Philosophy Now Forum

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 2:30 am other means of knowing can be necessary to get at the truth

Okay, so what can we glean from...

we know the sensory organs transduce...light into neural impulses, and...we know those neural impulses get process(ed) in the visual cortex, which it is supposed where the representation is occurring

...me, I reckon we glean pretty close to nuthin'.

You describe machinery and machine action, not seeing.

As I say: the direct realist does not say light, or molecules, or sound waves have no role in seein', smellin', tastin', hearin' the world; nor does he say organs are merely ornamental. What the direct realist sez is, the organs alone account for nuthin'. The optical system does not see or watch.

So, what does the seein’ if not the brain, nor the optical system? Let me guess, you are going to say you do? And what is that you think you are? The organism? That just dodges the question, how does the organism see?

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 9:39 pm

Dimebag wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 8:47 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 11:57 am

Come on. I just want you to answer whether you're saying one thing over the other. It's important to clarify this, to make sure that you're really understanding what the one side is claiming.

Also, it's not a matter of "excluding science from the discussion." It's a matter of what's logically possible if we wind up claiming one thing over the other.

As you have noted in our previous exploration, logic can only get us so far, other means of knowing can be necessary to get at the truth. There is no need to resort to solipsism when you can test the world.

If the claim is that all that's present-to-consciousness is content that's mentally created, we can't test anything other than mental creations qua mental creations.

Again, you are forgetting the human being prior to this has been operating on the assumption that a real world does exist, that their mental representations have, up to this point, allowed them to interact with other seeming individuals, to navigate and manipulate the world, that there was a way in which their perceptions revealed a right way to interact, and thus, revealed the structure of that world in the pragmatic way that learning allowed manipulation. There was the naming of things in perception, further solidifying the perceptions as distinct things out there, the observing the consistency of the perceptions, so along with this labelling, an understanding that certain things out there could reliably be interacted with. Feedback via touch, via sound, via interactions with other beings, who also taught how to manipulate, how to identify things. It was all constructed from an early age. The colours and shapes were taught, the numbers learned, language to make sense of position, such as “on top of” “in front of” “behind”, etc.

None of this should be taken for granted when considering how our perception is shaped.

So, a naive perspective came about, with the help of a social construction of supporting concepts, to divide the world into things.

We must take this naive perspective as being the case, because no one ever questions their perceptions from such a young age. It is either the case that, naive realism is the actual case, or that, the brain is built AS a naive realist, no matter whether representationalism is true or not.

So, what I’m saying is, our perceptions exist inside a greater contextual understanding, which is comprised of our understanding and beliefs about our perceptions, and thus, the world and reality.

As the default context of perception is, naive realism, I.e. take what the perceptions are pointing to, on face value.

All perceptions are intentional, meaning they are about something. It is that something which is the context of a perception. If I have a perception of internal speech, I.e. a thought, the context is, the sound came from inside my own mind, therefore, I don’t need to find its source, I was the source.

The context is, the belief or understanding about the perception, which guides our reaction towards it.

If I have chronic back pain, the context of the feeling is in relation to my understanding of that feeling as having existed previously, with a known cause, and its alleviation or treatment is known, therefore, my behaviour will be different than say, if I have a shooting pain down the left side of my body. This perception has no context, so it is viewed as having an unknown source, and it is important to investigate, to discover the context in which this perception should be placed.

Imagine I am invited to my friends house, who has a new virtual reality system. I place the goggles over my eyes, the ear phones on my ears, and am dropped into a highly convincing environment. I can even walk around, reach out and grab “objects” as the system monitors my hand position and tracks them in the VR environment.

After just a few minutes, I actually forget I am wearing the VR goggles, and am immersed in this convincing world. The context of these perceptions have fooled me, they behave similar enough to the world I am used to that I now accept them as real enough to be immersed.

Although these perceptions were images projected from a screen in the vr headset, the interface was convincing enough to fool the context into a naive realist understanding.

Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 4:51 am Again, you are forgetting the human being prior to this has been operating on the assumption that a real world does exist, that their mental representations have, up to this point, allowed them to interact with other seeming individuals, to navigate and manipulate the world,

Those assumptions are completely irrelevant IF we're claiming that what turns out to be the case is that we can only experience our own mental creations as such. In that case, the assumptions were wrong.

And as I've explained many times, consistency of any phenomena is again completely irrelevant in establishing anything about a real world IF we're claiming that we can only experience our own mental phenomena. There would be no possible way to ground that anything about the real world is consistent rather than inconsistent. All we could say is that our own mind is consistent in some respects. That tells us absolutely nothing about anything else (again IF we're claiming that what's really the case is that we can only experience our own mind as such).

Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 4:11 am

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 2:30 am other means of knowing can be necessary to get at the truth

Okay, so what can we glean from...

we know the sensory organs transduce...light into neural impulses, and...we know those neural impulses get process(ed) in the visual cortex, which it is supposed where the representation is occurring

...me, I reckon we glean pretty close to nuthin'.

You describe machinery and machine action, not seeing.

As I say: the direct realist does not say light, or molecules, or sound waves have no role in seein', smellin', tastin', hearin' the world; nor does he say organs are merely ornamental. What the direct realist sez is, the organs alone account for nuthin'. The optical system does not see or watch.

*So, what does the seein’ if not the brain, nor the optical system? Let me guess, you are going to say you do? **And what is that you think you are? The organism? That just dodges the question, ***how does the organism see?

*The person, not the parts.

**That question takes us into metaphysics: we can go there if you like.

***As I say, in context, the biological model is unimportant, but since you focus on it, you go first...in particular, lay out how the visual cortex creates representation; explain how a mass of complex organic matter, active with electricity, creates a model of the world rather than just apprehends it; explain why this modeling is necessary. So far, the closest you've gotten to explainin' is...

