Poll about realism

[Genesius]

The only thing that makes the experience real for us is the fact that we think.

Real "for us" is one thing. "Real" in itself is quite another. Everything would still be "real", even if we weren't here to think about it.

 

[Iacchus]

Real "for us" is one thing. "Real" in itself is quite another. Everything would still be "real", even if we weren't here to think about it.

So, why does reality need an explanation then? Why should I be listening to what's real for you?

 

[Genesius]

So, why does reality need an explanation then? Why should I be listening to what's real for you?

Reality doesn't need an explanation. Reality simply is.

 

[PixyMisa]

If you could take a step or two back you might realise that the truth is the reverse. It is not me who is totally discounting one area of academic knowledge (philosophy) and claiming that "everything we actually know" is based on science.

Nor me.

But perception is - and we know this - a physical process. Philosophy doesn't, can't, say anything about physical processess. That's science. So, when you restrict the argument to metaphysics, you exclude what we actually know about perception.

So who is the one who is making claims of superiority?

You.

You really can't see the irony, can you?

Oh, we can, just in a different place to where you think it is.

People like PM think they "fighting extremism".

Eh? What I am fighting here is fuzzy thinking.

But he is every bit as extreme - and one-dimensional - as he people he thinks he is fighting. The post he made about the Chinese Room argument is a classic example. It was all bark and no bite. He doesn't actually understand either the chinese room argument

Go back five spaces and lose a turn.

or the debate about realism so what we were treated to instead was the scientistic equivalent of


"Evolution? Evolution?? You don't actually believe in that silly evolution do you!? LOL! (snigger) "

Uh, no.

Evolution is a predictive, falsifiable, scientific theory that is supported by an immense body of factual evidence.

The Chinese Room is a thought experiment. It attempts to apply the proof by contradiction to functional theory of mind, but does not stand up to even the most cursory examination. It's Berkeley's Demon in a funny hat.

It's more like "The World Ice Theory? The World Ice Theory?! You're kidding me, right?"

The fact the the author of such statements is entirely convinced he knows what he is talking about, swaggeringly confident whilst displaying no actual knowledge of the subject, fools only people who are just extreme themselves. The sad thing is that most of the people at this site aren't like this, but the ones who are take it upon themselves to trash peoples threads and cause flame wars, somewhat devaluing this site for everybody else. PM isn't interested in having a debate. He is interested in derailing threads and fanning the flames of his own ego.

No.

Which rebuttals? I am not aware of any that are generally considered to work. As implied by the quote I originally posted, I do not believe there are any good rebuttals to the CRA.

Yes, we know what you belive. You're wrong.

I have an essay to write, and really can't be bothered to continue with this thread.

Exit stage left, tail on fire.

Some of the people at this site seem to be in their own version of the dark ages. The era when large numbers of people believed in "strong AI" has ended. Wake up and smell the roses.

No.

The magic-fairy theories of consciousness, the work of people like Searle and Penrose, the abandonment of objective evidence, that is what is pushing us back towards the dark ages. An attempt doomed to failure, of course, because scientists and engineers will continue to apply methods that actually work.

Claiming that I dismiss philosophy entirely is simply false. Popper, for example, and Dennett, are clear and incisive thinkers, because they are considering things as they apply to reality. 97% of philosophy (figure pulled out of my hat, of course) is worthless drivel because it simply ignores what we know of what is. There is no mechanism in philosophy to discard worthless ideas; if it's self-consistent, it never goes away.

99% of amateur philosophy is drivel because not only is it founded on a system that is largely drivel, but the amateur philosopher tends to overstate the extent or relevance of whatever bit of philosophy they might have latched onto.

