GE Morton wrote: ↑January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmConsul wrote: ↑January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pm
I have a blue T-shirt that doesn't
look blue at night, but
isn't it still blue at night? Does it cease to be blue during sunset and become blue again during sunrise?
No, but only because we infer from our percepts an external object, project the color we perceive upon that inferred object, and by convention, assume that object exists with its projected properties when not being perceived. That convention is "common sense realism," and it is pretty useful for communicating our experiences.
There are sophisticated philosophers such as David Armstrong, who are materialists and objectivists about colors. If they are right—I'm not saying they are—, then my T-shirt is blue even when no one sees it.
QUOTE>
"The theory that I would like to uphold is that the secondary qualities are to be identified with the properties of objects as they begin to be revealed to us by the advance of scientific knowledge. Consider the blue surface of the mouse pad that I have beside my computer. It presents itself as a fairly uniform darkish blue surface with very small white specks in the pattern. I want to accept that the surface is for the most part blue. Perception presents us with the blueness as an objective property of something in the world and I think we should accept this, accept that the blue colour is in the world qualifying the pad. Science presents us with an apparently very different account involving light waves interacting with the fine structure of the physical surface of the pad reflecting light waves into my eyes. But I want to
identify the colour surface with what the physicists tell us is going on there. It is a second identity theory alongside the identity of mental processes with brain processes."
(Armstrong, D. M.
Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. pp. 109-10)
<QUOTE
Reductive Color Physicalism:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/#ReduColoPhys
GE Morton wrote: ↑January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmConsul wrote: ↑January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmAnyway, from my perspective of reductive materialism, all phenomenal or "secondary" qualities such as colors must be reducible to some (complexes of) primary, physical qualities, which are internal or external to central nervous systems.
They are reducible in a causal sense, but not a qualitative sense. That is, we can prove that only light in a specific range of wavelengths produces a "red" sensation (in trichromatic animals), but not why it produces the specific sensation it does (we can't even describe that sensation, in order to determine whether the sensation it produces in you is the same as the one it produces in me).
As for the why-question, there will be brute facts of nature about the production or constitution of secondaries by primaries that defy further explanation.
"Causal reducibility" isn't ontological reducibility, since effects aren't reductively identifiable with their causes. If sensations are
caused or produced by, but not
composed of or constituted by physical (or neurological) processes, then we have a
quality dualism of primary qualities and secondary ones; and then we get into trouble with the causal closure of the physical sphere if sensations are regarded as
non-epiphenomenal.
GE Morton wrote: ↑January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmConsul wrote: ↑January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pm
This is just an "argument from incredulity", but I cannot believe that I am a "windowless monad" without any perceptual access to realities beyond the contents of my mind.
Well, I think that if I am unable to demonstrate any access beyond the contents of my mind, then I will be forced to believe I have none.
I don't think so, because it does seem to me that I have (direct or indirect) access to nonmental reality; and I don't feel forced by counterarguments to believe that this is just an illusion. I doubt that my sensations prevent me from perceiving nonsensations. On the contrary, they are what
enables me to perceive nonsensations. A sensory experience isn't an appearance at all if there is nothing transexperiential which appears
through the experience, since an appearance
of nothing is a
nonappearance.
GE Morton wrote: ↑January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmConsul wrote: ↑January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmOntological categories are objects of thought, since we think and talk about them; but construed realistically, a category scheme represents (or purports to represent) the fundamental division of Being (rather than merely of Thought).
Indeed it does so purport. The issue at hand just is whether that claim, assumption, is rationally defensible. (I think it is, but only on pragmatic grounds, i.e., it is useful). Something certainly exists beyond ourselves and our percepts and concepts (else we could not explain our own existence). Presumably, whatever is "out there" provokes the sensations we experience. But we have no means of knowing how accurately those sensations represent that external something, or even whether they resemble it at all. (But we have ample pragmatic grounds for so assuming).
If sensations aren't presentations but only
representations of nonmental things or events, then there is the question of how they represent them. Berkeley argues that ideas (including sensations qua "sensory ideas") cannot resemble any nonideas
but only other ideas. If this is true, sensory representations of nonmental things cannot be
"icons", to use Charles Peirce's semiotic term for signs which represent things by virtue of resemblance or similarity. A paradigmatic example of iconic signs are photographies.
If sensory representations aren't [url=http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/icon]icons[/url], they are [url=http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/index]
indexes[/url] or [url=http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/symbol]
symbols[/url], to use two other terms of Peirce's semiotics.
(Note that Peirce doesn't use "symbol" and "sign" synonymously, because for him symbols are just one kind of signs among others!)
Do we not have very accurate (mathematically precise) scientific theories of nature that are based on sensory observations of it? From the perspective of scientific realism, there is no reason to be pessimistic in principle about the epistemic accessibility of nonexperiential reality.
(Note that if there are nonconscious minds or mental events/states, then parts of our minds are parts of nonexperiential reality too!)
As for fundamental ontological theories (category schemes) of reality, these are much more abstract and general than scientific theories; and so it is hardly possible to subject them to empirical or experimental tests. Unavoidably, ontological theorizing is more or less speculative.
