What's all symbolic? — Ludwig V
If I see an actual flower, the object I actual see
— Joshs
Why do you think that when you see an actual flower, you actually see something else? — Ludwig V
Its objectivity is thus a socially constituted ideal.
— Joshs
I think that you misunderstand what objectivity is. It is something that happens irrespective of any socially constructed ideal — Ludwig V
Good question. One way of answering is to consider it's use in ↪Hanover. The truism that perception always involves a perceiver, is associated with "beauty in the eye of the beholder", "nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" and the conclusion that all perception is subjective looks plausible. How can I say that forgery or not is not in the eye of the beholder, or that thinking does not make forgery so (or not) without appearing to deny the truism?
I have to admit that my way of putting the issue might be taken to suggest that Hanover's motivation is suspect. So I have to clarify that I don't doubt that Hanover believes what he is saying. — Ludwig V
I'm uncertain what metaphysical ideas you think underpin feelings of pain or unhappiness and judgments regarding how to avoid it. If they amount to "ideas" such as that there is an "external world" which has things in it which cause us pain or unhappiness, then I think we're speaking of what I've been calling affectation. I don't think this sort of metaphysics was indulged in by the Stoics, at least. — Ciceronianus
Certain statements are labeled subjective because they set out an individuals taste or feelings. In contrast, other statements are called objective, as they do not set out an individual's taste, feelings or opinions.
Supose that "I prefer vanilla to chocolate ice-cream" is a subjective fact - or if you prefer, it is a subjective truth. It's truth is dependent on my own taste. — Banno
I have a phenomenological state that seems to me to be elicited by an external stimuli, but I know that it can be elicited without it because people dream and some people have hallucinations elicited by brain injury, direct brain stimulation, drug use, or perhaps some sort of mental illness. — Hanover
Give me a concrete case then of an object that is unimpacted by the perceiver so that you can say object A is described as having the qualities of a, b, and c in all instances. — Hanover
The flower is one object; the fish, one object.We determined Banno's flower is not one such object and it seems your fish is not either. What then is that object you refer to? — Hanover
It's also true. Indeed, by the end of this thread, you are agreeing that it is true.How about Banno's flower? It has four petals, a definite height and flowers at a particular time of year.
— Ludwig V
That's just a restatement of naive realism. — Hanover
So we come across Hanover singing along to "Let it be" on his little transistor radio, the song barely discernible through the hiss and the hum. If we ask him what song he is listening to, his reply, despite the singing, is "I'm not listening to a song, but only to parts of a song, so I'm not hearing "let it be" I'm hearing all sorts of other things". (notice that this is a paraphrasing of his own words).Any inconsistency between the flower and the perception is defined as distortion. If the radio transmits a song filled with static, we don't say the static was part of the song. We say the song was distorted by the static. If you ask if I'm hearing the song, my answer is I'm hearing parts of the song and parts of other things as well, but, to the extent the song is X, I'm not hearing X. I'm hearing all sorts of other things. — Hanover
Thanks for this. It makes your mistake much clearer. The "undistorted X" is the song, in the second example, and the submarine, in the first. You have the thing and the perception of the thing confused. You think that you never see a flower because you only ever see it with your eyes, and never hear a song because you only ever hear it with your ears. Stove's Jew box, rather than his gem. Hence your conclusion: "What is the undistorted X? My position is that it is unknowable because the perception necessarily is filled with all sorts of distortions from within me and from the environment." You hold that you never see the sub or hear "let it be". That's enough of a reductio to reject your view.We have to determine which part of Object X I am sensing against those perceptions I am having of things imparted upon Object X if we want to distill what Object X is. What is the undistorted X? — Hanover
instead of just reacting, it is clear that the alternate to our seeing things only indirectly is that we sometimes see them directly, sometimes indirectly. — Banno
You hold that you never see the sub or hear "let it be". That's enough of a reductio to reject your view. — Banno
You are agreeing that there are things about the flower that are true regardless of one's perceptions. Where previously you had insisted that "My position is that it is unknowable" you now agree the flower has four petals. You don't believe your own theory. — Banno
No.You say there are certain objects we see directly. — Hanover
I'm not at all sure what you are claiming here. So you think that you only ever hear "interpreted sound waves", and hence you never hear songs? I propose that when you hear a song, it is the song that you hear.What I hear is an interpretation of sound waves. It's for that reason that when you sing behind a wall, I don't hear the song. What do you suppose I hear when I hear the song? — Hanover
A realist will say that it is true that the flower has four petals, and that this is true regardless of what you percieve. As opposed to @Joshs, who apparently thinks that since the language we use for the flower is communal, the number of petals is, too.What I can say of my perception of the flower is that it has four petals. I don't think I'm inconsistent in my position. — Hanover
And that repeated mischaracterisation of those who reject indirect realism is at the heart of why these threads are interminable. Sometimes you see stuff directly, sometimes you see the same stuff indirectly. — Banno
I propose that when you hear a song, it is the song that you hear. — Banno
A realist makes no epistemological claim. He doesn't suggest an accuracy of the senses. He will say that the flower exists however it does independently of the observer. He has no opinion on how many petals it has.A realist will say that it is true that the flower has four petals, and that this is true regardless of what you percieve. — Banno
Is the song not the sound waves? — Hanover
That's not right, as you agree when you say "He will say that the flower exists however it does independently of the observer". The realist commits to the view that "the flower has four petals" is either true, or it is false, and that this is so regardless of who is looking at it or how. Those are epistemological claims. That is as opposed to antirealism, which claims that the number of petals is indeterminate, usually until observed; and thereby commits to a non-bivalent logic.A realist makes no epistemological claim. — Hanover
The hard part... is going to be addressing the arguments Austin actually presents, and not re-dressing them so that they fit a preconfigured critique. (Austin) is not defending realism against antirealism, but rejecting the very distinction between these two.
