A better category to describe the actions of many who live in an abundantly prosperous world, and have the means to act with this one goal in mind every moment of the day.
"That we perceive objects directly is a powerful illusion, but an illusion nonetheless."
I disagree with this use of the word 'illsuison'. It fhe contructed 'image' in are brain is representation of something 'outthere' it's not an illusion.
If you see a truck speeding past, it's best not to step in front of it under the illusion it is an 'illusion'.
Some theoretical physicist have said 'time is an illusion'. This seems silly to me. Just because it may be built on top of some deeper structure doesn't make it an 'illusion'. A house is not an inllusion because it's made of bricks and a brick is not illusiond because it's made of molecules. If somebody throws a brick at you duck.
Arthur, I see your point, but in this case I disagree. Your analogy with the other "illusions" you mention doesn't work, in my opinion. What is illusory here is the strong intuition that we have direct access to objects in the world. We don't. That's not to say that those objects themselves are illusory just because we can only perceive them via our sense-data.
I would not call the 'strong access intuition' an illusion, but a dellusion (perhaps a 'hardwired' one). It seems to me that it is worthwhile to distinctquish between a 'representation' [a] that is anchored to exteranal realality and an illusion which is not.
The direct access falacy shows up a lot in Quora physics questions. E.g., 'How do we know an electron is real if we cannot see it?'
I consider using 'preception' but that is both more the whole process and also would inclucde bogsu 'direct perception'.
'Represention' is the best I have come up with. It is sort like mathimaticians concept of a function as a 'map'' howerver in their usaage it is a well defined mapping between well defined elements of one set to another. It need not be one-to-one, but the map is always well defined.
In the case of world->brain/mind the elements on each end of each are not that clearly delinated.
So there was no soul for Cyrenaics? Or that trying to grasp what a soul is can not be possible. Because no matter the combination of our senses and experience it is, the soul, does not exist in this world? Never heard of these guys before, thank you.
Maks, that's one of the reasons I write these pieces, to let people know of entire philosophies that perhaps they were not aware of!
As for the soul, good question. I would think the Cyreanics would say that we may apprehend intuitively the notion that we have a "soul" (or, as we would say today, a mind). But we can't tell what it is made of, whether it will survive death, and so on. Which, by the way, I think is a very reasonable position.
Could you recommend a book that gives a fair and extensive treatment to most Greco-Roman philosophy? Something for a modern reader. More of a comparison between ethic and physic of each school, rather then label of a general characteristic?
A better category to describe the actions of many who live in an abundantly prosperous world, and have the means to act with this one goal in mind every moment of the day.
Indeed.
"That we perceive objects directly is a powerful illusion, but an illusion nonetheless."
I disagree with this use of the word 'illsuison'. It fhe contructed 'image' in are brain is representation of something 'outthere' it's not an illusion.
If you see a truck speeding past, it's best not to step in front of it under the illusion it is an 'illusion'.
Some theoretical physicist have said 'time is an illusion'. This seems silly to me. Just because it may be built on top of some deeper structure doesn't make it an 'illusion'. A house is not an inllusion because it's made of bricks and a brick is not illusiond because it's made of molecules. If somebody throws a brick at you duck.
Arthur, I see your point, but in this case I disagree. Your analogy with the other "illusions" you mention doesn't work, in my opinion. What is illusory here is the strong intuition that we have direct access to objects in the world. We don't. That's not to say that those objects themselves are illusory just because we can only perceive them via our sense-data.
I would not call the 'strong access intuition' an illusion, but a dellusion (perhaps a 'hardwired' one). It seems to me that it is worthwhile to distinctquish between a 'representation' [a] that is anchored to exteranal realality and an illusion which is not.
The direct access falacy shows up a lot in Quora physics questions. E.g., 'How do we know an electron is real if we cannot see it?'
[a] A better word needed?
Yup, I'd be happy to go with a better word!
I consider using 'preception' but that is both more the whole process and also would inclucde bogsu 'direct perception'.
'Represention' is the best I have come up with. It is sort like mathimaticians concept of a function as a 'map'' howerver in their usaage it is a well defined mapping between well defined elements of one set to another. It need not be one-to-one, but the map is always well defined.
In the case of world->brain/mind the elements on each end of each are not that clearly delinated.
So there was no soul for Cyrenaics? Or that trying to grasp what a soul is can not be possible. Because no matter the combination of our senses and experience it is, the soul, does not exist in this world? Never heard of these guys before, thank you.
Maks, that's one of the reasons I write these pieces, to let people know of entire philosophies that perhaps they were not aware of!
As for the soul, good question. I would think the Cyreanics would say that we may apprehend intuitively the notion that we have a "soul" (or, as we would say today, a mind). But we can't tell what it is made of, whether it will survive death, and so on. Which, by the way, I think is a very reasonable position.
I know Massimo, its great!
Could you recommend a book that gives a fair and extensive treatment to most Greco-Roman philosophy? Something for a modern reader. More of a comparison between ethic and physic of each school, rather then label of a general characteristic?
Maks, the best book of that kind I know of is this one, by John Sellars:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40027029-hellenistic-philosophy
But my friends Greg Lopez, Meredith Kuntz, and I are just now working on a new one, which will hopefully come out in 2024. Stay tuned...