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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 12:16:31 GMT
Direct realism is a philosophy of perception stance. It's a claim about how perception works. Indirect realism is a combination of a philosophy of perception stance--it's representationalist on perception, plus a theoretical belief about ontology--that there are external-to-oneself objects in the world. Of course, direct realists believe that there are external-to-oneself objects in the world, too--otherwise the perceptual stance wouldn't even make sense as presented, but the "realism" part of "direct realism" is present in the sense of a given (for the stance to even make sense), whereas the realism part of indirect realism is only present as a theoretical construct. Thanks for explaining. I always saw naive realism as the common sense view that things are seen directly. The case of the straw in the drink is the case in the same way placing tinted cellophane over a window would make everything outside the window appear purple. With indirect realism there is an intermediatory between the thing in itself and the perceiver. That being the unconscious mind which does all the editing and filling in and created a new picture. Sort of like the newest smartphone takes great pics but the pics aren't the thing being taken. So it isn't direct but it can be described as realism in that it was shaped by evolution to do what it does and can be assumed it is working well enough most of the time. And the same would be true of naive realism since other organisms have worse or better perception than others. Removing the middle-subconscious mind part would turn it into direct realism and not indirect. Other than that I can't see any difference between the two. I don't like introducing the idea of a subconscious mind into it. One could be an indirect realist but not buy the idea of a subconscious mind. The "realist" part in both cases seems unnecessary to me, really, as long as we're talking about stances in philosophy of perception in any contemporary, conventional sense. That one believes that perception is occurring implies that (a) one believes one is receiving information external to oneself, and (b) that one's physiology, including one's brain, is processing that information. (a) means that any stance on perception is necessarily realist--otherwise we'd not be talking about perception per se (but maybe some illusion of it or whatever). The difference is simply whether one believes that one is perceiving externals themselves or whether one believes that one is "perceiving" mental images that are related to the externals in some unknown manner.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 2, 2017 12:41:02 GMT
Can you give me an example of a scientific program that was only successful because the scientists assumed physicalism was true?
How about: every single one. Why not be more specific though? You seem to be saying that a scientist who takes no stance on metaphysics and deals only with observable phenomena will never succeed at any scientific program. I just don't see why that would be the case. If you could say something like "If Alexander Fleming didn't accept that everything is physical, he never would have discovered penicillin because he needed this assumption in order to realise X" then I could maybe understand your point of view better.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 12:50:56 GMT
How about: every single one. Why not be more specific though? You seem to be saying that a scientist who takes no stance on metaphysics and deals only with observable phenomena will never succeed at any scientific program. I just don't see why that would be the case. If you could say something like "If Alexander Fleming didn't accept that everything is physical, he never would have discovered penicillin because he needed this assumption in order to realise X" then I could maybe understand your point of view better. Given that what we refer to by "physical" are things with location and extension and mass and so on, how would one even begin to do science under an assumption that one is dealing with nonphysical things?
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 12:56:02 GMT
Also, note that a common take on "physical"--although I like to distance myself from this, so I hesitate to bring it up--is to more or less identify it with the science of physics, if not science in general; at least in the sense of what an ideal physics would encompass.
So also if one looks at "physical" that way, it's difficult to say how we'd begin doing science an on assumption that the world isn't physical. That would seem rather contradictory in that case.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 2, 2017 12:59:46 GMT
Why not be more specific though? You seem to be saying that a scientist who takes no stance on metaphysics and deals only with observable phenomena will never succeed at any scientific program. I just don't see why that would be the case. If you could say something like "If Alexander Fleming didn't accept that everything is physical, he never would have discovered penicillin because he needed this assumption in order to realise X" then I could maybe understand your point of view better. Given that what we refer to by "physical" are things with location and extension and mass and so on, how would one even begin to do science under an assumption that one is dealing with nonphysical things? Sure but idealists and panpsychists and dualists and neutral monists don't deny location, mass and extension etc exist. They would disagree on what exactly gives rise to them but that seems to me beyond the purview of science and does not affect our ability to do science. But correct me if I'm wrong here.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 13:09:06 GMT
Sure but idealists and panpsychists and dualists and neutral monists don't deny location, mass and extension etc exist. They would disagree on what exactly gives rise to them but that seems to me beyond the purview of science and does not affect our ability to do science. But correct me if I'm wrong here. We should want to clarify what an idealist is even talking about when they talk about location, mass, extension, etc. though. Those are physical properties. I'm not at all of the belief that what people say isn't stupid, incoherent, etc. just because they say it, even if they're well-respected philosophers (or scientists or whatever). And I'm especially not of that belief publicly any longer now that I couldn't care less about having a career in philosophy.
