Affordances, Properties and the Knowability of Reality

[LMNO]

Fuck that.  Any resonably horizontal surface in an environment with gravity "affords" sitting.

The horizontal surface doesn't mean squat.  It's the way the joints in our ankles, knees, and hips that create a sitting action.  The horizontal surface just gets in the way.

[Kai]

To the OP: Affordances are map based assumptions. In other words, they aren't the territory. A couch is only a couch because we recognize it as one due to our experience and indoctrination with such things. If we dig up a couch and recognize it as such it is only because we have a /shared human/ experience with the original owner/maker. A tool/craft/human creation is just the sum total of it's components until we inbue more to it with a name and a purpose...which leads me to think you are projecting some sort of cathexis and assuming it's an intrinsic rather than extrinsic property of objects.

[Triple Zero]

I'm not really sure if you are arguing for or against what I said on the previous page, but be assured there is nothing "intrinsic" about my realization.

It's just that, if you had a couch, or the matter making up a couch, in the shape of a couch, but it would float somewhere in the vast emptiness of space, without any human ever able to get there or even observe it [it being small and light centuries far away].

Then IMO it would make more sense to me to think of such a thing as "matter in the shape of a couch" or "something that would be a couch if someone were around to use or even appreciate it as such", even if it were materially identical to a nice Chesterfield.

Because it would really be a meaningless clump of atoms, rather than "a couch".

I don't think this is so much about something intrinsic to the object, but more something intrinsic to the way we think of the verb "to be", oh shit E-Prime, I dont wanna go there, sorry. It just struck me as really profound the moment I was mulling over it.

[LMNO]

Let's look at an example. If you were walking through the Oceana exhibit in the Smithsonian, you'd see a wooden structure.  It's about a foot high, with a slightly convex surface about 6 inches by 8 inches, with either three or four legs supporting it.

If you saw it, you'd think it was a very short stool.  But it's actually a pillow.  The natives would sleep with their heads supported on this hard wooden platform.

We do not recognize it as a pillow because we do not have the experience of sleeping with our heads jacked up on a piece of wood.  Instead, we recognize it as a stool, because that is what we are taught that this kind of structure "means".

[Triple Zero]

Yes. So you agree with me, right?

Except it got even more confusing, when I realized when there's nobody around to attach this meaning, there is still the clump of matter making up the object, and even though it "is" nothing [meaningful], it's still there, being it's shape and atoms and shit.

[LMNO]

Allow me to make some assumptions:

This couch-shaped thing is not a naturally occuring thing; that is, it's not a meteorite that has one horizontal surface, and two perpendicular surfaces parallel to the first, or anything.  It's a constructed amalgamation of fabric, wood, and metal springs.

If so, then it was constructed with a pattern in mind.  Because of this, I would say it's still a couch.

If it's some sort of weird naturally-occuring thing, then I would say it's "couch-like", or (more specifically), "it has some properties that are oddly couch-like".

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This is all too fucking complicated.  I have a couch.  I know it's a couch because I can sit on it, because it looks like a couch, and because that's what the invoice said when I bought it.

What more do I need to know?  Couches are for three things: 

1.  Sitting on.
2.  Fucking on.
3.  Napping on.

Couches are NOT for mental masturbation about how we know if they're real or not.  It occurs to me that there are plenty of weird Damnthings in the universe to spend time thinking about, rather than how you "know" whether or not your couch is a couch.

For fuck's sake.

[LMNO]

This is all too fucking complicated.  I have a couch.  I know it's a couch because I can sit on it, because it looks like a couch, and because that's what the invoice said when I bought it.

What more do I need to know?  Couches are for three things: 

1.  Sitting on.
2.  Fucking on.
3.  Napping on.
4.  A weapon.

Couches are NOT for mental masturbation about how we know if they're real or not.  It occurs to me that there are plenty of weird Damnthings in the universe to spend time thinking about, rather than how you "know" whether or not your couch is a couch.

For fuck's sake.

Addendum.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This is all too fucking complicated.  I have a couch.  I know it's a couch because I can sit on it, because it looks like a couch, and because that's what the invoice said when I bought it.

What more do I need to know?  Couches are for three things:  

1.  Sitting on.
2.  Fucking on.
3.  Napping on.
4.  A weapon.

Couches are NOT for mental masturbation about how we know if they're real or not.  It occurs to me that there are plenty of weird Damnthings in the universe to spend time thinking about, rather than how you "know" whether or not your couch is a couch.

For fuck's sake.

Addendum.

True.

But my point stands.  All the rest is a collection of solopsisms.  If you can't be sure the couch exists, get a new couch.  If THAT one seems iffy, lift it 3' up and drop one of the legs of the couch onto the top of your foot, just below the ankle.  The reality or non-reality of the couch will become self-evident.

TGRR,
Refutes it thus.

[LMNO]

I was gonna write a long post, filled with analogies and metaphors, and then end it with:






But then I decided I have better things to do.

[Kai]

I'm not really sure if you are arguing for or against what I said on the previous page, but be assured there is nothing "intrinsic" about my realization.

It's just that, if you had a couch, or the matter making up a couch, in the shape of a couch, but it would float somewhere in the vast emptiness of space, without any human ever able to get there or even observe it [it being small and light centuries far away].

Then IMO it would make more sense to me to think of such a thing as "matter in the shape of a couch" or "something that would be a couch if someone were around to use or even appreciate it as such", even if it were materially identical to a nice Chesterfield.

Because it would really be a meaningless clump of atoms, rather than "a couch".

I don't think this is so much about something intrinsic to the object, but more something intrinsic to the way we think of the verb "to be", oh shit E-Prime, I dont wanna go there, sorry. It just struck me as really profound the moment I was mulling over it.

I was talking to the Original Poster, and their idea of affordances, which are essentially just concepts, and not real qualities of objects (like electromagnetism and shape and composition).

[LMNO]

yeah, I think the last handful of posters here are in agreement with each other, and disagree with the OP.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I hate when philosophy majors try for a PhD. 

[Brotep]

Aw crap, it's a reductio ad super cool story bro.  We learned about those in that online philosophy class I took seven years ago.


TripZip, whether or not your floating clump of matter is a couch, one could sit upon it if it drifted over to this planet and hung out somewhere around ground level.  Not worried about metaphysical essences here, just stuff you can do to stuff.

Kai, once again...How is the physical relation entailed by an affordance less real than the physical relation entailed by a chemical property?

[LMNO]

Because the "physical relation" occurs in the brain of the observer.  Not in the object.