Beliefs about rising global temperatures only occur in brains. — ChrisH

Rising global temperatures are different than beliefs about rising global temperatures.

Science has always been grounded in observation, I admit. But "the human perspective"? Science explicitly rejects the human perspective, and aims to observe impartially, in an unbiased manner. No human perspective there. — Pattern-chaser

There's a belief that humans can be impartial/unbiased, at least in conjunction with each other. That's not rejecting human perspective. It's seen as a feature of the human perspective.

I'm not saying I agree that we can be impartial/unbiased, but the view that we can and should be isn't actually rejecting the human perspective.

Incidentally nobody has taken a shot at an alternative term for 'lived experience'. — Wayfarer

"Experience" works just fine. "Lived experience" doesn't say/tell us anything additional to what simply "experience" would tell us.

I dont see the distinction. — Harry Hindu

The distinction is that the preference for Darjeeling only occurs in brains, whereas the temperatures occur elsewhere.

You don't find the preference for Darjeeling in air masses over the Atlantic, say, and when we talk about global warming, we're not talking about persons' brains increasing in temperature.

The question isn't how my mind can affect the physical world. The question is first, how does my mind affect my body? — fishfry

Mind is identical to a subset of brain function.

bodies which automatically react to their environment, no — leo

That's what you were thinking for the first post, I suppose, but didn't say.

You're assuming a thoroughgoing, strong causal determinism to be the case.

Not everyone assumes that, and the conventional wisdom in the sciences rejects it, too. (Not that the conventional wisdom matters for whether it's justifiable to accept or reject something. It's just that the determinism side can't appeal to a consensus, as it often wants to do.)

For some reason these free will debates always proceed as if we are in the mid 1800s re notions of what the consensus view is in the sciences. (Of course, given that some folks reading of "modern" philosophy doesn't seem to extend much past Kant (if not St. Thomas), I suppose this isn't surprising.)

Isn't it the case that as soon as we assume there is such a thing as an objective reality, a mind-independent world we are a part of, then we are necessarily assuming the absence of free will already? — leo

No.

I wish all philosophical questions were this easy. ;-)

Because if we assume we belong to a mind-independent world, then that world doesn't depend on our minds, so our minds don't have an influence on it, and so we don't have free will. — leo

Your mind primarily has an influence on it via the way it controls the rest of your body. For example, I think, "I'd like to push the 'n' key on my keyboard"--that's something mental, and so my brain sends a signal via my nervous system (of which it's a part), which activates muscles, tendons, etc., and results in my finger pushing the "n" key, which is an example of influencing the external world.

You're ignoring the question I'm asking you.

People can and do sometimes use "Canada" to refer to the land, where that's all they have in mind on those occasions. This is a fact. I'm an example of someone who does this. That land, the land that we're naming "Canada" in those instances, has a particular area (3.855 million mi²), a particular length of coastline (202,080 km), etc.

You said this is wrong. So when we use "Canada" that way, you'd say that we're simply using the word wrong?

I could have been clearer there. When I said 'no one knows', I meant that - at least to my knowledge - it cannot be proven philosophically/logically (or any other way) with absolute certainty. — EricH

Re science methodology 101, empirical claims are not provable period. So of course, since this is an empirical claim, it's not provable. That's not a liability here. It's just a truism about empirical claims.

The justification would typically be something like one's visual memory of what the person looks like.

If you ask for a justification of the visual memory--for example, say that we change it to "I visualized him. Did I know it was a visualization of him?" Then typically the justification would be something like the inductive reliability of one's memory in general.

Those aren't circular, because the justification isn't the same thing that one is asserting.

Justifications do not need to be infallible, of course. (If they did, almost nothing would be justified--certainly not any empirical claims or empiricism-based claims.)

Would you agree? — Banno

Yes.

I think two things often happen that lead to confusion about it:

(1) People tend to mistake or conflate "objective" with ideas like agreement/consensus, as well as facts (in the states of affairs sense). That's a mistake because people can agree on subjective things--obviously many people have a preference for Darjeeling, for example, and agreement can be quite widespread--for example, the vast majority of people would say that the London Symphony Orchestra has better musicians than the band the Shaggs (assuming we make sure the people we ask are familiar with both groups). Also it's a fact that one has the preferences that one does, which is going to be due to physiological facts.

(2) People tend to think of things that they feel very strongly about as being objective. There seems to be a bit of projection going on, partially due to feeling that something that seems so unquestionable to that person "can't merely be a disposition that I have and not some more fundamental fact of the universe in general."

That question aside for the moment, if the viewer can get out of a film what the filmmaker put into it then there is shared meaning, full stop. Quibbles along the lines that the meaning in the viewer's head is not "numerically identical" to the meaning in the film, which is not numerically identical to the meaning in the filmmaker's head on account of their different spatiotemporal locations would seem to be quite irrelevant. — Janus

When I made the book comment, for some reason you were focusing on the semantic aspect of that. I didn't bring that up for that reason--I wasn't thinking about the "semantic content of a book" at all. The idea is rather that two copies of the "same" book aren't identical, they're just similar. That's just like two electrons aren't identical, they're just similar, and two refrigerators the "same" make/model/etc., produced by the same factory on the same day, aren't identical, they're just similar. And so on.

I don't have a categorical objection to any-arbitrary-thing-we're-calling "shared meaning," as if I simply have a problem with that term, whatever it refers to. What I was saying is that two people can have meaning in mind that's as similar as two refrigerators can be similar (of the same make/model/etc. made by the same factory on the same day). If we want to call that "shared meaning," that's fine. I buy shared meaning in that sense in that case.

