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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 1, 2017 16:14:12 GMT
You ignored my last attempt to sort out one thing at a time, but hopefully you won't ignore this one. I didn't actually although I don't think I quoted you in my response so you might have missed it. But we'll try again sure. No, I am aware some reject it though I admit I'm not all that familiar with the arguments against it. Which argument(s) against it would you endorse? I'm a "naive" or direct realist on philosophy of perception. Sense data theory is a type of representationalism, and I don't believe there is any good reason to buy a representationalist philosophy of perception wholesale. I believe that a number of simplistic errors form the impetus to buy sense data theory. So re properties of physical objects, they include things such as location, extension, mass, electrical conductivity, and many other properties (I could list more if you want more for some reason). |
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 1, 2017 16:22:47 GMT
I believe that a number of simplistic errors form the impetus to buy sense data theory. What do you reckon those errors are? Maybe your answer to my first question will also answer this one, but how can you know these things are wholly properties of physical objects? |
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 1, 2017 16:32:20 GMT
I believe that a number of simplistic errors form the impetus to buy sense data theory. What do you reckon those errors are? Maybe your answer to my first question will also answer this one, but how can you know these things are wholly properties of physical objects? "What do you reckon those errors are?" For example, not understanding the relativity of facts, so that an object from reference point x is objectively different than the same object from reference point y. The other question doesn't really make any sense. Those are what we consider properties of physical objects. That's what we're referring to. We're referring to things that have location and extension and so on. That's what we're naming "physical objects." The crux of it isn't whether we're calling something "physical" or not--we could name anything whatever we like. What physicalists are saying is that the world is solely comprised of the sorts of things that have (in the sense of items of a property cluster) location and extension and mass and electrical charges/conductivity and so on. So if someone is disagreeing with that, they need to be saying that at least some of the world is comprised of not of the sorts of things that have location and extension and mass and so on, but the sort of things that . .. well, what? Who knows? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2017 16:37:29 GMT
I didn't actually although I don't think I quoted you in my response so you might have missed it. But we'll try again sure. No, I am aware some reject it though I admit I'm not all that familiar with the arguments against it. Which argument(s) against it would you endorse? I'm a "naive" or direct realist on philosophy of perception. Curious, how does the naive realist account for the blind-spot and the filling-in phenomena? |
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 1, 2017 16:40:13 GMT
I'm a "naive" or direct realist on philosophy of perception. Curious, how does the naive realist account for the blind-spot and the filling-in phenomena? Naive realism doesn't claim that you perceive everything correctly. |
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Post by faustus5 on Jun 1, 2017 16:50:19 GMT
You are also playing devil's advocate by twisting around something that has obviously pushed a button with you, by claiming it has noting to do with what is being discussed. It has plenty to do with it. This is a philosophy discussion forum, not a superficial dime-store self-improvement discussion forum. You've veered completely away from the content of the opening post. |
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Post by faustus5 on Jun 1, 2017 16:52:47 GMT
My only real issue is this insistence that physicalism should be accepted over alternatives because it is coherent and they are not.
There is nothing incoherent about physicalism. You can actually do something with it (i.e., science). Idealism or any other alternative just lets you sit in the safety of your armchair imagining that you've learned something when you've done nothing but spin your tires. |
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Post by general313 on Jun 1, 2017 16:55:40 GMT
I'm willing to take a look at "other substances" as soon as there is some backing evidence. I'm unaware of any. My point is there's not evidence for any supposed substances, including the physical. We know only that we gather sense-data. Physicalism suggests there is a physical substance that gives rise to this sense-data but any evidence we would seek to gather for this substance would merely be more sense data.
Put it another way, George Berkeley, Rene Descartes and Gilbert Ryle all enter a room to see an apple sitting on a table. Descartes: "Aha, I perceive an apple. Perceiving and the thing perceived are different so there are two substances at work here: the mind which perceives and matter which is perceived!" Berkeley: "Why complicate matters? Could you even describe the apple independent of your perceiving it? Only perception itself exists. There is only one substance: mind!" Ryle: "Don't be absurd! You're making a mistake thinking of perceiving and the thing perceived as separate. The apple is a physical entity and your perceiving it is the physical experience of physical things in your body doing what they do. Only matter exists!"