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 2, 2017 13:29:37 GMT
We should want to clarify what an idealist is even talking about when they talk about location, mass, extension, etc. though. Those are physical properties. What do you make of Berkely's discussion of such things in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge? Obviously he's only really looking at the basic Newtonian physics of his day but it's maybe a first step towards an idealistic conception of science. But idealists aside (as they're the most extreme case), how about dualists? They can presumably still do science pretty effectively as they don't deny that mass and extension are physical properties. I think these things are so beyond commonplace considerations that I would hesitate to think anyone stupid when they discuss such matters. I mean I find Dennett's dismissal of qualia very hard to accept, but I also think he's extremely intelligent and the fault may well be mine rather than his. At any rate, I'm grateful you've been civil and patient with me thus far! I did wonder if you were a professional philosopher, you certainly seem well-educated on the topic (as do faustus5 and Falconia). It's something I considered getting into myself, but I'm not sure I'm up to it. At any rate I only have a bachelor's degree so it would be a while before I could even consider it seriously.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 14:02:36 GMT
We should want to clarify what an idealist is even talking about when they talk about location, mass, extension, etc. though. Those are physical properties. What do you make of Berkely's discussion of such things in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge? Obviously he's only really looking at the basic Newtonian physics of his day but it's maybe a first step towards an idealistic conception of science. But idealists aside (as they're the most extreme case), how about dualists? They can presumably still do science pretty effectively as they don't deny that mass and extension are physical properties. I think these things are so beyond commonplace considerations that I would hesitate to think anyone stupid when they discuss such matters. I mean I find Dennett's dismissal of qualia very hard to accept, but I also think he's extremely intelligent and the fault may well be mine rather than his. At any rate, I'm grateful you've been civil and patient with me thus far! I did wonder if you were a professional philosopher, you certainly seem well-educated on the topic (as do faustus5 and Falconia). It's something I considered getting into myself, but I'm not sure I'm up to it. At any rate I only have a bachelor's degree so it would be a while before I could even consider it seriously. It's been so long since I've read Berkeley that I'd have to reread him to comment in any detail. When I paid the most attention to him was when I was an early undergraduate in philosophy and I had one of those moments akin to when I first discovered religious beliefs in any detail--namely, it was basically my introduction to idealism and I was completely dumbfounded by the idea that anyone took the notion seriously. My opinion of that didn't improve as I read Berkeley, but again, I'd have to reread stuff to comment in any detail. Re dualists, sure, but insofar as they'd be doing science, they're taking things to be physical. Most dualists aren't doing science about mind, as they think the idea is a non-starter. "I think these things are so beyond commonplace considerations that I would hesitate to think anyone stupid when they discuss such matters. I mean I find Dennett's dismissal of qualia very hard to accept, but I also think he's extremely intelligent and the fault may well be mine rather than his." I don't think that. My view that a lot of stuff that is said is stupid comes from reading and interacting with people like Dennett in detail. I don't think that Dennett is a moron overall or anything. But I've long realized that no matter how smart some people are in general, no matter how educated they are in general, they can still have some effective "blind spots" where they are more or less incoherent or moronic, even when we're talking about things directly pertinent to their professional field and subdiscipline. In my view, philosophy is loaded with moronic arguments, unfortunately, and my view about that has only increased as I've dived into those arguments and interacted with people about them. Re philosophy, I have graduate degrees in it, and at one point I thought I might want to pursue it professionally, but I've long been a professional musician (and I also have graduate degrees in music theory/composition--which I obtained prior to my philosophy degrees). I'm in my 50s already. I'm not going to pursue a career in philosophy at this point (and it would probably be futile to attempt to, given the time that has passed since I obtained my degrees and given that I'm a white male--because of EEO policies and the like, it's easiest (though still not easy) to get a philosophy job if you're a female, especially a minority female. This is moreso the case in philosophy than some other fields, because philosophy has been so white male dominated in the west overall).
