Ah. Gotcha. Yeah, that's true actually about "internal" and "external" word use. Having granted that, I think that we can mislead ourselves, when thinking a bit more reflexively, in speaking loosely of "external things".

In ordinary use, it's fine, we can speak of the things external to the house, or external to the relevant situation or even external surface, etc.

Why attribute the least things possible to objects? — frank

I meant that if we want to be scientific and try to speak of things independent of us, then we have to try to strip away those things that don't help us understand the phenomena.

If a given rock is 5 feet or meters away from me, the colour of the rock, nor its texture, nor its smell, matter in relation to the distance of the object.

you're actually missing the point of philosophy proper, — Wayfarer

Actually, I rather hope I am undermining a particularly poor sort of philosophy. So quite happy with that.

It's a cumbersome, disjointed view that divides the world into internal and external, objective and subjective, and then proceeds to deny the existence of cups and chairs and then get stuck denying the existence of other people.

Some questions are not meaningful.

Tell me, 180: who in the world, or in all of history, has had a clearer understanding of what mind is and its relationship to brains, and how did they obtain this clearer understanding, so as I might understand why what someone else thinks about this relationship could be better than mine or anyone else's? — Harry Hindu

Can't help you with that, Harry. Unlike you (seem to be), I'm neither a subjectivist nor a introspection illusionist.

Mary Midgley is particularly clear and readable on these issues — Banno

I read her piece on philosophical plumbing Very clear.

If a given rock is 5 feet or meters away from me, the colour of the rock, nor its texture, nor its smell, matter in relation to the distance of the object. — Manuel

True.

Some questions are not meaningful. — Banno

I'm not convinced you have demonstrated a grasp of what those questions are.

It's a cumbersome, disjointed view that divides the world into internal and external [...] — Banno

Off the top of my head, a question to all who disagree with the validity or utility of an internal-external divide:

That which is accessible to a single person, i.e. private, is internal to the person in question; that which is accessible to everyone in principle, i.e. public, is external to all persons.

Where’s the fallacy in this?

I read her piece on philosophical plumbing Very clear. — Tom Storm

There she is objecting to the grandiose schemes and others advocate, in favour of this sort of plumbing.

I'm not convinced you have demonstrated a grasp of what those questions are. — Wayfarer

Well, that rather follows from their being nonsense - that they do not make sense. Pity those who think they do grasp those questions.

That which is accessible to a single person, i.e. private, is internal to the person in question; that which is accessible to everyone in principle, i.e. public, is external to all persons. — javra

I see no problem with that as it stands. Issues arise when folk make attempts to talk about what is private, and hence to treat it as if it were public.

(edit: there's a quibble as to things that are privileged to an individual - pain, for example. But that's been overdone in other threads.)

There she is objecting to the grandiose schemes — Banno

They're not 'grandiose'.

That which is accessible to a single person, i.e. private, is internal to the person in question; that which is accessible to everyone in principle, i.e. public, is external to all persons. — javra

Such are the attributes of universals, numbers, and the like.

In the strict sense, it is not 'whiteness' that is in our mind, but 'the act of thinking of whiteness'. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea'...also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if 'whiteness' were the thought, as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts. — Bertrand Russell, The World of Universals

I see no problem with that as it stands. Issues arise when folk make attempts to talk about what is private., to treat it as if it were public. — Banno

Ah. Pacifies me a bit. As to the latter, isn't that what a majority of art does (... well, at least historically)?

Though I'm trying to avoid directly addressing issues regarding nuances of perception, cogitations, emotions, and the like, art when affective / effective can touch on most of these topics - in essence making the strictly private public to some community.



I agree with the quote you give. Though, to be honest, the issue of universals still gives me headaches sometimes. I guess it depends on which types of universals are addressed.

Yeah, on second thoughts I'll leave that for some other time.

it's a real $50 note, not a forgery. — Banno

I preferred when you used $70 as your example lol

Yeah, on second thoughts I'll leave that for some other time. — Wayfarer

While that sounds like a good idea, I'll comment anyways.

It strikes me that so termed universals can range from being cosmically applicable - thinking of things like goodness - or else be, well, not technically universal, instead being limited to a cohort of beings that communally shares the given so-called universal. While examples can get cumbersome and arguable, redness (when allowed to be a universal) is limited to only those beings capable of experiencing it; this while something like goodness (as in that which is favorable, rather than strictly moral) can be argued to be cosmically applicable to all beings in existence.

If you know of literature that addresses this disparity, or else have thoughts regarding non-univeral universals, please let me know.

As to the latter, isn't that what a majority of art does — javra

Cheers.

Art shows rather than says. That's part of the value of art: that with it we see things that are difficult, if not impossible, to say.

Art shows rather than says. That's part of the value of art: that with it we see things that are difficult, if not impossible, to say. — Banno

True. I was in part thinking of things like poetry, which is all words and therefore saying. But I can see how one could argue that poetry shows as well.

Should we go there?

I wonder, have you heard Austin's account of universals?

It can be read as a critique of the notion that there is a something had in common by, say, all red things (Austin uses "grey"); that what all red things have in common is a thing, and that we can call this thing "redness" and talk of one having "the concept of redness" in one's head as a sort of mental object.

His argument amounts to pointing out that this is an assumption. Why shouldn't we just use the word "red" to talk about a bunch of different things? After all, the flower and the sports car are not the same colour; and there is more than one sort of red in the sunset.

The argument is congruent with family resemblance. There need be nothing held in common by all members of a family, nor is is necessary to understand what is common to all games in order for us to use the word "game" effectively.

one could argue that poetry shows as well. — javra

Definitely.

Lightly touching upon this topic, I can see this argument working for what I discern to be non-universal universals, like redness, but not for cosmically applicable universals, like goodness (again, this in terms of that which is favorable).

