Now the question: Do we share at least the fundamental logical rules of inference with these beings, who perceive so differently? — Mersi
Do we share at least the fundamental logical rules of inference with these beings, who perceive so differently? — Mersi
Let us assume that life has evolved elsewhere in the universe, but different from ours. It also develops from a simple to a more complex state, sense organs arise and a sort of a central processing system, but again completely different from ours. Let´s assumethat the sensory impressions these beings receive does not at all overlap with how we perceive the enviroment. With one exception: like us these beings differentiate between an outside world theire conception of it.
Now the question: Do we share at least the fundamental logical rules of inference with these beings, who perceive so differently?
If not, that would mean that even most fundamental building blocks of thinking are dependent on experience and experience itselfe would in turn depend on the way sense organs developed.
But if we share the same logic with these beings regardless of the experience we have, the question arises as to where logic comes from?
This could mean that even the most specific factors that determine our thoughts are inherent (so far undiscovered) properties of the matter we are made of.
Both conclusions don`t really get us anywhere. What objections are possible? — Mersi
If Kolakowski is right, the quetion arises as to how (and if at all) progress in the field of epistemology is possible. — Mersi
Because then we would never know when nor why our ideas of the outside world coincide with this outside world. — Mersi
How could we apprehend the world from a non human, non biological perspective? — Amalac
If you and I stand a ways apart, and between us there's a red car and a blue car, the red car closer to me and the blue closer to you, from my perspective the blue car is behind the red car and from yours the red car is behind the blue car. Which is true?
Obviously both are true, because "behind" only makes sense given a particular perspective. Insofar as the plain statements, "B is behind R" or "R is behind B" appear to contradict each other, it is only because each statement carries presuppositions that have not been made explicit. Rather than being contradictory, they turn out to be not only equally true but equivalent once you've made those presuppositions explicit. (If from this side B is behind R, then it had better be true that from the other side R is behind B.)
There can be bad angles -- I'm thinking of baseball, for instance, where the umpire at second base may not be able to see from his angle whether the fielder's glove is actually touching the runner's leg. From another angle it will be perfectly clear. But the umpire's might be the only perspective from which you can see whether the runner's foot was touching the bag, so to get the whole story you may have to combine the views from more than one perspective. We have no trouble doing this, because we believe the world was in exactly one state at the moment in question, and each perspective shows us some of that state. — Srap Tasmaner
Sure, I know how the argument works. I also know "perspective" and "point-of-view" have been metaphored to mean all sorts of things.
I was just wondering if there's anything in the argument that would actually justify using the "perspective" metaphor if it weren't already to hand.
This might serve as an example: objects closer to you appear larger in your visual field than those farther away -- art-class perspective. You could metaphorically extend perspective to include the value people place on things by also metaphorically extending (visual) size to stand in for value -- a bit like the way a word cloud shows words in sizes that (approximately) preserve the proportions of their frequencies within a corpus.
I just can't quite come up with anything like that for, well, all of reality. So we have this "perspective" metaphor, but I don't know what it means. — Srap Tasmaner
The problem of knowledge can be summarized as follows: Is there something objective outside of our perception? And if that something exists, does our knowledge give a valid account of its nature, or rather does it account for the nature of our own mind? And if the mind is not (as traditional psychology, including psychoanalysis believed) a radically different instance of the brain, but is a biological-evolutionary derivative of the brain, then: Is all knowledge simply a material by-product of the brain of a mammal, but without the character of a validity that transcends our zoological condition?
The central question, as it has been posed throughout the history of philosophy, is this: Does the thing exist outside of the act of perception? For Kolakowski, the problem with this question is that although it is true that it is possible to formulate it, by means of a topological reference (the adverb "outside of"), this is still absurd since it is assumed that we are capable of seeing a “Whole”, while we remain “outside” of it and thus assess whether the thing is “inside” or “outside”.
Undoubtedly this way of reasoning seems like a mere metaphor, which does not shed much light on the problem of knowledge. Such a question cannot be formulated (more than metaphorically, I repeat) in virtue of the fact that we do not have consciousness, nor can we ever have it, of a transcendental instance: an "I" abstracted from time and space, that is, outside of all time and space.
Obviously, we know the answer to these questions from traditional philosophy, and we also know that Immanuel Kant's great contribution to the history of thought was to show that human knowledge is not derived only from the sensible impressions generated by our mind, rather, in addition to these empirical elements, a “something else” is needed. And that something else is given by the subject, who, immersed in space and time, apprehends the phenomena, but never the things in themselves (the so-called "noumena").
From this perspective, the so-called "problem of knowledge", which has preoccupied philosophers for thousands of years, disappears in one fell swoop. And not only does it disappear, it is revealed as nonsense.
Indeed, it is impossible for a human being to think in non-human terms, from a pre- or super-human perspective, thus valuing the “primal objectivity” of a world: value-neutral, ahistorical, timeless, and also, making a judgment on how that ontological condition prior to one's own existence is.
And that something else is given by the subject, who, immersed in space and time, apprehends the phenomena, but never the things in themselves (the so-called "noumena").
From this perspective, the so-called "problem of knowledge", which has preoccupied philosophers for thousands of years, disappears in one fell swoop. And not only does it disappear, it is revealed as nonsense.
Indeed, it is impossible for a human being to think in non-human terms, from a pre- or super-human perspective, thus valuing the “primal objectivity” of a world: value-neutral, ahistorical, timeless, and also, making a judgment on how that ontological condition prior to one's own existence is.
If all that is, is your perceptions, then other people are just your perceptions. — Banno
Phenomenology is not a solipsism , it is a radical
interactionism. You don’t solve the issue by posting a noumenal reality , you reify a form of solipsist idealism. — Joshs
if a philosophical argument reaches the conclusion that "there is no reality", that alone is sufficient to reject the argument. — Banno
Is there more to the word than phenomena? I say yes. You? — Banno
For Husserl, the phenomenon is a complex entity composed of my intention projecting forward into the world and the world pushing back on my intention by acting both as a constraint and an affordance. — Joshs
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