you have internal representations that map to objective features of it. — hypericin
I’ve only seen red things. — NOS4A2
I have no problem understanding the argument, only the entities we’re dealing with. And that the indirect realist cannot point to any of these entities, describe where they begin and end, describe how and what they perceive, nor ascribe to them a single property, is enough for me to conclude that they are not quite sure what they are talking about, and that this causal chain and the entities he puts upon them are rather arbitrary. — NOS4A2
But again, your position lacks a referent. — NOS4A2
As it stands, no intermediary exists between perceiver and perceived. — NOS4A2
The odour molecules are a part of that unperceived causal chain. — Luke
You seem you construe the perception as of an intermediary sensation which lays "between" the distal object and the perception, and thus perception is not of the distal object and thus is indirect. — fdrake
You don't directly perceive images formed by your brain. Those images are your perceptions. — Luke
Did you read all of this article? It argues in favour of direct realism. — Luke
The causal chain is prior to the visual percept. If, by "visual percept", you mean a "perception" of a distal object, then it cannot be a perception of the causal chain, since the causal chain is prior to, and is the cause of, that perception.
Surely, the intermediary - whatever it is - does not provide a direct perception of its distal object, and allows only a representation of the object to be perceived without allowing the distal object to be immediately perceived.
You do not perceive the causal chain that produces your visual percepts. — Luke
it just isn't the case that you see mountains in your dreams. It would be more accurate to say that you dream of mountains, in my opinion. — NOS4A2
Light is of the world. The eye is of the perceiver. It just doesn't make sense to me that the perceiver can be the intermediary for himself. The contact is direct, so much so that light is absorbed by the eye, and utilized in such an intimate fashion that there is no way such a process could be in any way indirect, simply because nothing stands between one and the other.
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Yes, more than just eyes are involved in vision. I would argue it requires the whole body, give or take. A functional internal carotid artery, for instance, which supplies blood to the head, is required for sight, as are the orbital bones and the muscles of the face. Sight requires a spine, metabolism, digestion, water, and so on. Because of this, I believe, the entity "perceiver" must extend to the entirety of the body. In any case, I cannot say it can be reduced to some point behind the eyes. — NOS4A2
Since they point outward, you cannot see into your own skull, for instance. — NOS4A2
It’s direct because at no point in your chain is there any intermediary. I would distill it as such: — NOS4A2
Or when I point to a sensation I point to my body. — NOS4A2
Since most of his senses point outward one would assume he mostly perceives in an outward direction — NOS4A2
But indirect realism undermines this relationship. It claims that even though the senses point outward, and interact directly with the rest of the world, his perception remains inward. — NOS4A2
The relevant issue is about perceptions of objects, not awareness of sensations. The directness or indirectness of awareness is irrelevant. — Luke
The view that perception is direct holds that a perceiver is aware of or in contact with ordinary mind-independent objects, rather than mind-dependent surrogates thereof.
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The position that perception is direct begins with the common sense intuition that everyday perceiving involves an awareness of ordinary environmental situations.
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The indirect position, in contrast, argues that the common sense intuition of perception as the direct awareness of environmental objects is naïve. Upon closer examination, a perceiver is actually only in direct contact with the proximal stimulation that reaches the receptors, or with sense-data, or with the sensations or internal images they elicit - but not with the distal object itself.
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The perceiver is directly aware only of some mind-dependent proxy— the sense-data, internal image, or representation - and only indirectly aware of the mind-independent world.
