Philosophy Now Forum

SpheresOfBalance wrote:That you think your senses are somehow tainted, separate from the universe is quite insane. Organisms developed the senses so as to survive, and we've done a pretty good job all these billions of years. Ones perceiving was in fact born of the universe, and tested and improved over much time, therefore it is not separate from the so called objects in the universe, it exists because of the objects in the universe, thus anyone that then says they cannot perceive the universe is a fool! Probably just wants some attention because they believe their penis is too small. That we can't see the micro or macro without aid is irrelevant. And that we can with the creation of tools is again born of the universe. The objects created by the universe meant to sense the universe, can only ever see all the objects in the universe including itself complete, if only eventually.

Different organisms have different senses; very simple organisms with very simple brains have survived far longer than humans. Nor is it the case that our senses have been tested and improved; as long as they are sufficient for an organism to produce viable offspring, that is enough. Judging by their track record, as far as evolution is concerned, the senses possessed by Cyanobacteria and comb jelly (ctenophores) are the acme of perfection!

I would have thought that the clever thing about higher animals, especially humans, is that they have learnt not to trust their senses. That those things that our human senses can detect are not the only things out there. The way we usually understand the world may arise from our senses, but we have learnt that this understanding is sometimes inadequate.

I think that our eyes and ears etc. are only tools, we need tools but we should not be ruled by them. The organ of perception is the brain.

SpheresOfBalance wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:How can you know objective stuff, since all you know is gained by mental phenomena?

Say you're looking at a tree. Well, you know that objective thing by looking at it. There's absolutely no coherent reason to assume that you're not actually seeing the tree and that what you're seeing is mental phenomena instead. It wouldn't even be clear what the heck mental phenomena versus anything else would be if you assume something like that. And if that's not clear, then what would we even be claiming?

Wrong, because the sense of feel can back up sight to yield the object, eliminating subjectivity. In such a case everyone would see and feel the exact same thing. It makes no difference that their descriptions would highlight different aspects of it. That different words are used to describe things has no necessary bearings upon the things in and of themselves. The truer description would be the one that was the most complete, relative to all that was sensed without embellishment (imagination).

I can't make any sense out of your comment supposedly being a response to what you quoted from me.

Londoner wrote:I did not say that trees etc. were unreal; I said that the mental image we have of them is something we construct.

Well, a "mental image" is going to be something we construct, because it's mental. Mentality is a subset of brain states and not something else. When we're talking about brain states we're talking about us, persons with brains.

Perceptions are also something that occurs in us and not elsewhere, as perceptions are a subset of mentality/consciousness.

It's important to remember that in philosophy of perception disagreements, no one is claiming that we're not talking about perception (otherwise we're not doing philosophy of perception any longer, we're doing something else). What's at issue, rather, is the "nature" of perception, just what it is that we're perceiving.

My side of the philosophy perception debate is that we're directly perceiving objective things (where again, because for some reason it's so easy to overlook this, one should note that I'm not saying that we're not perceiving objective things, we are perceiving them). My side of the debate is not that we're instead "perceiving" mental images, so that there's another level of remove somehow from the objective things.

One reason I have for saying this is because people with different sensory abilities (e.g. colour blindness) will have different mental images of what a tree is.

Naive realism very well agrees that various factors, such as color blindness, can interfere with accurate perception of objective things.

Aside from that, the same tree is not going to be perceived identically by any two person for these two reasons:

(1) Nominalism is true. When we're talking about whether the same tree is perceived identically by two different people, we're talking about two different persons' perceptions. Person 1's perception is not identical to person 2's perception simply because nominalism is true. It's two different instances, numerically distinct, of perceptions, and two numerically distinct things are not identical.

(2) A general, thoroughgoing relativism is the case. Every existent has at least some different properties at different "reference points," there are no "reference point-free reference points," and there are no objectively-preferred reference points. Two different people necessarily experience the "same thing" (such as the "same tree") from two different reference points. The tree in question has at least some different properties at reference point A and reference point B. Plus we're also talking about the properties of all the other stuff involved--the lightwaves, the atmosphere, etc. that obtain between the surface of the tree and the surface of the person's eyes, for example.

I also pointed out that if we simply assumed that normal human senses just happened to be perfect for capturing the entirety of external objects,

No one said anything about the "entirety" of anything.

this would create a paradox; that when we used these reliable tools to examine how our eyes work, we find that our ideas of external objects are reconstructed from electrical signals. That there is no way that our eyes can somehow capture external objects directly.

