Is it possible to perceive a world which is external to our perceptions?

Kevin

"I perceive a tree!"
Click to expand...

STOP. This is all. That thing you perceive is an example of the class of things I wish to label "Objects of perception." No more thinking is required.

How do you know it is a tree?
Click to expand...

Because it's an example of the things you have always called "trees".

"Okay, I perceive a brown woody thing with leaves!"
Click to expand...

Why bother with this? All I am interested in is "I percieve an object". I don't care whether you call it "tree" or "woody thing with leaves".

How do you know it is really a brown woody thing with leaves?

"Okay, I perceive an object distinct from its surroundings!"
Click to expand...

You are still just saying the same thing. "I percieve an object"

How do you know this distinction is real?

"Okay, I perceive stuff!"
Click to expand...

Rubbish. The distinction between a tree and a rock is obvious, and obviously correct. And it is also irrelevant.

Doesn't the very verb "perceive" carry baggage?

"Okay, I experience sensation!"
Click to expand...

Now you are falling into cartesian dualism where none was required.
 
Upchurch,

Have you now given up arguing and let Kevin speak for you?

Answer my questions:

When you make the statement "I percieve a monitor" EXACTLY what assumptions are required?

"I percieve something": ***NOT*** an assumption.
"It looks like a monitor": ***NOT*** an assumption.


There are some VERY confused people posting in this thread. If you cannot say "I perceive a monitor" without a detailed discussion of metaphysics, then something is seriously wrong with you. :(

Paul - I really cannot be bothered to continue with this. It's utterly pathetic.
 
JustGeoff said:
At least I was justified in calling you an idiot. You had no justification for doing the same to me earlier in this thread.
Click to expand...

Sure I did. You are an idiot, Geoff. You have no real interest in finding the truth. What you want is to play word games until everyone else throw up their hands in desperation, so you can claim victory.

You have tried here for years to convince just one person that you are right, yet you have failed miserably. Is it because everyone else here is a moron, or is it because you are not making any sense?

JustGeoff said:
It's standing in front of me.
Click to expand...

Blondlot also saw N-rays standing in front of him.

JustGeoff said:
It's a wooden thing with green leaves on it. It's a tree.
Click to expand...

Why? "Wooden"? "Green"? "Leaves"? How do you know what those are?

See what I'm getting at?
 
"It looks like a monitor" contains the assumption that my perception today matches my prior perceptions, and also possibly the assumption that it matches your perceptions. People with various perceptual difficulties might not make such as assumption.

But why don't we move along, just for the sake of conversation? We're talking about that tree there. The one with the monitor hanging off the branch.

~~ Paul
 
JustGeoff said:
STOP. This is all. That thing you perceive is an example of the class of things I wish to label "Objects of perception." No more thinking is required.
Click to expand...

I think more thinking is definitely required if we want to position this perception as being free of metaphysical assumptions.

Because it's an example of the things you have always called "trees".
Click to expand...

You are assuming I have always known about these things, that I have always called these things trees, that I know them to be things distinct from other things, that I know my memories and knowledge to be reliable and so on and on.

Why bother with this? All I am interested in is "I percieve an object". I don't care whether you call it "tree" or "woody thing with leaves".
Click to expand...

How do you know that these "objects" are meaningfully distinct from everything else?

You are still just saying the same thing. "I percieve an object"
Click to expand...

You are assuming this is perception of something, as opposed to sensation ex nihilo, and assuming that there is an "I" to perceive.

Rubbish. The distinction between a tree and a rock is obvious, and obviously correct. And it is also irrelevant.
Click to expand...

Lots of things seem obvious to people who are unable to ditch their metaphysical baggage, which are not obvious at all to an open-minded person.

Now you are falling into cartesian dualism where none was required.
Click to expand...

No.
 
JustGeoff said:
Now you are falling into cartesian dualism where none was required.
Click to expand...