This applies also to direct/indirect realism. The danger for this thread is that the discussion becomes just another rendition of that tedious "he said/she said". — Banno
The point Austin makes quite early seems to me to cover this:My problem is that I can't imagine what direct perception would be. — Ludwig V
You didn't see it directly, you saw it through a telescope, or a mirror, or only its shadow; how we are to understand "direct" perception depends entirely on what it is contrasted with; so of course it is difficult to imagine what "direct perception" is, per se. It's a nonsense, an invention of the defenders of the sort of argument Ayer is presenting. You can find examples in every thread on perception*.I. First of all, it is essential to realize that here the notion of perceiving indirectly wears the trousers- 'directly' takes whatever sense it has from the contrast with its opposite — p.15
Yes!Austin is specifically tearing down philosophy's framing of the issue as both direct or indirect. — Antony Nickles
list. Bless. It's not that simple. — Banno
I want to bring this song thing into my house. What do I bring in my house to have that song? As we've determined, realism demands the song thing be able to exist independent of the perceiver.Well, yes, its not. It's a Beetles song, heard many times before, that I can play bits of and that many will be able to sing along with and which quite a few folk have made their own. — Banno
The realist commits to the view that "the flower has four petals" is either true, or it is false, and that this is so regardless of who is looking at it or how. Those are epistemological claims — Banno
You didn't see it directly, you saw it through a telescope, or a mirror, or only its shadow; how we are to understand "direct" perception depends entirely on what it is contrasted with; so of course it is difficult to imagine what "direct perception" is, per se. It's a nonsense, an invention of the defenders of the sort of argument Ayer is presenting. You can find examples in every thread on perception*. — Banno
Hence the quote in the next post.You say it's too complicated? — Hanover
Not I. I'm supporting Austin's rejection of that distinction. But we do sometimes see things directly, sometimes indirectly - I woudln't call these "sorts of perceptions". I've already given several examples - seeing the sub directly as opposed to via sonar; seeing the flower directly as opposed to seeing a picture of it; seeing something directly as opposed to seeing it through a telescope, or in a mirror, or seeing it's shadow.You say there are two sorts of perceptions: direct and indirect. — Hanover
You have an odd notion of what a song is. Download it on Tidal. Better quality.What do I bring in my house to have that song? As we've determined, realism demands the song thing be able to exist independent of the perceiver. — Hanover
I don't have to do anything of the sort. You made that mess for yourself.Then we have to determine somehow which perceptions are most closely correlated to the noumenal flower in order to rank the perceptions from most direct to least direct? — Hanover
Philosophers, it is said, 'are not, for the most part, prepared to admit that such objects as pens or cigarettes are ever directly perceived'. Now of course what brings us up short here is the word 'directly'-a great favourite among philosophers, but actually one of the less conspicuous snakes in the linguistic grass. We have here, in fact, a typical case of a word, which already has a very special use, being gradually stretched, without caution or definition or any limit, until it becomes, first perhaps obscurely metaphorical, but ultimately meaningless. One can't abuse ordinary language without paying for it.
I. First of all, it is essential to realize that here the notion of perceiving indirectly wears the trousers- 'directly' takes whatever sense it has from the contrast with its opposite: while 'indirectly' itself (a) has a use only in special cases, and also (b) has different uses in different cases-though that doesn't mean, of course, that there is not a good reason why we should use the same word. We might, for example, contrast the man who saw the procession directly with the man who saw it through a periscope; or we might contrast the place from which you can watch the door directly with the place from which you can see it only in the mirror. Perhaps we might contrast seeing you directly with seeing, say, your shadow on the blind; and perhaps we might contrast hearing the music directly with hearing it relayed outside the concert hall. However, these last two cases suggest two further points.