Then again, I know that it requires a comparison of very different metaphysical approaches in order to even consider things such as goodness to be a universal.

If you like. The take-away for me is that universals are not a thing but a way of talking- another language game.

That's why they are so damn hard to find out in the world, and why Plato was wrong.

But another thread...? @Tom Storm - more plumbing that does away with vast, grandiose philosophical ponderings.

That's why they are so damn hard to find out in the world, and why Plato was wrong.

But another thread...? — Banno

The "Plato was wrong" gave me a good friendly laugh. Not planning on staying long on the forum, but maybe I'd partake of another thread.

Out of fun, though, can you think of any awareness-endowed life that doesn't move toward what it find's favorable, hence good? If you can, then the good would not be cosmically applicable to all beings, hence would not be universal as Plato claimed.

Out of fun, though, can you think of any awareness-endowed life that doesn't move toward what it find's favorable, hence good? If you can, than the good would not be cosmically applicable to all beings, hence would not be universal as Plato claimed. — javra

Oooo lots to unpack.

The obvious point is that either "favourable" is not the same as "good" - and that "hence" is misplaced; or you are using "favourable" and "good" for the exact same thing, and so saying what is good is what is favourable achieves nothing but a change in wording.

The first is a common error - the naturalistic fallacy, from Moore; who shared with you the desire to ground ethics on "good". Moore tied himself in knots trying to get that to work. Better perhaps to forget about good and instead look at improvement. Hence, virtue ethics.

Rather than looking for a grand ethical scheme, it might be better to look at what is before us: Tolstoy's three questions.

The obvious point is that either "favourable" is not the same as "good" - and that "hence" is misplaced; or you are using "favourable" and "good" for the exact same thing, and so saying what is good is hat is favourable achieves nothing but a change in wording. — Banno

For what its worth, it the second option, a change of wording, which can serve to clarify what is semantically intended.

I agree that we respond to things that we perceive (such as red flowers). But I was referring to KK's "image of 'red flower'". Where does that fit into the "perception" story, on your view?
— Andrew M

Well I can't speak for Kenosha Kid's understanding (although I just did in my post to you, so... oops), but I think we can justifiably use the term 'image' to describe what exits the visual cortex. We're already not a million miles away from being able to directly decode the neural signal leaving that area into an actual computer image. Much like I might say "I have an image of my house here on this USB stick" — Isaac

Cool. I'd just add that it doesn't then follow that we perceive images or, alternatively, respond to images. Instead we respond to things that we perceive, such as red flowers.

I think we all had the "does separating out experience from perception create a perceptual intermediary + invite the Cartesian theatre criticism" discussion before. Somewhere around page 30 here. Jack Cummins may find the discussion of the article in that thread's OP useful. — fdrake

:up: Preparing for another 90 pages of this...

And I don't see how you can say that with a straight face. — Srap Tasmaner

It's pretty easy, you just don't cherry-pick reality. There's lots of famous examples.

Just what I’d hoped. Would you agree the empirical occurrence, and the quality of it, as reported, belongs properly to the concept of sensation? — Mww

Indeed, I suggested sensation, but that's not right either. The issue is what the word 'perception' means, and it means the organisation of sensory information by the brain, and therefore is brain function. I'm not seeing an argument that it occurs elsewhere. I think we can assume a common understanding of the sending of that information to the brain until we hit a counterexample.

An octopus has a distributed nervous system, so a particular arm, being as clever as it is delicious, can make its own decisions, which means some local organisation of sensory information. But I don't know whether that could ever constitute perception. Man, I could go for some octopus for breakfast. A heavy sprinkling of paprika...

So does that mean that if there were a 1-to-1 mapping, we could *prove* not just what something is, but that it is? — Srap Tasmaner

It would be a useful start. If there are other sources of our experiences (and there are, not just dreams and hallucinations, but biases, errors, and features of processing), and those sources aren't separable after the fact (and they're not), then there's always an unknown about whether we're seeing an object, some feature of processing data about it, or something else entirely.

Fortunately the brain is pretty good about making hypotheses about continuity of identity and similarity (it's a good categoriser, in ML terminology), plus we have other people to point out that, no, your gf hasn't turned into a wolf, that's just the acid man.

The point that interests me about universals is that they're only knowable by the mind, but they're not a product of your or my mind.

The issue is what the word 'perception' means, and it means the organisation of sensory information by the brain, and therefore is brain function. I'm not seeing an argument that it occurs elsewhere. I think we can assume a common understanding of the sending of that information to the brain until we hit a counterexample. — Kenosha Kid

In humans, reason is a major contributor to that organising ability (much more so than in non-rational animals). Do you think reason can be understood as a brain fuction? I would suggest not, on the basis that that the basic constituents of reason - e.g. logical principles, like the law of the excluded middle - are not meaningfully the product of anything envisaged in neuroscience. Rather we need a grasp of such principles to even pursue a scientific explanation. Certainly one needs the large hominid forebrain to grasp such ideas as the LEM, but presumably were our particular species of hominid to die out, the LEM would not die out with it.

Eventually the attempt to understand oneself in evolutionary, naturalistic terms must bottom out in something that is grasped as valid in itself—something without which the evolutionary understanding would not be possible. Thought moves us beyond appearance to something that we cannot regard merely as a biologically based disposition, whose reliability we can determine on other grounds. It is not enough to be able to think that if there are logical truths, natural selection might very well have given me the capacity to recognize them. That cannot be my ground for trusting my reason, because even that thought implicitly relies on reason in a prior way. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (p. 81). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Fortunately the brain is pretty good about making hypotheses about continuity of identity and similarity — Kenosha Kid

An example of the mereological fallacy - brains don't do anything of the kind, it is rational beings who make hypotheses.