Coming from the guy who's been making the same arguments for at least 5 years. — jamalrob

I deleted that part, as it's a bit unfair. But some people do take perceptual relativity seriously.

No, I think that's wrong. The widely known fact that dogs don't see colours as we do does not put a dent into anyone's conception of perception. — jamalrob

Maybe not dogs, but birds and insects do, since they can see colors we can't. As for dogs, there is smell and those big ears they have.

So it would seem that the direct realists are defending a correlationist view of perception, while the indirect realists think perception is like a simulation the brain creates consisting of color, sound, taste, smell, various feels and awareness of the body. Think of it as the Star Trek holodeck, except that the color, sound, etc. is merely representative of light, temperature, sound waves, the body, etc. The sticking point being the brain is where the magic show takes place.

But both agree that the real world (transcendental) is a bit different than how it appears to us.

Is there actually a naive position that is somehow corrected by the idea that perception happens from a perspective and in a certain way? — jamalrob

The default common sense view of almost everyone going about their daily life, and everyday language would be that naive realist position. The world is (usually) at it appears to us.

Perhaps what the salient parts of the disagreement are depend on what camp you're in? A difference that looks different from both sides. — fdrake

Which raises the question of what exactly the direct realists are defending. If it isn't a direct awareness of the object itself, but rather a relation or process, then ...? Presumably they're defending something of consequence different from what the indirect realists are defending.

And that would likely relate to not having a veil of perception between us and the world.

Actually it seems like Reid had a more nuanced view of color which sounds more indirect (or relative), unlike the primary qualities of shape and size. Here's a SEP description of color realism along with philosophers who have supported it:

Color Primitivist Realism is the view that there are in nature colors, as ordinarily understood, i.e., colors are simple intrinsic, non-relational, non-reducible, qualitative properties. They are qualitative features of the sort that stand in the characteristic relations of similarity and difference that mark the colors; they are not micro-structural properties or reflectances, or anything of the sort. There is no radical illusion, error or mistake in color perception (only commonplace illusions): we perceive objects to have the colors that they really have. Such a view has been presented by Hacker 1987 and by J. Campbell 1994, 2005, and has become increasingly popular: McGinn 1996; Watkins 2005; Gert 2006, 2008. This view is sometimes called “The Simple View of Color” and sometimes “The Naive Realist view of Color”. — Color (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

That's a caricature of indirect realism's critics. — jamalrob

Unless they happen to be color realists. Thomas Reid was one if I recall correctly.

It seems to me that in order to say that the brain gets stuff "wrong" is implying that you know what is "right". How did you know what is right or wrong if not using your brain - directly or indirectly? — Harry Hindu

Usually in context of illusions, you investigate further. If you walk five miles through the hot desert to the oasis and it isn't there, then you know your brain tricked you.

but that a perceiver is in an active relation with its environment, in which perception depends on both. — jamalrob

Wouldn't that be true for both direct and indirect realists? So when most people see red, that means they have a direct awareness of the object's reflectivity?

Part of the problem is that every time I've seen direct realism introduced, it's stated as seeing objects as they are instead of some mental representation. If we see objects as they are, then knowledge is not a problem.

I'm not sure where the "active relation with the environment" fits in with direct realism's certainty versus indirect's reliance on inference.

Exactly! Our senses don't lie. Our interpretations of what we observe are the problem. A bent straw in water is exactly what you are suppose to see given that we see light, not objects. — Harry Hindu

Our brains could have evolved to correct for that, if it had been advantageous enough. Our brains do corrections for lighting conditions, and of course sometimes our brains get angles, lighting or motion wrong. Thus the various visual illusions.

The image on the retina is 2D, so the brain has to be making some inferences about depth as it produces the perception.

That would be misleading, as Dennett doesn't believe that. — InPitzotl

It would be, "I could not have done other than write this, but I still had a choice!"

