humanities.philosophy.objectivism

Malrassic Park wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:58:30 -0800, vonvegas wrote:

Vonvegas:
>> So the difference between Indirect and Direct Realism boils down to
>> whether whats is known is the mental content (Indirect Realism) versus
>> that which the percept is of, reality (Direct Realism).
>>
>> Now please carefully look again at the Rand quote which you've provided
>> as evidence for your conclusion, but this time with my emphasis added:
>>
>> "A percept is a group of sensations automatically
>> retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the
>> form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses *AND
>> APPREHENDS REALITY*".
>>
>>

Mal:
> I can only grant you that Rand was trying to be a Direct Realist.
> There is no question about that, the entire basis of her philosophy
> screams "Direct Realist."

Well, if you can grant as much as "that, the entire basis of her
philosophy screams "Direct Realist.", then all we have pointing in the
opposite direction is a few ambiguous statements contrariwise, yes?

>
> But she can't be a Direct Realist based on her theory of percepts, no
> matter how loudly she screams it.

Not so. (see below)

>
> And to answer your quote about apprehending reality, notice that
> "reality" is not absent from the title Indirect Realism, for which
> reality is apprehended, indirectly.

I take it your point is that were she an Indirect Realist instead, she
would still have arrived at the words "apprehend reality". That's true,
but a *good* Indirect Realist would not have skipped over, hence not
mention at all, the crucial step from knowing our mental content to
getting to know reality, since that is otherwise a fatal objection to
Indirect Realism. So now you've accused her of being not just an
Indirect Realist, but a bad one at that.


Notice that she did not say
> "direct awareness" in your quote, not yet. She slides deftly into
> Direct Realism in the next statement, or tries to.

Well, we can't expect her to say everything in one sentence, can we?

> Now take your quote and substitute in Rand's definition of "percept."
> It becomes, "It is in the form of groups of sensations automatically
> retained and integrated by the brain that man grasps the evidence of
> his senses and apprehends reality." At this point you don't even have
> Direct Realism,

Nor do we have Indirect Realism. What we have is a description of a
sequence of steps/processes leading from sensations to perceptual
knowledge.

>that doesn't come until the passage after the next,
> which is, 'When we speak of "direct perception" or "direct awareness,"
> we mean the perceptual level.' She is striving toward Direct Realism
> there;

No. She's not *striving* for anything; she's declaring that we've
arrived (in her description) at perceptual knowledge which furthermore
is sometimes called *direct* perception/awareness.


>however, in the context of the preceding statements it only
> means that we have direct perception and direct awareness of these
> integrations of sensations called percepts.

No! You're wrongly reading that into it.

>That is indirect
> perception of reality through percepts, not directly via perception.
>
> A Direct Realist account would only allow for perception, not
> percepts, > which is direct perception of reality not perception via
> percepts.

No. Percepts are perfectly acceptable to the Direct Realist. But a
percept has intension that is it is *of* something (in this case reality).


(snip)
>
>>>Talk about schizophrenic. Which is it, Direct
>>> or Indirect Realism? Or both?


>> Maybe you're just being too hard on her?


> If someone wants to throw the first punch and bring up "schizophrenia"
> with regard to my theory, which is exactly what happened, then that
> leaves it wide open for a counter-punch. Maybe someone was just being
> too hard on me. Ya think?
>
Yes. But I would have thot it obvious
a justified return punch be thrown at the initiator, and not at the
memory of someone who long ago left the ring and is dead and buried.

Vonvegas