The first half of the book is an assault on Ayer's essay on perception, a pretty extreme example. — Banno

Yeah, more than half is dedicated to showing why Ayer got it all wrong. It's interesting because he doesn't attack the Ayer tradition as much a Ayer specifically.

Without getting into the specifics of everything he says, I would say I generally agree with his notion that it's impossible to speak of metaphysics as many attempt to. The problem, and I blame those who don't articulate it well enough more than those who misunderstand it, is in clarifying the metaphysical is not being denied. Once that is understood, the instinct to attack the position dissipates (or should).

This comment inadvertently makes my point. Wittgenstein and Austin are fairly clear that their object is to delineate the scope of philosophical inquiry. If ever you believe that scientific evidence defeats philosophical claims, then there has been a category error, confusing science with philosophy. The purpose of philosophy under this tradition is to preserve cogent argumentation and use of language and communication. So, if you are doing science, then your debate would be among scientists. That is, stop trying to disprove my position with science. My position makes no important scientific claims. — Hanover

Philosophical enquiry ought take into consideration what science says about the world. If science says that colours are "in the head" then our philosophical account of language ought recognise that the word "colours" refers to something "in the head", else it is a false account of language.

This doesn't contradict your prior comment, but it presents an odd result. You claim that science answers the questions about how we perceive and not philosophers, but you then claim Locke got it right. We'd have to chalk that up to luck and science vindicating his method, which was just armchair theorizing. That is, he was right, but for the wrong reason. — Hanover

I said that empirical study trumps armchair theorising, i.e. that if the two are ever in conflict then we ought accept the results of empirical study over the results of armchair theorising. I didn't say that armchair theorising can't be correct.

That does not provide support for Locke's theory. Locke posited two things: (1) Primary and (2) secondary qualities. Showing that color (a secondary quality) doesn't exist in the object doesn't prove that primary qualities (shape and size, for example) do. To stick to the science, we would show that none of the attributes of the object go unmediated by the subject, which means that I have no more reason to think a red ball is red than I do to think it's round. — Hanover

I only said that I agree that there is a distinction between primary qualities and secondary qualities, not that I agreed that all the things that Locke says are primary qualities are primary qualities and that all the things that Locke says are secondary qualities are secondary qualities. I agree with him that things like colours and tastes and smells are secondary qualities, but I don't necessarily agree with him that things like shape and size are primary qualities — and in fact I have made arguments earlier in this discussion that orientation is a secondary quality. But I'm not an idealist, and so I do believe that there are mind-independent objects and that they do have mind-independent properties. I'm undecided on whether to be a full Kantian and claim that primary qualities are unknowable or to be a scientific realist and claim that the Standard Model describes these primary qualities.

What I mean is that I use the term ship is a certain way and we get along with its use in predictable ways and I'm not entering into your theoretical scientific musings about reality. — Hanover

You can use the word "ship" however you like, but that has nothing to do with perception. Perception has nothing to do with language and everything to do with physics, physiology, phenomenology, and the relationship between experience and the mind-independent world. People and animals without a language either do or do not directly perceive the world, and whether or not they do is something that only science can answer, not a critical analysis of speech and writing.

You can use the word "ship" however you like, but that has nothing to do with perception. — Michael

That summarizes what I just said.

If science says that colours are "in the head" then our philosophical account of language ought recognise that the word "colours" refers to something "in the head", else it is a false account of language. — Michael

The point of Austin and Wittgenstein is to challenge specifically what you have just said, which is what should be the proper account of language.

What you have been saying is that meaning is use and that mental states have nothing to do with it, and this is wrong. Some words and phrases do in fact refer to mental states, e.g. "mental states", "pain", and "red".

You also seem to have been saying that meaning-as-use entails direct realism, and this is also wrong. Perception and language are two different things.

What you have been saying is that meaning is use and that mental states have nothing to do with it, and this is wrong. — Michael

That's not what I've said. I said reference to mental states does not provide a method to determine meaning because they are not publicaly confirmable. I have no idea what mental states might do behind the scenes. I'm not arguing metaphysics.

