Yes, that sounds right. Although they'd have a hard time getting that argument to stand up, I think.

The parsimony claim seems unjustified given that mental imagery plausibly exists whatever one's view about perception. A plausible worldview should have to make room for it regardless of what it says about perception. If the indirect realist tries to run a parsimony argument, they really do seem to be arguing that anyone who acknowledges that fake banknotes exist, should then - on grounds of parsimony - accept that all banknotes are fake. But that seems a misuse of the parsimony principle.

Even taken on its own terms, however, the indirect realist seems to be the one who is guilty of positing more than is necessary. For on my view in the good cases we have a perceiver and a mind-external object some of whose properties are being directly perceived, whereas in the bad cases we have a perceiver and mind-internal states that are being directly perceived (whose origin nevertheless lies in mind-external states). So the more complicated case is the hallucination one - as that has mind-external objects that have - at some point - created in the perceiver a mental image that has then become the object of perception. The indirect realist, in supposing this always to be the case, is then making the more complicated case the norm. That violates the principle of parsimony it seems to me.

For an analogy: sometimes events are overdetermined. I put on two alarm clocks set for the same time and both go off together waking me up at the same time. My waking up at that time was overdetermined, for it was sufficient for just one to go off for me to be woken up. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be a proper use of the principle of parsimony to insist that just one woke me up - no, both did on this occasion, for sometimes events are overdetermined. However, it would violate the principle of parsimony to suppose that as some events are overdetermined, they all are. For that would then by to systematically propose two causes when one would normally do. It seems that this is what the indirect realist is doing though - we do sometimes hallucinate and, I think, the best explanation of what is going on in such cases (an explanation the indirect realist buys, of course) is that we're perceiving mere mental images. But to then move to 'therefore that's what is always happening' seems no different, from the perspective of reasoning about reality anyway, to inferring from the fact some events are clearly overdetermined to the conclusion that all of them are.

So yes, I think the indirect realist might try and argue from considerations of parsimony to their indirect realist conclusion, but it's hard - hard for me, anyway - to see how the argument could be compelling to anyone not already convinced indirect realism is true.

Thank you for these comments.

I think we can distinguish between an indirect realist who claims that it is impossible for a perceiver to perceive anything other than their own mental states and one who acknowledges that it is perfectly possible for a perceiver to perceive mind-external objects but that, in fact, this never happens in reality.

Of the first kind of indirect realist, they will have to deny my claim that we can perceive mind external objects directly. I think they can't, consistently, deny this - their view is untenable imo - for by their own lights they must acknowledge that perceivers can directly perceive their own mental states (and once this is acknowledged, I see no reason to deny that a perceiver cannot directly perceive states of mind-external things either). But, though I can see no grounds upon which they could do so rationally, they would have to deny that part of my view.

The second kind of direct realist can accept everything I have said and would only be denying that we ever actually do perceive mind-external objects. But that view seems epistemically untenable. Their reasoning is, I think, just plain bad. They are reasoning from the existence of forgeries of banknotes to the conclusion that therefore all banknotes are forgeries. Their rejection of the idea that we often directly perceive the external world would be an article of faith, not a conclusion one could reasonably arrive at.

So yes, because I make use of mental imagery to explain the bad cases, I am making use of what the indirect realist thinks all cases involve. But there is, I think, no metaphysical or epistemic problem in positing mental imagery - the problems come from what one thinks such imagery can do or how big a role one thinks it plays. And it's there that the indirect realist seems to be holding extreme and irrational views.

I am sorry, but I do not follow your point. Mental imagery can sometimes be mistaken for the objects of which they are images. But even then, there would be perception occurring, albeit of the mental image rather than of the object it depicts.

But I'm addressing all the issues you raise, or take myself to be doing.

I do not know the literature well enough to know if my view is already in it. No doubt it is. But it is what it is.

Direct perception has to be - by definition - a relationship that has two relata: the perceiver and the perceived.

No one can deny that - even the indirect realist must accept that this is the relationship we stand in to our own mental states, else we would not be aware of anything whatever.

My point is that when we perceive a mind-external ship, the perceptual relationship has that mind external ship as one of its relata and the mind - the perceiver's mind - as the other. There literally can't be anything else involved in the relationship. There can be no question that, if this is coherent, it constitutes direct perception of the mind-external ship. Perhaps it is not coherent. But I think it is.

By analogy, a desire is always for something. Only minds can have desires. But to have a desire - which is to be in a certain sort of mental state - is to desire 'something'. That something doesn't have to itself be something mental. If I desire a ship, then that relationship has two relata: me and a mind external ship.

