Is ‘There Are External Objects’ an Empirical Proposition?

1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-321
Author(s):  
Trudy Govier
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
External Object ◽  
Empirical Proposition ◽  
External Objects ◽  
The Way

Alice Ambrose once criticized Moore for treating the proposition ‘There are external objects’ as an empirical one. She said that those who denied that we could know this proposition to be true would not accept any evidence as going against their denial of it, and were not regarding the issue of its truth as empirical. She also maintained that one could not point out an external object in the way in which one could point out a dime or nickel and alleged on these grounds that saying that there are external objects is not the same sort of thing as saying that there are coins. The issue arose concerning Moore's paper, “Proof of an External World.“In “Reply to My Critics,” Moore pointed out that he had been concerned in “Proof of an External World” not to prove that we know that there are external objects, but rather to prove that there are external objects. But he applied Ambrose's remarks to that proposition. Moore rightly asserted that the fact that someone denies that there are external objects and treats all evidence as irrelevant to the issue does not show that the proposition he denies fails to be empirical.

Herman Bavinck and Thomas Reid on Perception and Knowing God

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Sutanto
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
External World ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
External Reality ◽  
External Objects ◽  
The World ◽  
Triune God ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
The Way

AbstractNicholas Wolterstorff argues that Kant had erected an epistemological boundary between mental representations and external reality that precipitates an anxiety in modern theologians about whether one can properly refer to God. As a way past this boundary, Wolterstorff's Reformed epistemology retrieves Thomas Reid's account of perception as an alternative to Kant, according to which knowledge of external objects is direct and immediate. Further, Wolterstorff points to the Dutch neo-Calvinist Herman Bavinck as one who bears many “reidian” elements in his epistemology, especially in the way in which Bavinck argues that the epistemic accessibility of the external world ought to be taken for granted. The thesis of this present paper, however, is that a closer investigation of Bavinck's account of perception reveals that he, unlike Reid, accepts the gap between mental representations and external objects, such that representations are those through which we know the world. Bavinck affirms that a correspondence between the two can be obtained by an appeal to the resources found in Christian revelation. In effect, what emerges in a close comparison of Bavinck and Reid is that Bavinck's account is an alternative theological response to the kantian boundary—one according to which mental representations correspond with external objects because both participate in an organically connected cosmos shaped by a Triune God.

Vasubandhu (4th or 5th century AD)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Hayes ◽  
Marek Mejor
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
External Object ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Prolific Author ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Direct Awareness ◽  
The Mind

An Indian Buddhist philosopher of the fourth or fifth century, Vasubandhu was a prolific author of treatises and commentaries. Best known for his synthesis of the Sarvāstivāda school of Abhidharma, he was sympathetic with the Sautrāntika school and frequently criticized Sarvāstivāda theory from that perspective. Vasubandhu eventually became an eminent exponent of the Yogācāra school. He also wrote short treatises on logic that influenced Dignāga, traditionally said to have been his disciple. Probably the most original of Vasubandhu’s philosophical works are his two short works in verse, known as the Viṃśatikākārikāvṛtti (Twenty-Verse Treatise) and the Triṃśikākārikāvṛtti (Thirty-Verse Treatise). In these two works, he argues that one can never have direct awareness of external objects, but can be aware only of images within consciousness. Given that some of these images, such as those in dreams and hallucinations, are known to occur without being representations of external objects, one can never be certain whether a given image in awareness corresponds to an external object. Because one can never be sure of what is externally real but can be sure of internal experiences, he concludes, a person seeking nirvāṇa should focus attention on the workings of the mind rather than on the external world.

Explaining Perceptual Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
External World ◽  
Satisfactory Explanation ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Epistemological Problem ◽  
The Way

This chapter offers a response to Quassim Cassam’s ‘Seeing and Knowing’, which challenges some of the conditions Cassam thinks the author has imposed on a satisfactory explanation of our knowledge of the external world. According to Cassam, the conditions he specifies can be fulfilled in ways that explain how the knowledge is possible. What is at stake in this argument between Cassam and the author is the conception of what is perceived to be so that is needed to account for the kind of perceptual knowledge we all know we have. That is what must be in question in any promising move away from the overly restrictive conception of perceptual experience that gives rise to the hopelessness of the traditional epistemological problem. The author suggests that we should explore the conditions of successful ‘propositional’ perception of the way things are and emphasizes the promise of such a strategy.

