We're aiming for the philosophical 17th Century. Somehow we keep missing it. — frank

The twisty journey that all must take from lumpen realism, to the body shock of idealism, to the eventual resolution of enactivism and pragmatism.

Do any of you have a clear grasp of what "closure" might be for Hilary Lawson?

As I read him, 'closure' means the assigning of identities, attributes and relations to things on the interpretive basis of inferential understanding. It's how we infer the world to be, how we "carve it up" in a kind of general sense. It's not really a new idea but is rather an old idea dressed up in new clothes.

Surely, but where does his antirealism enter? One cannot conclude from the above that there are no truths. Is it a conclusion or a presumption? Thus far he does not seem to be in substantial disagreement with Searle.

Lawson seems to think that the way we divide the world up is somehow arbitrary and entirely dependent on us. I think that kind of postmodern thinking is absurd.

In any case, since we all (or most of us) agree about how we do divide the world up (whatever the explanation for that might be) then of course there are truths relative to that common division.

There are those hereabouts who propose anti realism. It might be helpful if one of those folk would clarify.

↪Banno Lawson seems to think that the way we divide the world up is somehow arbitrary and entirely dependent on us. I think that kind of postmodern thinking is absurd.

In any case, since we all (or most of us) agree about how we do divide the world up (whatever the explanation for that might be) then of course there are truths relative to that common division. — Janus

I’m not familiar with Lawson but I am familiar with anti-realist positions ( Foucault, Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida, Rorty). Do they believe the way we divide up the world is arbitrary and entirely dependent on us? Well, they believe that there are better and worse, more or less valid ways to carve up the world, but the arbiter of validity is itself a construction. Put differently, the world speaks back to us in the language in which we couch our questions, so truth is the product of a ceaseless conversation between personal and interpersonal construction , and events. Not a conversation between subjects and a recalcitrant, independent reality, but a reciprocation in which the subjective and the objective poles are inextricably responsive to, and mutually dependent on each other. We may agree about how we divide up the world within the bounds of a particular cultural episteme, but epistemes change historically, neither arbitrarily nor rationally, and with them our truths.

English philosopher Hilary Lawson makes the point that:

... metaphysical frameworks, such as idealism and panpsychism, which were derided as baseless nonsense by the positivists of the past, are back in new forms. But such claims cannot be taken as a true description of an ultimate reality for there is no credible realist theory of language that would make sense of such claims.

I'm not looking for a defence of realism, I'm more interested in the implications of this matter - do we need a theory of language that explains how any realist claim is possible in order to accept those claims?

If we do not employ a realist account of language (as per postmodern thinkers), what is it we can meaningfully say about this notion of 'reality' we are so fond of describing and seems to be a substitute for god? — Tom Storm

There is no theory of language that will answer your question (this question: "...do we need a theory of language that explains how any realist claim is possible in order to accept those claims?") because the theory itself will fall victim to the same questions. Wittgenstein tried answering this question in the Tractatus through the use of names and objects, it's a kind of mapping of reality, viz., the correspondence of names to objects. We know of his rejection of this theory (much of it that is) and we know of what replaced it (language-games). What W. doesn't reject is the notion that language can reach beyond the world, into the world of metaphysics. He still held onto this notion, although it's a bit modified.

If it's true that the meanings of our words come down to how we use the words, then much of what we believe is a matter of what language-game you believe best describes reality. What do we mean by reality? There is no one answer to this question, there are just answers that fit within the context of a particular language-game. If you're an idealist or realist depends on what language-game you believe best describes reality, or best maps reality. If you're religious, then you accept those views of reality as interpreted by a certain view of metaphysics. If you're not religious you'll latch onto views that have another view of metaphysics. If you hold to a third view, as I do, then you'll hold to another view of metaphysics.

I believe there are answers, I'm not saying there aren't answers. However, you were looking for the implications, the implications are that we have a multitude of beliefs that are very difficult to sort through. As I've always said, language is a very confusing tool, but it's the only tool we have to describe reality. Apart from language, all we have is our subjective consciousness that reaches out to reality through sensory experience.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. I think that is a very succinct summary of the matter as understood by Lawson et al.

