion that it is impossible to build an indisputable system of philosophy, which is just what ancient scepticism was. I've always thought that Wittgenstein was a Pyrrhonian.

Yes. It's a non-problem, because the Realist and the Phenomenalist take in each others' washing. Each actually allows some grain of truth in the other's position. The grain of truth that the Realist has to accept from the Phenomenalist is something we already know and are familiar with - that perception can't be "direct" in the Naive Realist sense (although that doesn't mean it can't be direct in other senses - the actual directness is in the fact that there are no such things as mistakes in a casual chain from object to brain). — gurugeorge

I know some Realists and Phenomenalists made a lot of this issue of the 'directness' of perception. Russell did, for example. I don't think that's important at all. All that matters is that certain elements of experience are unproblematically available to consciousness in such a way as to make them indisputable, and some aren't. The property of unperceived existence, isn't. It is painfully easy to produce a story, compatible with all of the indisputable 'given' elements of experience such that nothing exists unperceived. I have no way to prove to you, I suppose that the property of unperceived existence isn't given to my conscious awareness like the property of blueness is. I take this to be patently obvious to anyone who has the faculty of sense perception.

But then if it's not sensation, if it's being thought of truly "without presuppositions," as the 3-d cinema show hovering in nothing, then no conclusion can be drawn from its existence or form whatsoever. It's already a foregone conclusion that it's not going to be able to connect to anything external to it, it's not an interesting discovery that it can't connect to anything external to it. — gurugeorge

I don't think its foregone at all. Why is it so obvious that no conclusion can be drawn from the given? I certainly can't tell, a priori, that this is so. The discovery, if it were one, would be that almost nothing that I believe is indisputable, and that sounds to me like an interesting philosophical discovery. I can't stop global warming with it, but all the same.

As I said, no one's claiming that physical cameras and laptops are such things as exist necessarily and couldn't possibly not exist, like God is supposed to be. — gurugeorge

I didn't use the concept of necessary existence in my reducio about God. I used the concept of existence, and you did claim that laptops are such things as exist - which was the premise of the reducio. So it still seems to me that that argument is parallel to the one which you gave.

I find the critics of the Cartesian approach pretty convincing. — ff0

What is it about the Cartesian approach that you find untenable?

The theoretical epistemology-obsessed approach has nothing to do with this kind of living. — ff0

I agree.

We 'know' that we are in a shared situation or world in a pre-rational way. — ff0

If 'know' means that the thing known is indisputable, it isn't clear to me that that is true. By 'Indisputable', I don't mean 'certain', I just mean that there is some reason, no matter how meagre, which sensibly answers the question of why we should believe it to be true.

He need not postulate a car which exists unperceived; just a car which approaches and a car which hits him. — PossibleAaran

I'm going to just respond to this proposition for now because I think it gets to the heart of what I'm trying to say. If the Idealist has the concept of these two cars and the idea that the one leads to the other, then he is in no meaningful way any different to a Realist. The only difference would be how he would describe events and (as we've established before) such an obtuse definition would be difficult for him to obtain, for no gain. This is why I keep asking what benefit such a view might bring the Idealist.

Also, perhaps even more importantly, this is what it is to be a Realist. We too postulate a perceived car and an impacting car. We then come up with a theory as to why these two cars seem to be so inextricably linked, that theory is that they are the same car. Its a damn good theory too, it does exactly what a theory is meant to do in that it provides us with virtually 100% successful predictions, now why would we change that process in favour of one which gives no explanation as to why the two cars are inextricably linked.

I'd be interested to hear your theory, why is it that whenever I sense an approaching object and then close my eyes, seconds later an object of exactly the same description impacts with me from exactly the trajectory the previous object had?

If the Idealist has the concept of these two cars and the idea that the one leads to the other, then he is in no meaningful way any different to a Realist — Inter Alia

It seems to me that he is meaningfully different and that you recognize this. The Realist postulates that these two experienced cars are numerically the same car which persisted whilst unperceived. The Idealist denies this.

We too postulate a perceived car and an impacting car. We then come up with a theory as to why these two cars seem to be so inextricably linked, that theory is that they are the same car. Its a damn good theory too, it does exactly what a theory is meant to do in that it provides us with virtually 100% successful predictions, now why would we change that process in favour of one which gives no explanation as to why the two cars are inextricably linked. — Inter Alia

I think you are right that this kind of argument is the kind which Idealists of the past typically missed. What leads Stace, for example, to Idealism is that he thinks you can only infer that things exist unperceived either by deduction or enumerative induction. He completely fails to see inference to the best explanation.