 

[Dogdoctor]

My perspective on the human mind. Your mind has limitations in it's ability to process data so you have to limit the data coming into your mind. Your mind acts like a filter and you take the input of your senses and your mind and place them into categories of significant and insignificant. So you walk along going from point A to point B and you have sensations and thoughts; you feel the air on your skin, the ground under your feet or shoes, the motion of your body, the smells of the area, thoughts of where you are going and other thoughts. Many objects within your field of view are not consciously noticed since they have been judged as insignificant. Much of your perception and sensations are ignored because you have automatically judged them as insignificant. Your mind does this subconsciously so most people don't recognize the activity. You see what appears to be a person but not too sure so your mind looks for more info. Yes it is a person, then usually is it a male or female? Do I recognize them? Do they require action? All of this occurs usually without a conscious thought unless there is a disparity or an action is desired or needed. You meet the person and they are talking to you. You hear their words but beyond that your subconscious mind picks up on their non verbal communications and you automatically react to them without consciously recognizing what is going on. Some of this is filtered out because you subconsciously categorize it as insignificant. The data you have available are your thoughts and sensations/perceptions. Your mind constantly makes judgments about all of these on a subconscious level and then what gets through to you is data you can make conscious judgments about their significance which you may or may not. So your experience of life and the world are always extremely limited due to limitations of your mind and limitations on the data you can acquire. Even if you focus on something, say you are studying a rock, you can look at it, touch it and feel the textures and temperatures and other tactile properties and you can smell it and you can hit it with your hammer and hear the resonance. In your mind you reference it with your data base of information and make a guess as to what it is. You maybe fairly convinced of what it is and yet you may be wrong. Everyone is limited in their ability to see the world. Some more than others. No matter how well you think you see the world your perceptions and your database is limited and so you can't really see it, still you can well enough to make accurate choices about things.

 

[Dancing David]

I used "a priori programming", if that's what you want to call it. Writing a program that could learned on its own to solve the puzzle would have been a complete nightmare, or downright impossible.

Complex and impossible are not exclusive, and it is the way that biological systems appear to develop consciousnesss. The human brain does not have a preexisting pattern for consciousness, it has the program to develop the structures of a brain, the brain has to interact with sensation , perception and the rest of the body for consciousnesss to accur.

So saying that your apriori way of creating a problem solving program is a reason that computational methods can not mimic consciousness is like saying that a cookbook can't build a house.

 

[Dancing David]

cpolk



Sorry don't have time for a reply to all of your post right now but this bit is interesting. That reduces all reality to information, leading to something that looks like information dual-aspect theory - a sort of neutral monism. Is this what you are suggesting?

Except for the fact that the information carried by the generating computer for the BIV is much simpler than the potential physical properties of the physical stick. The comuter only has to store the perceptual qualities of the physical stick.

 

[Dancing David]

Absolutely. But that position is called indirect realism. Indirect realism does not deny that there are "real physical objects". It just denies we perceive them directly.

Which is the problem of sensation and perception. We can not percieve directly, because of the nature of sensation and perception. But if you acept the appearance that perception is an entrained biological event, then the perceptions are directly dependant on the physical direct events.

Therefore both direct and indirect are true.

That would be the experience of being an object. I feel similarly about indirect realism. I'm not sure what it is supposed to mean.



No, that is a question for neuroscience alone, this is well and truly metaphysics. Indeed, "percieves" may not even be applicable, in this context, to what brains do. It is about subjective experience, and if you start talking about "brains perceiving things" then the p-zombie argument enters the frame and you end up arguing about whether there has been an assumption of physicalism. Part of what makes this debate interesting is that it sidesteps the arguments about physicalism.

I don't see how that is the case , assuming theat appearances are true.

The process is like this,
a.physical interactions meet with the pragans of perception.
b. the sense organs generate physical signals which are transmitted through nerves.
c. nerves interact in processing areas of the brain.
d. the brain constructs the qualia through the associative and filtered information presented by the sensation cortex to the frontal cortex.

In each step there is either sensation, transmission or perception, the final stage of the process.

So from the bilogical perspective, there are only phsyical processes leading to other process.

Both direct and indirect.

As you know, I am fairly certain I am no physicalist - but I am not even sure what my position on realism is. I defended direct realism in an essay, but I'm not sure I even believe it is true. There is no easy mapping between (direct realism / physicalism) (indirect realism / dualism) and (non-realism - idealism). Neither is there a straight mapping onto naturalism.

