Do we really perceive anything?

[Speakpigeon]

Yes, exactly, provided you also doubt just about any conceivable alternative, including the one which says that there may be nothing beyond impressions.
EB

Seems right to me what you are saying here. As I have said many times, what actually exists seems to be unknowable to humans including human science.

This process of going on discovering illusions in our world view and rejecting them, what do you think about this activity?

I don't think that there is anything necessary to think of this situation. We may think whatever we like, though.

Also, to talk of "illusion" as you do here is misleading since it suggests you know that an illusion is an illusion, i.e. that there is nothing in the material world like what is suggested by the illusion. Knowing that would be knowing something about the material world.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Isn't that what we are all dealing with, i.e. trying to figure out what is real and what is mere impression.

Then, philosophy, maybe just a part of it, though a big one, and Kant no doubt, could be said to be the professionalisation of that activity.
EB

I agree that a part of philosophy is and Kant was doing this activity professionally. And right now we are doing this activity also.

But an overwhelming majority of people in many ways do not want to discover delusions in their world views, and they are not only ignorant, they are willfully ignorant (self-deceiving).

What do you think?

Self-deceiving or willfully ignorant seem to be equally misleading. They suggest you know there is a "self", that it can deceive itself, that you have something you call "will" that makes sense etc.

My attitude is that I don't know that this idea of not knowing anything about a material world has any implication about such a world. I'm happy to assume that what we believe may be a fact of some real world but if I start to assume anything definitive about it I contradict myself. All I can say is that the idea that one knows something about the kind of material world we seem to believe in is self-contradictory. This is not a psychological fact about people having this idea, it's a logical point.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm a sensory psychologist who just can't pull the trigger on this topic. Is the goal of philosophy to get at reality or is it to get at the reality that humans survive in. My take is that reality is way beyond what humans can process even that which is right around them. On the other hand reality of survival or that reality we use to get from this generation to the next, still well beyond what the classicists had in mind, may be approachable.

Thus thinking, I want to stick my toe in here by suggesting the reality of survival leads to approximations getting ever nearer what biological systems can do with what they are embedded in. The mind being no more than a construct which it appears is going to be reduced to some sort of a social descriptor in the next few decades. My impression is that the the aware human being is several aware things at once with one or another of them holding sway at any onetime. Yet it is apparent that we come to appreciate stimuli to some very low level and seem able to scale it to relatively high levels in our expected environment.

Integrating these sensations to world view seems well beyond our current abilities to determine except by making huge self evident claims. I'm beginning to feel like 'Sutherland did in the fifties when computers were coming into the research arena.

I'm quite convinced that the wast majority of people, probably even the vast majority of scientists, will continue to use the non-reduced notion of mind as their main paradigm when it comes to living their interpersonal, professional and more generally their social lives. It's probably a question of survival if it came to that.

Philosophy is not defined by goals but by how it does what it does. Philosophers would have goals but I don't see why they should have the same. Unlike science, almost anyone can do philosophy and do it without paying any attention to what other people doing philosophy may be doing.

The fact of survival, if it is a fact, only makes it necessary that there should be some mechanism for individual organisms and individual species to have adapted fast enough to their environment. But there is no fact of survival that would make us somehow come ever closer to anything. We will or we won't survive. That we have survived does not foretell whether we will. This is true of now and this will still be true in a million years, if evolution is at all a fact.

The idea that human science could improve for ever, while maybe true in the abstract, overlook the bare necessity that science requires resources and that ever better science may well require ever more resources, resources that may one day be in short supply in the context of the time. One such resource may indeed be intelligence. But, hey, if the mind is reduced, I guess it would mean that artificial intelligence would get cheaper than dirt. Such a shame I won't be around to see that.
EB

 

[Togo]

Unlike science, almost anyone can do philosophy and do it without paying any attention to what other people doing philosophy may be doing.

????

