Fine&NOA
P. Thonemann
(966 words) I'm trying to persuade you - and myself - that Conjectural
Realism (CR) does not involve extreme claims about really real reality
(thump table) - real chairs which really exist in an external world - as
opposed to moderate claims about ordinary chairs which just exist. CR is
an analysis of common sense, which does not reach far beyond it. It is
close to a Natural Ontological Attitude.
I'd like to look at Ville's interesting posting (4894). He is uneasy
about Jonathan's inference from 'appearing' to 'reality' - rightly, since
I've argued that accepting inference leads us back to CR. "In an ordinary
situation", writes Ville, "this kind of inference never takes place". I
disagree. This is crucial. Contra Ville, the CR theory is that inference
does occur in an ordinary situation - though we naturally neither notice
it, nor linguistically refer to it. Ville writes: "I turn my head to the
left and I say "Hey! There is my bookshelf!" No inference is needed".
*Did an inference occur?* A thought-experiment suggests it did. Suppose
that the bookshelf now disappears, and someone says "Fooled you! That was
me testing my new hologram projection system onto your eyeball". Either
you say (i) No inference occurred; there was a bookshelf, or you say (ii) I
seemed to see a bookshelf (and hence inferred that there was a bookshelf),
but I now realise that there was no bookshelf. The second option expresses
the natural attitude.
I don't think it helps, Ville, to say that, in cases "when we are
right", there is no inference. What we mean by 'right' is that we have
obtained no evidence yet to think that there was no bookshelf. If we do
obtain some evidence, we will change our mind. In which case, the
bookshelf will leave the world - there will be no bookshelf in the story of
these events. But the story will still include have to include what we
experienced - the event of seeming to see a bookshelf. So, even in cases
where we would now say "we are right", we would accept that evidence could
come to light indicating that there was no bookshelf - but we would insist
that, however the story changes in the future, a real event occurred (see
below): we *seemed* to see a bookshelf.
Ville, I'm reading your posting carefully, and of course I'm not
dismissing it. The line of argument you and Jonathan are following is an
important one - maybe more contemporarily acceptable than mine.
"There isn't a bent stick anywhere..it just seems that the real stick -
which is 'out there in the world' is bent.... (this needs, of course, a
more careful analysis of 'seeming')" I think you might agree that this
isn't a million kilometres from CR. :-) No one is suggesting that there is
a bent stick in the mind of the perceiver - that I see a
'bent-stick-appearance or sense-datum, which exists, in some sense, as a
kind of *thing* apart from the stick. This way of expressing the CR theory
was abandoned, as making potentially misleading verbal presuppositions, in
favour of the adverbial expression (not that it makes much difference how
it is expressed - it is the idea that counts). So, the CR defender agrees
with you - there isn't a bent stick anywhere. There is a "real stick ...
out there in the world" which is straight. And there is us, the
perceivers, for whom it seems that the stick is bent.
Ville, don't worry about the "analysis" of 'seem' - unless you think
that it is giving us substantial problems with our philosophising. Roughly
(I'm sure you know), 'the stick seems bent' means 'we perceived the stick
as bent, the stick appeared bent, we had the experience that we would have
had seeing a bent stick', BUT the stick may (really) have been straight'.
The Rorty/Fine claim is that there isn't really a gap; the gap is an
artificial puzzle - leading on to scepticism - which arose as a result of
an unnecessary traditional empiricist theory. So you are rightly trying
hard to avoid the "gap between appearance and reality". But you are
snagging on aspects of ordinary experience - aspects which are nicely
explained by CR theory. My proposal is that if you strip out all the
extremist claims of Fine and Rorty about Realism (with a capital 'R') as a
special theory about Entities(x) Existing(x)in Reality(x) in an External
World(x), you are left with a very ordinary theory, which is little more
than what people everyday, and physicists, use.
On the Annihilation scenario: You conclude, firstly, that "how we
ordinarily represent the world to be, is not how it really is". This goes
considerably beyond CR. All I would propose, preferably without using the
slippery word 'represent', is that there may well be aspects of the world
of which we are not aware. That's all.
You want to make "appearing" not be "external to the external world",
but rather, if I understand you, be part of nature, part of what exists.
(I may have got this wrong) You want to "understand {the distinction
between perceiving and being} in a broadly naturalistic framework". Let me
finish by suggesting how this can be done.
What is there? (i) Perceiving, (ii) Sensing beings, and (iii) Material
things. Perceiving, sensing, is an event, an occurrence, a process. The
event requires the existence of a sensing being. The event does not
require the existence of the material things characterised in the
perceiving (eg. when we hallucinate a bent stick).
There is no reason to remove perceiving from nature - from what exists;
it is as much part of the natural course of events as a stick is.
Does this help?
