Austin's point here is that "direct" and "indirect" are a pair, linked by their opposition. Each derives it's meaning from the other, like "north" and "south", "up" and "down", "hot" and "cold". If you say that all perceptions are indirect, and imply that no perception is, or could be, direct, you deprive "direct" of any "meaning" and hence render "indirect" meaningless as well.

I don't accept that my eye is an intermediary, getting in the way of my perception — Ludwig V

Yes!

I appreciate the facetious style - this is what such silly alternatives deserve.

This is a new concept to me. — Ludwig V

Yep. It would have been novel for Austin, too. Thank you for saving me from addressing this incongruity.

An excellent post.

But they might say that when you look at a cup, what you are seeing is the cup — Banno

Suppose there is a tribe that does not have cups. What do they see when shown or given a cup?

Prima facie, Lecture IV required the most effort for the least gain.

But 's question shows some of where these ideas might be taken, more so by Wittgenstein than by Austin. One wonders what direction Austin might have taken had he lived longer.

Presumably they see the cup - a less racist alternative to the old myth that they could not see anything at all. We might find that despite seeing the cup they have no word for the cup and so no knowledge of how to use it.

What I am getting at is that there is more to perception than passive reception. What we see when we see the cup is not something separate from or independent from what we call it and what we use it for.

That's what @RussellA said. It's linguistic idealism.

I hope the absurdity is plain, and that you see the relevance of ↪Ciceronianus's joke. — Banno

I figured you'd notice the joke and the irony. Perhaps others will now that you mentioned it.

there is nothing to understand — Banno

The pie has hit your face when you recognize this to be the case. There's a kind of self-deception at work. or affectation, when we question whether or not we really see a cup.

That's what RussellA said. It's linguistic idealism. — frank

I think it is more a matter of what we do than what we say, of what cups are made and used for. The role or function that cups or, to use two examples Austin does, cigarettes and pens play in our lives.

I think it is more a matter of what we do than what we say, of what cups are made and used for. The role or function that cups or, to use two examples Austin does, cigarettes and pens play in our lives. — Fooloso4

No doubt.

What we see when we see the cup is not something separate from or independent from what we call it and what we use it for. — Fooloso4

Is that consistent with me using a cup to trap a spider?

People surely have the ability to see ways of using things, in ways no one has before. So surely what we 'see' is more than just previously recognized linguistic and usage associations?

There's a kind of self-deception at work. — Ciceronianus

And it will come to the fore with Lecture V. There will be folk who are so enamoured with the delusion of sense data that they will reject the argument, which is curiously phenomenological in character. In a good way.

What I am getting at is that there is more to perception than passive reception. What we see when we see the cup is not something separate from or independent from what we call it and what we use it for. — Fooloso4

Sure. There's much more detail that might be included, if it were deemed relevant.

How do you think this impacts on Austin or Ayer's arguments? Otherwise, this would for me be veering off towards Quinn and Davidson; Radical translation, Radical interpretation, Triangulation and so on. Interesting stuff, and happy to follow up on it, if it is germane.

But otherwise, you and I might agree that name calling - "linguistic idealism" - doesn't help. There's more to a cup than the word "cup". Some of the comments here are utterly off the path.

You miss the point. If you are going to assert that the objects of perception are unreal or that tables and chairs are real, it is a good idea to know what the word means, including what it means to other people. Unless you offer your own definition of real, other people will assume that you mean by it what it means in ordinary language. But in ordinary language, the assertion that tables and chairs are real is extraordinarily pointless, and the assertion that rainbows and sunsets are unreal is completely puzzling.

He makes the point clear enough. It is a “fatal enterprise” to use the word in the way Ayer does. If us ordinary people need our hand held in what the word “real” might mean, perhaps he should have reminded his readers that it isn’t really fatal to use the word in such a manner.

Is that consistent with me using a cup to trap a spider? — wonderer1

I think so.

People surely have the ability to see ways of using things, in ways no one has before. So surely what we 'see' is more than just previously recognized linguistic and usage associations? — wonderer1

I agree.

