I think you are missing the point that the self is not 'in there' to begin with but more like an avatar within a conversation. — plaque flag

This is where we will never agree. There is more to life and the world than language. Things happen that aren’t talked about. I don’t need a language or a community of people to interact with to have experiences.

To me Brandom is the beautiful collision of AP clarity and continental insight. FWIW, an equivalence class is still abstract in some sense, what exactly do we mean by 'abstract' ? — plaque flag

The typical abstract object are things like numbers and sets. They aren't mental objects because one can be wrong about them, but they aren't physical like golf balls. They're a sort of third category.

I think this is where Hegel and Heidegger pour into Brandom who puts their ideas in a more AP and less freaky vocabulary. A person is like something like a dance rather than a pair of legs — plaque flag

I've long thought of a person as a kind of music with a range of frequencies and recurring themes which harmonize or jangle. :starstruck:

. 'I' am held accountable for what I've said and done. An 'I' is the kind of the thing that ought not disagree with itself. This also applies to claims. I can't say I love animals and kick dogs for pissing in my yard. — plaque flag

All true. There are two egos. One appears in reflection only. As far as it has responsibility, this means it's being identified as a causal agent. It can also be helpless, so it's not just a matter of having power.

The other is that thing Kierkegaard talked about: quality of being. The here and now. The view out the windows of your eyeballs. The two egos are inextricable. They constantly play off of each other. That's a scenario one could ponder anyway.

Lemons are sour and yellow, i.e., taste sour and look yellow. That you think this is (equivalent to) an hallucination plus an external trigger is just your headbound epistemology.

I’m not saying it’s an hallucination. An hallucination is when there is some sensation that appears to be of an external world object but isn’t.

What I’m saying is that in both the case of the veridical and the non-veridical experience, there is a sensation. This sensation can be described as “feeling cold” or “tasting a sweet taste” or “hearing voices” or “seeing a red sphere”. In the case of the veridical experience we can describe this further as “hearing my friends talking” or “tasting an apple” or “seeing my neighbour’s ball”.

This is where we will never agree. There is more to life and the world than language. Things happen that aren’t talked about. I don’t need a language or a community of people to interact with to have experiences. — Michael

Sure, that's the grammar of 'experience.' Who can deny your beetle if they can't even signify it ?But to do philosophy is to push on tribal norms. As philosophy, it's not the random emission of words. It appeals to norms as it critiques them, like Neurath's boat.

It's not I see the tree directly but (much better!) I talk about the tree ( our tree) and not my image of the tree.

Of course, I understand that. Obviously. I was calling back to your schizophrenia post.

Lemons are sour and yellow, i.e., taste sour and look yellow. That you think this is (equivalent to) an hallucination plus an external trigger is just your headbound epistemology. — Jamal

:up:
Heads too are hallucinations in this mad but popular interpretation of our existence.

It's not I see the tree directly but (much better!) I talk about the tree ( our tree) and not my image of the tree. — plaque flag

Then this has nothing to do with direct and indirect realism, which concerns the nature of perception, not the nature of conversation.

They aren't mental objects because one can be wrong about them, but they aren't physical like golf balls. — frank

:up:

OK. I'm a math guy by training, so I can relate. As I grok it, certain norms are set up and then other norms fall out pretty naturally from them. Once one learns to start with 1 and also learns to add 1 more, one has a kind of 'potentially infinite' staircase. Then one can define prime numbers and prove you never run out of them, etc. I'm pretty much with this guy:

In "What Numbers Could Not Be" (1965), Benacerraf argues against a Platonist view of mathematics, and for structuralism, on the ground that what is important about numbers is the abstract structures they represent rather than the objects that number words ostensibly refer to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Benacerraf

This fits in nicely with Saussure on nonmath language. It's about roles rather than 'positive elements.' And that gets us back to equivalence classes of tools that pretty much do the same thing.

Yep, and it’s not just the problem of other heads.

Then this has nothing to do with direct and indirect realism, which concerns the nature of perception, not the nature of conversation. — Michael

To what are you appealing to say so ? How could you possibly establish truths about the nature of perception without relying on inferential and semantic norms ? How could any theory avoid absurdity if it neglected to address or even acknowledge the condition of its possibility ? To do philosophy is to take up a duty to conform to certain norms and speak about a world beyond the self. Or is logic a private matter ? But that would be a self-cancelling statement.

To me it's as if there's a temptation to do folk psychology with almost mystically reclusive entities.

Yep, and it’s not just the problem of other heads. — Jamal

:up:

Exactly ! The idea that I'm inside (my skull or wall of intuitions and concepts) to begin with only makes sense by a secret taking of common sense for granted, that I have a body in nature with other bodies, that I have sense organs on which I depend to see what's going on.