2. The 'first of these points is that the notion of not perceiving 'directly' seems most at home where, as with the periscope and the mirror, it retains its link with the notion of a kink in direction. It seems that we must not be looking straight at the object in question. For this reason seeing your shadow on the blind is a doubtful case; and seeing you, for instance, through binoculars or spectacles is certainly not a case of seeing you indirectly at all. For such cases as these last we have quite distinct contrasts and different expressions-'with the naked eye' as op- posed to 'with a telescope', 'with unaided vision' as opposed to 'with glasses on'. (These expressions, in fact, are much more firmly established in ordinary use than 'directly' is.)
3· And the other point is that, partly no doubt for the above reason, the notion of indirect perception is not naturally at home with senses other than sight. With the other senses there is nothing quite analogous with the 'line of vision'. The most natural sense of 'hearing indirectly', of course, is that of being told something by an intermediary-a quite different matter. But do I hear a shout indirectly, when I hear the echo? If I touch you with a barge-pole, do I touch you indirectly? Or if you offer me a pig in a poke, might I feel the pig indirectly- through the poke? And what smelling indirectly might be I have simply no idea. For this reason alone there seems to be something badly wrong with the question, 'Do we perceive things directly or not?', where perceiving is evidently intended to cover the employment of any of the
senses.
4· But it is, of course, for other reasons too extremely doubtful how far the notion of perceiving indirectly could or should be extended. Does it, or should it, cover the telephone, for instance? Or television? Or radar? Have we moved too far in these cases from the original metaphor? They at any rate satisfy what seems to be a necessary condition-namely, concurrent existence and concomitant variation as between what is perceived in the straightforward way (the sounds in the receiver, the picture and the blips on the screen) and the candidate for what we might be prepared to describe as being perceived indirectly. And this condition fairly clearly rules out as cases of indirect perception seeing photographs (which statically record scenes from the past) and seeing films (which, though not static, are not seen contemporaneously with the events thus recorded). Certainly, there is a line to be drawn somewhere. It is certain, for instance, that we should not be prepared to speak of indirect perception in every case in which we see some- thing from which the existence (or occurrence) of some- thing else can be inferred; we should not say we see the guns indirectly, if we see in the distance only the flashes of guns.
5· Rather differently, if we are to be seriously inclined to speak of something as being perceived indirectly, it seems that it has to be the kind of thing which we (sometimes at least) just perceive, or could perceive, or which- like the backs of our own heads-others could perceive. For otherwise we don't want to say that we perceive the thing at all, even indirectly. No doubt there are complications here (raised, perhaps, by the electron microscope, for example, about which I know little or nothing). But it seems clear that, in general, we should want to distinguish between seeing indirectly, e.g. in a mirror, what we might have just seen, and seeing signs (or effects), e.g. in a Wilson cloud-chamber, of something not itself perceptible at all. It would at least not come naturally to speak of the latter as a case of perceiving something indirectly.
6. And one final point. For reasons not very obscure, we always prefer in practice what might be called the cash-value expression to the 'indirect' metaphor. If I were to report that I see enemy ships indirectly, I should merely provoke the question what exactly I mean.'I mean that I can see these blips on the radar screen'-'Well, why didn't you say so then?' (Compare 'I can see an unreal duck.'-'What on earth do you mean?' 'It's a decoy duck'-'Ah, I see. Why didn't you say so at once?') That is, there is seldom if ever any particular point in actually saying 'indirectly' (or 'unreal'); the expression can cover too many rather different cases to be just what is wanted in any particular case.
Thus, it is quite plain that the philosophers' use of 'directly perceive', whatever it may be, is not the ordinary, or any familiar, use; for in that use it is not only false but simply absurd to say that such objects as pens or cigarettes are never perceived directly. But we are given no explanation or definition of this new use - on the contrary, it is glibly trotted out as if we were all quite familiar with it already. It is clear, too, that the philosophers' use, whatever it may be, offends against several of the canons just mentioned above-no restrictions whatever seem to be envisaged to any special circumstances or to any of the senses in particular, and moreover it seems that what we are to be said to perceive indirectly is never - is not the kind of thing which ever could be - perceived directly. — Sense and Sensibilia, pp14-19
This isn't responsive though to your attempt to negate the distinction between the object and the perception. Our conversation initially revolved around what you seemed to suggest was the superfluousness of referring to phenomenal states and your equation of the perception of the thing to the actual thing. — Hanover
Risible.He's not discussing metaphysics at all, but instead is just trying to hammer out how we use the term "direct" and "indirect"... It says nothing about reality. It just talks about how we talk. — Hanover
The empirical object is something that no one actually sees, because it is a social construction derived from myriad subjective perspectives.