You also seem to have been saying that meaning-as-use entails direct realism, and this is also wrong. Perception and language are two different things. — Michael

That's also not what I said . I said that reference to the inner workings of the conscious and the unknown ways the environment and your brain monkeys with the mystical noumenal ship at sea provides us no way to establish what we mean when we say basic statements like "There is a ship." I am not suggesting in any way that the ship out there "really" looks like the ship in your mind's eye. I have no idea what the noumenal is and I defer to science how light bends and drug abusers misunderstand their perceptions.

I said reference to mental states does not provide a method to determine meaning because they are not publicaly confirmable. — Hanover

They don't need to be publicly confirmable. I don't need you to tell me that I have a headache for me to have a headache, or for the word "headache" to refer to this mental state that I am in.

I agree with him that things like colours and tastes and smells are secondary qualities, but I don't necessarily agree with him that things like shape and size are primary qualities — and in fact I have made arguments earlier in this discussion that orientation is a secondary quality. — Michael

An indirect realist speaks of the thing out there X and the thing in your head Y. If you are not committed to X resembling Y in any way (having no primary consistent quality), then why are we talking about Xs at all? What I'm getting at is that if we dispense with reference to X, the word "really" becomes irrelevant because X is what is supposedly "really" there." As in, let's not talk about "really" because that is metaphysical talk and it gets us no where. But might there be an X? Of course, but that's beyond the scope of philosophy.

They don't need to be publicly confirmable. I don't need you to tell me that I have a headache for me to have a headache, or for the word "headache" to refer to this mental state that I am in. — Michael

Do you think that is my argument though? Do you think with that hammer, you've just defeated the entirety of what Wittgenstein was getting at, as if that argument was overlooked? I'm asking that because I'm suggesting you're not giving the argument it's due.

You have headaches. You talk to yourself. You have an inner life. You have all sorts of beetles. The word "headache" is understood by me with no reference to your inner headache but by the way the word is used.

An indirect realist speaks of the thing out there X and the thing in your head Y. If you are not committed to X resembling Y in any way (having no primary consistent quality), then why are we talking about Xs at all? — Hanover

Because we are not idealists and we believe that there is an X and that it has properties that are causally responsible for Y.

Do you think that is my argument though? — Hanover

If your argument is an argument against my claims then it must be — and you have presented it as an argument against my claims.

So if you don't deny that words like "headache" and "colour" are referring to the phenomenal character of subjective experiences then why do you keep bringing up Wittgenstein and Austin when I am clearly talking about perception and indirect realism?

I think it's important to keep in mind that the Private Language Argument only pertains to one theory of meaning, that being rule following. If words gain meaning in some other way, the PLA becomes moot.

Phenomenal experience does in fact exist and some of our words do in fact refer to it and its qualities. All you seem to be saying is "let's pretend otherwise".

Indirect realism tries to explain its own theory with a cascade of morphology, usually by way of verb-to-noun or adjective-to-noun nominalizing. So with each and every coining of a phrase we are introduced to new things and places by meeting new nouns and noun-phrases, but never by observing anything different.

Two types of nouns are particularly dubious. There is the necessary setting or environment where phenomena is said to occur— “awareness”, the “mind”, or “phenomenal experience”—and then there is the phenomenons themselves, often treated as discreet objects—qualia (Lewis), impressions (Hume), sense-data, perceptions, representations (Kant), and yes, experiences. (You seem to present “phenomenal experience” as a place one time and a thing in another). Not a single one of these things and places can be confirmed to exist, however, because not a single one of them have been found or observed. At any rate, to do so would be to utilize the method of observation indirect realists are busy at work in undermining. But places and things are how we are left to speak about them, I suppose? Sorry, but we’ve looked in heads and there are no such things.

It's the way children and uneducated adults intuitively think of perception and the world (hence the term "naive").

With no sense allowed, any inquiry into human understanding is precisely that much lacking in the evidence, leaving a sense-sized hole in each one. Not only does it undermine one’s own faculties, but privileging the intellect while undermining the senses as fallible is to give away the plot entirely. There has to be an ulterior motive involved in discrediting one faculty while retaining undue faith in the others. This is evident in the moniker “naive realism”, the idea that those who trust their senses are of the unwashed, unphilosophical masses, who are still tied up in Plato’s cave.