I think a more general way of seeing use is in terms of state transitions. The way you use a cup is a special case since how I use a cup is a sequence of percptual states (and transitions between them): e.g. how I fill a cup with water, bring it to my mouth and drink. My knowledge of this use might be seen, broadly, in terms of predicting what the next states are (or what they plausibly could be) from any part of the sequence and knowing what came before (or what could have come before, plausibly).

But then state transitions also include things that seem a bit more basic and probably totally unconscious; for instance, predicting what I will see next if I twist the cup a certain way, or how the percept changes when I myself moves. Perhaps, predicting the type of sound when I tap it or the way it feels if I touch. That is quite implicit knowledge since no one is really explicitly predicting or paying attention to what they will see next as they twist a cup, or the sound it will make when they set it down on the table - yet we would all know very well if something unexpected happened in these contexts.

If you think about it, even though your using a cup to trap a spider (or some other trick) might be a totally novel use of the cup, it relies entirely on knowledge of such state transitions like I just mentioned - known regularities in cup-related percepts. I would not be able to use the cup to trap the spider if I could not predict / have knowledge of the next sensory percepts that would occur in trapping the spider. I probably must, at least implicitly, know the cup has certain predictable properties to even come up with the idea.

I disagree with that post though that this has anything to do with seeing in the conventional sense. I think what we see when we see the cup is just the specific, immediate, individually unique image / percept of whatever is infront of us, which in fact is probably rarely ever exactly the same between two moments and is almost inevitably in constant flux as we move in the world, and the world itself moves.

There are therefore just transitions to the next perceptual state and the next state after that, in real time. Much of these transitions might just be what we passively observe, but there is always some control we have in some sense, which requires knowledge of state transitions.

- for instance, the way I move my head changes the way the cup looks. I can move my hand to manipulate it directly. I can move my jaws and speak the word "cup" or perhaps utter a selection of words that evoke a response in someone else. Maybe the sounds of those words will just appear before me, disembodied (like internal monologue); disembodied images likewise. I can shift my eyes to an area of the visual field where the next cup-related event miraculously occurs (e.g. water pouring from a spout; such a coincidence I happen to look there: why did I do that?). Perhaps I have other changes in attention and even internal states (like maybe heartbeat) if that miraculous event were not to occur. Notice these controllable acts are all coupled to my knowledge of state transitions in the sense they are all re-actions or pre-actions to what could come next (or perhaps what could have happened in the past even - any type of cup-related association).

Totally passive observation of changes of perception in real time is meaningless because without any of these controllable actions / reactions, I cannot even express or enact my knowledge of those passive observation sequences (e.g. our eyes following around these passive observations, words uttering the next passive observation, the shock and heartbeat change when some unexpected passive observation happens, an imagine picture popping into my head). Without those controllable actions I am probably no different to a wall which a film is being projected onto - the wall is receiving the image without any reaction, no meaning for the wall, even though it has these images projected on to it!

Knowledge is nothing more than these controllable actions which themselves are still just special cases of state transitions in our perception in real time, but nonetheless characterize my expertise about things like cupness through raw, individually unique percepts that change over time with some regularity / pattern to those transitions. So there is no sense in seeing the use of a cup. The use or knowledge of a cup unfolds in real time as it is being used, as we are reacting to it, as some sequence of unique percepts over which we have varying amounts of control.

There is no explicitly stored catalogue of knowledge unless you perhaps think it is appropriate to use that term to refer to latent biochemical states in our neurons (I don't). What we know is generated and enacted on the fly in our controllable perceptual states in contextually sensitive ways, embodied in neuronal action potentials.

There is such a thing as sense data, per basic anatomy and physiology. It's just taking things too far to state that we don't see the world we're in, we just see the data from neurons. Neuroscientists would agree. The data from rods and cones is discreet. What we experience is integrated. The quest to know how that integrated experience comes to be continues.

I think Austin is saying that language is a tool and speaking about the world is part of how this tool works.

I gather we are in broad agreement, then.

I've looked for uses of "sense data" outside of philosophical contexts, but found precious little. I checked the main online physiology and medical resources, but found nothing; certainly nothing showing its use in these fields.