How do the causes of a perception act as an intermediary between the perception and its object? — Luke
The relevant issue is whether perceptions of objects is direct or indirect, not whether awareness of perceptions/sensations is direct or indirect. — Luke
The cake emits the odour molecules, presumably. — Luke
Earlier you seemed to be saying that smelling a cake and "smelling" odour molecules were equivalent, just like watching pixels/light and watching Joe Biden on television. — Luke
Secondly, if perceptions are not equivalent to their causes, then we can ignore the causes, which are irrelevant to the question of whether or not our perceptions are directly of objects or not. — Luke
The relevant issue is whether perceptions are direct or indirect, not whether awareness is direct or indirect. — Luke
The smell of cake is not a property of the cake either; it’s an interaction between the cake and the perceiver. That doesn’t mean the perception is not of the cake. — Luke
Is the perception of smelling cake equivalent to the cause of the perception? — Luke
If the causal chain of odour molecules, olfactory system, etc. is equivalent to the perception of smelling cake, then what’s the intermarry? The causal chain can’t be both the perception and the intermediary. What’s between the perception and the cake? — Luke
I don't believe so. I directly smell the cake. I do not smell an intermediary. — Luke
The causal chain of odour molecules entering the nose, interacting with the olfactory system, converting to brain signals, etc. can explain its effect: our smelling cake. But molecules entering the nose is not equivalent to smelling molecules, and molecules entering the nose, by itself, is insufficient to cause us to smell anything. Therefore, we don't smell odour molecules. The effect of this causal chain (the sensation of smell) cannot be its own cause. Moreover, it doesn't work the other way: the sensation is not an explanation for its distal cause. That is, smelling cake isn't an explanation for why odour molecules enter the nose, etc. So, I don't believe these are equivalent. — Luke
It means that we don't perceive things directly in the naive realist sense of taking physical objects directly into one's mind (somehow). It is just as I am describing: a perception (including representation) is the end result of a causal chain; for example, taking odour molecules into the olfactory system and converting them into brain signals, etc. The output of this causal chain is a perception such as a smell... — Luke
Are the pixels the perception or the cause of the perception? In your previous example you said that the odour molecules were the cause of the smell. Here you appear to imply that the perception and its cause are equivalent. — Luke
I think I am using language in an ordinary way when I say that you can smell the cake directly. — Luke
It's odd, then, that Intentionalism was included in the SEP article you were quoting. — Luke
Thus, like sense-datum theorists and adverbialists, intentionalists reject Direct Realist Presentation, and admit that we are not ever directly presented with ordinary objects, not even in veridical experience.
The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR). PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism (SDR), the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories.
To put it bluntly:
The perception is: the smell (of cake).
The causes of the perception are: the odour molecules in the air stimulating the sense receptors.
What you perceive/smell is the cake.
What you don’t perceive/smell are the causes of the perception.
The perception is the final product; the smell. All you smell is the cake. You don’t smell the causes of the perception. — Luke
I don’t know how you could smell the cake more directly. — Luke
One difference could be that qualia exist and sense data don't. — RussellA
For example, the relational view of color does a good job explaining how the properties of the object perceived, the ambient enviornment, and the perceiver all go into the generation of an experience. Could an adverbial description do the same thing? Maybe, but not easily. And it's hard to see what the benefit would be. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Only if sense data exist. The Adverbialist doesn't need them. Why do you think sense data exist if they are not needed? — RussellA
The Adverbialist may accept qualia but don't need sense data. — RussellA
The thesis of Direct Realism (at least, according to the SEP article) is that "we can directly perceive ordinary objects". Some of us believe this thesis but disagree with naive realism. We are also direct realists. I genuinely disagree that we always perceive an intermediary and that we cannot directly perceive ordinary objects. Call that a semantic disagreement if you will, but we can't both be correct. — Luke
The Adverbialist rejects sense data. Sense data should go the way of the aether, of historic interest only. — RussellA
I don't think there is a distinction. But the quote you were quoting also wasn't making that distinction. — flannel jesus
That's a very interesting piece of information, but I think it's still the case that most people talking about qualia here are talking about the experience, and not the data. — flannel jesus
The technical term “sense data” was made prominent in philosophy during the early decades of the twentieth century by G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, followed by intense elaboration and modification of the concept by C. D. Broad, H. H. Price, and A. J. Ayer, among others. Although the promoters of sense data disagreed in various ways, they mainly agreed on the following points:
1. In perceiving, we are directly and immediately aware of a sense datum.
2. This awareness occurs by a relation of direct mental acquaintance with a datum.
3. Sense data have the properties that they appear to have.
4. These properties are determinate; in vision, we experience determinate shapes, sizes, and colors.
5. Our awareness of such properties of sense data does not involve the affirmation or conception of any object beyond the datum.