Presenter: Good evening. On 'Ethel the Frog' tonight we look at violence The violence of British Gangland. Last Tuesday a reign of terror was ended when the notorious Piranha brothers, Doug and Dinsdale, after one of the most extraordinary trials in British legal history, were sentenced to 400 years imprisonment for crimes of violence. We examined the rise to power of the Piranhas, the methods they used to subjugate rival gangs and their subsequent tracking down and capture by the brilliant Superintendent Harry 'Snapper' Organs of Q Division. Doug and Dinsdale Piranha were born, on probation, in a small house in Kipling Road, Southwark, the eldest sons in a family of sixteen. Their father Arthur Piranha, a scrap metal dealer and TV quizmaster, was well known to the police, and a devout Catholic. In 1928 he had married Kitty Malone, an up-and-coming East End boxer. Doug was born in February 1929 and Dinsdale two weeks later; and again a week after that. Someone who remembers them well was their next door neighbour, Mrs April Simnel.

Mrs Simmel: Oh yes Kipling Road was a typical East End Street, people were in and out of each other's houses with each other's property all day. They were a cheery lot.

Interviewer: Was it a terribly violent area

Mrs Simmel: Oh no......yes. Cheerful and violent. I remember Doug was keen on boxing, but when he learned to walk he took up putting the boot in the groin. He was very interested in that. His mother had a terrible job getting him to come in for tea. Putting his little boot in he'd be, bless him. All the kids were like that then, they didn't have their heads stuffed with all this Cartesian dualism.
Click to expand...
Monty Python: The Piranha Brothers
 
JustGeoff said:
There are some VERY confused people posting in this thread. If you cannot say "I perceive a monitor" without a detailed discussion of metaphysics, then something is seriously wrong with you. :(

Paul - I really cannot be bothered to continue with this. It's utterly pathetic.
Click to expand...

This is a beautiful moment.
 
JustGeoff said:
Upchurch,

Have you now given up arguing and let Kevin speak for you?
Click to expand...
Why repeat something that was said so well?

JustGeoff said:
Answer my questions:

When you make the statement "I percieve a monitor" EXACTLY what assumptions are required?
Click to expand...
  1. What the meaning of "I" is.
  2. What is meant by "perceive".
  3. The differentiation inherent in the word "a".
  4. What is meant by "monitor", not only as a subclass of the more generic "object", but as object itself.

JustGeoff said:
"I percieve something": ***NOT*** an assumption.
"It looks like a monitor": ***NOT*** an assumption.
Click to expand...
You're assuming that the above statements are not only obvious, but that obvious necessarily means that they are true.

JustGeoff said:
There are some VERY confused people posting in this thread. If you cannot say "I perceive a monitor" without a detailed discussion of metaphysics, then something is seriously wrong with you. :(
Click to expand...
I can easily say that "I perceive a montor" without going into detailed discussions of metaphysics. What I cannot do is accept your claim that there are no assumptions involved and that there are no metaphysical consequences to it.

So far, I've countered that claim by pointing out several assumptions. Repeatedly. And your response has been to merely repeat your claim that "there are no assumptions", sometimes shouting with pretty stars and font manipulation to support your "argument", and occasionally call people names.

Could you please address the assumptions I've pointed out inherent in your claim and explain to me why they are not assumptions without merely saying "uh-uh"?


eta: had a tag malfunction. eek.
 
Last edited:
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
But why don't we move along, just for the sake of conversation?
Click to expand...

I don't think so. I am not wasting my time trying to convince a supposedly intelligent person that "I perceive objects" isn't laden with metaphysical assumptions.

Here's the deal. If people other (than me) can get Upchurch and Kevin to arrive at the first line of the argument ("I percieve a monitor") without tying themselves in metaphysical knots, and allow us to all agree that THAT monitor is an example of an object of perception, then I'll be willing to continue the debate. If not, I'm out of here, because there's nothing worthwhile to be said. I'll keep an eye on this thread to see if any progress gets made in that respect, but I am expecting no such progress. Sophistry is bad enough. Moronic bullsh*t dressed up as sophistry is something I have no word for.
 
Upchurch said:
So far, I've countered that claim by pointing out several assumptions. Repeatedly. And your response has been to merely repeat your claim that "there are no assumptions", sometimes shouting with pretty stars and font manipulation to support your "argument", and occasionally call people names.

Could you please address the assumptions I've pointed out inherent in your claim and explain to me why they are not assumptions without merely saying "uh-uh"?
Click to expand...