What do we mean by reality? There is no one answer to this question, there are just answers that fit within the context of a particular language-game. If you're an idealist or realist depends on what language-game you believe best describes reality, or best maps reality. If you're religious, then you accept those views of reality as interpreted by a certain view of metaphysics. If you're not religious you'll latch onto views that have another view of metaphysics. If you hold to a third view, as I do, then you'll hold to another view of metaphysics. — Sam26

Thanks Sam. I have sympathy for this view.

Do they believe the way we divide up the world is arbitrary and entirely dependent on us? Well, they believe that there are better and worse, more or less valid ways to carve up the world, but the arbiter of validity is itself a construction. Put differently, the world speaks back to us in the language in which we couch our questions, so truth is the product of a ceaseless conversation between personal and interpersonal construction , and events. — Joshs

It's hard for me not to agree. I wonder what the best arguments against this might be?

How do they determine what is a better or worse way - a type of pragmatism - useful for certain purposes? How is that determined?

It is denying that knowing is direct correspondence , representing or mirroring between knower and world. Scientific and other forms of knowing, far from being the epistemological representing of a reality independent of the knower, is the evolving construction of a niche. We are worldmakers rather than world-mirrorers, whose constructions are performances that pragmatically intervene in the world that we co-invent , changing it in ways that then talk back to us in a language responsive to how we have formulated our questions. — Joshs

One question I have is, how much nuance is allowed from this point of view? I mean sure, to believe in some sort of perfect correspondence between our perceptions and things as they are in reality would be quite naive. However, is there a good reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Does it make sense to you, that although we can't have perfect correspondence we can pick out salient aspects of the way things are in an external reality? If not, what is this "world" that you speak of?

what, in all that, renders up anti realism? Why are there no true statements?

What W. doesn't reject is the notion that language can reach beyond the world, into the world of metaphysics. — Sam26

The step from real worlds to possible worlds. But then that also requires the same inherent criteria of being worlds from a point of view. Worlds dichotomised in terms of their “objective vs subjective” poles.

You can find all this within language as a semiotic tool. The motif repeats at the lower level of neurobiology and higher level of scientific inquiry.

The secrets of existence - the answer to “why anything?” - is to be found in the immanence of semiosis, not some transcendent manoeuvre, whether this be the transcendence of the lumpen realist or deluded idealist.

Semiosis is what Peirce could see as the immanent wellspring of reality whether we talk epistemology or ontology.

This makes a tool like language neither arbitrary nor necessary, neither PoMo subjective nor AP objective, but just an expression of the pragmatic dynamic that organises a state of persisting being.

Language does not need external grounding. Worlds and selves co-arise as complementary poles of being. Or initial conditions and boundary conditions if we are drilling down (and up) in terms of pansemiotic cosmic generality.

The secrets of existence - the answer to “why anything?” - is to be found in the immanence of semiosis... — apokrisis

Don't you think that might be a tad bit grandiose?

Wittgenstein does reject that language can reach into the world of metaphysics. It's part of his philosophy from beginning to end. What he doesn't reject is that we can show what's beyond this world, but that's different from saying.

Do they believe the way we divide up the world is arbitrary and entirely dependent on us? Well, they believe that there are better and worse, more or less valid ways to carve up the world, but the arbiter of validity is itself a construction. — Joshs

I agree, but the construction is based on the obvious commonality of human experience, which cannot be entirely explained by human construction. We cannot be conscious of the processes of perception, but we know that we all (most of us) perceive the same things, at the same times in the same places, which suggests that there is something about the structures of the world that give rise to that situation.

Put differently, the world speaks back to us in the language in which we couch our questions, so truth is the product of a ceaseless conversation between personal and interpersonal construction, and events.

That is only part of the story. We are affected pre-consciously, pre-linguistically, and if it was not for the pre-linguistic commonality of human experience, language could never have gotten started in the first place.

Not a conversation between subjects and a recalcitrant, independent reality, but a reciprocation in which the subjective and the objective poles are inextricably responsive to, and mutually dependent on each other.

The world we can talk about is obviously in part dependent on our ways of talking, but we have no control over the way the world is really; go out and stand on the expressway if you don't believe me.

We may agree about how we divide up the world within the bounds of a particular cultural episteme, but epistemes change historically, neither arbitrarily nor rationally, and with them our truths.