You have two kinds of neurons, sensory neurons and motor neurons. Sensory neurons do nothing but send electrical impulses into your central nervous system. I would think those impulses would qualify as sensory data. No?

sensory data — frank

Sensory data, sure. Our senses provide data. But "sense data" seems a term peculiar to philosophy, with the mentioned peculiarities.

How do you think this impacts on Austin or Ayer's arguments? — Banno

From an earlier post:

In the case of a table, and perhaps more clearly in the case of a pen or cigarette, what we see in not simply an object in passive perception, but something culturally and conceptually determined. In a culture without tables or pens or cigarettes what is seen is not a table or pen or cigarette. But neither is what is seen "sense data".

If, to take a rather different case, a church were cunningly camouflaged so that it looked like a barn, how could any serious question be raised about what we see when we look at it ? We see, of course, a church that now looks like a barn.
(40) [correction: page 30 of text/40 electronic]

I agree with Austin that what we see is not something immaterial, but I do not think it a matter of course that what we see is a church that looks like a barn. It is only when the camouflage is removed that what we see is a church. What it is and what we see are not the same. What we see is what it looks like to us. — Fooloso4

The sense data (indirect)/material object (direct) dichotomy, taking either one or the other or both together fails to encompass the problem of seeing.

To quote Wittgenstein:

PPI 251. We find certain things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough.

But "sense data" seems a term peculiar to philosophy, with the mentioned peculiarities. — Banno

I see.

What it is and what we see are not the same. — Fooloso4

Well, sometimes what we see is what there is...

I'm not seeing a difficulty for Austin, here - is there one? I had rather taken him as showing that seeing, touching, smelling and so on were much broader than Ayer's account supposed, in much the way you do here.

@Banno @J @Ludvig @Corvus @javi2541997 @Ciceronianus @frank

I wanted to point out that part of the confusion here is that we (and most everyone in philosophy in general) do not take what Austin is doing as revolutionary and radical as it is. He is not offering another theory to explain “perceiving” or something to replace it. He is claiming that the problem that everyone is arguing about how to solve is made up; that the whole picture that we somehow interpret or experience remotely (through something else--sense perception, language, etc.) or individually (each of us) is a false premise and forced framework.

It might appear that Austin is just being snobby about words or is only making a claim that language is the right filter for the world, etc. But his method (as with Wittgenstein) is to set out what we say and do about a topic as evidence of how that thing actually works. That is to say, he is learning about the world. For example, in examining what we say and do about looking, he is making a claim about how "looking" works, the mechanics of it. “Seeing” something is not biological—which would simply be vision—and neither is judging, identifying, categorizing, etc. (“perception” is a made up thing, never defined nor explained p. 47). . Austin is showing us that “seeing” is a learned, public process (of focus and identification). “Do you see that? What, that dog? That’s not a dog, it’s a giant rabbit; see the ears.”

So, again, he is not saying we experience the world directly or indirectly--he is throwing out the entire picture of us (here) and the world (there) that leads to that distinction. This, for some, is very hard to wrap their heads around because it means letting go of a fixed, certain world, even, as is the case here (and with Kant), when we can’t or don’t know it.

As examples:

"It’s a shame Austin doesn’t wade into any of these problems …and is content to split-hairs on rather trivial matters, like an entire lecture on the word 'real'."

"there is not much significance in delving into the differentiation of direct and indirect perception because from my point of view, all perceptions are somehow indirect from the minimal perspective that for any human perception, it will happen via proper and relevant sense organs"

“sense organs are not the final perception location in the process, then they have to be the medium passing the sensed contents into the final location i.e. the brain”

“I think perspective - subject and object - is based on two main categories: the external, which essentially treats all things as objects and ignores the subject”

Is that consistent with me using a cup to trap a spider?

People surely have the ability to see ways of using things, in ways no one has before. So surely what we 'see' is more than just previously recognized linguistic and usage associations? — wonderer1

But “creative” problem solving and “imaginative” ways of using things are based on the fact that we have had practices like holding in cups, trapping things, pacifism, etc. and not a matter of “seeing” as if it were attached to vision. But, yes, our practices are not closed off from innovation.

V
Roughly, Ayer's argument is that

• When we see something, there is always a thing that we see.
• There are instances where what we see is a different thing to what is "really" there; a thing philosophers call "sense data"
• This account must be generalised, so that in all instances, what we see is sense data.

