Got it. Well, I think his idea of "immediate intuitions" are "unmediated" awareness of sensory input, it's not necessarily an accurate picture of the external world. — schopenhauer1
I think it pays to remember that there is no "accurate picture" of an external world, except relative to the context of our collective representation: the empirical world. — Janus
I think it’s more that he is reacting to the equally incoherent claim that we don’t perceive things “as they (really) are”. — Jamal
When you see a tree, you are directly seeing not the tree but it's reflected light. — hypericin
The idea that we perceive things "as they are' seems incoherent to me. — Janus
When you see a tree, you are directly seeing not the tree but it's reflected light. — hypericin
I think it can be coherently argued that the principle problem of philosophy is precisely learning to perceive truly. This does not only apply to the hypothetical tree, apple, or coffee cup which is the perennial stand-in for ‘the world’. If you go back to the beginning of philosophy (with Parmenides and the Eleatics) the understanding of how things can come to be as they are is the fundamental question. I *think* this is what Heidegger was attempting to revive with his question of ‘the meaning of being’.
Anglo philosophy is now as Banno pointed out overwhelmingly realist (and I would add naturalistic) in orientation. It starts with the assumption of ‘the reality of the tree/apple/coffee cup’ and then tries to work backward from that assumption without ever really calling it into question. Whereas what is generally categorised as idealist philosophy and also phenomenology, does call the ‘normal attitude’ into question. — Wayfarer
Great philosophical systems, such as those of Plato and Aristotle, scholasticism, and German idealism were founded on an objective theory of reason. It aimed at evolving a comprehensive system, or hierarchy, of all beings, including man and his aims. The degree of reasonableness of a man’s life could be determined according to its harmony with this totality. Its objective structure, and not just man and his purposes, was to be the measuring rod for individual thoughts and actions. This concept of reason never precluded subjective reason, but regarded the latter as only a partial, limited expression of a universal rationality from which criteria for all things and beings were derived. — Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason
No matter which intermediary you choose, all of it is a part of the environment, which is directly accessible and perceived directly. — NOS4A2
They’re not really whom I’m talking about — Wayfarer
Not just a casual chain, a series of fundamental transformations, between which there is nothing "direct". — hypericin
Realism holds that the sentence "the tree has leaves" is about the tree, and not about the perception of the tree, or our beliefs about the tree, or any other relation between ourselves and the tree. That the tree has leaves is true if and only if the tree has leaves, regardless of what we perceive or believe. — Banno
I have two modes that I haven’t quite been able to reconcile. One is my Anglo mode, in which I’m a plain-speaking direct realist, and the other is my sort of phenomenological, sort of Marxian, quite traditional, wannabe Hegelian mode, in which philosophy has ambitions as grand as you’ve set out here. From the latter point of view, Wittgenstein’s statement that philosophy “leaves everything as it is” is an abomination. — Jamal
But this is trivially true regardless of one's metaphysics. — Janus
Oh, that's good. Shoudl save plenty of paper, then. — Banno
Correct, though if I was a good realist, I’d add in evolutionary fit regarding why this empirical world and not a bats, or a slug, let alone interaction without animal perception. — schopenhauer1
I don't understand this comment; can you explain? — Janus
I think it can be coherently argued that the principle problem of philosophy is precisely learning to perceive truly. This does not only apply to the hypothetical tree, apple, or coffee cup which is the perennial stand-in for ‘the world’. If you go back to the beginning of philosophy (with Parmenides and the Eleatics) the understanding of how things can come to be as they are is the fundamental question. I *think* this is what Heidegger was attempting to revive with his question of ‘the meaning of being’. — Wayfarer
Wittgenstein cannot have really believed that "philosophy leaves everything as it is" since he saw it as a therapeutic, transformative process of liberation from reificatory thinking, of "bewitchment by means of language" — Janus
Getting our house in order so we can all get on with whatever it is that we already, with no input from philosophy, regard as important in our social and spiritual lives. — Jamal
I don't understand Heidegger as ever being concerned with the "understanding of how things can come to be as they are". — Janus
What if debating philosophy gives us social and spiritual fulfillment? Some philosophers like the perplexing madness of it. Certainly "going about your day" can be very mundane so not sure why he couldn't circle back to that idea at least pragmatically speaking, being that he was kind of a linguistic pragmatist. — schopenhauer1
That is to say, the human, bat, and slug are experiencing a "real" tree, but each one "constructs" (and there is the indirect) the tree differently. — schopenhauer1
I don’t think it’s a contradiction but I’m unwilling to work out exactly why it isn’t. The main point is that what you call a transformative process of liberation, others would call a purely negative effort to clear up some deep confusions. Getting our house in order so we can all get on with whatever it is that we already, with no input from philosophy, regard as important in our social and spiritual lives. It is in this sense that some critics have labelled him as basically conservative.
I think they’re pretty much right but I also think Wittgenstein is great. — Jamal
As I understand it, his deep project was about the meaning of being, so wouldn’t that entail an “understanding of how things can come to be as they are”? — Jamal
I don’t understand what you’re saying here schop.
This discussion has gone off-topic. I have a feeling it was my fault. — Jamal
Personally, I think the whole direct/ indirect parlance is inapt. It's just another example of being bewitched by dualistic thinking. From different perspectives 'direct" and 'indirect' are both OK, but the idea that one or the other is "correct", in anything but a contextual sense is misguided in my view.
Philosophy delivers only contextual truths, and there are as many possible assumptions to begin from as there are philosophies. The idea that some are "correct" and others not, tout court, erroneously fails to acknowledge the different presuppositions in play, and the reality of talking past one another on account of that. — Janus
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