Re: [Fis] Realism

Re: [Fis] Realism

From: Rafael Capurro <[email protected]>
Date: Sat 01 Jul 2006 - 22:06:22 CEST

Folks,

very briefly to (hopefully) clarify: Heidegger remarked once that the
"scandal of philosophy" (Kant) regarding our lacking of proofs for the
existence of the "outside world" is in fact the scandal that we still are in
search of such proofs. So, no question, for me about this. Sorry for being
misunderstood.

We are "already" in the world. Every question about the existence or not of
something "out there" is, as I already said, a petitio principii. My remark
concerning a "declaration of faith" does not concerns therefore the
existence of "beigns out there" (or "outside my mind") BUT the question of
what we mean when we start discussing what it means "to be" or what we mean
when we say, for instance, there is "just matter" or "just..." This
statements presuppose that we have a pre-understanding of Being (NOT: of the
existence of beings).

I know, this is a philosophic discussion, and may not be interesting for
everybody in this list.

kind regards

Rafael

Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro
Hochschule der Medien (HdM) - Stuttgart Media University, Wolframstr. 32,
70191 Stuttgart, Germany
Private: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
E-Mail: rafael@capurro.de; capurro@hdm-stuttgart.de
Voice Stuttgart: + 49 - 711 - 25706 - 182
Voice private: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21)
Homepage: www.capurro.de
Homepage ICIE: http://icie.zkm.de
Homepage IRIE: http://www.i-r-i-e.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Collier" <collierj@ukzn.ac.za>
To: <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2006 7:08 PM
Subject: [Fis] Realism

> Dear fisers,
>
> I have been grading almost full time the last week, so I did not get a
> chance to respond to Arne, or comment on the other interesting recent
> posts on this topic. I will just make a short realist statement, though.
> It is based on the Realism of C.S. Peirce. He distinguished between
> imaginary doubt and real doubt. Real doubt is that which gives us evidence
> that appears to be contrary to our beliefs. Imaginary doubt is based on
> possbilities that we have no evidence for, but we believe are at least
> possible. The problem with imaginary doubt is that it is based on abstract
> reasoning, void of ties to evidence by and large, and it is thus very
> fallible.
>
> Here is what I think:
>
> I just don't think that we can base epistemology on some consensual
> agreement about there being an external world, or about some world we have
> socially constructed. I think that we can know the world in terms of its
> features, and that we know many features of the world. I think that the
> world is an information structure along the lines of a distributed system
> in the line of Barwise and Seligman. The logic of such systems is that we
> cannot infer backwards to the source in general. We need a special sort of
> channel to do that. However, science and evolution tend to make such
> channels. Obviously I would have to get into more detail. Of course this
> all assumes there is something "out there". My best evidence for that is
> that there are things I do not create in my mind. Perhaps they come from
> other parts of my mind, but that is still "out there" relative to my
> consciousness. Basically, I think that the evidence that there is
> something "out there" is very strong, and the evidence that there is not
> is negligible. That we can't know the "out there" is based on a huge
> string of inference about the possibility of error in special cases
> extended to the possibility for all cases. I reject the last part of the
> argument. I don't think it is possible that everything we believe about
> the external world is false. My argument again is fairly simple: whatever
> the structure of the information that we experience, that which we don't
> consciously cause comes from "out there", so we know "out there" has at
> least that much structure. And from there we bootstrap. Part of what we
> bootstrap to is a consensual world (though I am constantly surprised that
> my neighbours see so little of what I see, so I am not sure how much is
> consensual -- I find myself often faking that the world is more like what
> people around me seem to think it is like -- this dishonesty bugs me, but
> it saves fights over things like Zulus are much more like Scots-Canadians
> than they are different from each other -- if I have a Zulu student who
> wants to think that Zulus are fundamentally different, then I usually let
> it go.)
>
> I see no need of any consensual proof of such an abstract entity as a
> consensually agreed on world in order to have knowledge of an external
> world, nor do I see that the proof would be very convincing compared to
> direct experience of things I do not cause myself, and which can surprise
> me. I think that the evidence for a consensual world must be weaker than
> the evidence for a world beyond our conscious experience, and any argument
> in favour of doubting that world must have even weaker evidence. Lacking
> such evidence, I doubt when I am surprised, and have a reason to doubt.
> Otherwise, I think both sceptical arguments and anti-realist arguments are
> all very fallible abstract thinking, which I don't much trust.
>
> That said, I think that the evidence is that we construct our
> understanding of the world out of materials from both our mind and the
> world, so I fall into the category that is usually called constructive
> realist.
>
> Regards,
> John
>
> ----------
> Professor John Collier
> collierj@ukzn.ac.za
> Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South
> Africa
> T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
> http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html
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