That is because it is a mix of both, the sense organs interact with other physical processes, which are a sort of reflected direct realism.
The brain generates the perception from the interaction of the sense organs. Which is indirect realism.

So it would seem that there is a blending of the two.

 

[davidsmith73]

Paul originally said:

It seems to be nothing more than a question of exactly how indirect our experiences are. I can't get a grip on what it would mean to experience an external object absolutely directly.

It would mean that the experience of the object is all that exists. There would be no need for any notion of the object existing independently of the experience. As soon as you conceive of "indirectly experiencing" (whatever that incoherent notion means), you are forced to admit the existence of experience-indepedent reality.

I think the existence of experience-independent reality is what scientific explanations of experience assume (although not necessarily needed). This leads to confused arguments about the merits of neuroscience on contributing to the central issue of this thread. The truth is, of course, that neuroscience cannot say anything about direct vs indirect realism because such "scientific facts" about perception etc already assume one side of the argument that we are trying to debate.

All my experiences are indirect. Exactly how much depends on neurophysiology.

And this is an example.

 

[davidsmith73]

. We can not percieve directly, because of the nature of sensation and perception. But if you acept the appearance that perception is an entrained biological event, then the perceptions are directly dependant on the physical direct events.

David, I think you are missing the central issue.

If you state that we cannot perceive directly then you must be assuming that an experience-independent reality exists. In other words, you are stating that we can only experience reality indirectly and therefore this reality must have a non-experiential nature to it.

I can accept that as a starting point for a philosophical position to defend, but you can't then appeal to scientific observations that already assume indirect realism in an attempt to give evidence for indirect realism.

I'm not one of those anti-science types, but I just can't see the merit of any "facts" about neurophysiology in this debate.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

It would mean that the experience of the object is all that exists. There would be no need for any notion of the object existing independently of the experience. As soon as you conceive of "indirectly experiencing" (whatever that incoherent notion means), you are forced to admit the existence of experience-indepedent reality.

Huh? If anything, I would say the opposite. If I can experience an object directly, that implies the object exists and I am somehow "melding" with it. If I can only experience an object indirectly, through my senses, then we might be able to dispense with the object completely and just fiddle with my senses (as Interesting Ian has claimed, I believe).

Check out the Wikipedia definition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_realism

~~ Paul

 

[Danhalen]

A) Pragmatism suggests that the question is unanswerable, and thus irrelevant. One vote for none of the above.

I can see it's been a while since this poll began and this response posted. I just wanted to agree with this whole heartedly.

Pragmatists in solidarity!

 

[davidsmith73]

Huh? If anything, I would say the opposite. If I can experience an object directly, that implies the object exists and I am somehow "melding" with it. If I can only experience an object indirectly, through my senses, then we might be able to dispense with the object completely and just fiddle with my senses (as Interesting Ian has claimed, I believe).

Check out the Wikipedia definition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_realism

~~ Paul

I do apologise, should really have read the definitions at the start of the thread. Yes, I now see where you're coming from with the direct vs indirect realism thing when both assume an experience-independent reality. From the wikipedia, indirect vs direct realism seem like versions of the same view to me. They both assume experience-indepenent objects

To me, the term "experiencing an object directly" seems to be a statement that doesn't need an experience-independent object. "The object" does exist but it only meaningfully exists as a certain experience/s, for example a visual experience or a mental concept. Hope that makes some sense.

 

[davidsmith73]

I can see it's been a while since this poll began and this response posted. I just wanted to agree with this whole heartedly.

Pragmatists in solidarity!

If the question is really not answerable then wouldn't that mean all three positions (indirect/direct/non realism) cannot be distinguished from one another in terms of any predictive power? And if that is true then couldn't we apply Occam's razor and opt for non-realism since it makes the least assumptions, i.e., no experience-indepdendent reality?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

To me, the term "experiencing an object directly" seems to be a statement that doesn't need an experience-independent object. "The object" does exist but it only meaningfully exists as a certain experience/s, for example a visual experience or a mental concept. Hope that makes some sense.

Ah, I see. But then what does it mean to call the thing an object? The metaphysic should be called "direct hallucination" or something.