GE Morton wrote: ↑January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmConsul wrote: ↑January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmAn object in the narrow ontological sense is not defined relatively as an object
of, for, or to anything or anybody, but as an object
in itself; so being an object in this sense is not the same as being an
intentional object, an
object of thought or some other mental or linguistic representation. Moreover, the ontological sense is not so narrow that objects are
by definition material or concrete. All bodies are objects, but not all objects are bodies.
Well, that leaves "object" even more problematic. What are the definitive criteria? Your "narrow ontological sense," BTW, is somewhat question-begging; it seems to presuppose materialism. But an ontology is
any theory of existents; how they are to be defined and classified. An idealism which denied "material" existents would still have an ontology.
I think there is no other way to understand "objects" other than as "intentional objects" --- as objects of predication in cognitive propositions (propositions having determinable truth values). In other words, as whatever things we can fruitfully talk about (which is how we actually use that term in ordinary conversation). We can then sub-classify those objects, according to whatever ontological theory we favor, into material (spatio-temporal) objects, abstract objects, mental objects, etc.
All nonexistent objects are intentional objects (objects of thought), but the narrow
ontological concept of an object is different from the broad
psychological concept of an object of thought, perception, or discourse.
However, the narrow ontological concept of an object is so basic or primitive that it is very difficult or even hardly possible to define it informatively by means of other concepts which are even simpler and easier to understand. Objects in this narrow sense are
things in the narrow sense; and, for example, Jonathan Lowe defines a thing as
"any item falling under a sortal concept supplying a criterion of identity for its instances. Thus shoes and ships and sealing-wax are things, but certainly not sakes and probably not propositions."
(Lowe, E. J. "Things." In
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed., edited by Ted Honderich. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 915)
Is this an adequate definition?
(By the way, is "sealing-wax" really a sortal concept or count/non-mass noun? Isn't "wax" a noncount/mass noun like "gold" or "milk"?)
In another book he presents the following definition of "object":
"An object is a property-bearing particular which is not itself borne by anything else: in traditional terms, it is an individual substance." (p. 10)
"Objects, I have said, are property-bearing entities of order zero, having a certain kind of ontological priority over property-bearing entities of higher orders (if such there be), and are also individuals, having determinate identity and countability." (p. 76)
"[T]here are two independent ways in which property-bearing entities may lack individuality and so fail to qualify as objects in my recommended sense: they may lack it either by lacking fully determinate identity conditions or they may lack it by lacking intrinsic unity and hence countability." (p. 76)
(Lowe, E. J. The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.)
Note that given Lowe's definition, "form-indifferent" masses of stuff do not count as objects (or things). So a cup of tea is an object or thing, but the tea in it is not. However, if a mass of tea is fundamentally composed of elementary particles
and these are things, then why shouldn't a mass of tea or any other kind of stuff count as a thing as well?
Another problem with Lowe's definition is that given Donald Davidson's conception of events, these are "property-bearing entities of order zero" too; but we want to have a definition of objects which distinguishes them from events. Some say that what distinguishes objects from events is that the former
exist, while the latter
occur, happen or take place. Then one could make Lowe's definition more precise by saying that objects are "property-bearing entities of order zero"
which are existents rather than occurrents.
(
William Johnson calls such non-occurring entities
"continuants".)
The ontological relationship between
things (objects) and
events, and between
things and
stuffs is a complicated issue (that is off-topic here).
Events:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/events/
The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meta ... ssexpress/
GE Morton wrote: ↑January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmWhat is your objection to universals? The term merely denotes properties
per se, which may attach to numerous objects, as opposed to when attached to some particular object. Since we can speak of the color "red," distinguish it in thought and speech from "green," it is an existent of some sort, and an "object" in the above sense of that word. We can then assign it to some ontological class, depending upon the ontology we adopt.
There's a distinction between
(spacetime-)transcendent or Platonic universals, and
(spacetime-)immanent or Aristotelian universals. Transcendent universalism is supernaturalistic, and I'm a naturalist; so it's not my cup of tea.
Anyway, it makes no sense to me to say that the properties of a concrete or material object or substance existing somewhere in spactime exist
separately from it in some mysterious non-spatiotemporal realm, and yet spatiotemporal objects "instantiate" or "participate in" their non-spatiotemporal properties qua transcendent universals.
For example, it is an empirical fact that I can see the sphericity of tennis balls; but how could I do so when their sphericity is a transcendent universal existing in an imperceptible non-spatiotemporal realm?
Furthermore, transcendent universalism usually includes the incredible claim that universals can exist uninstantiated. For example, sphericity is said to be able to exist even if nothing spherical exists—apart from sphericity itself perhaps, which might be "self-instantiating".
