FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

I can't thank you enough.

Again, you're quite welcome.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

But two questions that popped from this are :
a) Why does can't it be true if it can't be stated ?
b) What if we can't say anything? Like, if nothing exists, then "there are no things to exist", but it can be a truth.

To be sure, there are truths which cannot be stated, because they are too complicated or beyond our ken. When I say that phenomenalism cannot be stated, that is not what I mean. What I mean is that it would at least need to be a thesis; it would at least need to have content; there would need to be some way for things to be for it to be true. In the case of phenomenalism, nothing is being claimed, because its statement would employ concepts which could not be employed if it could be and were true. More specifically, there being such a thesis as phenomenalism depends on the idea that sense data can be described with our own language and concepts (however complicated those descriptions would need to be). If phenomenalism would imply that there could be no such language and concepts, then there could be no thesis which we are in fact talking about. (This is why I have referred to it as a picture rather than a thesis. It can't be stated, but it still seems that somehow things must together just right so that it works.)

So I'm not merely saying that things can't be true if they can't be said. (Something's being statable in this sense is a fact about the knowledge we can attain to. The modality in "can be stated" is not that of metaphysical possibility, as it is if one considers the possibility that nothing exists. The suggestion is not that a proposition could only be true in some possible world if someone existed in that possible world who could assert or deny it.)

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

I will, but it's hard. I feel that Hume is quite recent, and I can't see correct replies to him in a way that doesn't beg the question.

Well, Hume is not that recent. There is a lot of philosophy that has happened since he happened. And while neo-Humeanism enjoys some prominence in moral psychology and the philosophy of action, his philosophy of perception, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and thoroughgoing skepticism are really not so prominent these days. There is something that seems very persuasive about his philosophy for newcomers to the discipline. He just proceeds by trying to break the stuff of common sense up and when he can't do it he declares that it can't be done; if one hasn't done much philosophy, it might not occur to one that his standards of proof do not need to be met, that his definitions need not be accepted, that the sorts of things he just says about impressions might be nonsense. And the work which most successfully critiques him is subtle and difficult.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

Doesn't it commit us to a realistic theory of truth?

Doesn't what commit us to a realistic theory of truth? And what do you mean by "a realistic theory of truth"?

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FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

And how would you respond to someone saying that "well, nothing exists metaphysically"? Like, things might exist when we state them, but cease to exist once we finished our sentence?

Well, my objection to phenomenalism doesn't hinge on its not being the case that things cease to exist once we finish talking about them. If someone said that is the case then I would ask him why he thinks so and see where things go from there. I don't think my knowledge of the external world and my belief that things don't (generally) go out of existence when we stop talking about them depends on showing him to be wrong.

Don't put too much weight on statability here. The point applies equally to thinkability. It is not that there is some special connection between talking about things and their existing. The problem for the phenomenalist is that he has no concepts to describe the "passing show" except our concepts, which have their primary application to the world, and he cannot create his own independently of ours.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

Sorry, I meant a correspondence theory of truth. Holding to a non-null reality. Couldn't a nihilist argue that you're begging the question? He'd say that there are just words, and that they don't refer to anything, since there is nothing behind but words. Checking the Stanford, it seems that it requires a metaphysics of facts, not of events, right?

No, holding that there is a world besides me does not commit me to a correspondence theory of truth, and there are people who would agree with what I have been saying who hold rather a disquotational theory of truth. In any case, to say why the phenomenalist is doomed to failure, I have not premised any theory of truth.

I didn't claim that the phenomenalist is using words that refer to objects in the world so that, therefore, those objects exist, so the hypothesis that there are just words isn't responsive to my argument. But the suggestion that there are "just words" with nothing "behind them" is, I think, a totally incoherent one. The nihilist needs his words to be words. They have to be part of a language. They need to have meanings. (If they aren't part of a language and do not have meanings, then the nihilist is welcome to call them whatever he likes, but when he strings them together he won't be saying anything.) What we call words, what are words for us--vocal sounds, lines on a page, thoughts about words--would not be words if they were the only things which existed, because such things as vocal sounds, lines on a page, and thoughts about words couldn't mean anything outside of the context of a language and its practices. (If the sound of your saying the word "turtle" happened to echo in space, it would not be an utterance of the word "turtle". If you remove all of the context of space except the echoing sound--we are of course slipping into physical incoherence here, but set that aside--it still will not be an utterance.)

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

​My brain's last attempt of a gibe : someone could argue that you're using concepts while the default position would be to use no concept (=assuming too much), and describe no reality (for reality, if it exists, couldn't be described); experience isn't something rational, or holding rationality to begin with, or concepts; and what we have are only sense impressions; if reasoning emerges from that, it's just meaningless gibberish and vacuous words, like the world itself. What would be the best response here?

I don't understand the suggestion. The person you're imagining is trying to assert that we only have sense impressions (or perhaps what this comes to is: there are only sense impressions), but there are no concepts available to describe those sense impressions?

I would say that it is in fact his position which is just meaningless gibberish and vacuous words. What does he think he is doing in saying that there are only sense impressions if not describing? The concept of sense impressions is our concept. He either can use that one or say that he means something else. If neither, then I don't know what he is saying or why it should worry us. If he is not saying anything but just making noise, then don't worry. He can't be right.

You're welcome, again. God bless.

You may be interested to know that Anscombe spent some time struggling with phenomenalism. From the introduction to her collection of essays Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind:

For years, I would spend time, in cafés, for example, staring at objects saying to myself: 'I see a packet. But what do I really see? How can I say that I see here anything more than a yellow expanse?' ... I always hated phenomenalism and felt trapped by it. I couldn't see my way out of it but I didn't believe it. It was no good pointing to difficulties about it, things which Russell found wrong with it, for example. The strength, the central nerve of it remained alive and raged achingly. It was only in Wittgenstein's classes in 1944 that I saw the nerve being extracted, the central thought "I have got this, and I define 'yellow' (say) as this" being effectively attacked. (quoted on her Wikipedia page)