"Directly" means that it's not a perception of a mental image. Not that it's not a perception.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Anyway, what's at issue is whether the bushman can observe a coke bottle. I say he can.

He don't know what the fuck a Coke bottle is having never seen one before. The object might be the same thing, but you see a "Coke Bottle" and he sees a gift from the gods.
I think you must either be a really dull person or are being deliberately obstructive.

You're conflating concepts, meanings, interpretations, etc. with perception.

I'm not saying anything about concepts, meanings, etc. when I say "can observe a coke bottle." I'm talking about perception only.

SpheresOfBalance wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

SpheresOfBalance wrote:Yet only fools believe that individuals committed to any particular subject of study are not infallible.

Would you say then that people who are not fools believe that individuals committed to a particular subject of study are infallible?

Obviously there can be any permutation there of.

But wait a minute. Then your first statement wouldn't make any sense.

You either believe that individuals committed to a particular subject of study are infallible, or you believe they're not infallible.

You said that only fools believe that they are not infallible.

So how can it be "any permutation thereof"? If I believe that they're not infallible (which is something I believe--I'd say that no person is infallible, period), then per your view, I'm a fool.

So to not be a fool, you have to not believe that they're not infallible, or in other words, you have to believe that they're infallible.

SpheresOfBalance wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:What's real and descriptions of what's real are two different things.

Obviously,

So then if truth is the description of the real, as you said earlier, that wouldn't imply that truth is also the real.

yet the description of what is real, changes not that which is real.

Right. I don't think anyone disagreed with that.

Terrapin Station wrote: My side of the philosophy perception debate is that we're directly perceiving objective things (where again, because for some reason it's so easy to overlook this, one should note that I'm not saying that we're not perceiving objective things, we are perceiving them). My side of the debate is not that we're instead "perceiving" mental images, so that there's another level of remove somehow from the objective things.

By 'objective things', do I understand that these are 'things-in-themselves', 'noumena', all that stuff? So that when you say we perceive them 'directly', you are saying we see them in their entirety, rather than just those aspects that manifest themselves to our senses as phenomena? Indeed, that there is no such distinction to be made?

Me: One reason I have for saying this is because people with different sensory abilities (e.g. colour blindness) will have different mental images of what a tree is.

Naive realism very well agrees that various factors, such as color blindness, can interfere with accurate perception of objective things.

That being the case, how do we know which perception is 'accurate'? We can compare our own perception to others, but only second hand through the medium of language. If everyone agrees that the word 'green' means 'the colour of grass' then everyone will agree that the grass is green, even if we all see different colours. And even if we could get over that hurdle, democracy amongst humans would not prove accuracy; other creatures have eyes that are in some ways superior to ours. Why don't they get a vote?

Aside from that, the same tree is not going to be perceived identically by any two person for these two reasons:

(1) Nominalism is true. When we're talking about whether the same tree is perceived identically by two different people, we're talking about two different persons' perceptions. Person 1's perception is not identical to person 2's perception simply because nominalism is true. It's two different instances, numerically distinct, of perceptions, and two numerically distinct things are not identical.

(2) A general, thoroughgoing relativism is the case. Every existent has at least some different properties at different "reference points," there are no "reference point-free reference points," and there are no objectively-preferred reference points. Two different people necessarily experience the "same thing" (such as the "same tree") from two different reference points. The tree in question has at least some different properties at reference point A and reference point B. Plus we're also talking about the properties of all the other stuff involved--the lightwaves, the atmosphere, etc. that obtain between the surface of the tree and the surface of the person's eyes, for example.

That too. I would say we are aware of such things, so the idea we form of a tree necessarily goes beyond our own perception of that tree. It will be part of the way in which I understand the world generally. Thus, because I have found things generally have backs, my idea of a tree is of an object that exists in three dimensions, even though I can only see the front.

Me: I also pointed out that if we simply assumed that normal human senses just happened to be perfect for capturing the entirety of external objects,


No one said anything about the "entirety" of anything.

But surely the thing-in-itself must comprise of all of that thing, not just the bits we happen to see? The 'tree-in-itself' must be the whole tree, not just the bit nearest me. If we can only capture an aspect of the tree, then what we claim to be the 'objective thing' would be something we ourselves had constructed.