So far we have watched Austin carefully dismantle the first two steps. The first in Lecture II, the second in Lecture III and IV. Now we are moving on the finishing step.

Before looking at Austin, let's consider Zhuang Zhou. You will no doubt be familiar with the story. As a butterfly, he did not know he was Zhuang Zhou. When he was Zhuang Zhou, he wondered if he was a butterfly.

It's a stimulating story, throwing one's considerations off-centre, and I do not wish to detract from it, but to add to it, since I think it can give us some insight into the approach Austin takes in Lecture V. We do know the difference between dreaming and being awake. We understand the nature of dreams, that they occur during sleep, usually at night, and may involve various otherwise impossible things. We understand what it is to dream and what it is to be awake - we must do, because we have the language around dreaming. If we could really not tell our dreams from our more lucid states, we could have no such language. We could not even have the word "dream".

We know also that the story is told from the point of view of Zhuang Zhou, and not from the point of view of the butterfly. If we did have the story from the perspective of the butterfly, the world would be a very different place. But the symmetry on which the story depends must be broken in order for the story to be told.

Considerations such as these have a close parallel in the final writings of Wittgenstein on certainty. The story can only take place if the very things it brings into doubt are held firm. And the story, being constructed of words, has to take it's place in a community of human beings.

Here again is the self-deception that is needed to get a good story to come alive - as mentioned.

So, again, he is not saying we experience the world directly or indirectly--he is throwing out the entire picture of us (here) and the world (there) that leads to that distinction. — Antony Nickles

I hearty agree! While we are at it, let's also throw out that other bugaboo (should that be buggerboo?) subjective/objective, the notion of things having to be either "internal" or "external".

“Seeing” something is not biological—which would simply be vision—and neither is judging, identifying, categorizing, etc. (“perception” is a made up thing, never defined nor explained p. 47). . Austin is showing us that “seeing” is a learned, public process (of focus and identification). “Do you see that? What, that dog? That’s not a dog, it’s a giant rabbit; see the ears.” — Antony Nickles

Well, it doesn't surprise me that Austin embraces empiricism roughly. I read from other users who took part in this thread that, if we want to try to understand the exhange between Austin and Ayer, we have to focus on Linguistics as well, because Austin states that 'Ayer's 'linguistic' doctrine really rests squarely on the old Berkeleian, Kantian ontology of the 'sensible manifold'(p. 60), and he also states:

if Ayer were right here, then absolutely every dispute would be purely verbal. For if, when one person says whatever it may be, another person may simply 'prefer to say' something else, they will always be arguing only about words, about what terminology is to be preferred

.' (I fully agree on this point)

So I wonder to what extent we should take into account this topic from a Philosophy of Language perspective, and not just metaphysics.

On the other hand, I think pages 59, 60 and 61 are key. It shows what this is about, in my humble opinion, and even when afterwards I read them I started to wonder why people believe that Austin wants to 'disagree' with Ayer. I don't think so, but just to improve his theories and arguments. Don't you think?

Interesting, because on page 61 Austin states that there is a sense of 'melancholia' related to Locke and Berkeley, and others who worked with empiricism. Nevertheless, Austin himself states:

'Kant and Ayer all further agree that we can speak as if there were bodies, objects, material things. Certainly, Berkeley and Kant are not so liberal as Ayer-they don't suggest that, so long as we keep in step with the sensible manifold, we can talk exactly as we please; but on this issue, if I had to take sides, I think I should side with them'.

When he says 'them' it is not clear to me if he refers to all of them altogether or just Kant and Berkeley.

I wanted to point out that part of the confusion here is that we (and most everyone in philosophy in general) do not take what Austin is doing as revolutionary and radical as it is. He is not offering another theory to explain “perceiving” or something to replace it. He is claiming that the problem that everyone is arguing about how to solve is made up; — Antony Nickles

Part of the difficulty is understanding the significance of what he says. It is too easy to trivialize "ordinary language". But I think that's is a reaction to the difficulty of seeing what one might do next in philosophy. So much is being dismantled that the landscape can seem to be a desert. Bringing the nonsense in philosophy to an end is one thing. But bringing philosophy to an end is something else. Whatever motivates philosophy has certainly not gone away.