The Idealist is indeed offering no explanation at all, at least as I characterized him so far. In that way perhaps Realism is superior, but then, it isn't clear that Realism is the best explanation period. Why Is Realism a better explanation of the two perceived cars than the evil demon hypothesis? Perhaps an evil demon brings these cars in and out of existence to trick you into thinking that Realism is true.

PA

It seems to me that he is meaningfully different and that you recognize this. — PossibleAaran

No, this is the major problem I have with the general argument (not your argument personally), I do not think that he is meaningfully different, it has no important consequences at all. If the idealist is thinking carefully and doesn't start believing in bridges that aren't there, or allowing their laptops to be stolen out of a belief that it no longer exists because they have their eyes shut, then they are indistinguishable from the Realist.

Why Is Realism a better explanation of the two perceived cars than the evil demon hypothesis? Perhaps an evil demon brings these cars in and out of existence to trick you into thinking that Realism is true. — PossibleAaran

Basically because we cannot see, hear speak to or otherwise interact with the 'evil demon' he has shown himself in no other way than being the enactor of the laws of physics, he hasn't turned up in the flesh one day asking for money. So because his actions are indistinguishable from the laws of physics the issue becomes semantics. We might as well have departments of 'evil demonology' at our universities, studying the effects of the evil demon, trying to predict his activities. In fact they'd do such a good job of predicting his actions (because he's extremely consistent) that they might even propose evil demon laws to help us predict what he's going to do next.

Unless the evil demon is going to start acting like a demon (evil, capricious, capable of changing his mind) then he basically is the laws of physics and the difference is just in what we call it.

What do you mean 'a public world'? What's a 'public world', and why does the concept 'experience' only have meaning 'in that context'? — PossibleAaran

Because the conditions for whether a concept like "experience" as ordinarily understood is being used correctly, or not, only make sense if the world is a public world, a shared world, a world we are all partaking in, accessing together and discussing together, investigating together, etc. We normally use words like "me," "you," "experience", "unperceived", etc. in a way that involves (not the "prior acceptance of Realism" as you would have it but) acceptance that at least some things are as we think they are, that there are at least some perceptions that are valid, etc.

The methodological solipsism of the Cartesian method brackets that world from the start, but in doing so it thereby removes the normal conditions for the use of those concepts, which means that the concept isn't being used in the way it's normally used.

But then what, in what way is it being used? When are you applying or using "schmexperience" properly? How would you know? What is the nature of the "self" who's "having" "experience" in this new sense? Or does schmexperience not have a haver? Or is the haver of a different kind? If so what?

The situation is really that the words are being used as analogies. The concepts have a vague connection to the ordinary concepts, but only insofar as they still have a few of the criteria that in their ordinary use would accompany the bracketed criteria, so there's enough of a family resemblance we feel justified in using the term.

But actually we don't know, in the depths of suspension of presuppositions, what the hell it is that's going on; we actually have less confidence than we have looking at the whole show in terms of ordinary language, not more.

There is a lot here to discuss. The characterization '3-d cinema show hanging in nothing' is both uncharitable and difficult to understand. — PossibleAaran

Why is it uncharitable? It's just an attempt to describe, by analogy, what you get when you don't have any presuppositions. The nearest you can get to describing the stuff of experience without presuppositions is that it's some kind of experiential display that purports to be of something, but you can't be sure that it's of anything, and nor can you be sure what you are, who perceives it. In fact, "you" even drop out of the picture altogether (even your thoughts themselves are just part of the display) and the nearest that one can get to describing what "you" are in that context is the very perspectivalness of the display, the fact that it seems to display things from a point of view.

But what news from that world enlightens the ordinary, everyday world? How do you tighten up our thinking in the ordinary everyday world but simply noting that the less you presuppose the less you can say about what exists?

What is meant by 'hanging in nothing'. If you mean here that experience is the presentation of images which are pictures of the world, and the phrase 'hanging in nothing' is supposed to indicate that we are bracketing the issue of whether the pictures really are of the world, that is not at all what I meant to do. That obviously presupposes a veil of perception, which I reject. What I mean to restrict us to at the outset is simply what can be seen. Now, in one sense, when I look in front of me at the moment, what I can see is a laptop, and as you said, the laptop exists unperceived. But in another sense, that isn't what I see at all. What is available or given to my consciousness at this moment? Not the property of existing unperceived. Only certain patches of colour of a certain size and shape. — PossibleAaran

"In another sense" - in WHAT sense, precisely? What is this "seeing" you're talking about?

