Your position seems to entail that comparing one model of the world with another cannot produce a model that corresponds to reality. I don’t see why that should be the case. If you have a transitive correspondence relationship of the form R ⇒ M(R) ⇒ M’(M) with R standing for reality and M, M’ for models, that may well establish a limit on the accuracy of M’(R) but it doesn’t make it impossible. Indeed if it did there could be no pragmatic basis for a model since you could never expect your model to correspond with reality in any context.
Moreover I don’t think your characterization of sense data in the visual field as a “visual model” is warranted. Sense data is primitve, which is to say yellow is nothing but yellow. It models nothing else. The relationships between posited to exist between different bits of yellow, red, orange etc. and the postulated range of possible changes those relationships could undergo constitute the model. If there were no such thing as primitive sense data, then what could the relation between the position of the corner of a square and its center be but a relation between yet more relations? How would you be able to form any models at all without becoming trapped in an infinitely descending hierarchy?
If the deliverances of my scientific models match up with the deliverances of my perceptual models perfectly, I can say they are true. But there is something very unsatisfactory about this stance. The world has just disappeared. Truth, if it is anything at all, involves both our models and the world. However, the world doesn’t feature in the coherence conception of truth. I could be floating in a void, hallucinating various models that happen to cohere with one another perfectly, and I would have attained the truth. That can’t be right.
You don’t have to subscribe to the idea that coherence is truth if you just treat this as a description of how human beings practically function. The world goes nowhere, nothing is true just because a coherent model exists that shows it to be true. We just assume it does in the absence of better evidence (or the absence of any need for a better model). All we’ve done is removed the ability to know that we know something, the ability to know it remains intact. In other words, M’(R) may hold even if we can’t know that M(R) does, and hence know that M’(R) does.
You can meaningfully say “That’s a good representation” or “That’s a bad representation”. There is no analog with causation. There’s no sense in which some particular putatively causal relation ends up being a “bad” causal relation.
Again I perceive an insistence on knowing that you know something which is in my view unwarranted. To know anything at all, by such reasoning, you have to know it, and know that you know it, and know that you know that you know it, ad infinitum.
Sense data is primitve, which is to say yellow is nothing but yellow
“This soup tastes like chicken.”
“No, you’re wrong—it tastes like turkey.”
“Gosh, you’re right, it does taste like turkey.”
If sense data are primitive, either we can never talk about them, or the above conversation is impossible. But it’s thoroughly possible. The minute you describe anything—even sense experience—the possibility of error creeps in. I.e., you are making a model.
I think the correspondence theory might work none the less, though. You’re onto something in your last paragraph. Perfect epistemic access is not required for a semantic (correspondence) relation to make sense.
Are you are the two parties disagreeing about what their sense data actually are, or about what the sense data match in some way? The same sense data can be matched against different things (think of the sketch which seems to be a young woman when you look at it one way, and an old one at second glance).
I think I understand your question, based on your young woman/old woman example. The two parties are disagreeing, then agreeing, about what the sense data actually are.
Your position seems to entail that comparing one model of the world with another cannot produce a model that corresponds to reality. I don’t see why that should be the case. If you have a transitive correspondence relationship of the form R ⇒ M(R) ⇒ M’(M) with R standing for reality and M, M’ for models, that may well establish a limit on the accuracy of M’(R) but it doesn’t make it impossible. Indeed if it did there could be no pragmatic basis for a model since you could never expect your model to correspond with reality in any context.
Moreover I don’t think your characterization of sense data in the visual field as a “visual model” is warranted. Sense data is primitve, which is to say yellow is nothing but yellow. It models nothing else. The relationships between posited to exist between different bits of yellow, red, orange etc. and the postulated range of possible changes those relationships could undergo constitute the model. If there were no such thing as primitive sense data, then what could the relation between the position of the corner of a square and its center be but a relation between yet more relations? How would you be able to form any models at all without becoming trapped in an infinitely descending hierarchy?
You don’t have to subscribe to the idea that coherence is truth if you just treat this as a description of how human beings practically function. The world goes nowhere, nothing is true just because a coherent model exists that shows it to be true. We just assume it does in the absence of better evidence (or the absence of any need for a better model). All we’ve done is removed the ability to know that we know something, the ability to know it remains intact. In other words, M’(R) may hold even if we can’t know that M(R) does, and hence know that M’(R) does.
Again I perceive an insistence on knowing that you know something which is in my view unwarranted. To know anything at all, by such reasoning, you have to know it, and know that you know it, and know that you know that you know it, ad infinitum.
“This soup tastes like chicken.” “No, you’re wrong—it tastes like turkey.” “Gosh, you’re right, it does taste like turkey.”
If sense data are primitive, either we can never talk about them, or the above conversation is impossible. But it’s thoroughly possible. The minute you describe anything—even sense experience—the possibility of error creeps in. I.e., you are making a model.
I think the correspondence theory might work none the less, though. You’re onto something in your last paragraph. Perfect epistemic access is not required for a semantic (correspondence) relation to make sense.
Are you are the two parties disagreeing about what their sense data actually are, or about what the sense data match in some way? The same sense data can be matched against different things (think of the sketch which seems to be a young woman when you look at it one way, and an old one at second glance).
I think I understand your question, based on your young woman/old woman example. The two parties are disagreeing, then agreeing, about what the sense data actually are.