That analogy is supposed to show how a person can be in a mental state and being in it can constitute a relationship between the mind - the one in the mental state - and some object that may not be a mental state at all.

I am then saying that this is what is going on in perception. There is a perceptual experience - that's a mental state. But it is not involved in the relation that it creates - at least not as a relatum within it, anymore than my desire is 'in' the relation between me and the ship when I desire the ship.

And so in this way the actual mind-external object is directly perceived - the perceiving relationship is constituted by the mental state, and in the good cases that relationship puts the perceiver in direct contact with a mind external object, and in the bad cases it puts the perceiver in direct contact with a mental image of one.

To return to my desire analogy: let's say I desire a $10 note and there is a $10 note on the table. Well, then that $10 satisfies my desire. But imagine it is not a genuine $10 note but a perfect forgery. Well, then it does not satisfy my desire, even though I might well think it does as a perfect forgery is indistinguishable from the real deal. What is phenomenologically indistinguishable from having a genuinely satisfied desire for a $10 note? Receiving a perfect forgery of one.

As I see it, what you're saying is that there is no need for me to posit forgeries and that in doing so I am introducing unnecessary extras. But this seems to me to be untrue on both fronts. First, if in hallucination cases there is no object of perception, then that's not going to be a seeming at all. Second, forgeries exist - they're not exotic extras that others do not have to posit. By analogy: mental imagery exists and any plausible view about what reality contains is going to have to make room for them. So I am not helping myself to anything that is not already there. That indirect realists appeal to the same material is irrelevant given they're doing something very different with it.

That's a misrepresentation, because no direct realist believes that one perceives one's own mental state or some element of it. — jkop

That was not what I claimed. The point was that one cannot, by perceiving the content of a mental state thereby perceive a mind-external object. And that is certainly something some direct realists - or people who call themselves such - claim. They talk of the content of the mental state - so it is 'of' that mental state, then. (You say "The 'content' of a mental state is not a picture nor a sensation. It is the perceiving, not its object" - I'm afraid I don't know what that means; the content of a painting would be what it depicts, the content of a note would be what it's about....it's not clear to me how 'content' can mean 'is the perceiving' as opposed to the means by which the perceiving occurs).

There is a painting of corridor. Now, whether one sees it as a painting or whether one doesn't notice and thinks, that by looking at it one is looking at a corridor, one cannot perceive a corridor by means of that painting.

So, crudely: the indirect realist thinks we're in a mental art gallery looking at paintings of the world. Some direct realists think we're looking at what the paintings depict (and they're emphasizing - quite pointlessly, I think - the difference between seeing a depiction as a depiction and looing at what it depicts). What I'm saying is that you're only perceiving the real world when you're not in the mental gallery at all.

Thank you for your criticisms.

You've introduced "mental images" into your model in order to explain hallucination. This introduces an instability within your position that indirect realists have been capitalizing on for centuries in order to show that direct realism is untenable. — Esse Quam Videri

I'd first want to say that in denying mental images a role to play in the perception of mind-external objects I am not denying their existence. A silly analogy perhaps, but I deny that toffees play any role in perception, but I am not thereby denying toffees exist - I think they certainly exist.

I think mental images most certainly do exist and it would be a problem for a view if it was committed to their denial. They are employed in imaginings, for instance, and - I would say - in hallucinations, including dreams. So my first point would be that nothing in direct realism commits the direct realist to denying the existence of mental imagery - and it would be a grave problem if it did, I think, given the clear existence of such imagery. The issue, as I see it, is not over the existence of such mental imagery, but over what work it can do - can we, by means of it, perceive the mind-external world or not. My answer is a decided no, and that's why I think it is what hallucinations involve perceiving.

The problem is that you appear to be explaining indistinguishability in terms of identity within phenomenal experience (I.e. identical “appearing object”). This is ambiguous. If by "appearing object" you just mean an object within phenomenal experience - i.e. an object directly present to consciousness - then you've already collapsed into indirect realism since now the direct object of perception in both veridical and non-veridical experience is a phenomenal object. — Esse Quam Videri

I do not see this. My view is that in the hallucination case I am perceiving mental imagery, whereas in the good case I am perceiving a mind-external object. I take it that our minds can copy good-case perceptual experiences and store these copies (and we call upon these copies in memory and imagination). And as these are copies, they - these mental images - can create in us an experience indistinguishable from perceiving the object they are depicting. So it is not that both cases are indistinguishable due to having identical objects. On teh contrary, they have radically different objects. In one case the object of the perceiving relation is a mind external object, in the other it is a mental image of a mind-external object.