I fear we have another example of metaphysic by wordplay.

~~ Paul

 

[davidsmith73]

But then what does it mean to call the thing an object?

If we're talking about our usual physical object, you would have a set of experiences that you would associate with your mental concept labelled "that object". Those associated experiences would be the stable, predictable kind that form logical relationships with one another. Strange as it may seem, I don't see the problem with thinking about physical objects that way. So, the mental concept we label as "an object" would simply refer to a set of a certain category of experiences. The main difference to the direct/indirect realism view, that I can identify, is the lack of any assumption that the experiences associated with mental concept of "that object" represent or reflect an experience-independent reality.

Why would they have to?

The metaphysic should be called "direct hallucination" or something.

It's interesting in that the non-realism view would essentially remove the subjective/objective barrier. I don't like your suggestion "direct hallucination" because that still carries a kind of vestigial sense that subjective reality has taken precident over objective. But both those concepts belong to some form of dualism, wherease we should be doing away with both concpets. An "hallucination" implies that the experience fails to represent any experience-independent reality. However, since I am suggesting we do not need such an assumed reality, the word should be thrown away!

I fear we have another example of metaphysic by wordplay.

I don't get this aversion to semantics. Even science is based on a semantic foundation isn't it?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The main difference to the direct/indirect realism view, that I can identify, is the lack of any assumption that the experiences associated with mental concept of "that object" represent or reflect an experience-independent reality.

Why would they have to?

And since there appears to be no way to devise any experiment to tell the difference, we're stuck. But I agree, we don't have to make any assumption one way or the other.

An "hallucination" implies that the experience fails to represent any experience-independent reality. However, since I am suggesting we do not need such an assumed reality, the word should be thrown away

I'd get rid of the word real first. I think most people would agree that real implies an external reality.

I don't get this aversion to semantics. Even science is based on a semantic foundation isn't it?

Yes, but when we're talking about untestable claims, science abandons them to philosophy. Philosophy then plays with them for millennia without making any progress, because, after all, there is no way to test them. That's what I call wordplay. But hey, a little wordplay is fun.

Question: When there is no external reality, how much of me is real internal stuff and how much is generated by whatever that internal stuff is?

~~ Paul

 

[Z]

If we assume no experience-independent reality exists, how does this differ from solipsism?

 

[Danhalen]

If the question is really not answerable then wouldn't that mean all three positions (indirect/direct/non realism) cannot be distinguished from one another in terms of any predictive power?

I don't think so. The question being unanswerable does not preclude being able to make any predictions based on any view. The pragmatic approach would assume the position which seems to make the most accurate prediction. Of course this assumption would be held tentatively as there is no possible way to objectively verify the position. It is held true simply because its predictive power seems to hold true. The only problem with this approach is we are no closer to truth, but pragmatism does not deal in truths; pragmatism deals in usefulness.

And if that is true then couldn't we apply Occam's razor and opt for non-realism since it makes the least assumptions, i.e., no experience-indepdendent reality?

I don't know how experience dependent realities make any less assumptions than objectivism or similar veins of thought.

 

[Roboramma]

And if that is true then couldn't we apply Occam's razor and opt for non-realism since it makes the least assumptions, i.e., no experience-indepdendent reality?

It doesn't make the least assumptions. For instance, the BIV point of view adds on a whole new level of explanation (a real reality of which we are unaware). Any explanation that is consistent with what we know has to take account at the least of the consistency of the observable universe.
The information exists. In fact, to me, that's all we're really talking about when we talk about "reality".

The universe is just things having effects on other things. We think of a rock as a solid object, but it's made up mostly of empty space, with some atoms hanging in it. We think of those atoms as little balls, but they're made up mostly of empty space, with a few particles floating around.
We think of those particles as little balls too, but all we know about them is the forces they exert on each other, and their interactions.

So, the universe is interacting particles. We know that if we put a rock down and it isn't moved, when we come back to it, it'll still be there. The universe is consistent.

To say that it's real or not doesn't change any of that. We know these interactions take place. We know the laws that underlie those interactions. What else is reality?