The basic truths, which are countless, like you will die if you try to swim across the Pacific Ocean, jump off Mt Everest or try to fight a tiger bare-handed don't change.

The basic truths, which are countless, like you will die if you try to swim across the Pacific Ocean, jump off Mt Everest or try to fight a tiger bare-handed don't change. — Janus

It's funny how truth only seems to take something closer to solid form when death is the accompaniment.

Don't you think that might be a tad bit grandiose? — wonderer1

Again the rustling of lolly papers from the cheap seats. If you want to join in, make a counter argument. Otherwise … :yawn:

For me I use this triad:
1. Thought/perceptions do not equal language.
2. Language does not equal what is observed (reality) .
3. What is observed (reality) does not equal thought/perception.

They're modes of communication. But all communication is imperfect - filtered, interpreted, altered in some way by the very act of interaction/being communicated in the first place.

The mind cannot comprehend reality in a raw form. It synthesises a comprehisble filtered and reduced version that's digestible. It organises the raw data into structures (dimensions). Disrupting this process with say... Hallucinogens, allows us to witness things unfiltered and unstructured but impairs our ability to memorise them well because memory requires executive tasking/structuring of info.

Language cannot impart the full scope of inner experience from one person to another. Words fail us to describe especially the most profound of emotions and experiences.

Finally, language and reality are only tied by a thin, frail yet pragmatic thread. This can be demonstrated in the fact that we have numerous languages (modes) to describe the same things. "Apple" has not only hundreds of other names but hundreds of descriptors and their respective meanings - from the literal, to the pragmatic/functional to the symbolic/metaphorical and figurative.

As well as the fact that words very frequently become obsolete or are formed anew. Languages evolve and with them we lose or gain new ways to describe. But never is language the reality we use it to describe.

It's funny how truth only seems to take something closer to solid form when death is the accompaniment. — Tom Storm

:lol: Yes, death or injury I guess. But still there are countless truths that deal with the natural constraints of a physical world: I can't walk through or see through walls, I can't fly, I can't even entertain two thoughts simultaneously, I cannot increase or decrease my size, weight or strength instantly, I can't know things I haven't learned, I can't change my appearance without resorting to disguise or plastic surgery...the list is huge...

The world affects us pre-perceptually in ways we cannot become conscious of, and it seems unarguable that its pre-perceptual effects, which give rise to, among other things, perception, do not constrain how we divide the world up in our perception and understanding of it. If the postmodernist says all is text, and we construct the world through and through, they go far too far, in my opinion.

"Apple" has not only hundreds of other names but hundreds of descriptors and their respective meanings - from the literal, to the pragmatic/functional to the symbolic/metaphorical and figurative. — Benj96

Yes, but all the names of the apple are names of the apple, not of anything else. I don't think our language has a tenuous grasp on the shared world of common experience and understanding at all, it grasps that world just fine, but at the same time it has no grasp at all on the world of pre-perceptual affects that is prior to all our models, analyses and judgements.

But still there are countless truths that deal with the natural constraints of a physical world: I can't walk through or see through walls, I can't fly, I can't even entertain two thoughts simultaneously, I cannot increase or decrease my size, weight or strength instantly, I can't know things I haven't learned, I can't change my appearance without resorting to disguise or plastic surgery...the list is huge... — Janus

No question about that.

If the postmodernist says all is text, and we construct the world through and through, they go far too far, in my opinion. — Janus

I've never quite known if they go as far as the critics suggest. :wink: I think they are probably an easy target... relativism this... relativism that... blah, blah blah. Like Chomsky I find them too complex to formulate a clear understanding, and I've never had the time. But I have to say, what I do know I find fascinating.

When I read Rorty, I am sometimes stuck by the romanticism underpinning the thinking - 'My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.'

It looks to be an odd question, to me. If I asked how a map maps onto reality, the answer would seem to be 'by being an arrangement of symbols that corresponds to the arrangement of features of note in the world.' or something like. The proof of the map is that the competent orienteer can find his way to the local hostelry in unfamiliar territory without falling off a cliff or into the river.