So I hold that we have perception occurring in both cases - in the hallucination case (which I take just to be a special case of imagining) - we are perceiving mental imagery, whereas in the 'perceiving the mind-external world' case we are perceiving mind-external things. At the moment, then, I do not see how I am collapsing into an indirect realist. I am, to be sure, making use of the same mental imagery that they are employing, but I am saying that it is not involved in perceiving the external world.

Russel's objection was that this is unduly complicated - that there is no need to suppose that hallucinations have an object of perception. But this I do not understand. Without an object of perception, they wouldn't be experiences 'of' anything seeming to be the case.

I would want to stress, the indirect realist does not have a monopoly on believing there is mental imagery - on the contrary, I take the existence of mental imagery to be something we can all agree exists. The issue is whether we are confined to perceiving this mental imagery (or, in some direct realist's case, whether this mental imagery can operate as a window onto the world and allow us directly to see it), or whether perception of the external world requires precisely its absence (my view).

I am a direct realist too - though I would say that I am a proper one whereas I think most of those who call themselves direct realists are not the real deal. I agree, I think, with what you say as I reject what most direct realists say on the grounds that there isn't real directness there. (Though perhaps there are some direct realists who agree with me - what I am saying may not be true for all direct realists).

The perceiver would be us, the mind, and the window would be the 'mental state with representative contents'. But the analogy doesn't really work. A window is an object, whereas a mental state isn't. So already there seems to be a category error involved in their view. The idea - I think - is that when it comes to these 'mental states with representative contents' we can distinguish between the state itself and its contents (just as we can distinguish between a note itself and its contents). They hold that the big mistake that the indirect realists are making is in thinking that in perception we are only ever aware of the mental states themselves - the notes - whereas in fact because they have contents, there is the possibility of us being aware of the content. They then think this gives them a way of respecting how it is that in perception we are in direct contact with the objects of perception - when the content of the mental state in question matches (and is appropriately caused) by the non-mental object 'out there', then we are perceiving the object itself. We are not perceiving the mental state it is putting us in, but its content - and as the content 'is' in some sense the object of awareness (though really it just mentions it), then we are seeing the object itself by being in that kind of state.

But to my mind this is not direct contact with the object at all. My example would be a painting of a receding corridor placed in a doorway such that if one looks at it, it looks as if the door opens onto a receding corridor. If we imagine that behind the painting there is indeed a receding corridor precisely corresponding to the image on the canvas, and imagine as well that the painting was created by the artist studying the actual corridor, then looking at that painting in the doorway - even if one does not realize it is a painting and so one is focused on what it represents to be the case - will not allow one to perceive the corridor behind it. No matter how accurately its content represents what is really there, at no point does the painting become a window. Matching content is simply not a way in which an object becomes transparent. So the whole idea of transparency is triply confused - first, because it involves a category error and second because even if it didn't, transparency does not come from matching content. And third, because the simple fact is we still have 3 elements to the relation - the perceiver, some mental state, and the object of perception.

A direct relation must, by definition, have only 2 relata, not 3. Thus a direct realist - I would say - is committed on pain of misdescribing themselves to saying that in perception, there is just a perceiver and the perceived. I am currently trying to explain how this can work by relocating the experience - the mental state - and saying that it is constitutive of that relation rather than an relatum within it. Just as a desire is a mental state yet is constitutive of a relation - between the desirer and the desired - likewise the mental state involved in perception can be constitutive of a relation between perceiver and perceived. I think this is a way of making the actual object of perception a part of the experience itself (I earlier dismissed this as being incoherent, but it now strikes me that it is not - for the object can be part of the experience in the same way as an object of desire is part of the desiring relation).

You said my view was extravagant in positing an object of awareness in hallucination cases. I don't understand your reply to my reply, for I explained why it is not extravagant and why you are the one who, by not positing an object of awareness in such cases, are saddled with a problem. You do not, so far as I can tell, address this point.

But that last bit - the direct bit - is stipulated. I don't see how it would be direct.

What Searle does is just emphasize the distinction between perceiving a mental state and perceiving its contents. He seems to think that so long as the content of the mental state is what one is perceiving - and its content is 'about' a ship and this content is satisfied in the right kind of way - then one is directly perceiving it. But that's precisely the issue: I'm arguing that simply won't work. I'm not denying that there are such mental states or that when we are in them it is the contents rather than the state that we are aware of; I'm just denying that when that occurs we're perceiving an object as opposed to looking at an image of one.

For example, these words are just patterns. But you're probably not seeing them as patterns, but rather as messages. That distinction - between the patterns and the content - is essentially the same as between a mental representation and its representative contents. Clearly, however, one cannot perceive a ship by reading a note about it, even if in reading it one is not noticing the patterns but only really noticing the content.