Best wishes,
Philip
P.H.Thonemann
16 Shakespeare Road, Mill Hill, London, NW7 4BB Tel. 0181-959-4797
Home Page http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/index.html
Physics Teachers Home Page
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Manuel Delaflor
>Material things. Perceiving, sensing, is an event, an occurrence, a
>process. The event requires the existence of a sensing being. The
>event does not require the existence of the material things
>characterised in the perceiving (eg. when we hallucinate a bent
>stick).
>There is no reason to remove perceiving from nature - from what
>exists; it is as much part of the natural course of events as a stick
>is.
I will try to draw a different picture here, more or less the way I
see things, if you don't care ;-)
"perceiving" (as a human do "this" I will not discuss other possible
types of doing it) is varnished by language, language "invade" the
event, as you called it, and a human cannot escape this
"sensing beings" and "material things" are both drew FROM this
"perceiving", this is, the categories arise from a boundary
developed by language
of course with this viewing "nature" equals to all "things" (i, ii and
iii) being one single (thought complex) "unity" (or whatever you want
to call "it")
something more, "all" that it is "beyond" this human perception,
should be meaningless
"Reality" is not knowledgeable, is breathable!
______________________________________________
Manuel Delaflor Tat Tvam Asi
______________________________________________________
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Ville Nygren
> I'd like to look at Ville's interesting posting (4894). He is uneasy
> about Jonathan's inference from 'appearing' to 'reality' - rightly, since
> I've argued that accepting inference leads us back to CR. "In an ordinary
> situation", writes Ville, "this kind of inference never takes place". I
> disagree. This is crucial. Contra Ville, the CR theory is that inference
> does occur in an ordinary situation - though we naturally neither notice
> it, nor linguistically refer to it. Ville writes: "I turn my head to the
> left and I say "Hey! There is my bookshelf!" No inference is needed".
> *Did an inference occur?* A thought-experiment suggests it did. Suppose
> that the bookshelf now disappears, and someone says "Fooled you! That was
> me testing my new hologram projection system onto your eyeball". Either
> you say (i) No inference occurred; there was a bookshelf, or you say (ii) I
> seemed to see a bookshelf (and hence inferred that there was a bookshelf),
> but I now realise that there was no bookshelf. The second option expresses
> the natural attitude.
It may be that I did not express my claim as clearly as I should;
particularly the sentence 'in ordinary situation inference never takes
place' was misleading. Of course I count in the class of 'ordinary
situations' situations where inferring occurs. What I meant was that there
are situations in which we perceive something to be case, but not via any
kind of inference. In 'normal' situation when I perceive something to be a
case, I just instantly take it to be case. But, when there is something
'suspicious' in situation, I may withdraw my judgement; this happens in
cases like the one you described: There is perception (instantenous) AND
'additional information', which makes me to raise the question (concerning
my initial perceptual judgement): to endorse of not to endorse? I hold
that when there is no such additional information, the veridicality of
perception is taken for granted, no inferring occurs.
So, in 'seemings' we do inferring, not in ordirary situation. To claim
that we have to infer allways from 'seems' to 'is' is simply circular.
But more on this later,
Ville
P. Thonemann
I found your remarks slightly gnomic, but tempting...
>"perceiving" is varnished by language, language "invade" the
>event, as you called it, and a human cannot escape this
>
>"sensing beings" and "material things" are both drew FROM this
>"perceiving", this is, the categories arise from a boundary
>developed by language
>
>of course with this viewing "nature" equals to all "things" (i, ii and
>iii) being one single (thought complex) "unity" (or whatever you want
>to call "it")
>
>something more, "all" that it is "beyond" this human perception,
>should be meaningless
I don't think you should raise language onto such a special pedestal.
But some of your phrases strike a chord in me nonetheless. I, like you,
feel that the category of material things, and the category of sensing
being, are drawn from perceiving. The boundaries are devised
(instinctively or consciously) to explain aspects of the perceiving.
I also agree that all three aspects are part of nature. Where I somewhat
part company with you is when you say that anything beyond human perception
is meaningless:
(i) I think that we are probably limited, in concepts, to those that we
have abstracted from perceiving. We can use these concepts to make
conjectures about material things - including things such as electrons
which are, in one sense, beyond human perception, because they are so
small. However, in another sense, they are not, in that they are devised
on a familiar corpuscular model, like billiard balls.
(ii) There are aspects of things which are unavailable to us directly,
because of our particular sensory apparatus; we do not sense them. If
these aspects also don't affect *other* things in ways that we can then
sense, then we are doomed to never imagine their existence.
All the best,
Philip
P.H.Thonemann
16 Shakespeare Road, Mill Hill, London, NW7 4BB Tel. 0181-959-4797
Home Page http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/index.html
Physics Teachers Home Page
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/physicspages/physicshomepage.html
=============================================================================
Jeremy Bate
> > "In an ordinary
> > situation", writes Ville, "this kind of inference never takes place". I
> > disagree. This is crucial. Contra Ville, the CR theory is that inference
> > does occur in an ordinary situation - though we naturally neither notice
> > it, nor linguistically refer to it. Ville writes: "I turn my head to the
> > left and I say "Hey! There is my bookshelf!" No inference is needed".
