Given representations (R), perceptions (P) and objects (O), direct realists believe that R are part of the mechanics of P and are subsumed under P. — Luke
Your position is this:
A direct perception is: P (excluding R) of an O.
An indirect perception is: P (including R) of an O. — Luke
The sensory information that an organism receives from its environment is a perception. You are basically saying that our perceptions are direct. — Luke
Good. I was going to lump you with Michael, so I'm glad you agree. — Leontiskos
<Machines make inferences from sense data; humans are like machines; therefore humans make inferences from sense data> — Leontiskos
Or in other words, do we agree that indirect realism has the burden of proof, and that direct realism is the default or pre-critical position? — Leontiskos
Well, if you plop a child down in front of a Disney movie, do they require special skills of interpretation and inference to enter into the story? — Leontiskos
A word is a sound, and so without the sound there is no word, but it does not follow that (conscious) interpretation or inference is occurring. It is the same, I say, for images and other sensory inputs. — Leontiskos
Okay, and so it is not a window, but is instead a set of data that, if interpreted correctly, can lead to knowledge of the real? — Leontiskos
There's a very odd use of "inference" in Michael's account. — Banno
I think we see (if we are close enough to identify them) what the distant objects are. The way you are putting it seems confused to me, and liable, if taken seriously, to breed further confusion — Janus
scientism — Leontiskos
For example, if someone is watching a film it is not at all clear that the sounds are more direct than the story. — Leontiskos
No, not a window.If you say the base level is the sensory experience then that is where the stack of layers terminates, is it not? Or are you viewing sensory experience as a window through which we come into contact with something else? — Leontiskos
They may even say that because we often shape and infuse meaning into sounds the meaning itself is more primary than the sounds. — Leontiskos
<The sense data is related to the intellect as that by which it understands [, not as that which is understood]> — Leontiskos
and your position would not have been called realism at all, because it terminates in perception and not in the real. — Leontiskos
So you believe the direct realist would hold that the layer of sensory experience does not exist and therefore the computer layer is most "direct"? — Leontiskos
Apparently knowledge of the sandpaper without fingers, nerves, and brain processing would be direct? — Leontiskos
For example, if the indirect realist says that "direct" is as I have described it, this does provide a relevant foil, it's just that the foil is counterfactual and not actual. — Leontiskos
Once we hit page 20 we will surely be able to say what it is we are arguing about. :grin: — Leontiskos
I'm not sure what you're arguing for, that there is no real distinction between imaginings and sense perception? — Count Timothy von Icarus
But you've seemed to ignore my main point, which is that brains don't appear to "bookkeep" or produce any sort of experience in the vast majority of environments that exist in the universe. Nor do they develop the capability to experience things in isolation. A back and forth between the "enviornment"/"individual" barrier is essential for embryo development and essential for survival. E.g., a radical constriction of sensory inputs after birth leads to profound deficits in mammals, whereas a total constriction of sensory inputs would obviously require an enviornment that is going to kill any animal. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Nor do true dividing lines between different "things" seem to show up in the world upon closer inspection. If the mind "constructs" things, it surely appears to construct these boundaries. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Direct realists recognize the difference between phenomenal experience and external world objects. So why do they still claim that perception of external world objects is direct? — Michael
You seemed to be suggesting that if there is some third physical thing in the causal chain between the experience and the external world object then the experience is mediated. — Michael
So when I'm watching at the stadium I have a direct perception of the game? — Michael
So an experience of an external world object is direct if and only if the atoms that constitute that object are physically touching the atoms in my brain that constitute my experience — Michael
So let's take olfactory experience. Do I smell a rose? Or do I smell the geraniol in the air, produced by the oils in a rose's petals? Must it be a case of either/or, or are they just different ways of talking about the same thing? — Michael
After that, we should ask if there's such a thing as a correct smell. Perhaps the way a rose smells to me isn't the way a rose smells to you. If there is a difference, must it be that at least one of us is wrong? — Michael
This leads on to having to ask if, and in what way, smells are properties of roses. Do our noses enable us to experience a rose's "inherent" smell, or does a rose have a smell only because organisms have noses? — Michael