Me: this would create a paradox; that when we used these reliable tools to examine how our eyes work, we find that our ideas of external objects are reconstructed from electrical signals. That there is no way that our eyes can somehow capture external objects directly.

"Directly" means that it's not a perception of a mental image. Not that it's not a perception.

I do not see how we can distinguish between perceiving something and creating a mental image of it. The two seem one and the same thing.

I suppose we could try to separate the two, but in that case what form would the perception have before it was a mental image?

It could be a photon, before it entered the eye, but then we would have the odd situation of the universe being full of perceptions that nobody perceives. It could be an electrical event in the nerve, but then we would have to say we perceive electricity, rather than objects. I think it only makes sense to speak of perception as a type of thought, as something we create in response to the stimulus of the photon and the electrical event, that we posit as having an external cause.

I would add that I do not think it is 'direct' in the sense that the thought is one fixed thing either, i.e. that a particular set of stimuli create a particular mental image. I think that we can and do apply a range of interpretations to the same set of stimuli, select within the set or ignore them all, or add knowledge obtained from some entirely different source.

Londoner wrote:By 'objective things', do I understand that these are 'things-in-themselves', 'noumena', all that stuff?

I use the terms this way:

Subjective = mental phenomena, that is, brains functioning in mental ways.
Objective = the complement of mental phenomena, or in other words--"everything else," everything that isn't a brain functioning in a mental way.

So that when you say we perceive them 'directly', you are saying we see them in their entirety,

You can't see anything "in its entirety," because that would suggest seeing it from a reference-point free reference-point, and there are no such things. Everything is necessarily situated some way with respect to everything else. That situatedness isn't other situatedness. Reference point A isn't identical to reference point B. And reference point A + B + C is just another reference point that's not identical to others. Things really have different properties at different reference points.

So the whole idea of "seeing something in its entirety" is rather nonsensical.

The same thing goes for "completely understanding" something, "having full knowledge" of something, etc.

Also, I HAD JUST CLEARED THIS UP in the previous post. I'm not saying anything about seeing anything in its entirety, and I explained, at least in two different spots, what direct versus non-direct perception is.

Why am I typing this if you can't even pick up on that? How many times would I have to type the same thing?

You're someone who'll keep increasing response lengths unless I keep things short, and I've already made this way too long to avoid that. So again, we'll deal with this part and then hypothetically get back to the rest (though really, we'll never get back to the rest because there's no possible way you'll stick with short, focused responses).

Terrapin Station wrote:
I use the terms this way:

Subjective = mental phenomena, that is, brains functioning in mental ways.
Objective = the complement of mental phenomena, or in other words--"everything else," everything that isn't a brain functioning in a mental way.

I do not see how we can know about 'everything else', since we can only know it using our brains. We can posit that there is an 'everything else' because our thoughts seem to be of different types, some thoughts seem to be imposed on us, they have a consistency and so on, so we guess that they must come from something external to our minds (although we can never know that for sure). But even so, we know that our brains are always involved, so we can never know how much of the mental phenomena derives from the 'everything else' and how much from our own brains.

You can't see anything "in its entirety," because that would suggest seeing it from a reference-point free reference-point, and there are no such things. Everything is necessarily situated some way with respect to everything else. That situatedness isn't other situatedness. Reference point A isn't identical to reference point B. And reference point A + B + C is just another reference point that's not identical to others. Things really have different properties at different reference points.

So the whole idea of "seeing something in its entirety" is rather nonsensical.

The same thing goes for "completely understanding" something, "having full knowledge" of something, etc.

Also, I HAD JUST CLEARED THIS UP in the previous post. I'm not saying anything about seeing anything in its entirety, and I explained, at least in two different spots, what direct versus non-direct perception is.

You keep helpfully explaining at length what non-direct perception is; unfortunately the clack of clarity is about what 'direct perception' might mean.

I am trying to understand what you meant when you wrote:

My side of the philosophy perception debate is that we're directly perceiving objective things

Above, you point out that we can only perceive things subjectively, i.e. from the point of view of the subject. I agree. So when you describe the things perceived as 'objective', I do not understand what you mean. As I have suggested, you could be referring to the 'noumenal', but the point about the noumenal is that we can never perceive it.