Children's Preference for Body or External Object on a Task Requiring Transposition and Discrimination of Right-Left Relations

1975 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 291-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald A. Winer
Keyword(s):  
First Graders ◽  
The Body ◽  
External Object ◽  
Initial Series ◽  
Alternative Systems ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Practice Trials

First graders were tested on trials requiring the discrimination and transposition of right-left relations, with stimuli similar to (dolls) or different from (toy planes) the body. On an initial series of training and practice trials children were allowed to respond to body and external objects as referents providing right-left cues. A later series of test trials was then used to determine the referent the child actually preferred. Results of the test trials indicated that 24 children tested with the dolls preferred the body as referent, while 24 children tested with planes preferred the external referent. The results were interpreted as suggesting two alternative systems through which children develop an undersranding of right-left relations and possibly other concepts as well.

Models of Self-Replicators

2010 ◽  
pp. 282-314
Author(s):  
Eleonora Bilotta ◽  
Pietro Pantano
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
External World ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Christopher Alexander ◽  
On Line ◽  
Instinctive Behavior ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
The Way

Structural models and patterns are vitally important for human beings. From birth, we base our emotional and cognitive representations of the external world on species-specific signals (the human face) and exploit these signals to structure our instinctive behavior. The creation of cognitive patterns to represent the world lies at the very heart of human cognition. It is this process that underlies our efficient use of signs, our ability to communicate with natural languages and to build cognitive artifacts, the way we organize the external world, and the way we organize external events in our memories and our flow of consciousness. Patterns are sometimes called schemas, or models, and discussed in terms of a gestalt (Piaget, 1960; 1970; Koelher, 1974). In the middle ages a pattern meant “the.original.proposed.to.imitation;.the. archetype;.that.which.is.to.be.copied;.an.exemplar” (from the On Line Etymology Dictionary). Modern use dates back to the XVIII century. In 1977 Christopher Alexander introduced a new way of using the term in architecture. For Alexander, a pattern was a model used to encode and organize existing knowledge, avoiding the need to reinvent the knowledge every time it was needed. For Alexander a pattern was “a three part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution” (Alexander et al., 1977).

Perceptual Knowledge of the External World

2018 ◽  
pp. 27-60
Author(s):  
Keith Lehrer
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
External Object ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Object Description ◽  
The Subject

This chapter explains how exemplarization of experience can provide representational evidence for perceptual claims. The perceptual subject experiences a smell of the spray of a skunk and knows what the sensation is like before he learns the origin of it. To know what the sensation is like in itself requires the subject has some conception or representation of what it is like. The representation of the experience is the result of using the experience as a reflexive exemplar representation of a kind of sensation of which it is an instance. As the subject learns that the exemplar sensation is the odor of the spray of a skunk, it becomes part of the meaning and, consequently, evidence for external object description by exhibiting what the objects are like for us. The evidence of truth is fallible but when not defeated by error it provides defensible knowledge of external things.

Wittgenstein and Anthropology

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-57
Author(s):  
Veena Das
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Shared Values ◽  
Vertical Dimension ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Horizontal Dimension ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Way

The main theme of this chapter is an understanding of culture not as a text to be interpreted through root symbols falling on the axes of nature and culture, nor simply as shared values, but instead as providing the ability to both forge a belonging and finding resources within one’s culture to contest it and find one’s voice in its singularity within it. The chapter explores the concept of counterculture and finds its alignments with skepticism that takes us in a direction that asks not how do we know that the external world exists but how do I know that I exist, that I can trust myself in relation to others? Skepticism is engaged in this chapter as lining the everyday—using the idea of lining not to suggest a border but to allude to the way a coat and its lining, the exterior and the interior, are joined to each other. Hence skepticism is not the kind of doubt that can be extinguished once for all. The idea of forms of life is introduced in its horizontal dimension as “form” and its vertical dimension as “life” showing how forms of life are both, particular to a milieu and as drawing from our common background as humans.