Normally seeing implies or presupposes a bunch of physical-world-story stuff. But if you're not implying that, then what is the testable content of this "seeing", what are the conditions for whether one is "seeing" in this sense? When can one correctly be said to be "seeing" (shcmeeing? :) ) in this sense, and when not?

Now, I am not saying that all I experience, in the ordinary sense of experience, is patches of colour. What I am saying is that that is the only part of my present experience which is indisputable; it is the only part of my experience for which there is a clear answer why I should believe it to be there. — PossibleAaran

Actually it's no more "indisputable" than unperceived existence. That this is a "colour", or a "patch" - these terms also hide presuppositions, just like "seeing."

I'm afraid I can't shake the suspicion that you are captivated by the veil of perception idea, otherwise why would you think that "coloured patch" is somehow less disputable than "laptop?" In fact, without the normal background world story as a context for the phrase's normal use, a phrase like "I'm seeing a coloured patch" used in the Cartesianly bracketed sense is even MORE disputable, MORE mysterious, than the same phrase could ever be in the ordinary, unbracketed sense.

"Coloured patch" and "laptop" and "unperceived existence" are all on a level, and all involve elements of public verification (it's just that unperceived existence requires a bit of indirect verification, and can't be read off from present experience of the object); you aren't getting to some deeper, more indisputable level by calling a thing a "coloured patch" and not "a laptop."

You might think "coloured patch" is something you can "read off" of present experience without presupposition, but look more deeply. Colours are normally a property of light or physical surfaces, both of which are such things as are capable of existing unperceived - but if you can't allow that they're a property of light and physical surfaces, because you can't perceive unperceived existence so you can't be sure there are physical surfaces, then what is this "colour" thing if it's not a property of physical surfaces? And if surfaces aren't such things as can demonstrably exist unperceived, what are they? What is this thing that you're sheerly beholding and are determined to restrict to present experience in order to behold? You can't call it colour, so let's call it schmolour. What are the criteria for application of schmolour, if they're not the usual ones for colour?

If you really want to drill down to absolutely no presuppositions, then you can't even help yourself to terms like "colour" or "patch." On the other hand, if you feel you can confidently call a thing a "coloured patch", then you can just as confidently call it a "laptop." Again, you're not actually getting to any deeper or more indubitable a layer by calling something a "coloured patch."

On the basis of this experience alone, there is no answer as to why I should believe that anything exists unperceived. You are right that this is a non-ordinary concept of experience. It is one tailored for the purpose of building an indisputable system of philosophy - not one which is certain, just one where there is a sensible answer as to why each part should be accepted. You don't even have to call this concept experience if you don't want. Call it schmexperience for all it matters. What I schmexperience is only certain colour patches of a certain size and shape. These things are given to me in such a way that it is simply indisputable that they are there. I cannot sensibly doubt that there are these patches of colour before me at this moment. There is an obvious reason why I should believe it. With that said, I am happy to concede that the ordinary concept of 'experience' cannot be meaningfully applied here. — PossibleAaran

And neither can ordinary concepts like "patches of colour." If you accept "patches of colour" then you are implicitly bringing in the public world, because patches of colour have no name outside the context of that kind of world, there's not even any possible method for tying them together across time (because, again, "memory" is going to have a different meaning in a non-physical world, and we don't know what that meaning could possibly be).

As I said, the concept of 'experience' implicit in my remarks is the concept of 'what is indisputably before my consciousness'. — PossibleAaran

And this consciousness is what? Is it the consciousness of a human being? Then you're implicitly accepting phsyical, public world presuppositions. Is it, on the other hand, the consciousness of a mere thinking thing or an abstract point of view as such? Then you're never going to get outside that prison by any means, so you might as well give up now! :)

The conditions for verification grow and shrink with the presuppositions accepted (hence my Chinese finger puzzle metaphor) - but then in that case, nothing is being revealed from the level with no presuppositions that's going to be of any help at the more presuppositions level, that level is not being firmed up in any way - but then, nor does it need to be, it never needed to be. Whatever you discover there, in the presuppositionless world, you can't bring back to here, it stays there and is applicable only there. But that's fine - that's why it's just a queer little game off to the side of life, and doesn't have the profound purport some philosophers think it does.

