Tales from Shopping Period: PL152 Consciousness

[paulhope]

This happened today. It was awesome. Paraphrased:

Professor Chris Hill: The paradigmatic example of a qualia is a kind of bodily sensation, like pain

Comments

[paulhope]

If I get the chance, I'll let him know.

I've been reading some more Putnam (The Threefold Cord), this time on perception, and apparently he espouses direct realism although he hates the name and wants to call it natural realism. He taking shots at Cartesians left and right and singing about how John Austin is the most underrated philosopher ever.

I'm not sure I buy it yet--I can't see how it solves the things he's trying to solve, or understand the direct/natural realists account of non-veridical experience (he seems to want to just deny that, for example, a realistic dream that convinces one that they are in it is possible or is a real case of perception). But in any case, I thought of you.

[paulhope]

All the direct realist need to claim is that these aren't veridical, and to posit a very real difference between the quality of these two experiences.

I'm glad you came out and said this, since Putnam seems to want to both not commit himself to this position and take stabs at those who think they have similar enough quality at the same time. It's confusing.

If you've ever hallucinated or had a dream, it's very easy and intuitive to understand that there is a difference between even your most realistic dream and your everyday perceptions.

I don't think the debate would exist if it were that easy. It seems to me that the major difference between the phenomena of realistic dreams and those of veridical perception (to the extent that it can be described that way, which is questionable, IMHO, but that's a tangent) is one discovered retrospectively and has to do with coherence with other experiences. (It's a relational, not intrinsic, property) There have been times in my life, however, when I've had very real confusion over whether

[paulhope]

1. I've been mostly reading books by him, not papers, which is invigorating if you like what he says and frustrating if you don't, since he invariably refers to his papers for more details about his arguments and leaves the rest pretty thin. That said, I found Ethics Without Ontology inspiring when I read it last summer. He's got a great section on the "Third Enlightenment" of pragmatism that transcends second-Enlightenment thinking and also runs circles around postmodernist critiques of progress. I'm in the middle of The Threefold Cord, which tackles realism and then some philosophy of mind stuff--that might be more up your alley.

2.

However, the real world is permanent and exists as it does independent of your mental states.While (based on your recent post on metaphysical realism), the "independent of mental states" property seems to be one we can safely ascribe to the real world by virtue of its definition, what makes you so confident, I'm not sure the permenance assumption is safe to make without begging the question