[lit-ideas] Re: Bishop Berkeley -- and Popper
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 14:10:41 +0000 (GMT)
> -- I add "and Popper" since possibly Popper commented on this, etc.
This ends the post below. Would this be bait on this list if I was not on
this list, as Berkeley et al might have asked? Anyway, bait nibbled...
--- Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx wrote:
>
> In a message dated 11/6/2004 7:56:36 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> If a tree falls
> in the forest
> when there's nobody
> there to hear it
> does it make
> a sound?
> Yes.
There is a crucial ambiguity here as to what the tree makes or can make: the
falling tree can make the physical effects that are the causes of a
subject-dependent sound, but it cannot make a subject-dependent sound merely
by falling, since it is a not itself a subject. However, we might in some
usage refer to those physical effects as 'sound' conceived as a
non-subject-dependent.
We know it makes a sound even when we are not there because if we leave a
tape running it will have a (perhaps BF) sound on it - just as we know there
is rain in the desert when we are not there because we later see the
rainwater in the vessel we left though we never saw or felt the rain. On this
point, Popper proposed Winston Churchill as having contributed a major,
original and brilliant argument on the epistemology involved - the argument
that we could tell whether something exists by extremely indirect means that
did not in *any crucial positivist sense* require the admixture of the human
senses in the learning process.
> ----
>
> Geary rephrases:
>
> >if a bush burns
> >and there's, etc.
>
> I believe R. Paul is echoing Bishop Berkeley? Berkeley thought, famously,
> _esse est percipi_, and the 'tree falling' example is also mentioned by D.
> Hume.
> I'm not sure it can be so easily solved.
The separation of subject-dependent from subject-independent phenomena is no
doubt somewhat open to controversy: eg. to what extent is 'colour' in the
external objects or merely in our sense-experience of them? Hume afaik even
suggested that 'solidity' is not a property of external objects but merely of
our perception of them, and Kant [afair, from our last fireside chat]
suggested that the actual reality of external objects as they exist in
themselves [noumena] is permanently hidden from us.
Popper says quite a few things on this, suggesting that this kind of problem
has very little epistemic significance in many respects, though of course it
might alter our metaphysics. For example, a metaphysical realist [Hawking]and
a metaphysical idealist [Mach] might each produce equally brilliant
contributions to the knowledge of ,say, physics. The truth is that scientific
methodology largely passes this problem by [Wittgenstein afair says something
similar, but his understanding of science is mistaken from Pop.s POV, being
'positivistic' - 'posvtc.' even though Wittgenstein did not accept the
positivist attitude to science as the be-all-and-end-all].
> In a way it compares to the chimera bombinating in the void.
Hm.
<snip>
> Locke distinguished between primary and secondary qualities. Things like
> SIZE ('bulk' he called it) are _not_ subject-relative (he thought). But
> things
> like "rotten" _are_.
>
> Think of it: the whole world divides into the primary and the secondary
> qualities, even if Locke was wrong about some of the examples.
>
> Cheers,
>
> JL
>
> -- I add "and Popper" since possibly Popper commented on this, etc.
This is where we came in. Unfortunately, though I believe Popper commented on
the primary and secondary qualities distinction [eg. in some Aristotelian
Society proceedings], I do not remember exactly what he said. My guess is
that the Popp. position is that the distinction is largely a misconceived
attempt to erect a justificationist theory of knowledge, and that the extent
to which subject-dependent experience corresponds to subject-independent
objects/reality is a matter for ongoing critical debate, and indeed partly a
matter of metaphysical faith.
Donal
England
___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo!
Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