The Problem of the External World

1988 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
D. W. Hamlyn ◽  
J. E. Tiles
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

Heidegger says concerning the question of the possibility of a proof of the existence of an external world that ‘the “scandal of philosophy” (Kant's words) is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again’. Heidegger thinks this because our being (Dasein) is in the world, and this is something which Descartes for one failed to appreciate. I am not concerned here to answer the question whether Heidegger's own views on these matters will do, though I think that they will not. Indeed they might well be said to beg the question at issue, in that Heidegger starts from the presumption that we are actually in the world, even if we are not in it in the way in which the tree in the garden is (and does not this last point make a great difference to the situation?). Another way of reacting to Heidegger would be to say that he does not treat the fact and force of scepticism seriously enough when he makes that presumption. After all, it is possible for us to raise sceptical doubts about the existence of a world apart from ourselves, while it is not possible for the tree in the garden to act similarly. Hence, even if we make the presumption that we are in the world, as Heidegger insists, we are in it in a way that leaves untouched the possibility of sceptical doubts about what that world and our being in it are like. It might, logically, be the case, for example, that the world consists of just me and that my being in the world is no more than for me just to exist. In other words, my being in the world does not directly entail that there exists a world apart from me.

scholarly journals Apprehension and Existence, Appearance and Reality: The Reception of Nafs al-amr Debates after the 13th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-39
Author(s):  
Murat Kaş
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
The Real ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Muslim Scholars ◽  
The Way

The structure of human cognition and the means of apprehension is suitable only for partly and gradually conceiving reality. This limitation has led to a certain distance between appearance and reality. This means that there will always be a gap between the judgments of the mind about the external world and its contents, which are entities, cases, facts, and states. This partiality and partiteness of human understanding has produced the truth-maker problem with regard to mind judgments. Muslim scholars who admit the correlation between the structure of reality and the categories of the mind but reject the notion of the construction and the determination of reality by the mind refer to the realm that is independent of the mind’s personal judgments as nafs al-amr. This realm is concerned with the all degrees of reality, namely—from the existent to the non-existent, from the necessity to the contingency and impossibility, from the absolute to the relative, from the material to the non-physical, from the external to the mental, and from the real entities to the abstracted ones—which step into the shot of human cognition or not. Carrying the concept of nafs al-amr from the logical plane to the metaphysical realm that intersects epistemology and ontology has led to debates that pave the way for various treatments. In particular, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274) nafs al-amr epistle that posited it to the cosmic sphere resulted in criticisms of this conception of nafs al-amr, and these criticisms are the same ones directed to the Avicennian theory of emanation and its epistemological implications. Scholars who use this concept free from any metaphysical presumption and implication argue against his leap from the logical to the cosmic sphere. During the following period, this tension occasioned debates that led to the approaches that refer to the various degrees of reality, i.e., to the cosmic spheres, the spiritual realms, and the divine realms. This work aims to create a map of treatments, arguments and problems with regard to the concept of nafs al-amr.

scholarly journals The theory of επινοια in st. Basil of Caesarea and Eunomius of Cyzicus: philosophical and theological background

Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 129-138
Author(s):  
Georgios D. Panagopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Sense Data ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Theological Thought ◽  
The Way

In the paper our attention is focused on the way in which both Saint Basil of Caesarea and his opponent, the anomoian Eunomius of Cyzicus, integrate in their theological thought the philosophical teaching about the formation of concepts (™p…noia) in human mind and their relation to the external objects. Our inquiry will provide the evidence that the two theologians are acquainted with the same philosophical material concerning human mind’s concepts; nevertheless each of them opted to use a different element from the related philosophical traditions in order to provide support to different theological purposes. Eunomius’ rationalistic doctrine of God’s knowledge, which goes hand in hand with his account of human language and mind, prompted Saint Basil to advance an empirical epistemologi­cal view that both makes possible a talk about God based on sense data and keeps fully intact the transcendence of God’s essence.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document