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 2, 2017 14:55:11 GMT
It's been so long since I've read Berkeley that I'd have to reread him to comment in any detail. When I paid the most attention to him was when I was an early undergraduate in philosophy and I had one of those moments akin to when I first discovered religious beliefs in any detail--namely, it was basically my introduction to idealism and I was completely dumbfounded by the idea that anyone took the notion seriously. My opinion of that didn't improve as I read Berkeley, but again, I'd have to reread stuff to comment in any detail. Berkeley's stance is we can study phenomena and any underlying cause we find will simply be more phenomena which we can study and make predictions about. Meaning science, for all intents and purposes, would be identical whether we believed in matter or not. You might not subscribe to Berkeleyan idealism (and for the record I don't either), but it's hard to see a fault with his reasoning here. Whatever the presumed metaphysics, the phenomena and our ability to make predictions about them won't change. Well then, dualism at least can be pondered on without any danger to science. Same with idealism if we accept Berkeley's argument. Panpsychism and neutral monism also would seem to allow for studies of the traditional "physical" properties as well. Are there any philopsophers you consider to have few (or perhaps no) blind spots? Yeah that's definitely the case from what I've observed.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 15:01:05 GMT
It's been so long since I've read Berkeley that I'd have to reread him to comment in any detail. When I paid the most attention to him was when I was an early undergraduate in philosophy and I had one of those moments akin to when I first discovered religious beliefs in any detail--namely, it was basically my introduction to idealism and I was completely dumbfounded by the idea that anyone took the notion seriously. My opinion of that didn't improve as I read Berkeley, but again, I'd have to reread stuff to comment in any detail. Berkeley's stance is we can study phenomena and any underlying cause we find will simply be more phenomena which we can study and make predictions about. Meaning science, for all intents and purposes, would be identical whether we believed in matter or not. You might not subscribe to Berkeleyan idealism (and for the record I don't either), but it's hard to see a fault with his reasoning here. Whatever the presumed metaphysics, the phenomena and our ability to make predictions about them won't change. Well then, dualism at least can be pondered on without any danger to science. Same with idealism if we accept Berkeley's argument. Panpsychism and neutral monism also would seem to allow for studies of the traditional "physical" properties as well. Are there any philopsophers you consider to have few (or perhaps no) blind spots? Yeah that's definitely the case from what I've observed. Re Berkeley, in order to be making predictions about what happens when force A acts on B, say, we have to have some idea what we're even referring to by "force," by A acting on B, etc. So what would he be referring to?
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 2, 2017 15:34:46 GMT
Re Berkeley, in order to be making predictions about what happens when force A acts on B, say, we have to have some idea what we're even referring to by "force," by A acting on B, etc. So what would he be referring to? I'll have to take another look about what Berkeley himself said, but I would imagine you simply define a force as a thing that affects the phenomena we perceive. So with the gravitational force the Earth exerts on the moon, we could define it as "that which causes the phenomena of the moon to be attracted towards the phenomena of the Earth." From this we could make embellishments like "that which we perceive as more massive is perceived as having a greater attractive force". Sure, it's cumbersome compared to "more massive objects attract less massive objects" but functionally it still does the job. And of course, in general parlance, an idealist can still talk of "massive objects" even if they think ultimately that mass is a property bestowed by the observer rather than a property of the thing in itself.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 15:46:10 GMT
Re Berkeley, in order to be making predictions about what happens when force A acts on B, say, we have to have some idea what we're even referring to by "force," by A acting on B, etc. So what would he be referring to? I'll have to take another look about what Berkeley himself said, but I would imagine you simply define a force as a thing that affects the phenomena we perceive. So with the gravitational force the Earth exerts on the moon, we could define it as "that which causes the phenomena of the moon to be attracted towards the phenomena of the Earth." From this we could make embellishments like "that which we perceive as more massive is perceived as having a greater attractive force". Sure, it's cumbersome compared to "more massive objects attract less massive objects" but functionally it still does the job. And of course, in general parlance, an idealist can still talk of "massive objects" even if they think ultimately that mass is a property bestowed by the observer rather than a property of the thing in itself. I wouldn't say that positing "that which causes the phenomena of the moon to be attracted towards the phenomena of the Earth" is positing anything non-physical. That's just the sort of thing that we're naming physical properties.