Why can't you do science while ignoring what other scientists are doing? I've worked with scientists who do just that, much to my annoyance. It seriously effects the usefulness of your work, of course, but the same is true in philosophy.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Unlike science, almost anyone can do philosophy and do it without paying any attention to what other people doing philosophy may be doing.

????

Why can't you do science while ignoring what other scientists are doing? I've worked with scientists who do just that, much to my annoyance. It seriously effects the usefulness of your work, of course, but the same is true in philosophy.

So this guy wasn't even trained as a scientist? Because if he did then of course he does not qualifies as a counterexample.

Same thing if he publishes anything in scientific journals or has discussions on science with even just one scientist friend.

One can do philosophy without even knowing that there is a philosophical tradition, without having read any philosophical text, without knowing any published philosophy, and without having trained as a philosopher. Of course this will affect the standard of presentation of your work but not necessarily the value of it. All you need is contact with other human beings and language, and I guess some wit.
EB

 

[Kharakov]

You're talking about sophistry.

 

[ontological_realist]

I agree that a part of philosophy is and Kant was doing this activity professionally. And right now we are doing this activity also.

But an overwhelming majority of people in many ways do not want to discover delusions in their world views, and they are not only ignorant, they are willfully ignorant (self-deceiving).

What do you think?

Self-deceiving or willfully ignorant seem to be equally misleading. They suggest you know there is a "self", that it can deceive itself, that you have something you call "will" that makes sense etc.

My attitude is that I don't know that this idea of not knowing anything about a material world has any implication about such a world. I'm happy to assume that what we believe may be a fact of some real world but if I start to assume anything definitive about it I contradict myself. All I can say is that the idea that one knows something about the kind of material world we seem to believe in is self-contradictory. This is not a psychological fact about people having this idea, it's a logical point.
EB

I do not understand your reply. So let me go through it again slowly.

You wrote,"Isn't that what we are all dealing with, i.e. trying to figure out what is real and what is mere impression."

This implies that you are trying to figure out what is real and what is mere impression and this also implies that you are saying that there is some thing real and there is some thing which is mere impression.

So far do I understand you correctly?

 

[Speakpigeon]

This implies that you are trying to figure out what is real and what is mere impression?

Yes.

and this also implies that you are saying that there is some thing real and there is some thing which is mere impression.

Not exactly. I have any number of impressions, some may be "real", i.e. what they seem to be an impression of exists, and some may be "mere impressions", i.e. what they seem to be an impression of does not in fact exist. But, how would we know which is which? All we can do is try to convince ourselves of one or the other. Often it seems straightforward, sometimes we fail to arrive at any conviction.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

You're talking about sophistry.

Am I?!

Can you explain?
EB

 

[Kharakov]

You're talking about sophistry.

Am I?!

Can you explain?
EB

Not without sophistry.

 

[ontological_realist]

Seems right to me what you are saying here. As I have said many times, what actually exists seems to be unknowable to humans including human science.

This process of going on discovering illusions in our world view and rejecting them, what do you think about this activity?

I don't think that there is anything necessary to think of this situation. We may think whatever we like, though.

Also, to talk of "illusion" as you do here is misleading since it suggests you know that an illusion is an illusion, i.e. that there is nothing in the material world like what is suggested by the illusion. Knowing that would be knowing something about the material world.
EB

At night time you may see further on the road what you take to be a dog but coming nearer you discover that it is not a dog but a bush. So then you realize that it was not a dog but only that you had an illusion of a dog. Then you have come to know some thing about the material world which you did not know before, ie. that on that road, at that place and at that time there was no dog.

 

[ontological_realist]

I agree that a part of philosophy is and Kant was doing this activity professionally. And right now we are doing this activity also.

But an overwhelming majority of people in many ways do not want to discover delusions in their world views, and they are not only ignorant, they are willfully ignorant (self-deceiving).

What do you think?

Self-deceiving or willfully ignorant seem to be equally misleading. They suggest you know there is a "self", that it can deceive itself, that you have something you call "will" that makes sense etc.