I dunno, maybe fdrake can explain things better. — jamalrob

Red things are red, but only to certain perceivers. — jamalrob

Red things being red only to certain perceivers is the same thing as what the ancient skeptics were saying. Honey isn't sweet, it's only sweet to tasters. Sweetness isn't a property of the honey, it's a property of tasting. "I am sweetened".

So there are no red things. I agree, it's a relational property of perceivers. Color isn't a property of objects.

Therefore, when we perceive a red fire engine, the redness is not a direct awareness of the object, since objects have no color.

Don't give in to the thought: well then we can't say that fire engines really are red. Reject it. Banish it forever. — jamalrob

You can if you care about which properties are real (mind-independent), and which ones are created by the perceiver. Isn't that what science tries to do? How can we say the fire engine is really red if we know visible light is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and if we had eyes that could see other parts, it might not look red?

Part of the ancient skeptical argument was noting that animal senses differ from our own. So no, we can't just say the world is how it appears to us, since it can appear differently to other animals.

Anyway, I care about what's real, to the extent we can know.

That's why I think that your approach (and unenlightened's approach, and jamalrob's approach) seem to sidestep the substance of the disagreement. — Michael

There seems to be a strong temptation on this forum to think that if only the terms can be used the proper way, the philosophical issue goes away. I take it that's Wittgenstein's shadow cast large over these sorts of disagreements.

However, the nature of perception has persisted as an in issue in philosophy across many time periods, cultures and languages, so it probably can't be resolved by just figuring out proper linguistic use, since it's a problem of perception, not language.

Indirect realism is much more historically specific, and has its roots in specific ways of thinking about what it means to perceive, what it means to be a person at all. — jamalrob

The problem of perception in general goes back to ancient philosophy, and it's not limited to the Greeks.

They Cyreneacs used the skeptical arguments around perceptual relativity to say that we can only know the sensory impression and not the external cause. Therefore for them, the proper linguistic use was "I am sweetened" instead of "The honey is sweet". Or "I am whitened" instead of "The table is white".

Indirect versus direct realism may be historically specific, like the current debate over consciousness, but the wider problem of perception is not. As soon as people started asking philosophical questions, perception became an issue. Or maybe because of issues with perception people started asking those kinds of questions.

I wish to be annoyed more.

The reason for the "venerable folly" of indirect realism is because illusions and hallucinations raise the possibility that perception isn't what we naively take it to be. Of course you can say that "seeing" used properly means only veridical perception. But that doesn't address the issue.

The possibility that perception is something other than direct awareness needs to be dealt with. Insisting on using language correctly won't make the issue go away because, as Michael pointed out, the language is based on a naive realist understanding, which could be mistaken.

Discussions like this on the forum rarely get off the ground because we individuate instances of perception differently, and people with intuitions that perception is model based have a habit of concluding that the representational varieties of indirect realism are the only way forward; even when the representation/modelling that constitutes perception itself is a direct relationship between body and environment — fdrake

What would constitute indirect for a direct realist? Going back to the neural implant, let's say when you close your eyes the implant receives radio signals from a camera mounted on a robot moving about some environment. The implant translates that to electrical signals the brain can interpret as images, and the result is a visual perception of what the robot camera is recording.

The reason for brining that up is to ask whether any possible process of perception could be indirect for a direct realist. Because if the answer is none, then the direct realist is playing a word game.

ou previously said that the thing that emerged was "complex and novel", now you're claiming it's so fundamental and obvious it can't be ignored. Which is it? — Isaac

It's complex and novel when saying it emerges form the physical. It's fundamental and obvious as someone who is conscious.

Seems a bit dodgy to me!! — Graeme M

For a genuine p-zombie, it would seem that way.

Is there the slightest evidence to support the contention that it is? — Graeme M

That you have conscious experiences.

Well, at the moment perhaps. Isn't it feasible that an explanation may be forthcoming? — Graeme M

Only if the arguments for the hard problem are flawed. Which perhaps they are in some subtle way, or are relying on faulty intuition. I guess we'll know if/when an explanation does emerge.