So, it's not enough for Searle to point out that when we have a mental image of a ship it is the content of the image that we 'see' and not the mental state. That's true - I grant all that. The point is that we're still dealing with a mental note 'about' a ship and not a ship itself. Thus, there is no direct contact between the perceiver and the perceived, much though Searle may insist otherwise.

There has to be but two relata in a direct relation, otherwise it's simply not direct. Mental states can't perceive things, only minds can. Thus, in a perceptual relation one of the two relata must be a mind. That leaves the object that is perceived as the other. Those are the only two relata a perceptual relation can contain (otherwise there's no directness). Introduce a third relatum - a mental state by means of which one becomes aware of the object - and one has indirect contact, not direct.

I'd say that overcomplicates things.

I take it we can agree that hallucinating a ship and perceiving a ship are indistinguishable experiences. So we need to explain why the hallucinating episode and the perceiving the ship episode would be indistinguishable.

My view does this: they are both perceiving relations, it's just that one has as its object an actual ship, and the other has a mental image of a ship as its object.
On my view the perceptual experience 'is' a perceiving relation (and it is precisely because of this that the experience doesn't feature as a relatum within the relation - for it is essential that the relation constitutive of perceiving have only 2 relata). Thus, the most straightforward way for an experience to be indistinguishable from perceiving an object is for it to be the same kind of experience - a perceiving experience - but with an identical appearing object (a mental image of a ship).

But on your view in the hallucinating case there is no object at all - but then that means it is not a perceiving relation and thus is a quite different kind of experience from the perceiving one. So why would it be indistinguishable from it?

It seems to me that you only have two options, one of which introduces extra clutter and the other of which renders the perceptual case - the good case - indirect. The first option is simply to posit a quite dfiferent mental state from the experience of perceiving and say that it can nevertheless be indistinguishable from it. But now you've got two kinds of state, not one. That's more complicated than my view.

The other option is to say that there is one and the same mental state, it's just that in one case there is nothing answering to its content out there in the world, whereas in perceptual case there is. But that's the indirect realist view in which it turns out that we never really perceive mind external objects at all.

No need to apologize. What I was trying to get across - not very clearly - in that quoted passage is that the mental experience of perceiving is 'of' perceiving rather than constitutive of it. The idea being that there is no mental state involved in the perceptual relation (this is how directness is achieved). But that there is an experience 'of' the perceptual relation. In this way direct contact with the object of perception is preserved and at the same time the raw materials from which hallucinations can be made are still available.

I'm not at all confident in this view and am quickly persuading myself that perception is essentially experiential, it's just that the experience constitutes the perceptual relation. So just as a desire constitutes a relation (between the desirer and the object of their desire), likewise a perceptual state constitutes a relation between the perceiver and the perceived.

I am only superficially familiar with Searle's view. It doesn't sound quite right to me, even given my revised view. For he seems to be trying to get directness out of the content of a mental state, and that - to my mind - is never going to work. All that'll get one is aboutness, but not perception. I want to insist that perception is a relation that can only have two relata - the perceiver and the perceived. There's no room for anything else. If 'the perceived' is to be a mind-external object, then there's no room for a mental state among the relata, for the other relatum has to be the perceiver themselves (not some mental state of theirs). What I currently think - and this is a distinct view from the one I started with - is that the mental state can be constitutive of the relation. If it's constitutive of the relation, then it doesn't feature as a relatum within it (thus preserving directness).

So now what I'd say about hallucination cases is that they are cases of perception, it's just that what they are perceptions of are mental states, not mind-external objects. So a visual hallucination of a ship would be a perception of a mental image of a ship, whereas a perception of a ship would be a perception of a ship. The difference, then, between hallucinations and perceptions of mind-external objects is not that one is a perception and the other not, but that one is a perception of something purely mental (but indistinguishable from a perception of something mind-external), whereas teh other is a percpetion of something mind-external

My gripe is with direct realists, most of whom seem to me to be indirect realists in disguise.

I think indirect realism is false as an account of what it is that we're perceiving in normal cases of perception. When I look at a ship in the harbour it is the ship, not a 'ship in the harbour-like' mental state that I am seeing if, that is, it is to be true that I'm perceiving the ship. On my characterization, the indirect realist is someone who - one way or another - says that what you're perceiving is a mental state; the perceptual relation terminates in the mental state. By contrast, the direct realist thinks that in the regular case, it is the ship that you are perceiving. They standardly try and keep the relevant mental state in the picture, they just think you're somehow looking through it to the ship. In the same way as if I look at the ship through a telescope I am looking at the ship 'through' the telescope and not looking at a telescope, the direct realist wants to say that some of our mental states - those involved in seeing and touching primarily - are akin to telescopes or windows. They are involved, but they enable one to see through them to the world, rather than themselves being the objects of perception.

