Le 26-juil.-05, à 03:12, Lee Corbin a écrit :
We all admit that it's easy to become confused. I myself regularly do so every day. In fact, you can't even learn anything until you first become confused.
I agree.
But there is *no* reason to become more confused than is necessary.
Sure.
The KEY DISTINCTION is between reality and perception of reality. This must be borne in mind at all times.
Absolutely so.
There are two things. One is reality. Two is perception of reality. They are not at all the same thing.
I guess you agree that we can hope or bet on some relations between them; Note also that there is "reality", "perception of reality", "belief on reality", "knowledge", sharable and un-sharable, etc. All this is already discussed in details in Plato, among others.
If you let even for a second the key distinction between the two slip, even by the tiniest, tiniest amount, then you are doomed. It's all over. You've bought the farm. There is no recovery. You've had it. Let us for the sake of God *not* define anything. That turns out, experience teaches us, to be the worst possible response. It is a horrible mistake. First, it gives rise to many different interpretations, and the curse of Babel is upon us. Second, we *ourselves* in almost all instances that I have seen, are not able to remember and strictly observe our own definitions. So preserve us from them.
To much definition can make things clumsy, but some definition can help people to realize that they were not arguing on the same things. Definition should always avoid the 1004 fallacy, i.e. not being more precise than the level of precision of the reasoning.
We need to look up to and admire all the people who are *not* philosophers, people who actually go about their business in the world and achieve admirable ends. Let us pray use *their* language.
Excellent. Although I would say that those who actually go about their business in world are the philosophers. But so-called "philosophy" suffers, like religion and even unions, from human institutionalization which just kill the spirit.
For one thing, it will be a cold day in hell before they ever change the way they use words because some half-assed philosophers have suggested they do.
OK. (note in passing the use of material implication!)
Second---unlike us---they are not confused.
Could depend on what.
When George Bush, for example, worries about the perception of the Russian ambassador, he is being very realistic. He does not have his head up his ass. He understands the situation perfectly: The world is out there, and the Russian ambassador sees things in it. The Russian ambassador is not insane, and so he knows that what he sees and the representations in his head are not the same thing. Yet the Russian ambassador may *perceive*, for example, that such-and-such is a threat, where we happen to know (since we are the possibly threatening party) that it is not. Therefore, George Bush wisely knows that he must try to afford the Russian ambassador an *accurate* representation of reality. We can do no better than they: we *must* continue to *never* confuse reality, on the one hand, with our perceptions OF it on the other.
Nor should we confuse reality with the interpretation of theories that we build from those perceptions and experiments. But we must take seriously those theories if only to be able to be refuted and to progress toward closer approximation of that reality. This needs works.
Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