It's just that there's a need to clarify just what we're saying when we posit "shared meaning," because we can be saying very different things, especially since there are so many realists on universals/types around, whether they're realists on that issue uncritically or not.

You've just named them, so you've answered your own question ! — fresco

So on your view you can't visualize a shape as shape, you necessarily have the word "shape" in mind?

So first, we need to clarify that on my view there are no shared meanings in the sense of there being a numerically identical meaning--in other words, just one single unit--that's somehow instantiated in multiple people.

People can have similar meanings in mind--as similar as, say, two copies of a book.

No. Nowhere have I said that internal dialogue wasn't linguistic. — fresco

So an internal dialogue of shapes, colors, etc. is a language in your view?

Now is there a 'mind-independent and language independent world'? No one knows — EricH

I think it couldn't be more obvious that there is, and I see the view that it's a problematic question as pretty juvenile/sophomoric if not infantile (if I'm being honest rather than trying to be PC and not hurt anyone's feelings).

Okay, but if that's thought then some thought isn't linguistic, right?

"Internal dialogue"/"critical internal dialogue" isn't thought?

What about visualization? For example, visual artists thinking in terms of shapes, colors/saturations, textures, etc.? Isn't that a way that people can think?

Here's something that marshill wrote:

Jesus was not concerned with politics
Therefore, the church should stay out of politics. — marshill

That's attempting to deduce a normative from a fact, no?

I can't see it can be otherwise since all 'thinking' is done via a socially acquired language. — fresco

You'd say that we can only think in terms of language?

So you're saying that the reason you endorse this view over other possible views is that you only value thinking about human relationships/relationships with humans?

First, "should/should not," "allowed/not allowed" and the like aren't going to be part of traditional logic. Those are normatives. You'd need some sort of well-developed system of deontic logic to deal with them, but even then, you're not going to be able to successfully move from a fact, such as "Jesus was/was not concerned with x" to any sort of normative implication, because of the is/ought problem. Any conclusion there would be a normative fallacy.

Are you not familiar with direct (aka "naive") realism?

I'm not saying I'll agree with every sentence of the following, but these provide some basics on direct/naive realism if you're not familiar with it (rather than me having to explain all of this a la reinventing the wheel):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism
https://www.iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/#H1

Wrong. "Canada" is not just a name for a piece of the world 'out there'. Your argument would be valid if I had used "Stuart Lake" or "Mount Robson" instead, because these are objects to which we have attached a name, just as we call a certain molecule "salt". - -
But "Canada" is not a piece of land . . . — Matias

So when people use "Canada" to refer to the physical extent of land (and buildings, trees, etc, on it), you just say what, that they're wrong to use the term that way?

All I will give you here is an analogy. "The fact that there is a thing in a box" is not the same as "the thing that is in the box". — leo

Are you trying to say "the fact that there is a thing in a box" versus "the thing that is in the box, conceptually abstracted from that situation, so that one is just thinking about the thing on its own, not in relation to the box"?

he is obviously talking about existence as a universal property of all objects. Because one property may have to be a property of all objects does not necessitate that all properties be a properties of all objects. and you already know that. — Arne

If we're saying that existence is a special case here, we need to justify why it's a special case.

Is it not obvious that it supports my 'human relationship' comments above ? — fresco

No, that wasn't obvious to me. I'm not sure what comments you're referring to. When I searched for "human relationship" over the last few pages I didn't find anything.

I explained that in the second paragraph. "Lived experience" can refer to "the fact that you experience", while experience refers to "an experience you have". — leo

I really can't type more than one sentence with you, or you'll ignore stuff. At the risk of a second sentence, what's the difference between the fact that you experience and an experience you have?

Can I ask you again why you're endorsing that view? ("Things require thingers" etc.)

Sure an experience was necessarily lived. I claim that this does not imply that "lived experience" is redundant, because "lived experience" can be used to refer to something that "experience" alone cannot. — leo

What can it refer to that experience alone can not, if experience is necessarily lived?

Do you agree that "neglecting an experience" is not the same as "neglecting the fact that you experience"? — leo

Just in case that's supposed to be part of the answer, no, I don't agree that those are not the same. What is the difference supposed to be?

As succinctly as I can, the physicist neglects the fact that he experiences when he builds his models of reality, while the employer neglects the experiences listed on a resume. — leo

Why are you talking about neglecting experiences in that section anyway? That part wasn't about that. This quote: "You completely ignored that referring to experience is referring to something that was necessarily 'lived,' necessarily processual" is about whether "lived" is redundant.

You're confusing the second half with the first half. (Hence a reason why the best course of action is to stick to one thing at a time . . . against my better judgment, I addressed more than one thing in a post and you're conflating the two.)

That an experience was necessarily lived does not imply that "the neglect of experience" has only one meaning. Again, if I hire you without looking at the experience you listed in your resume, I neglect experience. — leo

What? What is the non-lived sense of experience that you'd be referring to there?

Let's just solve that first, because this is going way too many rounds without you clarifying that.

A more important question might be: if we are constructing reality, why did we construct brains so that they seem to only receive electrical impulses from the senses, where we then have to construct reality?

West Virginia is still working on it.



(A joke that will be funnier to anyone who has done a lot of driving around the U.S.--West Virginia is infamous for seeming to always be doing major highway construction.)

Oh dear. Sorry for missing the typo! — Pattern-chaser

Quacking is the male equivalent of queefing?

You really are stuck on that objective - subjective hangup. — Banno

Just when people say wonky things in relation to it. And they often do. It's one of the more common confusions.

They need to do that if they want to get out of the film what the filmmakers are putting into it.

Absolutely zero humor taboos here.

That some people have humor taboos helps the impact of some humor, though.