> > *Did an inference occur?* A thought-experiment suggests it did. Suppose
> > that the bookshelf now disappears, and someone says "Fooled you! That was
> > me testing my new hologram projection system onto your eyeball". Either
> > you say (i) No inference occurred; there was a bookshelf, or you say (ii) I
> > seemed to see a bookshelf (and hence inferred that there was a bookshelf),
> > but I now realise that there was no bookshelf. The second option expresses
> > the natural attitude.
I don't follow this. Why does it follow from "I seemed to see a
bookshelf" that I inferred that there was bookshelf? Why must
there have been an inference at all? In fact, what does it actually
mean to speak of an inference in this case? Ville sees the
bookshelf. There's no doubt about it: he knows that it is a
bookshelf. He has learned what a bookshelf is. No question
(usually) of having to speculate or theorise about it. It's not as if
he's an archaeologist from the future trying to work out what the
purpose of the object was, or that he's bought an object from IKEA
in a flat-pack and is trying to figure out what it might be (a common
experience for those of us in the UK). Turns out he was wrong. "I
thought it was a bookshelf but it was just a hologram." But that
doesn't make his first confident assertion into an inference. No
more than I infer from reading this message that I can understand
English or that I am "perceiving" sense data. There are situations,
of course, where one might say this: have I recovered from my
blindness or the mental aberration which prevented me from
understanding English? Well, I can see / understand this
message, so I infer that I must have. But whence the logical
necessity for this in all cases? It has the hallmarks of a
metaphysical conspiracy to me.
jeremy
Mark Warren
them):
Mr. Bates challenges the notion tht someone looking at a bookcase and
saying, "Hey! (why such excitement, I wonder) There is my
bookshelf!" on the grounds, if I understand them, that inferring such
an inference is excessive; that to presume such a thing leads us down
a slippery slope (am I getting this right?) wherein we can be said to
make all sort of odd inferences every time we do just about anything.
So I would suggest that we drop the word "inference". It might be
clearer to say that the man saying, "Hey! There's my bookcase!" is
doing so in the *context* of CR. That is, CR is part and parcel of
the context in which he understands (and, if not in a sensory mode,
then at least in an intellectual--perceives) the world around him.
So that when the Evil Demon explains to him that he was actually just
looking at a hologram, he of course says "oh, yes--I understand
that." And everything still fits in the world view he has, since
nothing has contradicted his preconceptions (a tricky word to use,
because I'm edging closer and closer to the word "inference") about
CR.
The metaphor would be... well... Okay, a man walks down a dark alley
and is surrounded by a group of rough-looking characters. He reaches
for his mace not because he has just made a rather complicated
inference about certain inner-city social realities, but instead
because he was walking around the city with a certain world-view,
part of which included the... well, I'm not sure if "context" is the
right word to use, but I'll use it anyways--part of which included
the context of certain inner-city social realities.
Does that help or hinder?
Mark Warren
Philip Thonemann
(374 words) Thanks for your thoughts.
You wrote:
>there
>are situations in which we perceive something to be case, but not via any
>kind of inference. In 'normal' situation when I perceive something to be a
>case, I just instantly take it to be case. But, when there is something
>'suspicious' in situation, I may withdraw my judgement; this happens in
>cases like the one you described: There is perception (instantaneous) AND
>'additional information', which makes me to raise the question (concerning
>my initial perceptual judgement): to endorse of not to endorse? I hold
>that when there is no such additional information, the veridicality of
>perception is taken for granted, no inferring occurs.
>
>So, in 'seemings' we do inferring, not in ordinary situation. To claim
>that we have to infer always from 'seems' to 'is' is simply circular.
1 I don't think it is 'circular' in any sense. Still, that doesn't
matter; the main thing is that you don't agree with it!
2 I agree that usually "the veridicality of perception is taken for
granted". Philosophers are not ordinary people; we are probing beneath the
surface; we are not taking for granted things that people usually take for
granted.
My proposal is that the ever-present *possibility* of illusion,
hallucination, or dream - naturally ignored by ordinary people - shows that
inferring always occurs.
3 If we use 'perception' to refer to 'perceptual judgements', everything
you say is true. But perceptual judgements, and the endorsing of them as
true or false on the basis of additional information, comes later. **What
I am referring to in CR is the event of perceiving, which is separate both
from the verbal description of the event (propositions about the event),
and from the existence of the bookshelf.**
I am suggesting that this real event of perceiving is always,
consistently, the basis on which we infer the existence of the bookshelf -
even in cases where an ordinary, non-reflective, person would instantly
assume that they were in contact with the world, and that there was a
bookshelf.
4 In the ordinary case of 'seemings', this inference becomes, unusually,
explicit.
Best wishes from a rather damp London. Now I have to go and have a
tooth 'crowned' - Yuk!