Based on the evidence of perceiving an apple, any of them could be right. Meaning we can either take a phenomenalist stance and say it doesn't really matter who's right about metaphysical substances only that we get sense-data of an apple (something all 3 would agree on); or we can take a pragmatic approach and decide which one of the three stances (or perhaps another stance altogether) is the most useful and go with that one.
I think it depends on how much you want to stretch the definition of "physical" and "substance". In this thread we were talking about mind and consciousness and whether or not these were separable from the brain. I'm assuming that in that context we agree that brains are made of atoms, and that we can agree that atoms are physical. Otherwise we're shifting gears into some kind of metaphysical discussion that is a different topic. There's a ton of evidence-based science about atoms and brains, and none about souls (as an entity capable of being conscious in separation from a brain). |
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Post by general313 on Jun 1, 2017 17:00:46 GMT
Not just ideally. If you separate philosophy from science all you have left is mental masturbation. If you don't separate philosophy from science, you'll have tremendous confusion regarding just what is going on that's different in philosophy classrooms versus science classrooms, and/or why something different is going on. The same would go for trying to figure out what makes philosophy and science texts/books different, just what the difference would be between science and philosophy of science, etc. I'm not trying to conflate philosophy and science, just make sure that philosophy remains answerable to scientific methods. Without that you can have any number of internally logically self-consistent philosophies, each as valid as the next, just as one can with geometries (Euclidean, Riemannian, etc.) |
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 1, 2017 17:08:28 GMT
If you don't separate philosophy from science, you'll have tremendous confusion regarding just what is going on that's different in philosophy classrooms versus science classrooms, and/or why something different is going on. The same would go for trying to figure out what makes philosophy and science texts/books different, just what the difference would be between science and philosophy of science, etc. I'm not trying to conflate philosophy and science, just make sure that philosophy remains answerable to scientific methods. Without that you can have any number of internally logically self-consistent philosophies, each as valid as the next, just as one can with geometries (Euclidean, Riemannian, etc.) Philosophers are more concerned that science remains answerable to philosophical problems. They're two different methodologies. Usually philosophers prefer philosophical methodology and scientists prefer scientific methdology, and both often think that the other should sometimes be considered not applicable to their own field--or at least they often think the other is not worth bothering with in many cases re their own field. (And that's often met head-on if you're a philosophy student in science courses or a science student in philosophy courses and you're prone to asking a lot of question/posing a lot of challenges in the context of your preferred discipline.) |
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 1, 2017 17:54:25 GMT
My only real issue is this insistence that physicalism should be accepted over alternatives because it is coherent and they are not.
There is nothing incoherent about physicalism. You can actually do something with it (i.e., science). Idealism or any other alternative just lets you sit in the safety of your armchair imagining that you've learned something when you've done nothing but spin your tires. Do you have to presume physicalism to do science though? |
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 1, 2017 17:58:16 GMT
I think it depends on how much you want to stretch the definition of "physical" and "substance". In this thread we were talking about mind and consciousness and whether or not these were separable from the brain. I'm assuming that in that context we agree that brains are made of atoms, and that we can agree that atoms are physical. Otherwise we're shifting gears into some kind of metaphysical discussion that is a different topic. Fair enough, I suppose I was getting a bit off-topic. I was responding more to Terrapin's claim that all facts are physical facts rather than the main topic. |
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 1, 2017 18:16:05 GMT
"What do you reckon those errors are?" For example, not understanding the relativity of facts, so that an object from reference point x is objectively different than the same object from reference point y. Why do you think this is the case? I mean it seems a plausible point of view to me but no more than the representational point of view. In fact I wonder if the only real difference is semantic - what's the difference between saying "You get a different lot of sense-data from Position X than from Position Y" and "An object is different from Position X than it is from Position Y"? - it seems the observation dictates the properties of the object in both cases. Do you reckon these properties rely on an observer? Plus doesn't this take us back to the hard problem of consciousness? Qualia don't have mass, extension, electrical charge etc. So are they non-physical? Or are they a representation of the physical? Or do they not exist at all? Also what about mathematical truths like 1+1=2? They're clearly not physical, right? Although maybe you could say they are a linguistic tool for understanding the relationship between physical objects. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2017 19:02:23 GMT
