Taking inferences between matters of fact, not logic, as the basis for human reasoning.
A=A tells no-one anything unless they have some grasp of a language. For instance the first 'A' might mean 'tree', the 'A' immediately to the right of '=' might mean 'have lunch' and '=' between two 'A's might mean 'go to', or they might mean any other of an infinite number of things, or nothing. Languages represent complicated empirical subjects to learn. By contrast experiences, including the experiences involved with language, come to us with qualities that can be compared and contrasted with one another.
I will try to contrast two empirical ways of reaching a factual conclusion, or explanation of a fact, from some other facts. These ways can be illustrated by the example of the collision of two billiard balls, or by pushing a ball into a bucket of water.
What is or is not the true nature of the concepts of cause or effect is not something I will be concerned with, if I can help it.
A logical way of deducing what will happen in some way using ideas interpreting the situation will also be floating continually in the background, but we are trying to avoid that.
How can we get an explanation that is
A) not based on language
B) not based on a cultural or pragmatic or subjective ideal
C) is independent of humans?
If an explanation is its self sufficient for what is explained, then the way it is itself sufficient justifies the explanation.
If we can avoid drawing conclusions beyond factors in a situation, and BY THIS MEANS show how a result must, or would occur, then those factors are thus shown to be sufficient to produce that result. This can be illustrated by the case of pushing a stone into a bucket of water, and the water level rises. All these objects continue into their new configuration, which produces the resulting change.
Some ways of trying to check if the same factors are involved at different stages of a situation are; looking and comparing them through experience and memory; checking with other people; measuring them; counting them; having some way of marking their quantities so that these quantities can be checked again at present against what they were, having some way that they could continue from the previous situation into the present one.
Basically, we are trying to avoid drawing conclusions beyond objects.
If 'the reality of a situation, or of any factor within it' is judged by how sufficient that situation is itself to produce what occurs, or how sufficient the factors within it are to produce what unfolds then this is a different criteria from any intentionality, or aboutness any particular experiences may have. So any such intentionality is not relevant for judging the reality of a situation, by the present criteria.
Experiences may have all sorts of associations, qualities, atmospheres and significances but the question, from the point of view of the present criteria is 'can we see how they themselves could be sufficient to produce what occurs?' If we can see how they could themselves be sufficient to produce what occurs then that shows how they can do so independently of humans.
If we are judging if a number of objects remain the same on two occasions, a way of doing this may be to use tally marks. This presumes that tally marks, themselves, don't change on the various occasions of their use. But using tally marks in this way, and with this objective is not the same as doing something that overtly involves placing a description in the situation, or on the subject. It is a way of trying to note what is in a situation so as to aid deciding if any change has occurred on a subsequent development, or instance, of that situation. Tally marks can be usefully replaced by an ordered series of names in the form of 'numbers'.
Numbers can be used for other things than keeping a check and comparing factors in a situation e.g. they can be used as names of objects and addresses as in house numbers, or telephone numbers. So I'm not saying 'this is what numbers are', But only 'this is one use for them, and it doesn't overtly involve a description of a subject, or its contents, but a noting of it'.
Of course the clearest case of barely noting the contents of an experience may implicitly involve some description of it, of which we are unaware. One way of uncovering such an implicit and un-recognised description might be to point out how a present way of explaining what happens involves things not experienced in the situation. Thus getting rid of epicycles and absolute motion, shows how sticking more closely to what can be found in the situation produces a better explanation. Thus these advances can be described as getting rid of layers of unnecessary description and so producing a more objective explanation, not as merely producing something that is a better, or more useful description, although that may also result from producing a more objective explanation.
Another way of trying to avoid placing on experiences any character not belonging to them is to cut out any implicit reference to other experiences. To take only what is certain about the momentary experience, which then becomes a bare logical private object. A sense data. In the previous paragraph we tried to understand the world by trying to see how factors experienced as existing within it could themselves be sufficient to produce what happens, and this process made us concentrate more closely on the nature of what is experienced in the world. In this paragraph we tried to decide what is experienced on an occasion pure and simply, this leads to private objects. But isn't what we do actually experience, in the end, going to be what decides what we can claim to understand on the basis of our experience? And wont that be found to be what we experience pure and simply--which are a series of private objects? But how can we know that private objects don't continue? That is, how can we know that a momentary private object, a sense data, is not the artificial creation, when what we actually do experience are in themselves often continuing states? The attempt to look on experiences neat, without making any assumptions about them, in this way leads to overlooking a possibility.
But apart from that, if we look on our experiences as possibly constituting clues to the nature of an environment we presume ourselves to be in, and so try to use them to try and work out how what we experience ot happen could come about, one way of doing this is to try and see how what we experience could itself be sufficient to bring about what we experience, and a way it could appear like that is if we can avoid drawing conclusions beyond factors in our experience. It is not to indulge in an exercise of doing away with all assumptions, which leads to mind dependent data we must try to deduce something from but can't because they are turned into logically atomic states.
A theory that obviously seems to depend on showing how the world is self sufficient whith regard to its subject, is the theory of evolution through natural selection. But even though a certain 'background' to this theory might invlove physical atomism, the theory itself does not obviously invlove trying to avoid drawing conclusions beyond objects.
repeat
I will try to contrast two empirical ways of reaching a factual conclusion, or explanation of a fact from some other facts. These ways can be illustrated by the example of the collision of two billiard balls, or by pushing a ball into a bucket of water.