Philip
P.H.Thonemann
16 Shakespeare Road, Mill Hill, London, NW7 4BB Tel. 0181-959-4797
Home Page http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/index.html
Physics Teachers Home Page
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/physicspages/physicshomepage.html
=============================================================================
Bruce Denner
> My proposal is that the ever-present *possibility* of illusion,
>hallucination, or dream - naturally ignored by ordinary people - shows that
>inferring always occurs.
Philip, do you mean that...
(1) if I ask folks they will agree, "Yes, I'm always inferring the
objectivity of the world"? or
(2) or that they are doing it unconsciously and hence would be unaware, or
(3) to play it safe we *should* point out that our perceptions of things
"out there" are only inferences.
In other words, are you writing a phenomenology of perception, a
psychological theory of perception, or philosophical justification of
claims to knowledge?
bruce
bde...@sonic.net
Manuel Delaflor
>I found your remarks slightly gnomic...
sorry about that!... ;-) its a very bad costume being that radical!
>I don't think you should raise language onto such a special
>pedestal.
On the contrary, perhaps Im dead wrong, but I cant see a way to
"escape" from language, for me, the "human consiousness" is its
language. We can "perceive" without language, but in this state there
are no world, no subject, no objects.. (I didnt like to call this
"perception" because its out of the reach of language, its circular, I
know)
>(i) I think that we are probably limited, in concepts, to those that
>we have abstracted from perceiving. We can use these concepts to
>make conjectures about material things - including things such as
>electrons which are, in one sense, beyond human perception, because
>they are so small. However, in another sense, they are not, in that
>they are devised on a familiar corpuscular model, like billiard
>balls.
Well, electrons are not beyond human perceptions, we use "sense
extenders" (microscopes etc) to actually see them. but Im talking
about something different, whats the difference between thinking in
"extension" (ala Locke) or "electrons" as the "inner nature of
objects"??
The difference is drawn by language and is only relevant if we can use
it to make things differently, our explanations are more or less
correlated with our perceptions, but are no more "real" (I always
remember Ptolomeus here, is our current notion about planetary
movement "more real"? it has only more prediction capabilities in my
view)
>(ii) There are aspects of things which are unavailable to us
>directly, because of our particular sensory apparatus; we do not
>sense them. If these aspects also don't affect *other* things in
>ways that we can then sense, then we are doomed to never imagine
>their existence.
Take for example the radio waves for a tribe in Africa, for them its
existence is irrelevant. For them "radio waves" is meaningless, unless
you give them a radio and proper education, that was my point.
Manuel Delaflor
Manuel Delaflor
because it represent better my position and can raise, hopefully, some
other comments that could make me learn from my mistakes, thanks)
Gary, thanks for writing
>Yes, this happens often. But how often? Before humans had
>language, they had perceptions. A cat has perceptions.
>We still have many perceptions for which we have no words. Our
>perceptions are more complicated than our language.
I tried to say that a "human perception" is all we know, we infer the
perceptions in other animals (and a hole lot more), but this is from
OUR perspective. What I was trying to do is much bigger than to say a
couple of things about language and the world. I was trying to say
that we need new ontological and epistemological positions in order to
advance to a new kind of philosophy, this is TOO ambitious, I know..
but well ;-)
Seriously, Im trying to say that the world begins in an
indiferenciated state, then this state becomes more complex and the
world and the perceptors appears. It is a kind of solipsism that can
deal with a "certain kind" of realism, I see that there is "something"
beyond my mind, this "something" is beyond my language and my
comprehension. FROM my human perspective, I call that .... as the
universe, with sensing beings and objets and space time and so on..
this is:
>>"sensing beings" and "material things" are both drew FROM this
>>"perceiving", this is, the categories arise from a boundary
>>developed by language
as I said, this human perceiving is much more than a simply "receiving
data throught senses of an external reality" in this position we are
assuming just to many things, and nothing is resolved yet, at least
from the point of view of philosophers!
>The categories we use in speech are, of course, linguistic. An
>example would be the term "apples." Of course, we assume that
>apples exist whether we give them names or not.
to me this is an absurd, "apples" and "observers of apples" are both
the same thing, the same "being", they are the two poles of a
dialectic relation. I see no point in claiming that "the world exists"
or "snow is white iff snow is white" all this, and let me
say it again, ALL THIS belong to US, all this IS US
my english is so poor that I cannot explain this better to you,
sorry!!
"Reality" is not knowledgeable, is breathable!
______________________________________________
Manuel Delaflor Tat Tvam Asi
=============================================================================
Jeremy Bate
> The metaphor would be... well... Okay, a man walks down a dark alley
> and is surrounded by a group of rough-looking characters. He reaches
> for his mace not because he has just made a rather complicated
> inference about certain inner-city social realities, but instead
> because he was walking around the city with a certain world-view,
> part of which included the... well, I'm not sure if "context" is the
> right word to use, but I'll use it anyways--part of which included
> the context of certain inner-city social realities.
>
> Does that help or hinder?