So, crudely, I take indirect realists to think we're looking at pictures of the world and (the current crop) of direct realists to think we're looking through windows onto the world.

I don't think the window pane view makes sense (perhaps it does and I have just yet to conceive of it properly). I cannot see how a mental state can operate like a window. For one thing, it's a state, not an object. It would be a category error to think our mental states are literally windows, then. Now the issue is how it could be that a mental state - a state of mind - could give one direct contact with an object. It can't be a mediator - it can't be by simply 'telling us' - about the object. For that's not perception. That's not direct contact. It can't be by modelling or in some other way resembling the object of perception (which is perhaps a coherent possibility - for perhaps a state of mind can resemble a state of a mind-external object). For again, we cannot perceive something by looking at a model of it, no matter how accurate the model. These are indirect ways of acquiring information about something, not direct ways.

If they try - and some do this - to say that the object itself is included in the experience, then we have a mind external object being said to be part of a mind-internal state. That just seems confused - as confused as thinking a note about a mountain contains the actual mountain. (Additionally, such views face problems accounting for hallucinations and a driven to extreme and ontologically embarrassing measures to do so).

Maybe they could say that the experience - the mental state - is constitutive of the two place perceptual relation between the perceiver and the perceived. For an analogy, if I desire a ship, then there is a two place relation there constituted by my desire. My desire is for a ship. It's my desire - so I am the efficient cause of the relation - and it's for a ship. But the desire is not a relatum within the relation. So maybe the direct realist could say something analogous: the perceiving experience is constitutive of the perceiving relation, a relation that has two relata.

I find that proposal quite interesting and sometimes it is my view. But it seems to run into problems accounting for hallucinations. For if it is the essence of such experiences that there is an object of perception, then given hallucinations seem to be identical experiences, then they would need to have an object too. Perhaps that's not too much of a problem for one could just say that in their case it is a mental object, not a mind-external one. That is, that in the hallucination case the perceiver is perceiving a mental image of a ship, not a ship.

Ok, so one objection to your view is that the assumed "perceptual relation" between a "mental state" and the object means that the experience would be indirect. — jkop

But my view is that no mental state is involved. That's the objection I'm making to other direct realists - they still make a mental state - an experience - a component of the perceiving relation. I'm not doing that - I'm saying the perceiving relation has two and only two relata: the perceiver and the perceived. We experience these relations obtaining - that is, we experience perceiving things - but the experience is not itself a relata in the relation.

Our experience is 'of' perceiving rather than constitutive of it. That's also why my view does not face the problem of accounting for hallucinations, as hallucinations are kinds of experience (whereas if one bakes the object of perception into an experience then - the objection goes - hallucinations would seem to be impossible (to the discredit of the theory).

I do not understand. I take for granted that experiences are mental states. But that's not unorthodox or something the other direct realists would dispute, I think. Admittedly, some of them think mind-external objects can feature as constituents of mind-internal mental states - but my point is that this is incoherent. (I'm sympathetic to what they're trying to do, as they recognize that for perception to be occurring the object does indeed need to get inside the experience, but I just don't see how the notion can be coherent).

I am a direct realist and so i am not disputing that we perceive the actual objects out there - guitars and such like. But when I read other direct realists they talk about experience and think experiences are somehow constituents of perceptual relationships - which seems to me to transform them into indirect realists by another name - or they think the actual objects out there somehow feature as constituents of the experience - which seems incoherent.

Given perceptual relationships must be direct, then it seems true by definition that a perceptual relationship can only have two relata: the perceiver and the perceived. There is no room for any mental states. On my view 'experience' (and thus mental states) enter indirectly: we have experiences 'of' perceptual relationships between ourselves and objects, but these experiences are in no way constitutive of the perceptual relationships themselves.

A perceptual experience is 'of' something, namely a perceptual relationship.

My argument is that a perceptual relationship cannot possibly involve a mental state, as then there would be no direct contact between the object of perception and the perceiver. The perceptual relationship must have just 2 relata: the perceiver and the perceived. No doubt experience occurs too, but not as a constituent of the relationship. The experience of perception is 'of' it, not constitutive of it.

I'm arguing that experience is not a constituent of a perceptual relationship. We do not perceive things by experience (though we have experiences of perceiving things).

I think it's not in dispute that perception involves direct contact between the perceiver and the object of perception. What's in dispute is what's perceived - the world itself or mental states (with indirect realists saying that we perceive mental states and direct realists saying we perceive external reality).