If the latter then we might then ask if there's a difference between smelling a rose and experiencing a smell caused by a rose. — Michael
And finally, is there something unique about visual experience such that noses and smells are fundamentally different (in the relevant philosophical sense) to eyes and e.g. colours. — Michael
Well, the first step is to
explain what it means to experience something directly and what it means to experience something indirectly. Can "direct" and "indirect" be explained without simply being defined as not being the other? — Michael
Realism is the concept in question, after all, its apparent dual nature, right? — Mww
Dunno why it should be that we perceive the world indirectly just because it’s first in a chain of events. — Mww
First, phenomenology distinguishes between imagined/pictured phenomena and sensory experience. This seems uncontroversial since we do not generally have trouble distinguishing our imaginings and reality, and indeed of we did much of philosophy would need to be reworked. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The question arises, what is the “self”? — NOS4A2
Consider that the human body does not produce any experience unless it is an extremely narrow environmental range; the enviornment is always essential to the processes that give rise to perception. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Thus, on sensory experience I'd tend to go with the relational-dispositional theories, that sensation of say "sky blue" requires both a disposition on the side of the experiencer, and a certain sort of environment. — Count Timothy von Icarus
What, then, of the senses? — Mww
Agreed on the first, but how does the second follow? — Mww
So really my question "against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it" — Janus
Why are you so certain of this? — Banno
I put it to you that you also sometimes know how things are - not all the time, and sometimes you are indeed wrong, but sometimes, you get it right - which is to say, you occasionally speak the truth. I hope you will agree with me at least on this. — Banno
if you doubt their existence, then they should not stop you walking naked through the local shopping mall. Their gaze can be quite convincing. — Banno
dreaming of me — Banno
Sure, certainty is overrated; but hereabouts, even more so, doubt. — Banno
You are presently reading this sentence. An empirical fact? Call it what you will, it is... difficult... to see how it might be coherently doubted. — Banno
I am at al loss here as I don't know what you are trying to say. — Janus
Indirect realists claim that we see objects indirectly because we can only see their visual representations. — Luke
You cannot attend either to objects or to their visual representation when you can only see their visual representation. — Luke
Wouldn't the position of the indirect realist be that we can only "attend to" (or "see") visual representations and are unable to choose otherwise? That is, the indirect realist can only ever directly "experience" or "attend to" or "see" representations and can never directly see objects. — Luke
Our ordinary perceptions, and against these the seeing things indirectly through tinted glasses, distorting mirrors, telescopes, radar, periscopes and so on make sense. — Janus
I still don't understand the difference. Why don't we "see" representations in the same way? (And why the use of scare quotes?) — Luke
both of those views as far as I can tell are equally vulnerable to the same types of skeptical questions — flannel jesus
My point to Amadeus was that if he denies we have access to the world, to empirical facts, — Janus
I think it is a matter of accuracy or reliability. "Are we able to form true propositions which accurately and reliably get at what truly exists in the world?" — Leontiskos
If you were consistent, you would say we have no access to empirical facts and therefore cannot draw any conclusions at all about perception, the world or anything else. — Janus
As long as our perceptions are of the world, then we directly perceive the world, regardless of the qualitative features of those perceptions. — Luke
You did not answer my earlier question: What is the difference between directly seeing a representation and directly experiencing a representation? — Luke
If representations are not a part of our perceptions, then where do they come from and how do we know about them? — Luke
How can the world possibly be perceived “independently of an observer”? — Luke
First, to echo Banno's question, what would the correlate to indirect, "direct," mean in the context of your claims? — Leontiskos
What would it take to directly see an object? — Luke
What would constitute a direct physical interaction? — Count Timothy von Icarus
- I don't believe that indirectness implies inaccuracy. — Leontiskos
It seems to me that your word here, "indirect," is being asked to do far too much work. — Leontiskos
Is that your theory, or is it something else? — Leontiskos
But you are importing a homunculus theory. Most obviously you are doing this by conflating mediation with indirectness, and this goes back to the same idea that reality could not be accurately mediated by sense organs. — Leontiskos