I think it's about a draw. But why not just: "he reached for his
mace because he was surrounded by a group of rough-looking
characters"? Or: "He jumped out of the way because the car was
heading straight for him". Doesn't that explain his behaviour
perfectly to anyone who understands what a rough character or a
car is?
jeremy
Philip Thonemann
Jeremy has excused himself from this conversation for now, but I'll carry
on as if he is still listening. (By the way, never mention "flat packed
furniture" again...)
Jeremy wrote:
>Why does it follow from "I seemed to see a
>bookshelf" that I inferred that there was bookshelf? Why must
>there have been an inference at all? In fact, what does it actually
>mean to speak of an inference in this case? Ville sees the
>bookshelf. There's no doubt about it: he knows that it is a
>bookshelf. He has learned what a bookshelf is. No question
>(usually) of having to speculate or theorise about it. It's not as if
>he's an archaeologist from the future trying to work out what the
>purpose of the object was, or that he's bought an object from IKEA
>in a flat-pack and is trying to figure out what it might be (a common
>experience for those of us in the UK). Turns out he was wrong. "I
>thought it was a bookshelf but it was just a hologram." ... But whence
>the logical necessity for this in all cases? It has the hallmarks of a
>metaphysical conspiracy to me.
The key issue arises at "Ville sees the bookshelf. There's no doubt
about it". Just because he is confident, thinks he has no normal reason to
doubt it, doesn't happen to doubt it, doesn't imply that it is not open to
doubt. He is getting on with his life, not reflecting carefully on his
situation; his judgements on this matter are not valuable - certainly not
decisive.
So I examine his situation, and our own, reflecting on all the evidence
I have. I realise that he is being vague when he says "I see the bookshelf
there". He is claiming some combination of "I am bookshelf-pattern
sensing" and "There is a bookshelf there"; usually the mixture causes no
problem in communication.
How do I justify analysing his claim into these two parts? {Note that I
am not suggesting that this is "logically necessary". Not at all. My
suggestion is that the division is a *conjectural global theory*, which
provides the best available explanation of the variety of evidence we have
about perceiving, and about things.}
Step 1: One of our bits of evidence is that we realise that the event
that happens at the moment when we see a bookshelf, see a hologram of a
bookshelf, hallucinate..., is, in one respect, the same. This event E is
private, or internal, to us. Accepting this evidence is crucial to the
argument.
Step 2: We then need to accept, as you do, that the occurrence of this
event E alone is not sufficient to establish that the bookshelf exists. E
establishes a probability - which depends on the kinds of other evidence
that you mention. Sometimes the probability is very high - but there is
always the possibility of an alternative explanation of E (hologram,
hallucination).
Step 3: I call the process of moving from E to its explanation (there is
a bookshelf) an 'inference', because it is similar to any other inference
to the best explanation, or abduction.
If you accept the first two steps as describing our situation - if
humans remain they are and the world remains as it is - then the existence
of the bookshelf will remain inferred from events like E. {Again, this is
not logically necessary; it just happens to be how things are}
Best wishes,
Philip
P.H.Thonemann
16 Shakespeare Road, Mill Hill, London, NW7 4BB Tel. 0181-959-4797
Home Page http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/index.html
Physics Teachers Home Page
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Philip Thonemann
(483 words) Before Jonathan signed off this strand, he sent me the
following posting on perceptual error: "which it is pressing for NOAers to
explain."
>
>I really didn't mean to invoke an appearance versus reality distinction in
>describing cases of illusion. Instead I tried to say that there was an
>explanation of illusory experience and this explanation is tied to the
>explanation of object shape. So in the case of a stick-in-water we can
>explain both the stick's shape and the perceptual experience of the stick's
>shape and perhaps explain how sticks-in-water produce perceptual experiences
>of bent sticks. Both the perceptual experience and the shape of the stick
>are real. We shouldn't say as NOAers that one is merely phantasmal or
>appearance and the other reality. Instead we account for error by showing
>that when one forms a belief about the shape of the stick without possessing
>the right collateral information one makes a mistake. That is when one
>infers from 'That stick looks bent' to 'That stick is bent'. So we can have
>a theory of perceptual error without invoking the appearance/reality
>distinction.
Aha! Maybe NOA *is* the same as Conjectural Realism, expressed in
different words (as Rodrigo has been suspecting). We agree that:
(a) there is a stick, with the stick's shape (real)
(b) there is the perceptual experience (of the stick's shape) (also real)
(c) the perceptual experience is described as "That stick looks bent" (or
"That stick appears bent")
(d) we may make the mistaken inference from this, because of lack of
collateral information, that "That stick is bent".
(e) So, from the propositional description of real perceptual experience,
we infer that a proposition about real things is true
(f) thought later, once we have further information, we judge the same
proposition to be false.
I would describe this as "invoking the appearance/reality
distinction(1)", *in the sense that* the perceptual experiencing (how the
stick appears) is distinguished from the stick. I would also describe this
as a commonsense realistic(x) model (to distinguish it from forms of
idealism etc.)