Yes, those are objections that are used to motivate indirect realism (the idea that what we perceive are mental states). They don't seem to apply to the view I have proposed, however. With my view our experiences of perceiving are mental states, but the perceptual relationship itself is not. Thus cases of hallucination share with cases of experienced perception the same mental states, it is just that in the former there is no perceptual relationship there (and thus the experience constitutes a hallucination).

Late to this debate, but I take it that despite all the heat of the public debate, this is just an issue in metaphysics.

The public debate - my impression of it anyway - is that it is almost exclusively conducted by those with no training in metaphysics and it shows, for there seem to be two camps, both fairly obviously false. The two views seem to be either that you're a woman if you identify as one (so, identifying as a woman constitutively determines that one is one), or alternatively a biologist determines whether you're a woman. So, it's either you, or a biologist.

Both views are silly. It's true that both are reliably proxies for being a woman. Virtually all people who identify as women are women (just as virtually all people who identify as lawyers are lawyers). And virtually all people who satisfy the biologist's criteria for being a woman are women too. But being a reliable proxy is not the same as being the thing one is a proxy for.

Let's do some entry level metaphysics: first, not every concept can be defined, for that would generate an infinite regress in which it turns out nothing can be defined.

Thus, if there are true definitions, then there are concepts that cannot be defined.

Most people don't realize this and believe - fallaciously - that unless one can provide a definition for a concept, one doesn't understand it or have it. That's demonstrably false. But becausea they believe it, they will not believe they grasp a concept - even one of those basic concepts that are unamenable to definition - unless a definition is provided. And the first one that presents itself or is offered, will normally then be the one they cleave to thereafter, refining it if necessary but not giving it up. It's so common it's got a name: the definist fallacy.

Here's how one might fallaciously arrive at the conclusion that being a woman is constitutively determined by one's own subjective states: virtually everyone who believes they are a woman is a woman, therefore believing you're a woman is what makes you a woman, and thus a woman is just someone who identifies as one.

The other 'side' notices that there are clear counterexamples to this thesis - there are clear cases of men who are identifying as women, yet are not thereby becoming women (for they still seem to answer to the concept of a man, despite their identifying otherwise). And so they offer a different definition: that a woman is someone with immobile gametes, because when biologists look in detail at women's bodies, they find they all have that feature. And biologists - who are not metaphysicians and are just as capable of fallacious reasoning as the next person - reason that as all women they've examined have immobile gamates, then that must be what makes a woman a woman. That's fallacious. All square things have a colour, but that doesn't make the definition of a shape 'coloured'. Plus we can easily imagine someone who answers to the concept of a woman, yet does not have immobile gamates or any at all. So, it's as plainly false upon reflection as the individual subjectivist view about what makes someone a women.

But both sides think understanding comes from definitions and so they just double down on their own and get increasingly angry at the other side (as is typical of the ignorant).

The truth seems to be that we have the concept of a woman without being able to define it. It is in this respect like the concept of a mountain or a tree. Those are not amenable to definition either. In fact, there are loads and loads of concepts like this, or seem to be (we know there have to be some, remember).

We have evidence that we have an indefinable concept - though one that we nevertheless 'have' and are adept at applying - when our best attempts to define it fail. And we know that our best attempts at defining it are failing when there seem to be things that clearly answer to the concept in question, yet do not answer to the definition (and vice versa).

Is there currently a huge debate over the correct definition of a woman? Yes, that's obvious. So, the very existence of the debate - and the fact that both definitions in play are quite plainly false (which is why the debate continues, for each side can correctly highlight the absurdity of the other's defintion) - gives us reason to think that the concept of a woman is indefinable. A woman is someone who answers to the concept of a woman - that, it seems, is as much as can be said. And we already know well enough how to apply the concept - for we judge the credibility of a definition by whether or not it delivers verdicts consistent with the concept. It's just the definist fallacy prevents people from recognizing that they have the concept prior to any attempted definition - and then they feel themselves obliged to substitute their concept for the definition instead.

So, are transwomen women? Well, if a transwoman is someone who identifies as a woman but would not be considered one by a biologist in the grips of the definist fallacy....then some of them might be, and some of them might not be. It depends on whether they answer to the concept of a woman - a concept that is not amenable to definition and that biologists are not authorities about.

What a juvenile response.

But it wouldn't clarify what the term means. Its current meaning is not determined by the content of Aristotle's work titled 'metaphysics'. That would literally be the same as thinking that to understand what the word cartoon means it is important to go and look at some drawings by Leonardo.

Metaphysics is the study of what things are, in and of themselves.

I think you quite clearly are committing the etymological fallacy.

The etymological fallacy occurs when someone argues that the current meaning of a word is determined by its original or historical meaning, yes?