My attitude is that I don't know that this idea of not knowing anything about a material world has any implication about such a world. I'm happy to assume that what we believe may be a fact of some real world but if I start to assume anything definitive about it I contradict myself. All I can say is that the idea that one knows something about the kind of material world we seem to believe in is self-contradictory. This is not a psychological fact about people having this idea, it's a logical point.
EB

"All I can say is that the idea that one knows something about the kind of material world we seem to believe in is self-contradictory. This is not a psychological fact about people having this idea, it's a logical point."
EB

Very interesting! Would you please explain it?

 

[fromderinside]

The idea that human science could improve for ever, while maybe true in the abstract, overlook the bare necessity that science requires resources and that ever better science may well require ever more resources, resources that may one day be in short supply in the context of the time.
EB

That's the beauty of it. Oh wait. That's philosophy.

Are we done?

 

[Speakpigeon]

I don't think that there is anything necessary to think of this situation. We may think whatever we like, though.

Also, to talk of "illusion" as you do here is misleading since it suggests you know that an illusion is an illusion, i.e. that there is nothing in the material world like what is suggested by the illusion. Knowing that would be knowing something about the material world.
EB

At night time you may see further on the road what you take to be a dog but coming nearer you discover that it is not a dog but a bush. So then you realize that it was not a dog but only that you had an illusion of a dog.

It is still conceivable that it would still not be a bush after all but something else, including a dog. If you accept the principle of the illusion then you have to be consistent and apply it as possibility for all apparent instances of perception of the material world.

Of course you remain free to believe that there are instances when we know we are not prey to some illusion. Whether you know that, personally I don't believe it. If your are under the spell of an illusion you don't know you are. So, how would you know you are not under the spell of some illusion now or at any given time?

Then you have come to know some thing about the material world which you did not know before, ie. that on that road, at that place and at that time there was no dog.

That's conceivable and I sure don't know that it's wrong. That's also broadly what we tend to believe. Whether that's really possible or even a fact on some specific occasions I don't believe we know.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Self-deceiving or willfully ignorant seem to be equally misleading. They suggest you know there is a "self", that it can deceive itself, that you have something you call "will" that makes sense etc.

My attitude is that I don't know that this idea of not knowing anything about a material world has any implication about such a world. I'm happy to assume that what we believe may be a fact of some real world but if I start to assume anything definitive about it I contradict myself. All I can say is that the idea that one knows something about the kind of material world we seem to believe in is self-contradictory. This is not a psychological fact about people having this idea, it's a logical point.
EB

"All I can say is that the idea that one knows something about the kind of material world we seem to believe in is self-contradictory. This is not a psychological fact about people having this idea, it's a logical point."
EB

Very interesting! Would you please explain it?

If we believe we perceive the material world through our organs of perception and as mental representations of it somehow processed within our brains then whatever we come to be aware of is mediated by this process. There is this process between whatever fact is to be perceived and the actual perception of it we come to be aware of. So, what we know is the percept produced by our brain not the fact perceived. This follows from our basic belief about the material world that we perceive it through our body and from our belief about the process of perception. Maybe these beliefs are wrong but we have no other that I know of.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

The idea that human science could improve for ever, while maybe true in the abstract, overlook the bare necessity that science requires resources and that ever better science may well require ever more resources, resources that may one day be in short supply in the context of the time.
EB

That's the beauty of it. Oh wait. That's philosophy.

Sure, it's philosophy, but the real beauty of that is that there is no science of it, just philosophy, so if you want to make any claim on the subject beyond reporting scientific facts you also have to dabble in philosophy and if you do then you have to accept others do it too.

Of course it's also funny you never conclude any of your own philosophical musings saying "oh, wait, it's philosophy!". You just assume that since you take yourself to be a scientist your pronouncements are something else than philosophy. Of course they could well be on occasions, since not all is either science or philosophy, like idiotic remarks, pathetic comments, foggy considerations, irrelevant gibberish.