Maybe there is another interpretation of "the appearance/reality
distinction(2)" - presumably the one that Jonathan intends, in which an
appearance is a "mere phantasm" - not real - while objects are real. But
the word 'real(x)' is merely hindering us here. We don't need it.
So I propose (again!) that the Fine/Rorty view is the same as mine
(avoiding labels...)
But this view - with its agreed commonsense distinction, however we
describe it - leads to the traditional philosophical problems that they are
so keen to avoid. For example, the possibility now rears its ugly head
that crucial collateral information is lacking - information which, shortly
to be obtained, will demonstrate that our later inference to "That stick is
straight" was just as unsound as our earlier one to "That stick is bent";
this information will indicate that *there is no stick* - that we are
instead in a hospital bed, in the process of waking from the coma that we
have been in since a car accident last week.
True, we do not yet have this information. But that is not relevant.
True, this doubt will make no practical difference to anything that we now
do. But the philosopher has only ever wanted to point out the curious
*possibility* of this doubt.
Philip Thonemann
Thanks, as always, for your interest. I wrote:
>> My proposal is that the ever-present *possibility* of illusion,
>>hallucination, or dream - naturally ignored by ordinary people - shows that
>>inferring always occurs.
You responded:
>Philip, do you mean that...
>
>(1) if I ask folks they will agree, "Yes, I'm always inferring the
>objectivity of the world"? or
>
>(2) or that they are doing it unconsciously and hence would be unaware, or
>
>(3) to play it safe we *should* point out that our perceptions of things
>"out there" are only inferences.
>
>In other words, are you writing a phenomenology of perception, a
>psychological theory of perception, or philosophical justification of
>claims to knowledge?
Excellent question. Certainly (3). I am reconstructing knowledge,
locating the parts that are least doubtful, and those which are potentially
mistaken inferences from these parts. I am, as you say, working out the
varying extents to which humans are justified in making the claims to
knowledge that we make.
People normally make the inferences unconsciously.
But if folks reflect sufficiently on their situation, my experience is
that they will indeed agree that "Yes, I'm always inferring the
(objectivity of the) world". Most will hastily add that it is all
pointless speculation - quite right too; we don't want too many
philosophers around; most people are far to practical to care about these
things :-)) So the inference can, temporarily, be made conscious. Hume
would agree that 'temporary' is as far as we should ever go, if we want to
stay happy...
Notice that, as I always try to remember to do, I am systematically
ignoring the names you have used to refer to some classifications. The
attempt at classifying views causes more harm than good; we are classifying
animals, but sometimes it is wise to resist the temptation :-) So I am
writing ... what I am writing. The only substantial question is: "Is is
right?"
Bruce Denner
> So I examine his situation, and our own, reflecting on all the evidence
>I have. I realise that he is being vague when he says "I see the bookshelf
>there". He is claiming some combination of "I am bookshelf-pattern
>sensing" and "There is a bookshelf there"; usually the mixture causes no
>problem in communication.
Philip, the claim "I see the bookshelf there" doesn't sound vague to me. I
know exactly what it means. Of course, the claim can be dead wrong. A
figment of his imagination, what have you. So, he hedges his bet with a
claim about "bookshelf-pattern" sensing. But since I have no way of knowing
what he is sensing, I can't determine whether this claim is true or false.
Then again, can he determine whether in fact he *sensed* a
bookshelf-pattern? A bookshelf there, in the room, that we both see,
doesn't tell me anything about his sensations.
bruce
bde...@sonic.net
Philip Thonemann
(430 words) I have just read again your helpful remarks (4931)
concerning dropping the word,and the concept, 'inference' in Conjectural
Realism.
You are right that 'inference' does perhaps connote a more active process
than actually occurs just before we say "Hey! There's my bookcase!". We
clearly are not claiming that, for example, a person starts by being
conscious of bookcase-pattern sensing, and then continues by consciously
cogitating on the vexed question of what might have caused this sensing,
eventually coming to the conclusion that, at least this time, given the
available information, we can infer, as the best available explanation,
that there is a bookcase.
You are suggesting, I think, that CR is a background global theory of our
situation - a context, a "world view", as you called it. For example, a
concrete example of the global theory is the person's awareness that their
sensing could have been caused in various ways, only one of which is the
existence of the bookcase. The choice of explanation of the sensing is
then to be made on the basis of associated information (such as messages
from an Evil Demon, as you say) With the theory in place, the sensing,
combined with appropriate associated information, seamlessly implies the
existence, or the non-existence, of the bookcase.
If we are walking around with this world view in place - this analysis of
our own perceptual situation - then the move from sensing to "Hey! There's
my bookcase!" is immediate.
I find this very helpful. Thanks.
BUT:
As you also said, references to 'move' show that we are still referring
to a process that could be described as an 'inference'. This is hardly
surprising. What words we use to describe the process is ultimately not
important; what matters is whether we are successfully communicating to
each other an idea.