You give an explanation of 'objective' above as:

the complement of mental phenomena, or in other words--"everything else," everything that isn't a brain functioning in a mental way.

The noumenal might be described as 'things as they exist beyond our thoughts', which would sort-of fit that definition. But again, I do not see how we can perceive things non-mentally. We can only ever perceive them subjectively, and via our brains. So under what circumstances can we perceive things 'objectively', without involving a functioning brain?

You're someone who'll keep increasing response lengths unless I keep things short, and I've already made this way too long to avoid that. So again, we'll deal with this part and then hypothetically get back to the rest (though really, we'll never get back to the rest because there's no possible way you'll stick with short, focused responses).

My bits are long because they are repetitive. I keep asking the same question in different ways, because you don't seem to understand it!

Here is yet another way of asking it: what is your problem with Kant?

Londoner wrote:I do not see how we can know about 'everything else', since we can only know it using our brains. We can posit that there is an 'everything else' because our thoughts seem to be of different types, some thoughts seem to be imposed on us, they have a consistency and so on, so we guess that they must come from something external to our minds (although we can never know that for sure). But even so, we know that our brains are always involved, so we can never know how much of the mental phenomena derives from the 'everything else' and how much from our own brains.

The problem trying to get the following analogy off the ground in your camp is going to be that you don't believe the things I'll be mentioning can be known to exist as anything but your personal mental phenomena, but I'll try the analogy anyway just in case you are capable of going along with what you might consider the "usual story" for it:

Do you believe that stereo systems aren't capable of accurately presenting just what a band sounds like (at least from a particular reference point in a system)?

Terrapin Station wrote: Do you believe that stereo systems aren't capable of accurately presenting just what a band sounds like (at least from a particular reference point in a system)?

I believe that stereo systems can (more or less) reproduce the auditory experience we would get if we were in front of the band itself.

But I do not think that our auditory experience is some sort of objective representation of the band. Both the band and the stereo cause the air to vibrate. Our ears are sensitive to these vibrations and we interpret them as sound. If we had different ears or different brains we would hear different sounds, or no sound at all. So, what a band 'sounds like' is about us, it is a product of our ears and brains.

Londoner wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote: Do you believe that stereo systems aren't capable of accurately presenting just what a band sounds like (at least from a particular reference point in a system)?

I believe that stereo systems can (more or less) reproduce the auditory experience we would get if we were in front of the band itself.

But I do not think that our auditory experience is some sort of objective representation of the band. Both the band and the stereo cause the air to vibrate. Our ears are sensitive to these vibrations and we interpret them as sound. If we had different ears or different brains we would hear different sounds, or no sound at all. So, what a band 'sounds like' is about us, it is a product of our ears and brains.

The only reason I'm bringing that up is that on your view, the fact that our sensory systems work as they do--by sending information along nerves, etc., is sufficient to imply that our perception isn't accurate and unmediated. However, that's just how the recording (and mastering, record or CD etc. cutting, stereo reproduction etc.) process works. Electrical information is sent along cables and so on and received by the mixing console etc.

So the fact that perception involves an analogous process doesn't imply representationalism, unless you believe that what comes out of a stereo isn't an accurate accounting of what a band sounded like from particular reference points in a system, but for some reason is a depiction of something that you can only know is your stereo to itself.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Anyway, what's at issue is whether the bushman can observe a coke bottle. I say he can.

He don't know what the fuck a Coke bottle is having never seen one before. The object might be the same thing, but you see a "Coke Bottle" and he sees a gift from the gods.
I think you must either be a really dull person or are being deliberately obstructive.

You're conflating concepts, meanings, interpretations, etc. with perception.

I'm not saying anything about concepts, meanings, etc. when I say "can observe a coke bottle." I'm talking about perception only.

You can't separate the two things.
When you know what a thing is, what it is for, what it does ,or how you can use it, you see it differently.
When you look at a face you see a person. The truth of an object is indelibly linked with your interest in it.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:You can't separate the two things.

You need to if you want to avoid conflation, because they're two different things. That's not to say that we don't often apply concepts to perceptions, but they're not the same thing.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:You can't separate the two things.

You need to if you want to avoid conflation, because they're two different things. That's not to say that we don't often apply concepts to perceptions, but they're not the same thing.

To each individual they are the same. What is obvious is when they are the same.

What is less obvious is the objective.