{"id":7848,"date":"2014-07-09T11:28:32","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T11:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/07\/09\/seeing-and-reading-more-on-marcelo-gleisers-physics-driven-pseudo-philosophy\/"},"modified":"2014-07-09T11:28:32","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T11:28:32","slug":"seeing-and-reading-more-on-marcelo-gleisers-physics-driven-pseudo-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/07\/09\/seeing-and-reading-more-on-marcelo-gleisers-physics-driven-pseudo-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing and Reading: More on Marcelo Gleiser’s Physics-Driven Pseudo Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

This entry takes up where I left off yesterday<\/a>.  R. Crozat, responding to yesterday's post, e-mails:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I agree that philosophy is tasked to evaluate the philosophical claims of scientists. Your post on Professor Gleiser does the job.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to confusing seeing with object seen, Gleiser seems to mix physics with meaning. He writes \u201cYou say, \u201cI\u2019m reading this word now.\u201d In reality, you aren\u2019t.\u201d Here, his use of "reading" confuses:<\/span><\/p>\n

a)  an optical process that enables reading, with<\/span><\/p>\n

b) actual reading, which is the interpretation and understanding of the meaning of information.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gleiser's description of the optics is informative, but he misunderstands the nature of reading. He refers to \u201creading\u201d then proceeds to treat the optics as if optics is<\/em> reading. But they are not identical. Clearly, one can run his eyes over words without reading them. The light-traveling and eye-running are physical; the reading is mental\/intentional. Gleiser\u2019s mistake is like confusing driving with a gasoline fill-up, photography with light and lens, or jogging with trail-mix, bones and muscles.<\/span><\/p>\n

I can imagine Socrates rephrasing Phaedo 99b<\/span>: \u201cFancy being unable to distinguish between a mental faculty and the process without which that faculty could not be enabled!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My correspondent is exactly right.  I spotted the blurring of seeing and reading too, but decided not to pursue it in the interests of brevity, brevity being the soul of blog, as has been observed perhaps too often in these pages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading involves understanding, but one can see a word, a phrase, a sentence, and so on without understanding it.  So there is more to reading than seeing.  Seeing is with the eyes; understanding is with the mind.  Note also that one can read without seeing, reading Braille being an example of this.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would add to what my correspondent states by making a tripartite distinction among (i) the causal basis of visual perception, (ii) seeing, and (iii) reading.  It is not just reading that is intentional or object-directed; seeing is as well.  To see is to see something as something.  One cannot just see, and all seeing is a seeing-as.  It may be that our physicist is guilty of a three-fold confusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no reading (in the ordinary sense of the word) without seeing, and there is no seeing without brain, eyes, neural pathways, light, physical objects, etc.  But to confuse these three is a Philosophy 101 mistake.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The quotation from Phaedo<\/em> 99b is entirely apt although the topic there is not seeing and understanding, but free human action.  Plato has Socrates say:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

If it were said that without bones and muscles and other parts of the body I could not have carried my resolutions into effect, that would be true.  But to say that they are the cause<\/em> of what I do, . . . that my acting is not from choice of what is best, would be a very loose and careless way of talking.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Our physicists need to educate themselves so as to avoid the loose and careless ways of talking that they readily fall into when, eager to turn a buck, they inflict their pseudo-philosophical speculations on the unwitting public.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>This Just Now In: There is no Now! More Bad Philosophy from a Physicist<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Nonsense From the Science Page of the New York Times<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>What is Left for Philosophy to Do?<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Conscience, Brain, and Scientistic Pseudo-Understanding<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry takes up where I left off yesterday.  R. Crozat, responding to yesterday's post, e-mails: I agree that philosophy is tasked to evaluate the philosophical claims of scientists. Your post on Professor Gleiser does the job. In addition to confusing seeing with object seen, Gleiser seems to mix physics with meaning. He writes \u201cYou … Continue reading “Seeing and Reading: More on Marcelo Gleiser’s Physics-Driven Pseudo Philosophy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scientism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}