QUOTE>
"If universals can exist uninstantiated, then they must apparently be
abstract objects, in the sense…[that] they must be entities which do not exist ‘in’ space and time. Universals thus conceived are often described as ‘transcendent’ universals, or universals
ante rem, as opposed to ‘immanent’ universals, or universals
in rebus. And there is undoubtedly a problem in supposing that concrete objects, which exist ‘in’ space and time, could have as their properties only transcendent universals. For when we
perceive an object, we perceive some of its properties—how else, in the end, could we know what properties objects have? And when objects interact causally with one another, the manner of their interaction is determined by their properties. Indeed, since perception itself is at bottom just a species of causal interaction between one object (the perceiver) and another (the object perceived), the first point is embraced by the second. And then the problem is that entities which do not exist ‘in’ space and time the objects of mathematics being the paradigm examples—are necessarily causally inert, so that transcendent universals cannot play the role in perception and causation that at least some of the properties of objects are required to play."
(Lowe, E. J.
The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. p. 98)
<QUOTE
The central problem I have with immanent universalism is that it is incoherent with its postulation of universals which are
wholly located at different places at the same time:
QUOTE>
"According to what I shall call the ‘strong’ doctrine of immanence, universals exist ‘in’ space and time in the sense that they may be quite literally ‘wholly present’ in many different places at the same time. That is to say, the very self-same universal redness which is exemplified both by this flower and by that different flower is, according to this view, located
in its entirety both in the same place as this flower and in the same place as that flower. It is not, then, that
part of the universal is located in the one place and (another)
part of it in the other place, for the universal is not considered to have parts in this sense. However, it is difficult to understand how anything meeting this description could literally be true. For the two flowers are undoubtedly in wholly different locations. And yet we are to suppose that all of the first flower coincides spatially with all of the universal and, at the same time, that all of the universal coincides spatially with all of the second flower. (I am, of course, assuming for the sake of the example—I take it uncontroversially—that both flowers are wholly red in colour.) But then it is hard to see how the first flower could fail to coincide spatially with the second flower. It is no use just insisting that this need not be so, on the grounds that universals behave quite differently from particulars where matters of spatiotemporal location are concerned. For it needs to be explained to us how they can behave so differently, despite genuinely being located in space and time. And I have never yet come across a satisfactory explanation of this purported fact. As it stands, then, it seems to be nothing more than a piece of unsupported dogma."
(Lowe, E. J.
The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. pp. 98-9)
<QUOTE
GE Morton wrote: ↑January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmWe have to consider terms such as "thing" and "object" pre-ontological, belonging to "meta-ontology" --- natural language terms upon which we're forced to rely even to do ontology.
Metaontology is about the philosophical discipline called ontology; but the terms "object" or "thing" are "preontological" in the sense that a basic concept of perceptible concrete, material objects or things (i.e. bodies or organisms) is non-reflectively formed during childhood.
GE Morton wrote: ↑January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmConsul wrote: ↑January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmI don't think there are logical inferences involved in sensory perception as such. Perceiving isn't reasoning.
That is a good point. I spoke earlier of conscious experience as consisting of a model of "reality" we construct from sensory data. But there are actually two interacting models, the "phenomenal world model" described by Metzinger, and the conceptual model erected on top of that by science. Construction of the phenomenal world model occurs non-consciously; what appears to consciousness is the finished product. There are inferences involved in constructing that model, but no conscious reasoning. So when we perceive a tree that assemblage of qualia already appears to us as a unity, a distinct object.
Okay, no conscious reasoning in perceiving as such, just non-/preconscious cognitive processing of sensory information
before perceiving.
QUOTE>
"
Phenomenal Directness:
One dimension of directness, emphasized by Reid (1785), notes that perceptual judgments are phenomenally noninferential, in the sense that they do not result from any discursive or ratiocinative process; they are not introspectibly based on premises. This noninferentiality is usually understood loosely enough to allow for perceptual beliefs’ being based on things other than beliefs (in particular, on experiential states, as we will see below) and also to allow for the possibility of unconscious or subpersonal inferential involvement in the formation of perceptual beliefs, so long as the
agent is not deliberately basing these perceptual beliefs on other
beliefs. Without these two allowances, claims of noninferentiality would quickly run afoul of standard views in epistemology and psychology, respectively. To claim that perception is phenomenally direct is to claim that it is noninferential in this sense."
Epistemological Problems of Perception:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/
<QUOTE
GE Morton wrote: ↑January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmConsul wrote: ↑January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmI think it's a basic mistake to identify the inner appearing
of a thing with the appearing thing. We perceive transexperiential entities by means of sensory experiences; but these are just the (perceptually transparent)
media of perception and not its (direct or primary) objects.
Well, you're now creating a new "thing," an "appearing." But you're right to not confuse that "appearing" with the thing which appears. The latter is the construct our brains have created to represent a certain complex of sensory data. The "appearing" is the event of beholding that construct.
Appearances qua appearings of things aren't things themselves (qua objects or substances) but events, which I think are perceptually transparent rather than opaque "veils of perception".
Percepts and concepts qua mental representations are cerebral "constructs", but I still reject the view that mental "ideas" are the only (possible) objects of perception, such that we are perceptually incarcerated in our own minds. If this were true, sensory perception would be no different from introspection, i.e. from innerly perceiving or observing the subjective sensory contents of consciousness.