I don't want to 're-define' anything. I am happy not to use the word 'experience' if it is so troubling, although to drop that word represents a departure from traditional ways of discussing the issue. — PossibleAaran

So if it's not experience, what is it, and what bearing does it have on experience as ordinarily understood?

Does the concept which I have explicated above have no meaning? It seems to me that I understand it perfectly well. — PossibleAaran

Yes, that's the illusion. You think you are saying something that makes sense. But it doesn't make any sense in the world out here with its presuppositions (where things like camera tests are perfectly fine for testing unperceived existence). But then if it doesn't make sense here, then there must be some other kind of sense for it to make in the presuppositionless realm. So what is it? To what are you attaching the term "seeing" or "experience" or "coloured patch" in the presuppositionless realm? What is that thing? And how can you be sure you're not using the term or applying the concept wrongly?

On the other hand, if that thing is a "sensation", then we're back in the world where camera tests makes sense, where the fact that you can't perceive the unperceived is a mere tautology, and the difficulty it presents can easily be gotten around by perceiving not the unperceived existence, but the distal effects of that unperceived existence on your perception, by means of the present traces of its existence while you weren't perceiving it. If what you're having is a sensation as ordinarily understood, then the camera test is fine. It's only if what you're having is a "sensation" in the Cartesian, bracketed sense, that there's still the feeling that the truth has to be gotten from present experience directly. But that's only because you've set it up so that answers can only be gotten from present experience directly (and that's what's making the tautology that you can't perceive the unperceived an un-get-overable barrier to understanding, instead of just a slight inconvenience that can easily be gotten around).

Perhaps you are worried because the concept is not 'ordinary', but I don't see any reason to think that if a concept is 'not ordinary' then it must be meaningless. What is so magical about 'ordinary concepts' that they get to have meaning but 'non-ordinary' concepts don't. — PossibleAaran

It's not that they don't, I don't know whether they do or don't have meaning; it's that their meaning (the meaning of concepts used at the presuppositionless level) has yet to be explicated, and it's difficult to see how they can be explicated without surreptitiously borrowing from their meaning in the larger world.

This is just the suggestion that it is impossible to build an indisputable system of philosophy, which is just what ancient scepticism was. I've always thought that Wittgenstein was a Pyrrhonian. — PossibleAaran

No, rather it's saying that bracketing all presuppositions isn't necessarily the best way to build an indusputable system of philosophy. IOW, such a thing may or may not be attainable, but it's certainly not going to be attainable by retreating to a presuppositionless realm and trying to rebuild from there. We already know how that ends up, it ends up in solipsism with a thing that has no name and character "experiencing" various things that may or may not be the case. Yes, a very solid foundation for a philosophy.

I know some Realists and Phenomenalists made a lot of this issue of the 'directness' of perception. Russell did, for example. I don't think that's important at all. — PossibleAaran

If so, then you should have no problem with the camera test.

All that matters is that certain elements of experience are unproblematically available to consciousness in such a way as to make them indisputable, and some aren't. The property of unperceived existence, isn't. It is painfully easy to produce a story, compatible with all of the indisputable 'given' elements of experience such that nothing exists unperceived. I have no way to prove to you, I suppose that the property of unperceived existence isn't given to my conscious awareness like the property of blueness is. I take this to be patently obvious to anyone who has the faculty of sense perception. — PossibleAaran

Again, given =/= indisputable. "Given," like "experience," etc., etc., already carries some baggage from the larger world. "Given" in distinction to what?

I don't think its foregone at all. Why is it so obvious that no conclusion can be drawn from the given? I certainly can't tell, a priori, that this is so. The discovery, if it were one, would be that almost nothing that I believe is indisputable, and that sounds to me like an interesting philosophical discovery. I can't stop global warming with it, but all the same. — PossibleAaran

But you already knew that nothing is indisputable, that's already built into the ordinary way of looking at things. You just need a reason to dispute, but staring at your sensations and dreaming up alternative logical possibilities doesn't give you a reason to doubt the ordinary application of some ordinary concept.

I didn't use the concept of necessary existence in my reducio about God. I used the concept of existence, and you did claim that laptops are such things as exist - which was the premise of the reducio. So it still seems to me that that argument is parallel to the one which you gave. — PossibleAaran

But the argument only makes sense as pointing to a fallacy if you do think of necessary existence as taken for granted. Otherwise it's just an ordinary case of empirical discovery - someone says something exists, and we all go look and see, and take our scientific instruments with us (which help us "see" things we can't see). They might be right, they might be mistaken, any number of things could be problematic about the claim.