6. These properties are known to us with certainty (and perhaps infallibly).
7. Sense data are private; a datum is apprehended by only one person.
8. Sense data are distinct from the act of sensing, or the act by which we are aware of them.
Historically, the term ‘qualia’ was first used in connection with the sense-datum theory by C.I. Lewis in 1929. As Lewis used the term, qualia were properties of sense-data themselves.
As noted, adverbialism is committed to the view that experiencing something white, for example, involves your experience being modified in a certain way: experiencing whitely. A natural way to understand this is in terms of the idea that the experience is an event, and the modification of it is a property of that event. Since this property is both intrinsic (as opposed to relational or representational) and phenomenal then this way of understanding adverbialism is committed to the existence of qualia.
However, if all knowledge is necessarily "indirect," and "direct" knowledge is an impossibility because of what knowledge is, then it doesn't seem like the adjective does any lifting at all, regardless of if you think it should be "direct" or "indirect." — Count Timothy von Icarus
According to the SEP article, direct realism is the thesis that "we can directly perceive ordinary objects." It doesn't say only in the "direct" sense of naive realism. — Luke
It is this concept of an "unmediated awareness of objects" that I consider to be incoherent. Do indirect realists only hold the negative view that this concept is incoherent? Or do they also hold the positive belief in their position that we cannot directly perceive ordinary objects? — Luke
The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR). PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism (SDR), the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories.
It follows that your criterion for a direct perception is to have the distal object somehow be physically present in one's phenomenal experience. In other words, your criterion is that the object is identical with one's phenomenal experience. — Luke
Direct Realist Presentation: perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of ordinary objects.
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Direct Realist Character: the phenomenal character of experience is determined, at least partly, by the direct presentation of ordinary objects.
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On [the naive realist] conception of experience, when one is veridically perceiving the objects of perception are constituents of the experiential episode. The given event could not have occurred without these entities existing and being constituents of it; in turn, one could not have had such a kind of event without there being relevant candidate objects of perception to be apprehended. So, even if those objects are implicated in the causes of the experience, they also figure non-causally as essential constituents of it... Mere presence of a candidate object will not be sufficient for the perceiving of it, that is true, but its absence is sufficient for the non-occurrence of such an event. The connection here is [one] of a constitutive or essential condition of a kind of event.
How would that work? How is that kind of perception possible?
As I understand it, indirect realism asserts that we perceive representations (of objects). My position is not that we perceive representations (or some other intermediary), so my position is not indirect realism. My position is that perception involves representations. Representations are not the object of perception, as indirect realism asserts; instead, representations are formative in having perceptions. Or, as you put it earlier, representations are part of the "mechanics of perception". — Luke
That's my point. Michael was asserting that a direct perception must be when a perception is identical with its object. My reply was that this isn't a perception at all, because it excludes any representation (and, more simply, because objects are not identical with perceptions). You can't have a perception without a representation, yet Michael calls this a direct perception. — Luke
What is the distinction between direct and indirect awareness? The dispute is not over our (direct or indirect) awareness of our perceptions. This talk of "awareness of perceptions" is just another of your attempts to push our perceptions back a step; to create a gap between ourselves and our perceptions (much like your earlier talk of "experience of perceptions"). We do not perceive our perceptions; we perceive the world. — Luke
For Locke a primary quality belongs to the object — Leontiskos
and it seems obvious that one can interact with the same spatial property via both sight and touch. Some humans can interact with spatial properties via hearing, but there are other species which tend to be better at that. — Leontiskos