Maps have legends, that explain the meaning of the symbols. Cliff, river, bridge, hostelry. Things important to the traveller from afar. The legend informs those unfamiliar with the map, about scale and so on, but tells them nothing about the territory. The map does that.

And so it surely is with language. One needs to know the legend, and one needs to read the arrangement of the words, and one needs the right map according to where one is.

Here are a couple of arrangements to compare:

1. Don't eat the yellow snow.
2. Eat the yellow snow.

I leave the interested reader to work out by practical experiment which arrangement provides the best guidance to travellers in Northern climes.

(Those who have read the later work of Philip K Dick may be aware that there is a tradition of feeding reindeer with amanita muscaria and drinking their urine to enjoy the psycho-active benefits of the mushrooms without the upset stomach that one gets from direct ingestion of them. This is a legend.)

I have a book on fungi from the good old days when men were men and women were grateful, that has infallible advice for telling poisonous from edible mushrooms: "Eat them, if you get sick or die, they are poisonous, and if not they are edible." They don't make books like that any more. This is a true story.

we know that we all (most of us) perceive the same things, at the same times in the same places, which suggests that there is something about the structures of the world that give rise to that situation. — Janus

Gather 10 people in a room, and include persons from all corners of that world and all eras of human history. Ask them to paint the ‘same ‘ vase of flowers as accurately as possible. Compare the results and try and find any aspect of their paintings which exactly match each other. The wide variety of differences shows us how we actually interact with each other on the basis of supposedly shared experience. You might argue that even while our interpretations of the flowers vary, the physical world is sending the same data into all our heads. But the same problem crops up when we inquire into our shared understanding of the nature of the empirical data, its scientific structure. 10 physicists making use of the same mathematical calculations based on the ‘same’ qualitative variables to prove the ‘same’ physical world for us all come up with varying pictures, which fortunately goes unnoticed in most mundane situations of applying empirical knowledge. It’s when we shift our social activities away from the highly abstractive and conventionalized vocabulary of mathematics or natural science to political and ethical domains of engagement that we discover the implications of our varying pictures.
On this terrain of opinion, assuming there is a same world ends up forcing us into a moralism of blame and culpability, based on the seeming failure of persons to believe correctly.
Polarized political communities, believing the other side is absorbing the same basic facts as they are from the same empirical world out there, has no recourse but to cast aspersions on the other side’s intentions. This results is accusations of deception, greed, evil intent, brainwashing, motivated stupidity.

↪Joshs what, in all that, renders up anti realism? Why are there no true statements? — Banno

Let me first comment on Lawson. I just read a chunk of his book, Closure, and my conclusion is that his approach fits comfortably into the New Materialist wing of realism, in spite of his claim to be anti-realist. Karen Barad gives a flavor for the nature of the opposition between this group and poststructuralist anti-realists like Foucault:

“Language has been granted too much power. The linguistic turn, the semiotic turn, the interpretative turn, the cultural turn: it seems that at every turn lately every “thing”—even materiality—is turned into a matter of language or some other form of cultural representation. The ubiquitous puns on “matter” do not, alas, mark a rethinking of the key concepts (materiality and signification) and the relationship between them. Rather, it seems to be symptomatic of the
extent to which matters of “fact” (so to speak) have been replaced with matters of signification (no scare quotes here). Language matters. Discourse matters. Culture matters. There is an important sense in which the only thing that does not seem to matter anymore is matter.”

:up:

Very few painters have the ability (or desire) to represent any subject with photographic precision. How much less able are the unskilled to do that?

If the subject were a still life with flowers, vases, glasses and fruit, for example, and the instruction to represent every item, I have no doubt that most people would do that, which shows that people see the same things.

If the subject were a still life with flowers, vases, glasses and fruit, for example, and the instruction to represent every item, I have no doubt that most people would do that, which shows that people see the same things. — Janus

I think that's right. Painting is likely to depart from realism when the deliberate stylization (expressionist, impressionist, etc) result in aesthetic variation. But this isn't because the artists see the flowers differently, it's because they depict them using a particular style.

Ok. I don't follow what you are saying here.

@Joshs seems to be arguing that we paint differently, therefore there are no truths.

Hu?

therefore there are no truths. — Banno

They've just been deflated till they're flat as pancakes.