It's all symbolic. — Hanover

What's all symbolic?

What's all symbolic? — Ludwig V

Everything that you sense. Such is the nature of indirect realism. That's why it's called representationalism. Your phenomenlogical state of the flower is the symbol you have for that flower.

You are arbitrarily claiming that some perceptions are symbolic and others not. When you see the flower, what you see is a representation of it, just like when you see a blip on a computer screen, you see a representation of an airplane.

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

What I meant was that the idea of a spatial object as a persistingly self-identical thing enduring throughout changes in perspective is something we surmise, something we contribute to the phenomenon in front of us rather than something the world contributes. So what we see is a melding of conceptual expectation and what the world contributes, and the two sides are inextricably interwoven with each other.

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

Again, I’m thinking of objectivity as empirical objectivity. Following Husserl, this way of seeing objects is an idealization, The empirical object is something that no one actually sees, because it is a social construction derived from myriad subjective perspectives.

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

It seems plausible to me to think that perception is conceptually mediated. At the very least things seen, which are obviously not isolated from the rest of the visual field, as noticed, stand out as gestalts, as figure stands out from ground.

If 'see' is taken to mean something like 'the changing pattern of tones and colours formed on the retina' then we can say we always see the whole visual field. But this would be Jame's "buzzing blooming confusion' until something stands out as significant, with the rest of the visual field remaining 'invisible' or 'transparent'. We might say the rest is seen, but it is not consciously seen.

So, I don't think reality is socially or culturally constructed, but rather is merely socially or culturally mediated. There is always something real there which constrains what can be seen, but how what is there is seen may vary from culture to culture and individual to individual.

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

I'm saying that the Stoics, the Epicureans and the Neoplatonists, as three examples. had very definite and different metaphysical postulates which formed integral parts of their respective systems and were (at least understood to be) conducive to the kinds of strategies each employed to deal with pain and suffering and/ or spiritual advancement. In other words, the various metaphysical presuppositions were integral to the various practices involved in the teachings.

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'd say there are only objective facts or actualities. If you prefer vanilla to chocolate that would be an objective fact about you, so I'm not seeing much scope for confusion there.

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

Why engage in this kind of categorization? We're referring to processes, not isolated events or things. When a person is walking, the image of a person walking doesn't take form in their minds, which then induce their legs to move appropriately. They simply walk. People who dream are dreaming. They're having a dream (not encountering images coming into being in their minds). People who have hallucinations are hallucinating, for whatever reason. They have hallucinations (there are no images or sounds or things that they encounter). People who see a flower see a flower (not a sense datum or combination of them). People who look at a radar screen are looking at a radar screen (not an airplane, not a "blip").

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

What is it that you think this shows? So:

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

The flower is one object; the fish, one object.

There's a view that we only see things indirectly, and that view presents itself as opposed to the view that we only ever see things directly, building for itself the straw man of "direct realism". But if one gives a bit of thought to the issue, 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.

"Sir. there is a submarine off the port bow!"
"How do you know, Sonar Operator?" commands Captain Hanover
"I can see it on the screen!"
"Oh, that's not a Submarine! It's just a blip on the screen! And anyway, sonar uses sound, so you can't see with Sonar! Let me know when you see the submarine directly!"
Lost with all hands...

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

It's also true. Indeed, by the end of this thread, you are agreeing that it is true.

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

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).

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

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.

But you add "Either the flower is red or the flower is white. Either the flower has certain structural features or it does not. What is different about colour in that it can vary from perceiver to perceiver but not change the fact that it's the same flower". My bolding. You agree that the flower has four petals, and that this is the case for you, for me, and for the bee. 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.

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?

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

So I ask my question once again so I can understand what you're talking about. You say there are certain objects we see directly. We will call them D. There are certain objects we see indirectly. We will call them I. Give me a list of object Ds and then a list of object Is. I can then go back and forth between the two and figure out what the rule is that you are using to place each in its respective catagory.

You hold that you never see the sub or hear "let it be". That's enough of a reductio to reject your view. — Banno

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?

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

A realist, which I think we both are, holds only that things exist outside the mind. The simple act of existing is not a property. What I can say of the flower is that it exists. 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.

You say there are certain objects we see directly. — Hanover

No.

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.

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

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 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

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.

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

Very well, once you overcome your exasperation, in column 1 tell me those instances where we see directly and in column 2 tell me those instances where we see indirectly, offering whatever context you need.

I propose that when you hear a song, it is the song that you hear. — Banno

Is the song not the sound waves? Is it just the experience of hearing sounds?

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

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 list. Bless. It's not that simple.

Is the song not the sound waves? — Hanover

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.

A realist makes no epistemological claim. — 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.

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 quoted text continues...

My problem is that I can't imagine what direct perception would be. — Ludwig V

The point Austin makes quite early seems to me to cover this:

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

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*.