For instance, I would be perfectly happy to describe this idea with the
following words: The person is walking around with CR as a global theory of
his perceptual situation - as always. Some sensing occurs. He combines
this with available background information BI (No fog, Demons, ingestion of
illegal substances, people in white coats, subsequent sound of alarm clock
and sensing of bed) and infers, using {CR; sensing; BI} that, in this case,
there is a bookcase.
As you nicely describe it, the value of this analysis is that it explains
why the person is able calmly to understand (your word) later
re-interpretations of the sensing - as caused by a hologram. **CR, his
global theory, prepares him permanently for this possibility.**
Best wishes,
Philip
P.H.Thonemann
16 Shakespeare Road, Mill Hill, London, NW7 4BB Tel. 0181-959-4797
Home Page http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/index.html
Physics Teachers Home Page
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/physicspages/physicshomepage.html
=============================================================================
Bruce Denner
> I am reconstructing knowledge
Hate to be picky, but just what is (and is not) knolwedge? I tend to call
"knowledge" those claims which are testable. Mental states, moods,
sensations, etc. I don't call knolwedge. So, by my definition, knowledge is
always potentially disconfirmable.
>locating the parts that are least doubtful
Do you mean doubtful in the sense of a "sense of certainty", stuff I'ver
never doubted, e.g., my name is Bruce, the sun will rise in the East or
doubtful because of the conclusive evidence at hand, e.g., inteligence is
inherited?
Here I'm making a distinction between everday knowing and theoretical
knowledge. Amnd since you claim you are interested in justifying what we
know, I'd say that the everday is justified by living in a culture, while
the latter is justified by the methods developed by the specific
discipline.
I recognize that you want a global account, and, of course, our "senses"
are used in both contexts. But, as far as I can tell, sensations, as such,
play a small part in either context. Whether within the ordinary or the
theoretical, we are concerned with things in the world. So, I wouldn't
agree with the following...
> But if folks reflect sufficiently on their situation, my experience is
>that they will indeed agree that "Yes, I'm always inferring the
>(objectivity of the) world".
Now Philip, just to test what sort of theory you have here, suppose that 8
out of 10 say, "I don't infer"? I guess your next move is to claim it
happens "unconsciously". And how would one test that? Then again, are you
proposing a testable theory, for which one can asked (as you suggest)"Is it
right?" or a way of talking about your experience which promotes a sense of
certainty?
bruce
bde...@sonic.net
Ville Nygren
> As you also said, references to 'move' show that we are still referring
> to a process that could be described as an 'inference'. This is hardly
> surprising. What words we use to describe the process is ultimately not
> important; what matters is whether we are successfully communicating to
> each other an idea.
> For instance, I would be perfectly happy to describe this idea with the
> following words: The person is walking around with CR as a global theory of
> his perceptual situation - as always. Some sensing occurs. He combines
> this with available background information BI (No fog, Demons, ingestion of
> illegal substances, people in white coats, subsequent sound of alarm clock
> and sensing of bed) and infers, using {CR; sensing; BI} that, in this case,
> there is a bookcase.
But as you put it, BI containst information, that is NOT seeming, but
rather facts: the 'inferer' knows the backround information, it is a
matter of fact that he has not ingested drugs, there are no demons around
etc. How he/she comes to know these facts? by inferring again, from
another set of premises {CR;sensing;BI}. Does the BI belonging to this set
contain fact statements, or are we supposed to reach the point where the
backround information contains only 'seemings/sensings'? I feel myself
little uncomfortable with situation like such: though I am not able to
explicate my worry in detail, it seems that in such situation we could not
get from 'seems' to 'is'.(I think this is basically the traditional
problem of external world, only put in linguistic terms.)
As I see it, we can escape this situation by simply claiming that we
respond to external stimuli with fact-stating propositions, and if we have
BI that contains sentences that are not compatible with the proposition in
question, we either infer that the proposition is not true, it only
_seems_ that it is so or we can make adjustements in our BI. Thus:
1.BI
2.perceptual taking p (caused by stimulus)
3.BI & p is false
____________
so, either 'BI & seems that p' or
'P is true & for some x, responsible for 3., in BI: x is false'.
Why you cannot accept this?
Best wishes,
Ville
PS. I am starting to feel that maybe our disagreement is only with words:
you want to call inferring something that I would describe as reaction to
stimuli...
Philip Thonemann
(179 words) You wrote:
>So, he hedges his bet with a
>claim about "bookshelf-pattern" sensing. But since I have no way of knowing
>what he is sensing, I can't determine whether this claim is true or false.
>Then again, can he determine whether in fact he *sensed* a
>bookshelf-pattern? A bookshelf there, in the room, that we both see,
>doesn't tell me anything about his sensations.
"One question at a time" is a good motto. "What is the best explanation
of our experiencing?", is the primary question, which CR attempts to
answer. Then, *if CR is the best available explanation*, supplementary
questions arise. Rather than proceeding to worry about these questions, we
need to decide on our answer to the primary one.