For example, take the word 'cartoon'

The word 'cartoon' originally referred to a kind of paper on which artists would draw the outline of a painting for transfer onto wood or canvas.

Then it came to refer to the actual depiction - the working drawing itself.

Then it came to refer to, well, what we call cartoons today.

But if you want to know what 'cartoon' means it would be quite misguided to suggest going and looking at drawings by Raphael or a paper mill in Italy.

I am saying that it is not the way to understand what 'metaphysics' means.

That commits the etymological fallacy.

Imagine 'The House Next Door' is the title someone gives to a book I wrote about the composition and appearance of the house next door.

Subsequently 'Thehousenextdoor' becomes a word that starts to be systematically used to refer to what a house - any house - may be made of.

Well, it would be quite misguided to think that one gains insight into what the word 'thehousenextdoor' means by reading the original work that gave the world the word, for then one would believe it is exclusively about what a particular house is made of, plus about its appearance.

Words change their meaning over time. It is of philosophy pub-quiz use to know that the word's origin came from its being used to denote a particular book's placement in an author's list of works.

Because we're just discussing how a word is used. That's a first order question, not a second order one.

"What does the word 'metaphysics' mean?" is not a metaphysical question. I'm not doing philosophy in answering it, I'm just trying to explain what it means in philosophy (though with the caveat that there will be grey areas). It means the study of what things are, in and of themselves. I don't think it can be captured any better than that.

But in point of fact, 'metaphysics' was first used as a label (not by Aristotle himself) denoting the placement of a treatise. It's like 'the house next door'. It literally just meant 'the work that I have placed after the physics'.

That's not what the word means today. In philosophy it has come to mean the study of the nature of things - so, what something is in and of itself (partly no doubt as a result of the content of the treatise that had been so-labelled). Not that there are any strict rules about it and not that there isn't room for some dispute over exactly when an area of philosophical inquiry becomes metaphysical (there is room for that).

Only insofar as that will tell you something about what sort of a thing it is, in and of itself.

It is a properly of the act of wantonly killing another that it is wrong. But that is not a metaphysical claim, though the fact acts can have that property may tell us something about what wrongness itself is. And that - the investigation of what wrongness is, in and of itself, is metaphysical.

No, it was simply the title given to the work that had been placed 'after the physics'.

It denoted its placement in an order, not its subject matter.

No. It's about the meaning of the word 'metaphysics'.

It might do on ordinary usage, I am not sure.

It comes from 'metaphysics' which was simply the title given to one of Aristotle's treatises - the one that came 'after the physics'.

In philosophy it is the study of what things are, in and of themselves.

I understand metaphysics to be about what things are, in and of themselves.

For example, "which propositions are true?" is not a metaphysical question. But "what is truth?" is.

"Which propositions are known?" is not a metaphysical question. But "what is knowledge?" is.

"Which actions are right and which ones wrong?" is not a metaphysical question. But 'what is rightness?' is.

And so on. I think the same distinction is drawn by talking about 'first order' questions and 'second order' questions, where the latter are about the nature of the subject matter of the first.

The word 'meta' originally meant 'after', but I think it has subsequently come to mean the above.

I think unless there is a 'logical' problem of evil, there is no real problem of evil.

I think there isn't a logical problem of evil as all one has to do is conceive of a circumstance in which God exists and evils of the world exist. If one can conceive of just one such scenario, the logical problem is defeated.

Here is one. Imagine that just as some people among us enjoy danger and like doing things like climbing mountains, there are people in heaven like that as well who want the thrill of living in a genuinely dangerous world that has no safety nets (apart from death - which by hypothesis, takes one back to safety in heaven). Well, wouldn't God allow them to go to such a place? To deny them would seem, if anything, wrong. It's not as if they wouldn't be returning to safety eventually. God might not recommend it - just as I would not recommend climbing a mountain - but it's plausible at least that if someone really wanted that kind of experience, God would not deny them it.

This is that place - an adventure holiday park that has only one safety net: death. If we have all chosen to be here - signed-off on it, signed all the waivers and so on - then our situation is logically compatible with God's existence.

Yes, it would only be a heuristic and so would not assume AI is actually a person. It's just that - with a few notable exceptions - the ethical verdict seems to carry-over. It would be unethical, for instance, for me to ask a perfect stranger for their view about some sensitive material I've been asked to review - and so similarly unethical for me to feed it into AI. Whereas if I asked a perfect stranger to check an article for typos and spelling, then it doesn't seem necessary for me to credit them...and likewise if I use AI for a similar purpose. And the heuristic respects the fact there's a big grey area where legitimate disagreement reigns over exactly how much credit someone deserves for something. I think I'm right in saying that an anonymous reviewer suggested that William Golding remove a large scene setting introduction to his Lord of the Flies - which he did - and which no doubt greatly improved the work. But that person isn't credited - perhaps fairly.