Austin is specifically tearing down philosophy's framing of the issue as both direct or indirect. — Antony Nickles

Yes!

list. Bless. It's not that simple. — Banno

You say there are two sorts of perceptions: direct and indirect. I ask you to give me examples of each. You say it's too complicated?

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

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.

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

A realist knows nothing about the flower except that it exists or not. This has nothing to do with how we know things or what counts for knowledge.

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

This is indirect realism, just with you claiming varying degrees of indirectness. There is no pure direct perception as you've described it, but just your arbitrary gradations of directness versus indirectness. Perhaps me looking at the flower is more direct than me seeing its shadow. Is that all you're saying: everything is blurred to some degree, just some more than others, and the more unblurred is called "direct" when contrasted with the more blurred?

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?

This goes back to my request for a list. You can't avoid making this concrete with actual examples of direct and indirect perceptions or at least providing which are more and which are less direct and then providing reasons why you place them on your sliding scale.

You say it's too complicated? — Hanover

Hence the quote in the next post.

You say there are two sorts of perceptions: direct and indirect. — 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.

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

You have an odd notion of what a song is. Download it on Tidal. Better quality.

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

I don't have to do anything of the sort. You made that mess for yourself.

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.

This Austin quote isn't controversial to any degree. He's not discussing metaphysics at all, but instead is just trying to hammer out how we use the term "direct" and "indirect." The fact that we have reasons to distinguish between those things we perceive without obvious interference between ourselves and the object offers a reason why we have words for that, but that's as far as it goes. It says nothing about reality. It just talks about how we talk.

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

I'm doing no such thing.

Odd, that you repeatedly misattribute stuff to me.

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

Risible.

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

Following Husserl, there are different components that contribute to what we see. We perceive the actual flower in front of us but apperceive the empirical ‘same flower for all’. In both cases we ‘fill in’ from memory what isn’t actually in front of us. Parts of the flower may be visually occluded, the outline and coloration may have breaks, and inconsistencies, but we still perceive the whole flower based on what we fill in from many previous experiences of it. In empirical seeing, we also include the socially agreed upon idealizations we have learned, such as pure geometric shapes. Ask a child to draw a desk in front of them and they will try and draw a pure rectangle or square rather than the perspectivally given object presented to them.

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.

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?

If so, why not say so? I suspect you don't. You refer instead to how particular artists depicted people, something which may vary for many reasons, some technological, some cultural. On what basis do you conflate what we see with what we paint or sculpt? If you do that, I suppose it's easy enough to conflate what we see with what we dream or hallucinate.

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

What we see is a function not simply of what random pixels of shape and color happen to impinge on our retinas. It is a function of what patterns we are able to synthesize out of this chaos of sensation. We have to discern correlations among initially disparate elements of the world, and coordinate these with our own movements.
In addition, we have to correlate different sense modalities associated with what we see into a unity.
Perception strives to achieve relative regularities and stabilities in navigating our surroundings, not veridical truths. It is about goal-oriented interaction, not mirroring. That’s why puppies deprived of movement in their early years fail to see objects properly, despite a healthy visual system. And why when wearing glasses that invert our visual field, eventually we come to see the world right side up again despite no change in how the visual information is reaching us. When we hallucinate from Lsd, which fragments the constructed stabilities and regularities, we can learn to re-stabilize the chaotic scene somewhat by adjusting our interactions with it. At the very least, we can eventually learn to separate out the influence of the drug from the changes in the visual scene, just as we figure out the distorting effect of bad glasses.

Sense modalities coordinate with each other, with concepts we have learned about the world and with our movements. And our movements coordinate with the seen world in ever more complex ways so as to produce new patterns where before we saw nothing. Perception sees through interacting. Artists see nuanced gradations of color the rest of us don’t see. Musicians perceive sound patterns others cannot.

Because perception is conceptually mediated, whether we see a random pattern of dots or recognizable letters forming words or a face is a function of what we expect to see. Optical illusions and the ability to understand spoken and written language depends on our expectations filing in shapes that are incomplete. We see a completely formed letter A even though what is there is a degraded and broken set of points. We hear a complete sentence even though some of the words have been drowned out by background noise.

We see facial expression, bodily comportment, posture and attitude based on what we expect in the other’s behavior. The pre-Greek cultures produced art that expressed their ways of interpreting human behavior based on cultural schemes of understanding The Greek enlightenment produced a psychological, philosophical, artistic , literary and spiritual revolution in thinking that was expressed in new expectations in seeing the human form through sculpure. Many art historians have written about the originality of the Greeks in seeing persons as animated by an inner volition or movement absent from ancient ways of thinking.


What the Renaissance brought to seeing was the recognition that the elements of a scene are related to each more radically than simply by the fact that they all fit within the room or landscape. They are tied together in relation to each other and to the viewer by a unified perspective, and by a unified light source. These relational patterns were invisible to previous seers, who only had simpler notions like shrinking size correlates with distance from the viewer. It is not that only the Impressionists saw the rainbow , it is that they were the first Western painters to see that the rainbow resides in all objects that light illuminates. Again , this is a matter of construing more complex forms of relational pattern tying one element of a visual scene with all the other elements than had previously been seen .