For example, you are here touching, naturally, on such issues as colour
reversal sensing. *If* the distinction between what 'private sensing'
refers to, and what 'public thing' refers to, is accepted, then private
colour sensing reversal, surprisingly consistent with public agreement on
colour classification of things, becomes possible. But this is a big 'IF'!
Best wishes,
Philip
P.H.Thonemann
16 Shakespeare Road, Mill Hill, London, NW7 4BB Tel. 0181-959-4797
Home Page http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/index.html
Physics Teachers Home Page
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~thonemann/physicspages/physicshomepage.html
=============================================================================
Bruce Denner
>"What is the best explanation of our experiencing?", is the primary
>question, which CR attempts to
>answer.
Philip, I'm sorry, I unclear what "an explanation of experiencing" could
be. Sounds like what a research psychologist might ask, eg., "What is the
best explanation for the experience of terror". But I know yours is not a
research question. When you get down to details, you seem to be asking
something like...
"What is best argument that our experience (what you call "private
sensing") corresponds to, adequately represents, something along these
lines, the real world (what you call the "public thing").
In brief, you appear to be arguing against some form of specticism, e.g.,
either there is no world, it's all a fantasy projection, or there is one
but it is unknowable...something like that.
Finally, you answer, your "best available explanation", that we knwo the
world to be real through conjecture, sounds to me like a variation of the
Kantian solution, viz., the transcendental ego, transcendental because, as
you say the conjecture is unconscious.
Philip, is this a fair characterization of your claim?
bruce
bde...@sonic.net
Jeremy Bate
> Step 2: We then need to accept, as you do, that the occurrence of this
> event E alone is not sufficient to establish that the bookshelf exists. E
> establishes a probability - which depends on the kinds of other evidence
> that you mention. Sometimes the probability is very high - but there is
> always the possibility of an alternative explanation of E (hologram,
> hallucination).
> If you accept the first two steps as describing our situation - if
> humans remain they are and the world remains as it is - then the existence
> of the bookshelf will remain inferred from events like E. {Again, this is
> not logically necessary; it just happens to be how things are}
Well, shockingly, I think I don't disagree with _absolutely_
everything Philip says on this occasion :-).
In brief -
1. I agree that one cannot infer that something is the case from
the fact that one doesn't - or cannot reasonably - doubt that it is
the case.
2. Our attitude to the world (a terrible way of putting it) is based
upon a multitude of unreflective assumptions (again a terrible word)
about it. Not in the sense of inferences about the world, but as a
kind of perceptual framework against which our inferences,
assumptions, doubts, etc have sense. That's an awful way of
putting it, but what I have in mind are such notions as: physical
objects do not vanish out of existence without explanation; when I
open the door to my house I will not find a gaping chasm in the
floor; when I get up from my chair, I will have feet to stand on; I
am a male living in the UK, etc. I don't come to these basic
notions on the basis of inferences. I don't infer that I have feet from
the fact that I haven't fallen over when I stand up, or that I won't fall
into a gaping chasm when I step into my house on the basis that
it's never happened before, there aren't earthquakes in this part of
the world etc.
2 points of disagreement with Philip:
1. Back to the bookshelf. Philip's thesis has a crumb (an
elegant crumb, mind, as always) of plausibility on the basis that he
speaks only of our visual perception of it. He says that there is
always the possibility that we may turn out to be mistaken on the
basis of other evidence - a hologram in his example. But what
about when we have made sure about the bookshelf? That is, not
only have we seen it in our own library (ie not Madame Tussauds),
but we have touched it, put our books on it, looked behind and
below it in good light, etc., we're not suffering from delusions, as far
as we know, and everyone else that we speak to agrees that the
object certainly is a bookshelf. Is there still room for doubt as to
whether it is a bookshelf? I would say not. Not just that it's
"very possibly" the bookshelf, but that the expression of doubt
here wouldn't make sense, anymore than it would make sense for
me doubt that I have feet or that I am a male. If I look down to
check whether I have feet on my legs, am I checking my feet or
my eyes? Could I be mistaken about this, or about whether I am
a male living in the UK etc.? I mean, what would a mistake look
like here? What would count as evidence that I am not a male
resident of the UK? "Dang. All these years I thought I was living in
England and it turns out I'm actually a little girl living in Tanzania".
To quote Normal Malcolm: What a blunder! As Wittgenstein
says, if I'm wrong about this sort of thing, that's not a mistake, it's
evidence of a mental aberration: a remark about the logic of the
concept of doubt, mistake,etc, rather than psychology.
2. The fact that no reasonable doubt exists about something does
not entail that it's true. But neither does that entail that there is
always the possibility of doubt after all, so that we can only
achieve a high degree of probability and never certainty about
factual statements. What Philip has pointed to is an interesting
feature of the logical grammar (sorry Rodrigo) of the concepts of
doubt and certainty, rather than a discovery about the fabric of the
world.
jeremy