I'm not trying to dismiss panpsychism, I just don't get how it even flies as a serious contender. — Graeme M

Well, if the world contains both physical stuff and consciousness, but there doesn't seem to be a way for the physical stuff to produce consciousness, then an alternative would be that all physical stuff is conscious.

Why couldn't unexplained emergence be a brute fact? Are there some limits/preferences about what can and cannot be a brute fact? — Isaac

No, but I think complex novel things emerging is considered spooky in a way that brute fundamental things are not. The presumption being that emergence is produced by the fundamental building blocks, so how could you get something entirely novel out of that?

Something has to be fundamental because stuff exists. We just don't have an explanation for existence.

And that question is another category error. It's a dream; it doesn't take place at all. It happens in the magical land of unicorns. — unenlightened

But you have an experience of seeing a tree in your dream. That experience is like the experience of perceiving a tree. If the first is a mental image, why isn't the second experience?

Yes, it could be considered an abuse of language because language didn't develop to properly explain the true nature of perception, it developed according to the naive view that the properties present in the experience, like a red colour, are properties inherent in external world objects. — Michael

Exactly this. So for example we say the sky is blue without taking into account what that actually entails, because it's pragmatic to say skies are blue, not scientific or philosophical.

I have never, ever to my knowledge dreamed of a tree in my head, or any other object in my head. As I never experience anything being in my head, it doesn't feature in my dreams. — unenlightened

Where do you suppose the dream is taking place?

And anyway it is foolish to base a theory of vision on fantasies. Try again. — unenlightened

So perception is unlike all our other experiences? Some people think dreams are a form of hallucination.

If the object of perception is in my head, how do I see it? simple question How do I see what is in my head? If you don't mean that what do you mean that isn't an abuse of language? — unenlightened

The same way you see a tree in a dream. It's a mental image. The difference being the causal chain that produced the mental image.

No, that's not what he says. External reality is the stuff we see in everyday life, the empirically real. — jamalrob

So the categories of thought which organize the sense impressions into the empirical are mirroring the world outside the mind?

We certainly haven't reduced the mysteriousness - we've just re-invented the nature of the entire universe with a stuff that previously didn't exist and can't be measured. — Isaac

Sure, but it just becomes another brute fact of existence, along with the existence of QM, Relativity and fundamental properties and fields.

We haven't reduced the 'how' questions - we still have the question of how this stuff interacts with matter only now it's interacting with all matter. — Isaac

Well the matter interacts but it's also conscious. Combine the matter together and you have more consciousness. I'm not a panpsychist, so you'd have to see how they go about explaining combinations.

How can you claim this to be true? — Graeme M

There are plenty of arguments for the hard problem. Basically, no amount of objective explanation gets you to subjectivity. They're incompatible.

This might be a form of correlationism and so not as realist as you'd expect, but in the same way that Kant didn't think of himself as an idealist, neither do I. — jamalrob

Right, but what sort of realist was Kant? He thought there was an external reality of some kind, but we can't say anything positive about it, thus terming it the noumena.

Most realisms try to establish a connection between human thoughts, words, perceptions and the "furniture" of the world. The realist is saying that our minds carve up the world more or less at nature's joints. Get rid of the joints and for all the Kantian knows, reality could be the equivalent of a BIV, or some mystical godlike thing, or a damn sphere.

On the other hand, if by direct you mean to perceive something as it is beyond possible experience, yeah, that's not a road that I go down. I want to say that's incoherent. — jamalrob

Sure, however, I think that's what the direct realist is trying to say. The world basically looks the way it looks to us, once you account for lighting conditions, angles, and all the stuff we can't see.

So in answer to the question, no, I don't think Dennett is a p-zombie. Nevertheless, if not experiencing genuine phenomenal qualia is the definition of a p-zombie, then we are all p-zombies. — Graeme M

You certainly do philosophy like a p-zombie!

