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Teuton wrote:SpeedOfSound wrote:
Right. Berkeley doesn't deny what everyone knows exists. But then he goes on from there and tries to say something further about how these things are caused or just 'how they are'.
Right. Berkeleyan idealists and physical realists don't disagree on the existence of trees but on their ontic nature.
SpeedOfSound wrote:or maybe not
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/Berkeley presents here the following argument (see Winkler 1989, 138):
(1) We perceive ordinary objects (houses, mountains, etc.).
(2) We perceive only ideas.
Therefore,
(3) Ordinary objects are ideas.
LI, this sounds exactly like your argument the last time I talked to you. Wasn't a number 2 that we never agree upon?
Teuton wrote:SpeedOfSound wrote:or maybe not
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/Berkeley presents here the following argument (see Winkler 1989, 138):
(1) We perceive ordinary objects (houses, mountains, etc.).
(2) We perceive only ideas.
Therefore,
(3) Ordinary objects are ideas.
LI, this sounds exactly like your argument the last time I talked to you. Wasn't a number 2 that we never agree upon?
What's missing here is the distinction between mediate and immediate objects of perception. Even if mental ideas are our immediate objects of perception it doesn't follow that external, material objects as mediate objects of perception are themselves (collections of) ideas.
A representative theory of perception is compatible with physical realism:
"In this book I argue that the correct philosophical theory of perception is a representative one. By such a theory, I mean one which holds
(i) that the immediate objects of (visual) perception are always mental;
(ii) that there are objects, variously called external, material or physical, which are independent of the existence of sentient creatures;
(iii) that these objects have only the primary qualities;
and
(iv) to (visually) perceive a material object is to be in a certain kind of perceptual state as a causal result of the action of that object.
(The restriction to visual perception - seeing - is to be understood throughout.)
With the exception of clause (ii), these clauses are defended in the chapters that follow. Clause (ii) is, however, an assumption. I assume, that is, that Idealism (Phenomenalism) is false. I take it that we are a very small part of a universe that existed millions of years before we did and will exist millions of years after we have gone."
(Jackson, Frank. Perception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. p. 1)
Teuton wrote:
Is there an intelligible semantic difference between being there and existing? I don't think so.
"If you say there is something that exists to a diminished degree, once you've said 'there is' your game is up. Existence is not some special distinction that befalls some of the things there are. Existence just means being one of the things there are, nothing else."
(Lewis, David. Parts of Classes. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. pp. 80-1)
Teuton wrote:
Are trees physically irreducible or mentally reducible entities? This is not a meaningless question, is it?
SpeedOfSound wrote:Teuton wrote:
Is there an intelligible semantic difference between being there and existing? I don't think so.
"If you say there is something that exists to a diminished degree, once you've said 'there is' your game is up. Existence is not some special distinction that befalls some of the things there are. Existence just means being one of the things there are, nothing else."
(Lewis, David. Parts of Classes. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. pp. 80-1)
That is what I am trying to say in the exist discussion to be sure. I like this.
However, there IS a semantic difference between being there and existing and it is not in the language itself, lifted out of the situation, it's in the situation.
When you prepend the word 'fictional' you cause a mode that significantly alters anything you say next.
SpeedOfSound wrote:I think the word exist being substituted for 'being there' has a subtle influence, a nudge, in the direction of the more general.
SpeedOfSound wrote:Could be that I am paranoid about arguments slipping one in there by talking about 'fictional existence'.
Teuton wrote:SpeedOfSound wrote:Teuton wrote:
Is there an intelligible semantic difference between being there and existing? I don't think so.
"If you say there is something that exists to a diminished degree, once you've said 'there is' your game is up. Existence is not some special distinction that befalls some of the things there are. Existence just means being one of the things there are, nothing else."
(Lewis, David. Parts of Classes. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. pp. 80-1)
That is what I am trying to say in the exist discussion to be sure. I like this.
However, there IS a semantic difference between being there and existing and it is not in the language itself, lifted out of the situation, it's in the situation.
When you prepend the word 'fictional' you cause a mode that significantly alters anything you say next.
Right. But to use "to exist" or "to be there" in a fictional context is not to change its meaning but to implicitly or tacitly add "not really, you know", i.e. to pragmatically presuppose a socially shared context-dependent understanding that is not ontologically committing in the philosophical sense.
"There are prefixes or prefaces (explicit or implicit) that rob all that comes after of assertoric force. They disown or cancel what follows, no matter what that may be. Once the assertoric force is cancelled, no amount of tub-thumping will regain it. If you’ve disowned what follows, it doesn’t matter whether you then say just that eating people is wrong, or whether you say it’s true in the most robustly realist sense imaginable that eating people is wrong,
or whether you say the wrongness of eating people is built into the very fabric of mind-independent reality—whichever you say, it comes pre-cancelled.
Here are some examples of disowning prefixes and prefaces.
(1) According to the pack of lies my opponent has told you. . . .
(2) I shall say much that I do not believe, starting now.
(3) According to the Sherlock Holmes stories. . . .
(4) What follows is true according to the Holmes stories.
(5) Let’s make believe the Holmes stories are true, though they aren’t.
I classify (1), (3), and (4) as prefixes, (2) and (5) as prefaces. (So in view of (4), the distinction I’m drawing is not between complete sentences and mere phrases.) When the assertoric force of what follows is cancelled by a prefix, straightway some other assertion takes its place: an assertion, as it might be, about what my opponent’s lies or the Holmes stories say or imply. Not so for prefaces. In the case of (5), a replacement is at least suggested, but it is not yet asserted. In the case of (2), no replacement assertion is even suggested."
(Lewis, David. "Quasi-Realism is Fictionalism." In Fictionalism in Metaphysics, edited by Mark Eli Kalderon, 314-321. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 315)
Teuton wrote:SpeedOfSound wrote:I think the word exist being substituted for 'being there' has a subtle influence, a nudge, in the direction of the more general.
We do have and use an absolute concept of existence: to exist simpliciter (i.e. considered absolutely or without qualification). To exist simpliciter is to be part of reality.SpeedOfSound wrote:Could be that I am paranoid about arguments slipping one in there by talking about 'fictional existence'.
Fictional existence is like fool's gold or bogus money.
Teuton wrote:
(Chalmers, David J. "Ontological Anti-Realism." In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, 77-129. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. 80-2)
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