Two somewhat rambling videos from Gnostic Informant, the first about Biblical minimalism (the Copenhagen school), the second about Pythagorean number mysticism in the Book of Genesis. Could still be of some interest on a gloomy Thursday afternoon.
It´s intelligent design, captain, but not as we know it.
Oh, and I didn´t know there was an animated cartoon featuring Donald Duck learning about Pythagoras!
Back to the direct realism problematique, this time c/o ChatGPT.
What are the strongest arguments against indirect realism?
The strongest objections to indirect realism come from several different philosophical traditions (analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and some forms of direct realism). They usually try to show that the theory either creates unnecessary entities, fails to explain perception, or leads to skepticism about the external world.
Here are the main arguments.
This is the most famous objection.
If indirect realism is true:
We directly perceive mental representations.
External objects are known only indirectly through those representations.
But then a problem arises:
How do we ever know our representations correspond to the real world?
Since we never perceive the world directly, we cannot compare:
the representation
with
the object itself.
So critics argue the theory leads to radical skepticism.
This line of criticism is associated with philosophers such as:
Thomas Reid
Reid argued that representational theories place a “veil” between mind and world, making knowledge of reality impossible.
If perception works like this:
I perceive a mental representation.
That representation represents an external object.
Then critics ask:
How do I perceive the representation itself?
If I need another representation to perceive the first one, we get an infinite regress of representations representing representations.
Many philosophers think perception must stop somewhere — and that stopping point should be direct contact with the world.
Indirect realism says we only perceive sense-data or mental content.
But then:
How do we know which external object causes those representations?
Example:
You see a red apple.
But if what you perceive is only a mental image, you have no direct access to the apple itself. So how can you identify that the representation corresponds to that particular object?
Critics argue indirect realism cannot explain how perception successfully picks out real objects in the environment.
Many philosophers argue indirect realism misdescribes our experience.
When we look at a tree:
We experience the tree, not a mental image of the tree.
The idea that we see internal sense-data feels artificial.
This criticism is strongly associated with:
G. E. Moore
Moore argued that common sense tells us:
We directly perceive external objects.
Philosophical theories shouldn’t contradict such basic facts without overwhelming evidence.
Indirect realism relies heavily on hallucinations.
But critics argue this reasoning is flawed.
Just because hallucinations occur does not mean normal perception is the same kind of mental event.
Instead, critics propose:
Hallucination is a defective case of perception, not evidence about normal perception.
This view is common among modern disjunctivists.
Key defenders include:
John McDowell
Disjunctivism says:
In genuine perception, we are directly aware of the world.
In hallucination, we are not — even if the experiences feel similar.
So the shared “mental object” assumption may be false.
Some philosophers argue the brain-processing story is misunderstood.
Even if perception involves neural processing, it doesn’t follow that we perceive representations instead of objects.
Instead, the brain may simply be the mechanism enabling direct perception of the world.
This objection targets the modern “scientific image” argument.
Phenomenologists argue that perception is fundamentally world-directed.
When we see something:
our awareness is of the object itself, not a mental intermediary.
This critique is associated with thinkers like:
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
He argued that perception is an embodied engagement with the world, not internal picture-viewing.
Critics say indirect realism:
Solves the problem of illusion by introducing mental intermediaries, but those intermediaries create deeper epistemological problems.
It´s déjà vu all the way down. Seriously. I mean, Trump´s Iran War is rapidly turning into a copycat of the Iraq War and/or the Gulf War. So are the reactions to it. The only thing missing is the "decent left". You know, the leftists who actually supported the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It´s because of the Donald, of course. Imagine being less popular on the left than *George freakin´ Dubya*!
Socialdemokraterna vill tydligen förbjuda religiösa friskolor. Alltså muslimska friskolor. Egentligen. Fast de kan ju trösta sig med att även Ebba Buschs Bibelskola måste stänga. Kan ju bli bråk om Judiska Skolan. Dock.
Valkampanjen har börjat. In i turnébussarna! Alla ska med!
 |
| Credit: Charles J Sharp |
Den här moskén har varit på tapeten länge. Och varför bosätter sig vissa invandrare i ett land som älskar bögar och fria kvinnor? Kanske för att det var Sverige som tog hit dem...? Den andra länken är sex år gammal. Någon kan väl informera L-ledaren.
L-ledaren rasar efter moskéns minnesstund
"Den här gruppen kommer fortsätta att vara lojal mot den iranska staten"
 |
| Credit: Mvshreeram |
Komala, which apparently claims to be Social Democratic these days, has joined the Kurdistan Parties Coalition, which the United States may (or may not) arm against the Iranian regime. A propos the previous blog post.
Komala Party officially joins Kurdistan Parties Coalition
Another party joins opposition alliance
International support crucial to ending the regime in Iran
Interesting. So I suppose the question now is: is Donald Trump more like George Bush senior (who betrayed the Shia and the Kurds at the last moment during the Gulf War) or more like George Bush junior (who finished the job during the Iraq War)? Judging by his actions in Venezuela, the answer is "George Bush senior". So if I would be a Kurdish peshmerga, I would probably need very, very strong "security guarantees" before I enter the fray. See also: the SDF in Syria, et cetera.
Some of these apocalyptic prophecies sound less bizarre now, after the United States and Israel attacked the Iranian regime! Which doesn´t mean they´re true. Of course they´re not. The people in this video may be genuinely insane, but sometimes even the paranoid are persecuted...
It´s become something of a tradition on this here blog that we post cutsie pics of Ganesha every Wednesday, so here we go again. This is apparently Bhakti Ganapati, one of the 32 classical forms of Ganesha. Note the banana!
I actually assumed bananas were originally from South and Central America, but naaah, they are from the Indomalayan region. Fun fact: pineapples (which *are* from South America) have been introduced to India and are sometimes offered to Hindu idols...