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 2, 2017 15:57:18 GMT
I'll have to take another look about what Berkeley himself said, but I would imagine you simply define a force as a thing that affects the phenomena we perceive. So with the gravitational force the Earth exerts on the moon, we could define it as "that which causes the phenomena of the moon to be attracted towards the phenomena of the Earth." From this we could make embellishments like "that which we perceive as more massive is perceived as having a greater attractive force". Sure, it's cumbersome compared to "more massive objects attract less massive objects" but functionally it still does the job. And of course, in general parlance, an idealist can still talk of "massive objects" even if they think ultimately that mass is a property bestowed by the observer rather than a property of the thing in itself. I wouldn't say that positing "that which causes the phenomena of the moon to be attracted towards the phenomena of the Earth" is positing anything non-physical. That's just the sort of thing that we're naming physical properties. That's kind of the point though - for all intents and purposes the materialist and the idealist look at the world the same way. Where they differ is the metaphysics of it all. The idealist would say the moon only exists due to people perceiving. The materialist says it exists regardless of whether anyone's perceiving. Neither can be proven right as we can't remove perception from the equation. And both can make accurate scientific predictions.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 16:01:28 GMT
I wouldn't say that positing "that which causes the phenomena of the moon to be attracted towards the phenomena of the Earth" is positing anything non-physical. That's just the sort of thing that we're naming physical properties. That's kind of the point though - for all intents and purposes the materialist and the idealist look at the world the same way. Where they differ is the metaphysics of it all. The idealist would say the moon only exists due to people perceiving. The materialist says it exists regardless of whether anyone's perceiving. Neither can be proven right as we can't remove perception from the equation. And both can make accurate scientific predictions. Well re proving anything, nothing should hinge on that. Empirical claims aren't provable period. So it's not an issue of whether one thing or another can be proved.
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 2, 2017 16:13:06 GMT
That's kind of the point though - for all intents and purposes the materialist and the idealist look at the world the same way. Where they differ is the metaphysics of it all. The idealist would say the moon only exists due to people perceiving. The materialist says it exists regardless of whether anyone's perceiving. Neither can be proven right as we can't remove perception from the equation. And both can make accurate scientific predictions. Well re proving anything, nothing should hinge on that. Empirical claims aren't provable period. So it's not an issue of whether one thing or another can be proved. I would agree there.
My only real point in all this was that speculating on such things does not mean tossing science out the window as Faustus seems to hold.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 16:24:34 GMT
Well re proving anything, nothing should hinge on that. Empirical claims aren't provable period. So it's not an issue of whether one thing or another can be proved. I would agree there.
My only real point in all this was that speculating on such things does not mean tossing science out the window as Faustus seems to hold.
Well, remember that my stance is actually more extreme than Faustus', as I don't agree that the idea of nonphysical existents can even be made any sense of.
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 2, 2017 16:57:15 GMT
Well, remember that my stance is actually more extreme than Faustus', as I don't agree that the idea of nonphysical existents can even be made any sense of. Well if by physical existents you mean things with apparent mass, extension etc I don't exactly disagree (I would be loathe to use the word "physical" though as I feel that carries certain metaphysical assumptions). My stance is more that speculating on things beyond the observable may well be incoherent, but that in itself doesn't seem a good reason not to do so if you are so inclined.
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Post by faustus5 on Jun 2, 2017 16:58:01 GMT
Why not be more specific though? You seem to be saying that a scientist who takes no stance on metaphysics and deals only with observable phenomena will never succeed at any scientific program. I just don't see why that would be the case. If you could say something like "If Alexander Fleming didn't accept that everything is physical, he never would have discovered penicillin because he needed this assumption in order to realise X" then I could maybe understand your point of view better. My position is that the assumption of physicalism/materialism is fundamentally at the very heart of the entire scientific enterprise, at least methodologically, whether individual scientists think about it consciously or not.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 17:03:13 GMT
Well, remember that my stance is actually more extreme than Faustus', as I don't agree that the idea of nonphysical existents can even be made any sense of. Well if by physical existents you mean things with apparent mass, extension etc I don't exactly disagree (I would be loathe to use the word "physical" though as I feel that carries certain metaphysical assumptions). My stance is more that speculating on things beyond the observable may well be incoherent, but that in itself doesn't seem a good reason not to do so if you are so inclined. To me, a good reason to avoid it is if we're not even clear what the heck we'd be talking about. I'm not going to assert that something's the case when I can't express at all what I'd even be claiming.
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 2, 2017 17:58:54 GMT
I'm not going to assert that something's the case when I can't express at all what I'd even be claiming. Neither would I. My own stance is that the hard problem of consciousness is unsolvable, for the time being at least. If some people though want to think there is something transcendent about consciousness, I see no problem with that - so long as they accept it's just them making a leap of faith rather than anything others should take as true.
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