To what are you appealing to say so ? How could you possibly establish truths about the nature of perception without relying on inferential and semantic norms ? How could any theory avoid absurdity if it neglected to address or even acknowledge the condition of its possibility ? To do philosophy is to take up a duty to conform to certain norms and speak about a world beyond the self. Or is logic a private matter ? But that would be a self-cancelling statement. — plaque flag

I really don’t understand you at all. Whether or not I’m blind has everything to do with whether or not I can see and nothing to do with whether or not I can talk.

It's about roles rather than 'positive elements.' And that gets us back to equivalence classes of tools that pretty much do the same thing. — plaque flag

Start with what you can't do without, then ponder the ontology. Otherwise the tail is wagging the dog.

By and large phil-of-math people have recognized that we can't do without abstract objects due to some basic logic. Now if you want to dispense with logic, that's another matter.

1. I talk about external world objects
2. The nature of external world objects is given in my experience

Yes, both these claims require language to state, but they don’t mean the same thing. — Michael

Ok, let me know if my examples are appropriate for each:

1. I see the tree.

2. I experience “sense data” of a tree.

If it got this right, there are puzzling consequences of this view.

1. We learn the word “tree” to show a community of language users that we can pick out a correct object in this world. We find agreement in judgment. But the indirect realist says, “We cant’t quite know what is causing us to say such things.”

2. But I do know with great certainty about my “sense data”. Even if I don’t know what is causing my “sense data”, I know for certain what my “sense data” is. And what is that? In this case, “sense data” of a tree. But did you not say that you did not know what is causing your “sense data”, so you can’t say it is “of a tree”.

I think all that could be said by such a philosophical perspective is: I experience “sense data” of some unknown cause every time I experience something.

No specificity can be brought to the words used because of an unknown cause in the external world and an inaccessible experience the subject has.

Given such a consequence of such a view demonstrates the implausibility of such view. The view being “indirect realism”.

All true. There are two egos. One appears in reflection only. As far as it has responsibility, this means it's being identified as a causal agent. It can also be helpless, so it's not just a matter of having power. — frank

We can maybe call this the empirical-normative ego.

quality of being. The here and now. The view out the windows of your eyeballs. — frank

In its radical purity, I think it's best called just being and not consciousness. We realize upon reflection, dragging in the heavy machinery of public concepts, that it's a 'view' through eyeholes. But deeper than that is just its thereness, if such a thing can be really communicated. Here's Witt:

It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.

The experience that we need in order to understand logic is not that something or other is the state of things, but that something is: that, however, is not experience.

To say 'I wonder at such and such being the case' has only sense if I can imagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is. If for instance I had this experience while looking into the blue sky, I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case when it's clouded. But that's not what I mean. I am wondering at the sky being whatever it is. One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautology, namely at the sky being blue or not blue. But then it's just nonsense to say that one is wondering at a tautology.

There is something ! I swear !

Start with what you can't do without, then ponder the ontology. Otherwise the tail is wagging the dog. — frank

All we need is structure. Check out group theory to see this vividly. This I can talk about with a fair amount of confidence. No one in grad school every asked me for metaphysics but only to write proofs according to certain largely tacit norms.

By and large phil-of-math people have recognized that we can't do without abstract objects due to some basic logic. Now if you want to dispense with logic, that's another matter. — frank

In principle, informal proofs can be translated into extremely pedantic formal proofs and checked by computers. So it's possible to think of all as a generalization of chess. I'm a big fan of Chaitin's Metamath. A FAS (formal axiomatic system) is an idealized program (one could create concrete examples in many ways) that cranks out all theorems implied by a set of axioms but enumerating all finite strings of symbols and seeing if they are proofs. It's all 'dead' symbol crunching.

All true. There are two egos. One appears in reflection only. As far as it has responsibility, this means it's being identified as a causal agent. It can also be helpless, so it's not just a matter of having power.
— frank

We can maybe call this the empirical-normative ego. — plaque flag

OK. But clearly the normativity is partly a priori (as per the Transcendental Aesthetic).

In its radical purity, I think it's best called just being and not consciousness. We realize upon reflection, dragging in the heavy machinery of public concepts, — plaque flag

Yep.

In principle, informal proofs can be translated into extremely pedantic formal proofs and checked by computers. So it's possible to think of all as a generalization of chess. I'm a big fan of Chaitin's Metamath. A FAS (formal axiomatic system) is an idealized program (one could create concrete examples in many ways) that cranks out all theorems implied by a set of axioms but enumerating all finite strings of symbols and seeing if they are proofs. It's all 'dead' symbol crunching. — plaque flag

Ok. Math as we know it originated in tandem with the concept of money. Everywhere the idea of money as value in the abstract went, the development of math soon followed. Zero was originally part of the technology of Babylonian accounting.

Nothing dead about trade. (I'm all into Forex trading at the moment, so I'm seeing everything through that lens).

But I do know with great certainty about my “sense data”. Even if I don’t know what is causing my “sense data”, I know for certain what my “sense data” is. And what is that? In this case, “sense data” of a tree. But did you not say that you did not know what is causing your “sense data”, so you can’t say it is “of a tree”. — Richard B

I didn’t say that I don’t know what is causing it.