Curious, how does the naive realist account for the blind-spot and the filling-in phenomena? Naive realism doesn't claim that you perceive everything correctly. I'm not talking about inaccuracies (many of those can be explained away by distorted light or whatever) but that there appears to be an intermediatory between the retina and what is consciously (re)presented. From Consciousness and the brain, Dehaene : "We never see the world as our retina sees it. In fact, it would be a pretty horrible sight: a highly distorted set of light and dark pixels, blown up toward the center of the retina, masked by blood vessels, with a massive hole at the location of the ‘blind spot’ where cables leave for the brain; the image would constantly blur and change as our gaze moved around. What we see, instead, is a three-dimensional scene, corrected for retinal defects, mended at the blind spot, and massively reinterpreted based on our previous experience of similar visual scenes.” Do you agree with that? And if so is that not a problem for NR/DR? |
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 1, 2017 19:13:23 GMT
"What do you reckon those errors are?" For example, not understanding the relativity of facts, so that an object from reference point x is objectively different than the same object from reference point y. Why do you think this is the case? I mean it seems a plausible point of view to me but no more than the representational point of view. In fact I wonder if the only real difference is semantic - what's the difference between saying "You get a different lot of sense-data from Position X than from Position Y" and "An object is different from Position X than it is from Position Y"? - it seems the observation dictates the properties of the object in both cases. Do you reckon these properties rely on an observer? Plus doesn't this take us back to the hard problem of consciousness? Qualia don't have mass, extension, electrical charge etc. So are they non-physical? Or are they a representation of the physical? Or do they not exist at all? Also what about mathematical truths like 1+1=2? They're clearly not physical, right? Although maybe you could say they are a linguistic tool for understanding the relationship between physical objects. The difference is that the different properties from different reference points in no way hinge on there being a being with a mind to receive perceptual data. And no, the properties do not rely on an observer. The "hard problem of consciousness" is a bunch of nonsense in my opinion. The problem is the unanalyzed aspects of what explanations are. Qualia certainly do have mass, extension, etc.--they're brain states. And yes, mathematical truths, mathematical objects, etc. are physical. Again, they're brain states. Mathematics isn't objectively real. |
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 1, 2017 19:15:36 GMT
Naive realism doesn't claim that you perceive everything correctly. I'm not talking about inaccuracies (many of those can be explained away by distorted light or whatever) but that there appears to be an intermediatory between the retina and what is consciously (re)presented. It's important to remember that naive realism is a theory of perception. Perception requires a brain. It's something our brains do. Naive realism isn't a theory of non-perception. |
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Post by PanLeo on Jun 1, 2017 20:15:18 GMT
Curious, how does the naive realist account for the blind-spot and the filling-in phenomena? Naive realism doesn't claim that you perceive everything correctly. Care to explain how these innacuracies occur then in a way that doesnt include sense Data? |
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 1, 2017 20:29:33 GMT
Naive realism doesn't claim that you perceive everything correctly. Care to explain how these innacuracies occur then in a way that doesnt include sense Data? It doesn't have to exclude sense data. The idea is that normally you can be aware of something other than sense data. It's similar to the realism/idealism distinction in ontology. Realists aren't saying that you can never have or be aware of ideas, that you can't imagine things that don't exist, etc. What they're saying is that not everything is just an idea, an imagining, etc. |
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Post by PanLeo on Jun 1, 2017 21:21:42 GMT
Care to explain how these innacuracies occur then in a way that doesnt include sense Data? It doesn't have to exclude sense data. The idea is that normally you can be aware of something other than sense data. It's similar to the realism/idealism distinction in ontology. Realists aren't saying that you can never have or be aware of ideas, that you can't imagine things that don't exist, etc. What they're saying is that not everything is just an idea, an imagining, etc. so how come sometimes we are aware of sense data and sometimes not? How do you account for secondary ualities? |
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 1, 2017 22:08:50 GMT
The difference is that the different properties from different reference points in no way hinge on there being a being with a mind to receive perceptual data. But surely reference points imply an observer? Ah yes, you said that before. Still not sure I grasp what you mean. But I imagine it's probably too complex a sidetrack for here. How can you know that since qualia can't be tested for scientifically? And would your stance mean things with brains of different matter and configuration (robots, octopuses and aliens) wouldn't have qualia? Hmm but then if my brain came to the conclusion that 1+1=3, would I be right? Since there is no mathematical truth beyond our brain states. |
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