If so, why not say so? — Ciceronianus

Yes, the trouble with 's posts is that he hasn't said what his point is. It is set as a reply to my 'So because our calling it a "flower" is a social construct, we never see the flower?', but how?

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.

And the "pixels" are not "random". We see the flower with four petals because there is a flower with four petals.

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

When Husserl talks about sense data, he is not taking the naive realist position that there are concept or intention-independent features of the world that we incorporate into our perceptual schemes. The sense data are not raw but only appear to us on the basis of association. Rather than the Humean notion, for Husserl association is a synthetic activity based on likeness, concordance and similarity. One could say it constitutes on the basis of expectation.

“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

What if one has been blind since birth and only recently acquired sight? Would a flower appear at first as anything other than a random collection of colors, shadings and lines? 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. Developmentally speaking, we have to use the flower to see it, and that is intrinsic to its meaning for us.

Yeah, all that guff and misrepresentation. How many petals does the flower have? I say four. Your answer?

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.

Ah, if only we were in a court of law. I would object to your "response" as being unresponsive, and I think any Judge in the external world would sustain the objection.

In the rarefied realm of philosophy, so removed from the world of the sensible (a little pun on my part), there's no need for you to respond to direct questions, of course.

Have you ever thought that those children in pre-Renaissance painting actually were little adults? Or just that the artists who painted them thought they were?

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 find this fairly persuasive. We seem to apprehend and understand our world subject to frames of reference and emersion (for want of a better word) in the human experience - which brings sense making points of view, shaped and limited by our cognitive apparatus.

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 think this is correct given our intersubjective agreements about reality, which almost all share. But I think Joshs point refers to the sense making building blocks of human experince which assist us to make order out of apparent chaos. Until we have arrived at things like petals and numbers, the notion of flowers and counting, we can't really answer this meaningfully.

Now, unfortunately as a non-philosopher, I don't have access to the language I would need to defend this phenomenological perspective. I can only go by limited intuitions.

As someone who is not overly concerned with philosophy and is content to inhabit the quotidian world, I can see how many might consider it pointless to talk about the kind of constructivist process that seems to go into us making sense of our experince and constructing reality. To agree upon 4 petals is probably all we need to be happy and functioning.

In short, I probably want it both ways. Sorry.

This all seems very hand-wavy.

I've been struck by the lack of clarity in several recent discussions revolving around subjectivity, objectivity, truth and belief. — "Banno

You don't say what the purported confusion is. If all you are saying is that it seems to you that there is a lack of clarity, then that may say something about you but nothing about anything else.

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.

I don't see, and you haven't explained, how you think these obvious truisms refute anything or support your judgement that some beliefs or claims amount to affectation in philosophy.

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.

I've already dealt with your 'ice cream' example, showing that saying it is an example of a subjective or an objective statement are just different ways of talking about it. I received no response.

That this text is written in English is not dependent on my own taste or feelings. Hence it is an objective truth.

Do you think anyone would challenge that? What is the word "objective" doing there? Is it meant to suggest that the truth of the statement is independent of any context?

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.

An end to what? 'Subjective' and 'objective' is just a distinction we are able to make; they are valid in some contexts, and questionable in others.

It seems to me it is just a matter of different ways of thinking/ speaking. For example, I can say that without percipients (subjects) there are no facts, and in that sense all facts are subjective (or more accurately, intersubjective). Depends on what sense of 'fact' is being employed. Shifting sands...talk about bewitchment by means of language!

So the issue becomes how to consolidate the two...

The answer is in the difference between belief and truth. What you believe, in your terms, is down to "apprehend and understand our world subject to frames of reference and emersion... in the human experience". Notice this is about what we apprehend and understand, not about what is true.

What we apprehend and understand can be in error. One might apprehend the flower as having three petals, despite it having four. In which case, the flower has four petals regardless of what is supposed.

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 think what's at work here might be called a "hypertechnical" approach to questions, and meaning. What do we mean when we say "I see X"? To answer (if indeed we can answer) requires detailed and specific knowledge of how we see X, which requires consideration of anatomical, neurological, physiological processes within our bodies, the quality of and nature of the object X, its ecology and that of the person who sees it, the experiences of that person and the culture in which the person lives...indeed, the consideration of all aspects of the world itself. Many of these factors will vary from person to person, of course. The result is we don't see X. We see whatever it is that's the result of their interaction.

What do we mean when we say "I see X"? — Ciceronianus

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.

It will perhaps come as no surprise that I agree with . In 's thread the question arose of whether 'shape' is a mind-independent reality. My argument was that boulders treat cracks differently than canyons whether or not any minds are involved:

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

The point is that objects have existence in themselves and exercise causal powers independently of anything we do or know. We have to do certain things in order to learn that there is a flower and that it has four petals, but the flower with four petals exists whether or not we learn about it.