But to get to what you're interested in and state my positive position more explicitly: we always perceive under an aspect. We perceive affordances, what is relevant. Perception is a coupling with the environment in ways that depend on perceiver and environment. This might be a form of correlationism and so not as realist as you'd expect, but in the same way that Kant didn't think of himself as an idealist, neither do I. — jamalrob

The question would be in what sense is correlationiism a "direct awareness"? It sounds like the correlation is generating an experience of a table that is not what the table is like at all, since physical objects don't look, sound, smell, taste or feel like anything. They lack those properties, since those are affordances of perceiving.

Maybe an alternative would be to propose that perception is a direct awareness of a relationship to an object. That would allow for doing science without skepticism. But it wouldn't be what direct realists are arguing, which is a sophisticated form of stating a naive view of reality. The table looks like a table.

does it follow that if the problem of qualia were to be resolved in like manner to other physical matters (ie qualia are a describable and measurable physical event), would that undercut the rationale for positing panpsychism? — Graeme M

It wouldn't be describable or measurable. It would only be inferred, like with other people's minds. The hard problem is one of subjectivity, which can' be scientifically measured or described. Panpsychism is trying to solve the irreducibility of conscious experience by spreading it out through everything so that it's a building block instead of just mysteriously emerging.

If minds were the function of systems to undertake say logical operations on information, ie to undertake computations, we'd have to conclude that computers do this. And that seems relatively explicable. We could expect that human brains are doing similar computational processes, also explicable. We could conclude that information is ubiquitous, that computations are possible, and that the universe has the property that systems can undertake computations. But isn't that already known, accepted and explained? So panpsychism can't be making that claim. — Graeme M

Right, that's just functionalism. You still need the qualia. An alternative to panpsychism would be to suppose some kinds of information are conscious. That's what Chalmers has suggested. And it's not explained by the functions or kind of information. It's just an additional fact. That's property dualism.

Are you? What IS the phenomenal experience of blue? I suspect nothing at all, beyond the distinctions it tokens. Blue just is what it is for your brain to be in a particular discriminatory state. — Graeme M

Would you say the same thing for pain or pleasure?

Let's say you're driving down a familiar road and you go into autopilot as you day dream. Now, your brain is still discriminating the steering wheel, gas pedal, lines on the road and anything else relevant for keeping the car on the road. But you're having a conscious experience of imagining something else entirely. How does that work on Dennett's account?

How would such ineffable beliefs differ from beetles in boxes? — Banno

To followup on creativesoul's comment, other animals can't state their beliefs in language. They might communicate them in a variety of other ways. But not necessarily and not always. Think of how long people have argued over what exactly their pet dog or cat thinks.

This video was posted in the, "Is Daniel Dennett a Zombie" thread. Right around the 10:30 minute mark he starts talking about color representation and brain states. They begin a discussion using the example of perceiving a blue door. That would tie into this discussion.

So Dennett is some kind of representationalist regarding consciousness. At other times, he sounds like a direct realist. I've never heard or read him say anything about this particular debate (direct versus indirect). Regardless, how does a direct realist handle consciousness?

Dennett does go on to say that color and consciousness are real, they just aren't what we thought they were.

I assume that my senses tell me something about the world, because it think it will make for a better live... and that's it essentially. — ChatteringMonkey

The indirect realists do as well and so do the idealists. It's only the skeptics who think our senses aren't telling us something about the world. The indirect realists would say we have to infer the knowledge instead of getting it directly. Which does raise the possibility of being wrong. And humans have been plenty wrong about the world over time.

Around 11:26 Dennett starts talking about color (pigment). He says there's no role for a property like pigment other than the light hitting the retina and activating cones. But there are brain states which represent to the perceiver the property of pigment. The interviewer says that's the difference between having a phenomenal quality of color (blue) instantiated by his brain and having the quality of blue represented by his brain. Dennett agrees.

I don't understand the difference. We still have the experience of the blue sky (or blue door at this point in the conversation). Dennett is replacing talk of the phenomenal experience with talk of brain states. That's just a semantic move.

So if you don't like the implications of a particular philosophical argument, just change the words used to avoid those implications! If only Chalmers had realized he could have used different words, he could have remained a good physicalist.