Are we done?

Rare for me.
EB

 

[ontological_realist]

At night time you may see further on the road what you take to be a dog but coming nearer you discover that it is not a dog but a bush. So then you realize that it was not a dog but only that you had an illusion of a dog.

It is still conceivable that it would still not be a bush after all but something else, including a dog. If you accept the principle of the illusion then you have to be consistent and apply it as possibility for all apparent instances of perception of the material world.
EB

You wrote, "It is still conceivable that it would still not be a bush after all but something else, including a dog"

I agree that it is possible.

 

[ontological_realist]

"All I can say is that the idea that one knows something about the kind of material world we seem to believe in is self-contradictory. This is not a psychological fact about people having this idea, it's a logical point."
EB

Very interesting! Would you please explain it?

If we believe we perceive the material world through our organs of perception and as mental representations of it somehow processed within our brains then whatever we come to be aware of is mediated by this process. There is this process between whatever fact is to be perceived and the actual perception of it we come to be aware of. So, what we know is the percept produced by our brain not the fact perceived. This follows from our basic belief about the material world that we perceive it through our body and from our belief about the process of perception. Maybe these beliefs are wrong but we have no other that I know of.
EB

Very important point! I will have to think about it and will reply later. Thank you.

 

[ontological_realist]

"All I can say is that the idea that one knows something about the kind of material world we seem to believe in is self-contradictory. This is not a psychological fact about people having this idea, it's a logical point."
EB

Very interesting! Would you please explain it?

If we believe we perceive the material world through our organs of perception and as mental representations of it somehow processed within our brains then whatever we come to be aware of is mediated by this process. There is this process between whatever fact is to be perceived and the actual perception of it we come to be aware of. So, what we know is the percept produced by our brain not the fact perceived. This follows from our basic belief about the material world that we perceive it through our body and from our belief about the process of perception. Maybe these beliefs are wrong but we have no other that I know of.
EB

Do you know this?

 

[fromderinside]

"All I can say is that the idea that one knows something about the kind of material world we seem to believe in is self-contradictory. This is not a psychological fact about people having this idea, it's a logical point."
EB

Very interesting! Would you please explain it?

If we believe we perceive the material world through our organs of perception and as mental representations of it somehow processed within our brains then whatever we come to be aware of is mediated by this process. There is this process between whatever fact is to be perceived and the actual perception of it we come to be aware of. So, what we know is the percept produced by our brain not the fact perceived. This follows from our basic belief about the material world that we perceive it through our body and from our belief about the process of perception. Maybe these beliefs are wrong but we have no other that I know of.
EB

Most of your questions are irrelevant to the question at hand. Our layman's belief, awareness as you seem to put it, is immaterial since we know that whether we are aware or not we perceive and act on such. Before brains organisms acted with respect chemical, mechanical, and photic stimuli. By the time of chordates sufficient organization existed that shape, direction, and magnitude of external stimuli could be and were responded to by those beasts. We don't need awareness to demonstrate perception was being accomplished since appropriate actions were generated with respect to these stimuli by these beasts without forebrain which can be measured.

My view of whether the precept is the fact becomes whether the precept leads to a life saving or enabling act by the one perceiving. That the act in response to precept generally becomes better over the course of evolution is testimony as to the correctness of my assertion about fact.

This is not to argue the general notion about whether we can know everything - I agree we can't simply because we can't know everything b y the mere fact of our limited spatial temporal nature - but, that for the notion of precept the notion of fact is reduced to the process leading to improved quality of response over evolution. Otherwise the question about whether we can know anything reduces to an armchair exercise leading nowhere. Fact, by humans, can be approached in no other way. Given that most of us here are not theists a discussion of fact on that plain is, as I already said, moot.

Obviously we have differing bases for belief. It seems your the notion of all knowing plays a significant role, in mine, only better approximations confirmed by where we are are necessary.