What is or is not the true nature of the concepts of cause or effect is not something I will be concerned with, if I can help it.
A logical way of deducing what will happen in some way using ideas interpreting the situation will also be floating continually in the background, but we are trying to avoid that.
How can we get an explanation that is
A) not based on language
B) not based on a cultural or pragmatic or subjective ideal
C) is independent of humans?
If an explanation is self sufficient for what is explained, then the way it is itself sufficient justifies the explanation.
If we can avoid drawing conclusions beyond factors in a situation, and BY THIS MEANS show how a result must, or would, occur then those factors are thus shown to be sufficient to produce that result.
Some ways of trying to check if the same factors are involved at different stages of a situation are; looking and comparing them through experience and memory; checking with other people; measuring them; counting them; having some way of marking their quantities so that these quantities can be checked again at present against what they were, having some way that they could continue from the previous situation into the present one.
Basically, we are trying to avoid drawing conclusions beyond objects.
If 'the reality of a situation, or of any factor within it' is judged by how sufficient that situation is itself to produce what occurs, or how sufficient the factors within it are to produce what unfolds then this is a different criteria from any intentionality, or aboutness any particular experiences may have. So any such intentionality is not relevant for judging the reality of a situation, by the present criteria.
Also it seems possible that some theory might give a perfect prediction of everything that happens, and in what is agreed to be the most simple way, but still although this makes everything perfectly predictable it may not show how any of the things predicted are sufficient, considered in themselves, to bring about what follows them or any any of the other predicted things. So showing how things could themselves be sufficient to bring about something is not literally insignificant because it concerns something that seems achieved by literally considering the contents of experience themselves, even though no different experimental result can be produced from it over the perfect prediction.
Experiences may have all sorts of associations, qualities, atmospheres and significances but the question, from the point of view of the present criteria is 'can we see how they themselves could be sufficient to produce what occurs?' If we can see how they could themselves be sufficient to produce what occurs then that shows how they can do so independently of humans.
If we are judging if a number of objects remain the same on two occasions, a way of doing this may be to use tally marks. This presumes that tally marks, themselves, don't change on various situations. But using tally marks in this way, and with this objective is not the same as doing something that overtly involves placing a description in the situation, or on the subject. It is a way of trying to note what is in a situation so as to aid deciding if any change has occurred on a subsequent development of that situation. Tally marks can be usefully replaced by an ordered series of names which can be given a general name 'numbers'.
Numbers can be used for other things than keeping a check and comparing factors in a situation e.g. they can be used as names of objects and addresses as in house numbers, or telephone numbers. So I'm not saying 'this is what numbers are', But only 'this is one use for them, and it doesn't overtly involve a description of a subject, or its contents, but a noting of it'.
Of course the clearest case of barely noting the contents of an experience may implicitly involve some description of it, of which we are unaware. One way of uncovering such an implicit and un-recognised description might be to point out how a present way of explaining what happens involves things not experienced in the situation. Thus getting rid of epicycles and absolute motion, shows how sticking more closely to what can be found in the situation produces a better explanation. Thus these advances can be 'described' as getting rid of layers of unnecessary description, not as merely producing something that is a better, or more useful description. 'Described as';That is, we can try and point to the fact that we have got rid of what is, in hindsight a more overtly descriptive element with the new theory.)
This brings up the question "what is meant by saying something is a description of something else?"
If there are, at least in principle, various possible ways of handling a subject that each employs something looking like language, then by contrasting these possible ways with one another we can produce a reason for saying each of them, or any particular one of them, is a description. So, if there is no certainty that establishes only one unique way of handling a subject by what looks like a language, any way of handling it by what looks like language can be 'described' as giving a description of it. Again, if the properties of a linguistic handling of something are add to and are relied on for the handling of that something then this can also be said to be giving a description of that something. But if, as with tally marks, what we are doing is merely noting things that are easily marked off from each other, like sheep, so as giving us a method for finding if they have changed subsequently (for instance), then although there may be other apparently linguistic ways of handling your flock of sheep to check if they are the same or not, and although our way of checking them depends on the properties of the tally marks, neither point shows what we are doing must have added something linguistic to the subject. On the contrary our object is (for instance) just to compare the sheep we have at various times, there is no evidence this attempt must add anything to the subject.
If, as seems a philosophical habit, we tend to look at any subject by looking at the means we have of handling that subject; so instead of looking at things, we look at perceptions, or ideas, or concepts, or instead of looking at things or perceptions, we look at how we handle the stuff of perceptions, then by these sorts of means it always looks like we must be dealing with these 'means' and can never deal with the subject. Another reason for doubting if we are dealing with the subject itself is a lack of certainty in what we are doing, this seems to show that we might be mistaken we are dealing with the subject as it is. And once we have a set of tally marks, and then transform them into numbers, if we concentrate on these things they get a character all of their own with all sorts of poetical associations. But that is irrelevant for our purpose of comparing and keeping track of our flock of sheep and we don't have to concentrate on it when we use them to concentrate on our flock of sheep to see if they seem unaltered.