One reflection on re-visiting this text after so long. I see it differently. What Austin does in dismantling Ayer's argument is just a careful, thorough, detailed analysis of the argument. It's classic. The core of the business is not the messing about with dictionaries, but the careful critical reading of the text. Completely conventional, completely orthodox. Or so it seems to me now.

So I wonder to what extent we should take into account this topic from a Philosophy of Language perspective, and not just metaphysics. — javi2541997

The issues at this point are complicated, and I don't fully understand them. As a preliminary, it seems quite clear to me that Austin does disagree with Ayer. But he also wants to be as fair to Ayer as he possibly can. It would be easier to interpret Ayer uncharitably and produce an argument that, in the end, just attacks a straw man. But it is more convincing to refute what I have seen referred to as a steel man, i.e. an interpretation of the argument that is as strong as it can possibly be.

I'm not sure that Austin is entirely right about Berkeley. (I don't know Locke or Kant well enough to have an opinion about them.)

Berkeley is not entirely clear about whether the arguments he presents are just about language or not. If he is presented with possible counter-examples, such as the watch-maker, he shows that whatever the watchmaker believes, what he is doing can be represented in terms of "ideas" (which correspond, at least roughly to Hume's impressions and Ayer's sense-data). But his project is to refute any inference to anything beyond what can be perceived (ideas) - except minds, but set that aside for now. So it is clear that he does not think that it is just a question of language - how could the existence of God be just a question of language - except to an unbeliever?

But he gives permission several times for ordinary language to continue to be used in certain contexts and by certain people. True, there is always the proviso that users should accept his arguments. I read him as anxious to avoid the appearance of contradicting "vulgar opinion" - to the point where he allows that ordinary objects (or at least the ideas of them) continue to exist even when not perceived by anyone, since God continues to perceive them. (This is only clearly stated in the Dialogues). In short, I read Berkeley as suggesting exactly what Austin says he doesn't suggest. But I'm not at all sure that Berkeley's position on this is coherent. (If you want references to Berkeley's text, I can provide them.)

I think his melancholy is disappointment that Ayer has not really progressed from the classical doctrines, in spite of the claims that Logical Positivism is a revolution that overthrows the entire tradition of philosophy.

I also think that he is saying that he would side with the less liberal Kant and Berkeley.

The most interesting feature of this discussion is that it shows that Austin's view of language is more complicated than the dismissive interpretations of the linguistic turn suppose.

But this is all in Lecture VI, so perhaps we should park it for now and return to it later?

You had said he puts mind at the center of reality, and language at the center of mind. That's why I thought the ultimate relationship would be mind to world. No? — frank

When Wittgenstein at the start of On Certainty discusses GE Moore and the statement "I know that here is a hand", perhaps one can say that Ayer's centre of interest is the relationship of mind to world and Austin's centre of interest is the relationship of language to world.

For Ayer, we know of the hand through our sense data independently of language. For Austin, we know of the hand through our language, independently of any world that may or may not exist independently of our mind.

In this sense, there are similarities between Austin and the later Wittgenstein, in that for both of them the main interest is in language. Their interest is not in Ayer's metaphysical considerations of the relationship between the hand that I know exists in my mind to a hand that may or may not exist in a world independently of my mind.

Those metaphors "at the centre" are presumably shorthand for something and need a bit of explaining. — Ludwig V

Using an analogy (allowed within ordinary language), an author may write an article comparing and contrasting Atheism and Christianity in order to evaluate their similarities and differences. However, a Christian author may also write an article evaluating Atheism, and would unsurprisingly find it wanting.

Similarly, an author may write an article comparing and contrasting sense-data theory and ordinary language in order to evaluate their similarities and differences. However, in my opinion, Austin, as a believer in Ordinary Language Philosophy, has written an article Sense and Sensibilia evaluating sense-data theory and has unsurprisingly find it wanting.

From Austin's Ordinary Language point of view, it may well be the case that sense-data is irrelevant, but that does mean that the sense-data theory is irrelevant.