JustGeoff said:
Here's the deal. If people other (than me) can get Upchurch and Kevin to arrive at the first line of the argument ("I percieve a monitor") without tying themselves in metaphysical knots, and allow us to all agree that THAT monitor is an example of an object of perception, then I'll be willing to continue the debate. If not, I'm out of here, because there's nothing worthwhile to be said. I'll keep an eye on this thread to see if any progress gets made in that respect, but I am expecting no such progress. Sophistry is bad enough. Moronic bullsh*t dressed up as sophistry is something I have no word for.
Click to expand...
I should take that as a "no" then?



Aside, why is it people can never seem to defend that which they believe to be obvious? If something is obvious, shouldn't it be easy (although not necessarily brief) to explain? Do I have the wrong understanding of the word "obvious"?
 
Geoff said:
I don't think so. I am not wasting my time trying to convince a supposedly intelligent person that "I perceive objects" isn't laden with metaphysical assumptions.
Click to expand...
So don't bother. Do we all have to bow to the Requirements of Geoff in order for the conversation to continue?

Here's the deal. If people other (than me) can get Upchurch and Kevin to arrive at the first line of the argument ("I percieve a monitor") without tying themselves in metaphysical knots, and allow us to all agree that THAT monitor is an example of an object of perception, then I'll be willing to continue the debate. If not, I'm out of here, because there's nothing worthwhile to be said. I'll keep an eye on this thread to see if any progress gets made in that respect, but I am expecting no such progress. Sophistry is bad enough. Moronic bullsh*t dressed up as sophistry is something I have no word for.
Click to expand...
Upchurch! Kevin! Tow the line!

~~ Paul
 
Upchurch said:
Aside, why is it people can never seem to defend that which they believe to be obvious? If something is obvious, shouldn't it be easy (although not necessarily brief) to explain? Do I have the wrong understanding of the word "obvious"?
Click to expand...
Let's ask Obvious Man.

~~ Paul
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Fair comment. My intent was that the string of nines terminates at some unspecified finite point.

Is there a handy mathematical symbol for indicating that?
Click to expand...

If you were writing, you could add a line over the thousandths place, or use the ... system, of course.

Other than using ..., I don't know how you indicate repeating places on the computer.
 
Geoff, you're weird.

Of course there are assumptions in the statement, "I percieve a monitor", such as, for instance, that there is actually a monitor.
What we percieve is the data that we interpret to mean that we're seeing a monitor. We're not "percieving a monitor".

I remember walking into a mirror once when I was a kid (actually it's happened a few times since, but, hey...). How did this happen? Well, I saw what appeared, in the dark vancouver aquarium room, to be a continuation of the shark tank. So I started walking over there, and bang. Hit my head on the mirror.
How is this possible? Didn't I percieve an open space that I could walk into?
No. I percieved light hitting my retina that my brain interpretted, using basic opperating instructions that tend to do well in this world, to be empty space. That interpretation was wrong.

Does that tell me anything about the nature of that coridor? No. Does it say anything interesting about my brain? Only something we already knew - that it forms it's picture of the world based on incomplete information. Does it say anything interesting about perception?
Only that it requires a medium - in this case light coming from the mirror to my eyes, to get information about the world to the brain. That medium is basically anything in the world that our senses can interact with to give us information.

What more can we say? Sorry, but I just don't get the point.
 
Geoff, you're once again just plain wrong.

EVERY statement includes inherent assumptions. Certain ideas may not - but then again, most do.

The statement "I perceive a tree" clearly makes many assumptions.

Geoff, what's really important, when understanding our perceptions of things, versus our interpretations of things, is to understand what perceptions and interpretations would have been like, if we had never been taught anything about anything. What does an infant see? Does an infant understand the difference between 'I' and anything else? Does an infant understand the implications of the word 'perceive', as well as the possibilities of deception, hallucination, etc? Does the infant know anything about 'tree', or how to separate 'tree' from 'ground' and 'sky' and 'horizon' and 'flaming Boeing falling from sky'?

All of this requires assumptions of some form, and experiences, and memories. At the basis of all learning, after all, there are two assumptions that we need to survive and thrive: 1) that our perceptions are of a reality, and 2) that we are distinct from things perceived within our reality.

I think it's perfectly legitimate to ask, "What it?" when dealing with the metaphysics of perception. After all, there are those who argue that no real things exist at all, only perceptions within awareness (a la lifegazer, Gods rest his soul).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom