I don't think it's arbitrary at all. Consciousness picks out a clear phenomenon: there being something it is like for a subject. Pain, visual experience, felt thought, and so on.
Anyway, one can't get it out without putting it in, is my point. One can't construct it from that which does not have it at all - that would be no different from trying to get a thing of size by assembling things of no size. It's just not going to work.

But then you're getting consciousness out without putting it in.

But if a thing has qualia, then it has consciousness. So I'm not seeing how you're not simply attributing consciousness to the base materials.

On the other hand, if the point was - and it seems it wasn't, but as I have a reply anyway, I might as well post it! - that so long as we have states in we can get states out, even if the states we get out are of a different kind from those we put in, then I think that's false.

One kind of state cannot transform into, or generate, another kind of state at all. Size does not become shape, even though anything shaped will have size. Likewise, shape does not become size. Perhaps even more vividly and aptly, a conscious state does not turn into a geometrical state. No amount of rearranging experiences yields triangles or lengths. And conversely, no amount of rearranging geometrical states yields consciousness.

The same holds in general. A state can only confer its own kind of state on anything it is part of. The shapes of atoms can confer shape on the larger object they compose. The sizes of atoms can confer size on the larger object they compose. But the size or shape of atoms cannot confer consciousness on the object they compose.

So saying that atoms have states, and consciousness is a state, will not work, I think. Unless the base states are already of the phenomenal kind, appealing to organisation merely assumes that one kind of state can give rise to a fundamentally different kind.

But an object can't have qualia without being conscious, so it sounds as if you're attributing consciousness to the base materials.

To check if I am following, is your point that atoms have states of some sort and as consciousness is a state then there is nothing incoherent in the idea that an arrangement of atoms could create conscious states - for we have states in and states out?

It's clearly not patently false - it's patently true!

There is no example of a feature strongly emerging. If you know of one, say. Strong emergence is ruled out a priori by reason, and there is no example of it either to challenge what our reason tells us. Not, that is, unless you insist that consciousness itself is the example - but that's clearly question begging.

If I have understood you correctly, you are saying that atoms are conscious?

That seems to be the only option available to the physicalist if they are not to invoke magic.

I don't think there is anything incoherent in the idea of atoms - and by atoms here, I mean whatever the basic unit of physical stuff may be - having conscious states. But this does mean that we are atoms, not brains or anything like that. Atoms. Or at least, if one insists upon the truth of physicalism this would be the conclusion we are driven to. (I don't think we should insist upon the truth of physicalism as that seems to assume what should be discovered or refuted).

I haven't argued that consciousness requires strong emergence. I've argued that strong emergence is just fancy for magic and that it violates a truth of reason: that you can't get out what was in no sense put in. Thus, physicalism is either false - meaning that consciousness is a property of a non-physical entity - or consciousness is a property of atoms. Hence this is a real problem for the committed physicalist.

Right. And by the same reasoning, a magician has demonstrated that rabbits can come from nothing. You must be very impressed at magic shows - presumably you think you're witnessing miracles!

I am not sure I follow. You have said that it seems consciousness seems to depend on internal structure. But if the parts of that structure wholly lack conciousness, then appealing to structure and complexity just assumes that a new kind of property can arise from their arrangement. That is strong emergence. In other words, it just assumes magic happens - that one can get out what wasn't put in.

Invoking an “irreducible composition relation” does not help either. It simply labels the point at which something genuinely new appears without explaining how that is coherent. Calling the relation irreducible is another way of saying “here be magic”.

Again, you seem not to grasp the problem.

E = mc2 is not a case of something coming from nothing. Energy has mass equivalence. Mass is not conjured out of an absence of all relevant properties. This is weak emergence grounded in antecedent physical structure and laws and not an example of strong emergence.

Second, the origin of life is not a counterexample either, for either you don't mean conscious life - in which case we have weak emergence - or you mean conscious life, in which case we have strong emergence.

Third, appealing to cognitive science or psychology simply changes the subject. Those fields study correlations, functions, and mechanisms given that consciousness exists. They do not address the metaphysical question of how consciousness could come into existence from ingredients that entirely lack it.

Seems to me you haven't understood the problem. No amount of empirical detail explains how a wholly new kind of property could come into existence from ingredients that entirely lack it.

Yes, if they think conciousness is noncausal then they should revise their view that existences have causal powers given it clearly exists, or revise their view that it lacks such powers. Although having said that, it seems to me that it is not consciousness that has causal powers, but the thing-that-is-conscious. When I decide to raise my arm 'I' raised my arm rather than my decision doing so.

Hi, I'm no physicist, but if fusion could have been predicted from first principles then that seems to demonstrate that it is a case of weak emergence, not strong.

It must be that those atoms have a disposition to fuse under certain circumstances. So this is not a new kind of property that arises from nowhere, but a disposition that was always present but is only activated when the atoms are under the right kind of pressure.

Applied to consciousness, to make the analogy work one would have to say that atoms are dispositionally conscious (else we'd have strong emergence). Perhaps they are - but attributing a disposition to be conscious to atoms seems about as hard a bullet to bite as attributing acutal consciousness to them, imo.

A couple of people have mentioned the fallacy of composition here, though without taking the trouble to explain what this is or how I am supposed to have committed it.
As I suspect no such explanation will be forthcoming, I'll attempt it myself.

First, the fallacy of composition - which, really importantly, is not always a fallacy - consists of inferring, without further justification, that because each part of a thing has, or lacks, some property, the whole must therefore have or lack it. So because a brick is small, it is then inferred that a wall made of bricks must also be small.

That inference is indeed invalid in cases of weak emergence. New shapes can arise from old shapes, new sizes from old sizes, new weights from old weights. In such cases it would be fallacious to deny the whole a property merely because the parts lack it.

But my argument is not about weak emergence. It concerns strong emergence. The claim is that a wholly new kind of property cannot be generated from combining things that lack it. Combinatuiion and arrangement can produce new instances of an existing kind of property, but it cannot bring an entirely new property into existence. It is for strong emergence that no fallacy is involved. No size among the parts, then no size will belong to the whole. That's not fallacious.

Consciousness is a completely different property from size, or shape. If, then, one supposes complex bundles of atoms to have it, one would have to suppose the atoms possess it else one would be supposing a wholly new property to arise from combining things that lack it.

To elaborate a little more: Zeno’s paradoxes concern the divisibility of magnitude and motion. They raise questions about how continuous quantities can be composed from infinitely many parts, or how motion is possible given such divisibility.

However, my point has nothing to do with that. I am making a much simpler claim: you cannot generate a property of a given kind from ingredients that wholly lack that kind. No appeal to Zeno helps here. Even if space were infinitely divisible, it would remain true that combining things with no extension whatsoever cannot yield extension. That is not a problem about infinity. It is a problem about creation from nothing.

Regrding your example of an object in a cupboard. If colour is objective, then the object in the cupboard has it even when in the cupboard (it wouldn't be an objective propery otherwise). When we open the cupboard and it becomes illuminated such that we can now see its colour, nothing new has been created. Either colour is objective, in which case the relevant physical properties were already present, or colour is subjective, in which case the colour resides in the interaction between object, light, and perceiver. In neither case do we have a new kind arising from nothing.

Like I said, I don't see the size analogy avoiding the usual Zeno rabbit holes. — bongo fury

I don't think I follow. The point about size was simply to illustrate the principle that you cannot get something from nothing. Combining sizeless things will clearly never enable you to create a sized thing. Likewise, combining weightless things cannot give you something that has weight. Combining zeros cannot give you 1. And so on.

When it comes to colour, well if colour is objective, then atoms must have it if anything made of them is to. Whereas if colour is subjective, then it is not analogous to consciousness

But the point is that there can't possibly be. It's not for want of more detail that one can't build a shaped thing from shapeless things or a sized thing from sizeless things. The problem is that it seems a truth of reason that you cannot get something from nothing. And to propose that consciousness strongly emerges from ingredients wholly lacking in consciousness is to have gotten something from nothing.

So the problem is not one that arises through a lack of information. We seem to have incoherence. Burying it in a mass of information won't help stop it being incoherent. At some point the 'explanation' of how consciousness emerges from ingredients wholly lacking in it will have to say 'and hey presto - consciouness arises at this point'....which isn't an explanation at all, of course, but just an announcement of the magical arrival of consciousness.

It seems to me that you're focussing on a different issue. My point is that the real problem of consciousness for the physicalist - one that has real teeth - is that they either have to suppose consciousness to be a property of atoms (which isn't incoherent, I think, but seems unreasonable compared to just rejecting the assumption of physicalism), or insist that we can get consciousness out without having put it in - which seems incoherent, as incoherent as supposing that we can make a sized thing from sizeless things.

My earlier points where just setting the stage for this being the real problem. As those other 'problems' don't really get started. There's nothing in the peculiarity of consciousness that precludes it from being a property of physical things. It doesn't matter how radically dissimilar it is from other widely accepted physical properties - such as size and shape - it is, for that in itself does not indicate that it can't be a property of something with those other properties (anymore than differences between shape and size preclude those from being properties of one and the same thing).

I take kinds to be basic. Everyone must accept that some kinds are basic, so this is not a problem (or if it is, it's a problem for the strong emergentist about consciousness as much as it is for anyone else - which leaves the particular problem I'm highlighting standing).

The person who thinks consciousness can strongly emerge from physical entities that do not already possess it is insisting that consciousness just pops into being out of nothing - that really does seem like magic and we would not accept such a proposal in other contexts. When the magician pulls a rabbit from a hat, we do not think that the hat really was empty and then a rabbit simply formed in it out of nothing - we assume a rabbit had been cleverly secreted somewhere. No rabbit in, no rabbit out.

Weak emergence is fine, but strong emergence is magic.

In my limited experience, those who toss fallacy accusations around without taking the trouble to explain in precisely what way a fallacy has been committed do not know what they are talking about. But you're free to show my assumption wrong by spelling out how you think I've committed the fallacy of composition.

Well 'colour' is one of those features whose status as objective or subjective is a matter of debate.

If it is objective, then one would have to suppose atoms to be coloured if they are to be capable of creating something coloured (for now the colour is a feature of the object itself, not a disposition to cause a colour sensation in a perceiver of the object).

On the other hand, if colour is subjective then one does not.

The point though is that strong emergence seems impossible, as it is a case of getting something out that was in no way present in any of the ingredients.

I'm afraid I do not know what you mean.

Is there a problem in the idea of making a sized thing from that which has no size? If you agree that this sounds impossible, then you should agree that there is also a problem in the idea of getting a conscious thing out of things that have no consciousness, for the same impossibility attends it.

That seems to miss the point. A distinction is commonly drawn between weak emergence and strong emergence.

Combining objects of different weights will result in a whole that weighs more than any of its parts. The weight is said to be weakly emergent. But you can't get weight from that which has none. Or at least, if one could, then such weight would be 'strongly' emergent.

Likewise, one can combine shaped things to make an object that has a shape none of its parts possess - that shape would be weakly emergent - but one cannot combine shapeless things and thereby make a shaped thing (or at least, if one could, then the resulting shape would be 'strongly' emergent). Your forest from trees example is an example of weak emergence - and though there's nothing problematic about weak emergence, it is not weak emergence that we're talking about.

In other words, one cannot get a 'kind' from that which does not possess it - for that would be to get out what was in no sense there in the originals. And it is because strong emergence seems incoherent that there is a problem of consciousness for the physicalist. For they must either just insist that something can come from nothing - which is ad hoc - or they must insist that the basic units of matter have consciousness - which also seems ad hoc - or they must give up their physicalism and admit that consciousness is a property of something non-physical.

It is no use, note, simply to say we need to investigate the matter. The point is that no amount of further investigation will do anything to address such problems, for all one would be doing is stipulating that something is coming from nothing 'at this point'. And that's not an explanation, but a stipulation where an explanation sshould be.

Are you saying that I have committed such a fallacy?

Yes, that sounds right. Although they'd have a hard time getting that argument to stand up, I think.

The parsimony claim seems unjustified given that mental imagery plausibly exists whatever one's view about perception. A plausible worldview should have to make room for it regardless of what it says about perception. If the indirect realist tries to run a parsimony argument, they really do seem to be arguing that anyone who acknowledges that fake banknotes exist, should then - on grounds of parsimony - accept that all banknotes are fake. But that seems a misuse of the parsimony principle.

Even taken on its own terms, however, the indirect realist seems to be the one who is guilty of positing more than is necessary. For on my view in the good cases we have a perceiver and a mind-external object some of whose properties are being directly perceived, whereas in the bad cases we have a perceiver and mind-internal states that are being directly perceived (whose origin nevertheless lies in mind-external states). So the more complicated case is the hallucination one - as that has mind-external objects that have - at some point - created in the perceiver a mental image that has then become the object of perception. The indirect realist, in supposing this always to be the case, is then making the more complicated case the norm. That violates the principle of parsimony it seems to me.

For an analogy: sometimes events are overdetermined. I put on two alarm clocks set for the same time and both go off together waking me up at the same time. My waking up at that time was overdetermined, for it was sufficient for just one to go off for me to be woken up. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be a proper use of the principle of parsimony to insist that just one woke me up - no, both did on this occasion, for sometimes events are overdetermined. However, it would violate the principle of parsimony to suppose that as some events are overdetermined, they all are. For that would then by to systematically propose two causes when one would normally do. It seems that this is what the indirect realist is doing though - we do sometimes hallucinate and, I think, the best explanation of what is going on in such cases (an explanation the indirect realist buys, of course) is that we're perceiving mere mental images. But to then move to 'therefore that's what is always happening' seems no different, from the perspective of reasoning about reality anyway, to inferring from the fact some events are clearly overdetermined to the conclusion that all of them are.

So yes, I think the indirect realist might try and argue from considerations of parsimony to their indirect realist conclusion, but it's hard - hard for me, anyway - to see how the argument could be compelling to anyone not already convinced indirect realism is true.

Thank you for these comments.

I think we can distinguish between an indirect realist who claims that it is impossible for a perceiver to perceive anything other than their own mental states and one who acknowledges that it is perfectly possible for a perceiver to perceive mind-external objects but that, in fact, this never happens in reality.

Of the first kind of indirect realist, they will have to deny my claim that we can perceive mind external objects directly. I think they can't, consistently, deny this - their view is untenable imo - for by their own lights they must acknowledge that perceivers can directly perceive their own mental states (and once this is acknowledged, I see no reason to deny that a perceiver cannot directly perceive states of mind-external things either). But, though I can see no grounds upon which they could do so rationally, they would have to deny that part of my view.

The second kind of direct realist can accept everything I have said and would only be denying that we ever actually do perceive mind-external objects. But that view seems epistemically untenable. Their reasoning is, I think, just plain bad. They are reasoning from the existence of forgeries of banknotes to the conclusion that therefore all banknotes are forgeries. Their rejection of the idea that we often directly perceive the external world would be an article of faith, not a conclusion one could reasonably arrive at.

So yes, because I make use of mental imagery to explain the bad cases, I am making use of what the indirect realist thinks all cases involve. But there is, I think, no metaphysical or epistemic problem in positing mental imagery - the problems come from what one thinks such imagery can do or how big a role one thinks it plays. And it's there that the indirect realist seems to be holding extreme and irrational views.

I am sorry, but I do not follow your point. Mental imagery can sometimes be mistaken for the objects of which they are images. But even then, there would be perception occurring, albeit of the mental image rather than of the object it depicts.

But I'm addressing all the issues you raise, or take myself to be doing.

I do not know the literature well enough to know if my view is already in it. No doubt it is. But it is what it is.

Direct perception has to be - by definition - a relationship that has two relata: the perceiver and the perceived.

No one can deny that - even the indirect realist must accept that this is the relationship we stand in to our own mental states, else we would not be aware of anything whatever.

My point is that when we perceive a mind-external ship, the perceptual relationship has that mind external ship as one of its relata and the mind - the perceiver's mind - as the other. There literally can't be anything else involved in the relationship. There can be no question that, if this is coherent, it constitutes direct perception of the mind-external ship. Perhaps it is not coherent. But I think it is.

By analogy, a desire is always for something. Only minds can have desires. But to have a desire - which is to be in a certain sort of mental state - is to desire 'something'. That something doesn't have to itself be something mental. If I desire a ship, then that relationship has two relata: me and a mind external ship.

That analogy is supposed to show how a person can be in a mental state and being in it can constitute a relationship between the mind - the one in the mental state - and some object that may not be a mental state at all.

I am then saying that this is what is going on in perception. There is a perceptual experience - that's a mental state. But it is not involved in the relation that it creates - at least not as a relatum within it, anymore than my desire is 'in' the relation between me and the ship when I desire the ship.

And so in this way the actual mind-external object is directly perceived - the perceiving relationship is constituted by the mental state, and in the good cases that relationship puts the perceiver in direct contact with a mind external object, and in the bad cases it puts the perceiver in direct contact with a mental image of one.

To return to my desire analogy: let's say I desire a $10 note and there is a $10 note on the table. Well, then that $10 satisfies my desire. But imagine it is not a genuine $10 note but a perfect forgery. Well, then it does not satisfy my desire, even though I might well think it does as a perfect forgery is indistinguishable from the real deal. What is phenomenologically indistinguishable from having a genuinely satisfied desire for a $10 note? Receiving a perfect forgery of one.

As I see it, what you're saying is that there is no need for me to posit forgeries and that in doing so I am introducing unnecessary extras. But this seems to me to be untrue on both fronts. First, if in hallucination cases there is no object of perception, then that's not going to be a seeming at all. Second, forgeries exist - they're not exotic extras that others do not have to posit. By analogy: mental imagery exists and any plausible view about what reality contains is going to have to make room for them. So I am not helping myself to anything that is not already there. That indirect realists appeal to the same material is irrelevant given they're doing something very different with it.

That's a misrepresentation, because no direct realist believes that one perceives one's own mental state or some element of it. — jkop

That was not what I claimed. The point was that one cannot, by perceiving the content of a mental state thereby perceive a mind-external object. And that is certainly something some direct realists - or people who call themselves such - claim. They talk of the content of the mental state - so it is 'of' that mental state, then. (You say "The 'content' of a mental state is not a picture nor a sensation. It is the perceiving, not its object" - I'm afraid I don't know what that means; the content of a painting would be what it depicts, the content of a note would be what it's about....it's not clear to me how 'content' can mean 'is the perceiving' as opposed to the means by which the perceiving occurs).

There is a painting of corridor. Now, whether one sees it as a painting or whether one doesn't notice and thinks, that by looking at it one is looking at a corridor, one cannot perceive a corridor by means of that painting.

So, crudely: the indirect realist thinks we're in a mental art gallery looking at paintings of the world. Some direct realists think we're looking at what the paintings depict (and they're emphasizing - quite pointlessly, I think - the difference between seeing a depiction as a depiction and looing at what it depicts). What I'm saying is that you're only perceiving the real world when you're not in the mental gallery at all.

Thank you for your criticisms.

You've introduced "mental images" into your model in order to explain hallucination. This introduces an instability within your position that indirect realists have been capitalizing on for centuries in order to show that direct realism is untenable. — Esse Quam Videri

I'd first want to say that in denying mental images a role to play in the perception of mind-external objects I am not denying their existence. A silly analogy perhaps, but I deny that toffees play any role in perception, but I am not thereby denying toffees exist - I think they certainly exist.

I think mental images most certainly do exist and it would be a problem for a view if it was committed to their denial. They are employed in imaginings, for instance, and - I would say - in hallucinations, including dreams. So my first point would be that nothing in direct realism commits the direct realist to denying the existence of mental imagery - and it would be a grave problem if it did, I think, given the clear existence of such imagery. The issue, as I see it, is not over the existence of such mental imagery, but over what work it can do - can we, by means of it, perceive the mind-external world or not. My answer is a decided no, and that's why I think it is what hallucinations involve perceiving.

The problem is that you appear to be explaining indistinguishability in terms of identity within phenomenal experience (I.e. identical “appearing object”). This is ambiguous. If by "appearing object" you just mean an object within phenomenal experience - i.e. an object directly present to consciousness - then you've already collapsed into indirect realism since now the direct object of perception in both veridical and non-veridical experience is a phenomenal object. — Esse Quam Videri

I do not see this. My view is that in the hallucination case I am perceiving mental imagery, whereas in the good case I am perceiving a mind-external object. I take it that our minds can copy good-case perceptual experiences and store these copies (and we call upon these copies in memory and imagination). And as these are copies, they - these mental images - can create in us an experience indistinguishable from perceiving the object they are depicting. So it is not that both cases are indistinguishable due to having identical objects. On teh contrary, they have radically different objects. In one case the object of the perceiving relation is a mind external object, in the other it is a mental image of a mind-external object.

So I hold that we have perception occurring in both cases - in the hallucination case (which I take just to be a special case of imagining) - we are perceiving mental imagery, whereas in the 'perceiving the mind-external world' case we are perceiving mind-external things. At the moment, then, I do not see how I am collapsing into an indirect realist. I am, to be sure, making use of the same mental imagery that they are employing, but I am saying that it is not involved in perceiving the external world.

Russel's objection was that this is unduly complicated - that there is no need to suppose that hallucinations have an object of perception. But this I do not understand. Without an object of perception, they wouldn't be experiences 'of' anything seeming to be the case.

I would want to stress, the indirect realist does not have a monopoly on believing there is mental imagery - on the contrary, I take the existence of mental imagery to be something we can all agree exists. The issue is whether we are confined to perceiving this mental imagery (or, in some direct realist's case, whether this mental imagery can operate as a window onto the world and allow us directly to see it), or whether perception of the external world requires precisely its absence (my view).

I am a direct realist too - though I would say that I am a proper one whereas I think most of those who call themselves direct realists are not the real deal. I agree, I think, with what you say as I reject what most direct realists say on the grounds that there isn't real directness there. (Though perhaps there are some direct realists who agree with me - what I am saying may not be true for all direct realists).

The perceiver would be us, the mind, and the window would be the 'mental state with representative contents'. But the analogy doesn't really work. A window is an object, whereas a mental state isn't. So already there seems to be a category error involved in their view. The idea - I think - is that when it comes to these 'mental states with representative contents' we can distinguish between the state itself and its contents (just as we can distinguish between a note itself and its contents). They hold that the big mistake that the indirect realists are making is in thinking that in perception we are only ever aware of the mental states themselves - the notes - whereas in fact because they have contents, there is the possibility of us being aware of the content. They then think this gives them a way of respecting how it is that in perception we are in direct contact with the objects of perception - when the content of the mental state in question matches (and is appropriately caused) by the non-mental object 'out there', then we are perceiving the object itself. We are not perceiving the mental state it is putting us in, but its content - and as the content 'is' in some sense the object of awareness (though really it just mentions it), then we are seeing the object itself by being in that kind of state.

But to my mind this is not direct contact with the object at all. My example would be a painting of a receding corridor placed in a doorway such that if one looks at it, it looks as if the door opens onto a receding corridor. If we imagine that behind the painting there is indeed a receding corridor precisely corresponding to the image on the canvas, and imagine as well that the painting was created by the artist studying the actual corridor, then looking at that painting in the doorway - even if one does not realize it is a painting and so one is focused on what it represents to be the case - will not allow one to perceive the corridor behind it. No matter how accurately its content represents what is really there, at no point does the painting become a window. Matching content is simply not a way in which an object becomes transparent. So the whole idea of transparency is triply confused - first, because it involves a category error and second because even if it didn't, transparency does not come from matching content. And third, because the simple fact is we still have 3 elements to the relation - the perceiver, some mental state, and the object of perception.

A direct relation must, by definition, have only 2 relata, not 3. Thus a direct realist - I would say - is committed on pain of misdescribing themselves to saying that in perception, there is just a perceiver and the perceived. I am currently trying to explain how this can work by relocating the experience - the mental state - and saying that it is constitutive of that relation rather than an relatum within it. Just as a desire is a mental state yet is constitutive of a relation - between the desirer and the desired - likewise the mental state involved in perception can be constitutive of a relation between perceiver and perceived. I think this is a way of making the actual object of perception a part of the experience itself (I earlier dismissed this as being incoherent, but it now strikes me that it is not - for the object can be part of the experience in the same way as an object of desire is part of the desiring relation).

You said my view was extravagant in positing an object of awareness in hallucination cases. I don't understand your reply to my reply, for I explained why it is not extravagant and why you are the one who, by not positing an object of awareness in such cases, are saddled with a problem. You do not, so far as I can tell, address this point.

But that last bit - the direct bit - is stipulated. I don't see how it would be direct.

What Searle does is just emphasize the distinction between perceiving a mental state and perceiving its contents. He seems to think that so long as the content of the mental state is what one is perceiving - and its content is 'about' a ship and this content is satisfied in the right kind of way - then one is directly perceiving it. But that's precisely the issue: I'm arguing that simply won't work. I'm not denying that there are such mental states or that when we are in them it is the contents rather than the state that we are aware of; I'm just denying that when that occurs we're perceiving an object as opposed to looking at an image of one.

For example, these words are just patterns. But you're probably not seeing them as patterns, but rather as messages. That distinction - between the patterns and the content - is essentially the same as between a mental representation and its representative contents. Clearly, however, one cannot perceive a ship by reading a note about it, even if in reading it one is not noticing the patterns but only really noticing the content.

So, it's not enough for Searle to point out that when we have a mental image of a ship it is the content of the image that we 'see' and not the mental state. That's true - I grant all that. The point is that we're still dealing with a mental note 'about' a ship and not a ship itself. Thus, there is no direct contact between the perceiver and the perceived, much though Searle may insist otherwise.

There has to be but two relata in a direct relation, otherwise it's simply not direct. Mental states can't perceive things, only minds can. Thus, in a perceptual relation one of the two relata must be a mind. That leaves the object that is perceived as the other. Those are the only two relata a perceptual relation can contain (otherwise there's no directness). Introduce a third relatum - a mental state by means of which one becomes aware of the object - and one has indirect contact, not direct.

I'd say that overcomplicates things.

I take it we can agree that hallucinating a ship and perceiving a ship are indistinguishable experiences. So we need to explain why the hallucinating episode and the perceiving the ship episode would be indistinguishable.

My view does this: they are both perceiving relations, it's just that one has as its object an actual ship, and the other has a mental image of a ship as its object.
On my view the perceptual experience 'is' a perceiving relation (and it is precisely because of this that the experience doesn't feature as a relatum within the relation - for it is essential that the relation constitutive of perceiving have only 2 relata). Thus, the most straightforward way for an experience to be indistinguishable from perceiving an object is for it to be the same kind of experience - a perceiving experience - but with an identical appearing object (a mental image of a ship).

But on your view in the hallucinating case there is no object at all - but then that means it is not a perceiving relation and thus is a quite different kind of experience from the perceiving one. So why would it be indistinguishable from it?

It seems to me that you only have two options, one of which introduces extra clutter and the other of which renders the perceptual case - the good case - indirect. The first option is simply to posit a quite dfiferent mental state from the experience of perceiving and say that it can nevertheless be indistinguishable from it. But now you've got two kinds of state, not one. That's more complicated than my view.

The other option is to say that there is one and the same mental state, it's just that in one case there is nothing answering to its content out there in the world, whereas in perceptual case there is. But that's the indirect realist view in which it turns out that we never really perceive mind external objects at all.

No need to apologize. What I was trying to get across - not very clearly - in that quoted passage is that the mental experience of perceiving is 'of' perceiving rather than constitutive of it. The idea being that there is no mental state involved in the perceptual relation (this is how directness is achieved). But that there is an experience 'of' the perceptual relation. In this way direct contact with the object of perception is preserved and at the same time the raw materials from which hallucinations can be made are still available.

I'm not at all confident in this view and am quickly persuading myself that perception is essentially experiential, it's just that the experience constitutes the perceptual relation. So just as a desire constitutes a relation (between the desirer and the object of their desire), likewise a perceptual state constitutes a relation between the perceiver and the perceived.

I am only superficially familiar with Searle's view. It doesn't sound quite right to me, even given my revised view. For he seems to be trying to get directness out of the content of a mental state, and that - to my mind - is never going to work. All that'll get one is aboutness, but not perception. I want to insist that perception is a relation that can only have two relata - the perceiver and the perceived. There's no room for anything else. If 'the perceived' is to be a mind-external object, then there's no room for a mental state among the relata, for the other relatum has to be the perceiver themselves (not some mental state of theirs). What I currently think - and this is a distinct view from the one I started with - is that the mental state can be constitutive of the relation. If it's constitutive of the relation, then it doesn't feature as a relatum within it (thus preserving directness).

So now what I'd say about hallucination cases is that they are cases of perception, it's just that what they are perceptions of are mental states, not mind-external objects. So a visual hallucination of a ship would be a perception of a mental image of a ship, whereas a perception of a ship would be a perception of a ship. The difference, then, between hallucinations and perceptions of mind-external objects is not that one is a perception and the other not, but that one is a perception of something purely mental (but indistinguishable from a perception of something mind-external), whereas teh other is a percpetion of something mind-external

My gripe is with direct realists, most of whom seem to me to be indirect realists in disguise.

I think indirect realism is false as an account of what it is that we're perceiving in normal cases of perception. When I look at a ship in the harbour it is the ship, not a 'ship in the harbour-like' mental state that I am seeing if, that is, it is to be true that I'm perceiving the ship. On my characterization, the indirect realist is someone who - one way or another - says that what you're perceiving is a mental state; the perceptual relation terminates in the mental state. By contrast, the direct realist thinks that in the regular case, it is the ship that you are perceiving. They standardly try and keep the relevant mental state in the picture, they just think you're somehow looking through it to the ship. In the same way as if I look at the ship through a telescope I am looking at the ship 'through' the telescope and not looking at a telescope, the direct realist wants to say that some of our mental states - those involved in seeing and touching primarily - are akin to telescopes or windows. They are involved, but they enable one to see through them to the world, rather than themselves being the objects of perception.

So, crudely, I take indirect realists to think we're looking at pictures of the world and (the current crop) of direct realists to think we're looking through windows onto the world.

I don't think the window pane view makes sense (perhaps it does and I have just yet to conceive of it properly). I cannot see how a mental state can operate like a window. For one thing, it's a state, not an object. It would be a category error to think our mental states are literally windows, then. Now the issue is how it could be that a mental state - a state of mind - could give one direct contact with an object. It can't be a mediator - it can't be by simply 'telling us' - about the object. For that's not perception. That's not direct contact. It can't be by modelling or in some other way resembling the object of perception (which is perhaps a coherent possibility - for perhaps a state of mind can resemble a state of a mind-external object). For again, we cannot perceive something by looking at a model of it, no matter how accurate the model. These are indirect ways of acquiring information about something, not direct ways.

If they try - and some do this - to say that the object itself is included in the experience, then we have a mind external object being said to be part of a mind-internal state. That just seems confused - as confused as thinking a note about a mountain contains the actual mountain. (Additionally, such views face problems accounting for hallucinations and a driven to extreme and ontologically embarrassing measures to do so).

Maybe they could say that the experience - the mental state - is constitutive of the two place perceptual relation between the perceiver and the perceived. For an analogy, if I desire a ship, then there is a two place relation there constituted by my desire. My desire is for a ship. It's my desire - so I am the efficient cause of the relation - and it's for a ship. But the desire is not a relatum within the relation. So maybe the direct realist could say something analogous: the perceiving experience is constitutive of the perceiving relation, a relation that has two relata.

I find that proposal quite interesting and sometimes it is my view. But it seems to run into problems accounting for hallucinations. For if it is the essence of such experiences that there is an object of perception, then given hallucinations seem to be identical experiences, then they would need to have an object too. Perhaps that's not too much of a problem for one could just say that in their case it is a mental object, not a mind-external one. That is, that in the hallucination case the perceiver is perceiving a mental image of a ship, not a ship.

Ok, so one objection to your view is that the assumed "perceptual relation" between a "mental state" and the object means that the experience would be indirect. — jkop

But my view is that no mental state is involved. That's the objection I'm making to other direct realists - they still make a mental state - an experience - a component of the perceiving relation. I'm not doing that - I'm saying the perceiving relation has two and only two relata: the perceiver and the perceived. We experience these relations obtaining - that is, we experience perceiving things - but the experience is not itself a relata in the relation.

Our experience is 'of' perceiving rather than constitutive of it. That's also why my view does not face the problem of accounting for hallucinations, as hallucinations are kinds of experience (whereas if one bakes the object of perception into an experience then - the objection goes - hallucinations would seem to be impossible (to the discredit of the theory).

I do not understand. I take for granted that experiences are mental states. But that's not unorthodox or something the other direct realists would dispute, I think. Admittedly, some of them think mind-external objects can feature as constituents of mind-internal mental states - but my point is that this is incoherent. (I'm sympathetic to what they're trying to do, as they recognize that for perception to be occurring the object does indeed need to get inside the experience, but I just don't see how the notion can be coherent).