— Joshs
So because our calling it a "flower" is a social construct, we never see the flower? — Banno
As opposed to Joshs, who apparently thinks that since the language we use for the flower is communal, the number of petals is, too. — Banno
A history of art book offers a chronology of changes of socially shaped ways of perceiving. In many respects, this has involved leaning to ‘unsee’ previous socially formed notions of how things present themselves to us. Greek sculptors unsaw the rigid, depersonalized statues of the Egyptians, Assyrians and Mesopotamians when they discovered the inner dynamism of human beings. Renaissance artists had to unsee the inherited idea of a perspective-free landscape, no unifying light source and children depicted as tiny adults. Impressionist painters learned to unsee objects reflecting only a narrow band of colors onto the eye in favor of trees, skies and seas composed of every color in the rainbow. Expressionists taught themselves to unsee scenes in which subjective mood played no part in how things appear., giving us Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Munch’s Scream. — Joshs
Are you claiming that the ancient Egyptians and others perceived each other as rigid and depersonalized, expressionless? That the Greeks discovered the inner dynamism of human beings (whatever that may mean)--those before them were unaware that humans could do more than stand and sit (referring to statutes) or could laugh or cry? People before the Renaissance thought children looked like tiny adults--that's why they drew them that way? That before the Impressionists, people didn't perceive all the colors of the rainbow — Ciceronianus
If so, why not say so? — Ciceronianus
Joshs adopts the atomistic view that we "build" the objects around us from sense impressions or some such, form the "random (sic.) pixels of shape and color happen to impinge on our retinas... construing more complex forms of relational pattern tying one element of a visual scene with all the other elements." More recent work shows that the process is one of prediction rather than construction. — Banno
“The old concepts of association and of laws of association, though they too have usually been related to the coherencies of pure psychic life by Hume and later thinkers, are only naturalistic distortions of the corresponding genuine, intentional concepts…association is not a title merely for a conformity to empirical laws on the part of complexes of data comprised in a ''psyche" according to the old figure, something like an intrapsychic gravitation….all immediate association is an association in accordance with similarity. Such association is essentially possible only by virtue of similarities, differing in degree in each case, up to the limit of complete likeness.Thus all original contrast also rests on association: the unlike comes to prominence on the basis of the common. Homogeneity and heterogeneity, therefore, are the result of two different and fundamental modes of associative unification.”
And the "pixels" are not "random". We see the flower with four petals because there is a flower with four petals. — Banno
I don't agree. The flower has four petals regardless of what you suppose. That we see, feel, count or believe that it has four petals is incidental, post hoc.There is no flower with four petals , or any other visually identifiable object, until we first establish these relational interactions between ourselves and the world. — Joshs
Would we not have to construct the meaningfully recognizable object called a flower out of a series of sensory-motor interactions we have with it? There is no flower with four petals , or any other visually identifiable object, until we first establish these relational interactions between ourselves and the world. — Joshs
I don't agree. The flower has four petals regardless of what you suppose. That we see, feel, count or believe that it has four petals is incidental, post hoc. — Banno
I've been struck by the lack of clarity in several recent discussions revolving around subjectivity, objectivity, truth and belief. — "Banno
Before commencing the main argument, it may be worth pointing out that belief and truth are not the same. One can believe stuff that is not true, as well as disbelieve stuff that is true. Believing something does not imply that it is true, and being true does not imply being believed. I mention this because it is a simple, but ubiquitous error, and may well underpin other problems.
And so to the argument. The words subjective and objective are such that we are prone to allow them to lead us up and down various garden paths. It is especially important, therefore, to keep an eye on their use in mundane contexts.
That this text is written in English is not dependent on my own taste or feelings. Hence it is an objective truth.
That's an end to it; don't allow the notions of subjectivity and objectivity to take on any more significance.
in particular, don't pretend that there are either only subjective facts, or that there are only objective facts.
There is no flower with four petals , or any other visually identifiable object, until we first establish these relational interactions between ourselves and the world.
— Joshs
I don't agree. The flower has four petals regardless of what you suppose. That we see, feel, count or believe that it has four petals is incidental, post hoc. — Banno
A better answer is the obvious point that there are different ways of using an expression such as "I see the flower". I supose we might feel sympathy for those who cannot see flowers.What do we mean when we say "I see X"? — Ciceronianus
The second point, regarding shape, is that if a boulder rolls over a small crack it will continue rolling, but if it rolls into a "large crack" (a canyon) then it will fall, decreasing in altitude. This will occur whether or not a mind witnesses it, and this is because shape is a "primary quality." A boulder and a crack need not be perceived by a mind to possess shape. — Leontiskos
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