If the biological act of hearing involves using the body to perceive physical sound waves, it cannot be said that a man is hearing voices in his head, because there is neither the biological activity nor the sound waves required to hear such sounds. The biological activity of hearing and the biological act of hallucinating are two distinct biological activities.

Should we confuse the two? While it could be said that from a limited 1st person perspective the experience of hearing voices resembles the experience of hallucination, it ought to consider from any other of the unfathomable amount of perspectives that there is no hearing, let alone the hearing of voices. Were we able to record the movements of the biology in great detail, down to the tiniest of acts, an accounting of all biological activity involved in one would necessarily be different than those involved in the other, and therefor there really is no similarity between hearing actual voices and hearing voices in the head.

I wonder if indirect realism and phenomenalism has served to obfuscate the biology of hallucination rather than helped to explain it.

:up:

If the biological act of hearing involves using the body to perceive physical sound waves, it cannot be said that a man is hearing voices in his head, because there is neither the biological activity nor the sound waves required to hear such sounds. The biological activity of hearing and the biological act of hallucinating are two distinct biological activities. — NOS4A2

The field of a sound wave is air. Specifically, what's waving is air pressure. Those waves stimulate membranes and bones in the ear which convey the vibration to hairs in the ear which change the mechanical vibration into electrical signals that travel into the brain.

This kind of conversion of energy is well known to us. It's very clear that a transformation has taken place. Since it's all pretty predictable, it would appear that the electrical signals "represent" the audio waves.

What we don't know is what the brain is doing with those electrical signals to produce the experience of hearing sound. We are at the very beginning stages of even imagining how to theorize about it.

So the moral of the story is there for all sides of the issue: we don't know how it works, so leave off spouting off as if you know. And I will comment, that just about everybody contributing to this thread has done that at one time or another.

Something of an afterthought on classifying myself as an anti-realist Direct Realist is that it seems to follow pretty easily from a denial of Kant's system while acknowledging the worth of his arguments. It's the transcendental structure part that's doubted, the noumenal realm as anything more than a locution given it having no relation to theoretical knowledge. And then if you read Kant's ethics in an anti-realist direction, where the moral law and action is important precisely because the kingdom of ends won't exist unless people actually follow the moral law, you have a reason to doubt the noumenal has a reality from the perspective of practical reason too.

I didn’t say that I don’t know what is causing it. — Michael

But you only can say some empty generalization like “it is cause by some mind-independent object.” And that is not saying much of anything. Sort of like say, “What is causing your headache?” Response, “Everything” This is not so much an answer but more like an expression of exasperation.

But you only can say some empty generalization like “it is cause by some mind-independent object.” — Richard B

At first, yes. But then after a detailed scientific analysis (and assuming scientific realism is correct) we can extend it further to the cause being a collection of quarks, neutrons, and electrons, with the latter reflecting photons.

At first, yes. But then after a detailed scientific analysis (and assuming scientific realism is correct) we can extend it further to the cause being a collection of quarks, neutrons, and electrons, with the latter reflecting photons. — Michael

But now the metaphysical distinction breaks down between claim 1 and 2 for the indirect realist. Both reduced to talk of particles and waves. And to aid in this “talk” we use language to understand what we are taking about, particles and waves of the brain, and particles and waves of the tree. Interestingly, we by-pass the talk of “sense data”, and use everyday ordinary language of objects to set up some sort of correlation.

I really don’t understand you at all. — Michael

:up:

Whether or not I’m blind has everything to do with whether or not I can see and nothing to do with whether or not I can talk. — Michael

Yes, of course.

I'm throwing a rope down a well and trying to pull you out of this metaphor of internality. Forget everything else for a moment and consider this.

A philosopher, as such, makes claims about semantic norms with the authority of such norms. We can frame this as talk about electrons, for instance, but it's (equivalently?) talk about the talk about electrons, about how the concept is legitimately used. A philosopher is a semantic policeman. We all have a badge and no one is chief. We create a constitution in terms of what is already tentatively written there (Neurath's boat.). Sementic norms (the ones already largely tacitly shared ) are used to justify the enlargement and modification of semantic norms (criticizing those which have lost their value and introducing new concepts / metaphors).

The key here is that the individual philosopher comments on the norms, the way we (the royal we of universal rationality) ought to talk. If you disagree, you only prove my point, for you imply that I break the rules.

'We ought to think about talk about things this way rather than that way. '
'That does not follow.'
'You are assuming the conclusion.'
'That's not how the concept is used.'
'But you can't share my private experience.'

Interestingly, we by-pass the talk of “sense data”, and use everyday ordinary language of objects to set up some sort of correlation. — Richard B

I would say we don't (always). When we talk about pain we're not talking about objects but about sense data. When we talk about colour we're not talking about objects but about sense data.

A philosopher, as such, makes claims about semantic norms — plaque flag

Not always. Sometimes we make claims about trees and colours and experience.