There are exceptions - a perfect stranger deserves thanks for help and shouldn't be addressed rudely, whereas AI deserves no thanks or politeness. But it seems to me quite an effective heuristic - one that underlines that AI doesn't create any novel ethical problems, but just exaggerates existing ones. And I suppose on the plus side, it has made cheating available to the masses. It used to only be the rich who could afford to hire someone to write their essays for them....now such cheating is available to virtually everyone!

Yes, precisely.

Isn't the best policy simply to treat AI as if it were a stranger? So, for instance, let's say I've written something and I want someone else to read it to check for grammar, make comments, etc. Well, I don't really see that it is any more problematic me giving it to an AI to do that for me than it is me giving it to a stranger to do that for me. The stranger could corrupt my work, going beyond the brief and changing sentences in ways I did not license. Likewise with AI. The stranger could pass my work to others without my consent; likewise with AI. And so on. AI doesn't - I think - raise any new problems, so much as amplify existing ones. Though perhaps I simply haven't thought about this enough. But what's wrong with this principle for AI use - for (nearly) all intents and purposes, treat AI as if it were a stranger (I say 'nearly' because as it is not actually a person, it doesn't require acknowledgement or praise for any effort it has put it....but that's sort of trivial). Edit: another qualification - you don't have to worry about AI's feelings, so norms of politeness don't apply to AI but do to strangers.

Thank you for your very thought provoking response. And I agree that it is vulnerable in the way you mention and have been pondering this.

I mentioned that something might be morally valuable due to intrinsic properties of the concept to which it answers, but that also something might be morally valuable due to intrinsic properties of the thing itself. I have now found that the distinction in question is expressed by talking about something's 'de re' identity versus its 'de dicto' identity. And so I now have the terminology I need to distinguish between something's being intrinsically valuable 'de re' (where this means that it is intrinsically valuable because of what it, the object itself, is) and something's being intrinsically valuable 'de dicto' (where this means that it is valuable due to intrinsic features of the concept to which it answers).

The pen example you gave would be an example of something that is intrinsically valuable de dicto, as it is morally valuable not because it is a physical thing - even though it is - but because it answers to the concept 'pen used by Lincoln'.

What I hold is that my mind's intrinsic moral value is represented to be de re, not de dicto. This is because whether I am represented to be this person, the thinker of this thought, the human being now speaking, or me with a phenomenal past or me without one, or in any other way that truly refers to me, the truth of what my reason represents to be the case is unchanged. That is, regardless of which description I am given, I am intrinsically morally valuable no less. This invariance under co-referring substitution shows that my reason’s representation is de re: it concerns the object that I am, not any description or concept under which I may fall (I think).

if that is correct, then as my intrinsic moral value is intrinsic de re not de dicto, and none of any physical object's de re intrinsic properties are plausible candidates for the ground of my value, the argument goes through....I think.

Well, I suppose my point is that the moral premises of my argument are very strong.

Someone who denies that anything has intrinsic moral value would also have to deny that anything has extrinsic moral value as well (as extrinsic moral value presupposes intrinsic moral value - not everything can be extrinsically morally valuable, for instance).

But that means denying intrinsic moral value means being a moral nihilist.

Now, of course a moral nihilist would reject my argument as unsound. But then all I'm going to do is say that my argument establishes the truth of this claim:

Either moral nihilism is true, or our minds are not physical things.

That, I think, is quite an astonishing conclusion! I think we can safely say that the vast bulk of physicalists about the mind have no idea they need to affirm moral nihilism if they're to be consistent!

But think of a photon. — Banno

I am not sure I can, not unless I am being asked to think of a very tiny shaped thing. But anyway, I think this misses the point - which is that whatever features are proposed as being definitive of a physical thing, they're not going to include consciousness. And that's really all my argument needs. Precisely what is definitive of a physical thing can be left open, then.

I think the talk of essences distracts from that basic problem. The Aristotelian idea of an essence - "that which makes something what it is" - vergers on useless. If the argument could be reworked in model terms, using necessary properties rather than essences, the issue might be made clearer. — Banno

I do not see what you're getting at here. We could talk of intrinsic properties instead - the point is just that intrinsic moral value supervenes on intrinsic properties (which seems analytic). It's not clear to me that introducing necessity could make anything clearer, given the exact relationship between necessity and intrinsic properties seems open to some dispute.

But let's say - and I am not convinced this is true - that an object's essential (or intrinsic, if one prefers) properties are properties it has of necessity. Then all that would mean where my argument is concerned is that we are necessarily not physical things.