But then we do have at least qualified beliefs about how objects show up in the world, via light reflecting off them, or emanating from them directly.

So, we can go into how we know this if you want? Then we can proceed stepwise into how we know the sensory organs transducer that light into neural impulses, and then from there, go into how we know those neural impulses get processes in the visual cortex, which it is supposed where the representation is occurring.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 1:29 pm

Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 4:51 am Again, you are forgetting the human being prior to this has been operating on the assumption that a real world does exist, that their mental representations have, up to this point, allowed them to interact with other seeming individuals, to navigate and manipulate the world,

Those assumptions are completely irrelevant IF we're claiming that what turns out to be the case is that we can only experience our own mental creations as such. In that case, the assumptions were wrong.

And as I've explained many times, consistency of any phenomena is again completely irrelevant in establishing anything about a real world IF we're claiming that we can only experience our own mental phenomena. There would be no possible way to ground that anything about the real world is consistent rather than inconsistent. All we could say is that our own mind is consistent in some respects. That tells us absolutely nothing about anything else (again IF we're claiming that what's really the case is that we can only experience our own mind as such).

If I tell you to close your eyes and walk forward, and you do so until you reach a wall and hit your head, will you conclude there is no wall there simply because it can’t be seen? No, your senses reveal something about that external to them. They receive signals from external to them, and take them inside them, and present them inside in a way which allows our organism to operate within that external world.

They may not be the reality of the world, for some creatures might use different methods, such as echo location to “map” that external world, but what matters is if they can react to some phenomenal feature, which is consistent with what is out there. They can know well enough that what is out there is being presented accurately, by how successful they are are navigating that world, and guiding their organism in it.

If, on the other hand, their body keeps sustaining damage for some unexplained reason, or, their movements are obstructed for some unknown reason, there is something wrong with their perception, it is not capturing the world correctly. That is reason enough to conclude that something is not being captured correctly.

You are looking at this from the wrong perspective. Our brains aren’t born epistemologists, justified knowledge of the world is a concept learned later, so they don’t need to justify anything or ground anything epistemically, just the way my Roomba doesn’t ask itself if that wall is really there when it hits it, it just turns and keep on sucking.

Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 11:28 pm If I tell you to close your eyes and walk forward, and you do so until you reach a wall and hit your head, will you conclude there is no wall there simply because it can’t be seen? No, your senses reveal something about that external to them.

It's like you have some serious cognitive problem where you can't follow the very simple issue I'm bringing up.

IF we're saying that one only experiences one's own mental creations, then all we can conclude is that:

I had a mental creation of another person telling me to close my eyes and walk forward.
I had a mental creation of walking forward and hitting a wall and hitting my head.

There's no way to get to anything about an external world, aside from the fact that maybe:

I have a mental creation of an external world.


Your cognitive (dissonance) problem seems to be some sort of deal where you want to accept idealist/representationalist nonsense on the philosophical front, but you can't let go of standard scientific views despite the fact that your philosophical stance makes it so doing science in the normal way, accepting the normal picture of that, etc. is impossible to access.

Apparently I'm done with the conversation so I'll simply re-state my position and leave it at that...

Direct Realism

The world exists, exists independent of us, and is apprehended by us as it is (*not in its entirety but as it is). We **apprehend it directly, without the aid of or intervention of [insert hypothetical whatsis] and without constructing a model or representation of the world somewhere in our heads.

*If you take into account perspective (where the observer stands in relation to the observed); intervening, inconstant, possible, distortions (water instead of atmosphere, for example); and the inherent limits of the observer himself; then what is seen is as it is.

**Direct realism, of course, is not just about sight. Hearing, taste, smell, touch: the entire interface of a person as he's in the world is the concern of the direct realist. That's why I define it as I do. Apprehension covers it all, the whole of a person's direct contact with the world.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 2:36 pm

Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 4:11 am

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 2:30 am other means of knowing can be necessary to get at the truth

Okay, so what can we glean from...

we know the sensory organs transduce...light into neural impulses, and...we know those neural impulses get process(ed) in the visual cortex, which it is supposed where the representation is occurring

...me, I reckon we glean pretty close to nuthin'.

You describe machinery and machine action, not seeing.

As I say: the direct realist does not say light, or molecules, or sound waves have no role in seein', smellin', tastin', hearin' the world; nor does he say organs are merely ornamental. What the direct realist sez is, the organs alone account for nuthin'. The optical system does not see or watch.

*So, what does the seein’ if not the brain, nor the optical system? Let me guess, you are going to say you do? **And what is that you think you are? The organism? That just dodges the question, ***how does the organism see?

*The person, not the parts.

**That question takes us into metaphysics: we can go there if you like.

***As I say, in context, the biological model is unimportant, but since you focus on it, you go first...in particular, lay out how the visual cortex creates representation; explain how a mass of complex organic matter, active with electricity, creates a model of the world rather than just apprehends it; explain why this modeling is necessary. So far, the closest you've gotten to explainin' is...

But then we do have at least qualified beliefs about how objects show up in the world, via light reflecting off them, or emanating from them directly.

So, we can go into how we know this if you want? Then we can proceed stepwise into how we know the sensory organs transducer that light into neural impulses, and then from there, go into how we know those neural impulses get processes in the visual cortex, which it is supposed where the representation is occurring.

When you say, I, the person sees, what do you mean exactly? Do you mean, this whole being sees? But then, aren’t there certain biological features which instantiate seeing? Eyes, retina, brain.

Why do you say the biological model is unimportant. Do you not consider yourself the biology? If not, what are you that’s doing the seeing, what does the term person mean to you?

P.s. sorry if it seems I am ignoring posts, I don’t always have time to respond straight away.