There is a biological organism with photoreceptor cells in the eye that absorb electromagnetic radiation and in doing so reduce the release of glutamate into the central nervous system, changing the behaviour of the neurons in the visual cortex, and in many cases affecting bodily movement.

What does it mean to say that this biological organism "directly sees" some object located 100m away from it?

Does this biological organism have anything in his body called “phenomenal experience”? “Color”?

What does it mean to say that this biological organism "directly sees" some object located 100m away from it?

It means there is no mediator constructing imagery in the head, and that we are in fact seeing the environment.

that we are in fact seeing the environment. — NOS4A2

Which means what?

Without reference to first-person experience, how do you even make sense of what it means for an organism to "see" distant objects? According to your eliminative materialism there is just a mass of skin and bones and muscles reacting to other material that comes into immediate physical contact with it.

What the Direct Realist proposes is a logical impossibility

The bent stick argument is a weak argument against Direct Realism (DR), in that the Semantic Direct Realist (SDR) may sensibly say that although perception is indirect, cognition is direct. We directly cognise a straight stick that appears bent.

A better argument against SDR is that direct cognition is logically impossible.

The SDR agrees with the Indirect Realist (IR) that i) all our information about the mind-external world comes through our senses and ii) there is a temporal causal chain from something in the world initiating a causal chain which eventually causes a perception in the mind.

For example, we can conceptualise that the causal chain was initiated by the stick, followed by a wavelength of light, to an electrical signal in the optic nerve, then neural activity in the brain and finally perception in the mind.

The SDR agrees that the form of the links in the causal chain may change, for example, from a wavelength of light to an electrical signal. However, it is logically impossible for the content of the link not to change if the form of the link changes. From Leibniz’s Law, the Principle of Indiscernibles, two distinct things, such as two links of a causal chain having different forms, cannot share the same content, the same properties.

As the form of these links in the causal chain change, the content of these links must also change. But it is the content of these links that is cognised.

Therefore, the content of the link at initiation cannot be the same as the content of the link when perceived, but as it is the content that is directly cognised, what is cognised in the link at perception cannot be what would be cognised in the link at initiation.

The SDR is saying that in order to directly cognise the stick, even though the form of the links in the causal chain change, the content of the links must remain the same, as it is the contents of the links that is cognised, but this is a logical impossibility.

Without reference to first-person experience, how do you even make sense of what it means for an organism to "see" distant objects?

I don’t doubt we view things from a certain place in space and time. I just doubt that we’re watching things occur in our skull.

I don’t doubt we view things from a certain place in space and time. I just doubt that we’re watching things occur in our skull. — NOS4A2

We aren't watching things occur in our skull, just as when we feel pain we aren't touching something that occurs in our skull. You're misinterpreting the grammar.

We aren't watching things occur in our skull, just as when I feel pain I'm not touching something that occurs in my skull. You're misinterpreting the grammar.

Then what are you watching when you point your eyes towards distant objects?

Then what are you watching when you point your eyes towards distant objects? — NOS4A2

The distant object.

John Searle in The Philosophy of Perception and the Bad Argument wrote about the identity between the perception and experience.

The relation of perception to the experience is one of identity. It is like the pain and the experience of pain. The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain. Similarly, if the experience of perceiving is an object of perceiving, then it becomes identical with the perceiving. Just as the pain is identical with the experience of pain, so the visual experience is identical with the experience of seeing.

The distant object.

But you color it and give it shape, no? even though you cannot reach it?

But you color it and give it shape, no? even though you cannot reach it? — NOS4A2

The distant object reflects light into our eyes which triggers neurological activity which causes conscious experience with phenomenal character, with features such as shape, colour, depth, etc., and then like a phantom itch it's seemingly projected out beyond the body, despite the fact that conscious experience does not extend beyond the body.

Then what are you coloring and shaping if not something in your skull? Are you playing with the light in there?

Then what are you coloring and shaping if not something in your skull? Are you playing with the light in there? — NOS4A2

I explained it clearly above.

Projected outside beyond the body. That’s not what science believes nor is there any evidence for that.

I said seemingly projected out beyond the body. Look up phantom itches and phantom pains. It seems as if there's an itch or a pain located where one's arm used to be, but which is in fact now "empty" space. Obviously there is no itch or pain actually there.

But it doesn’t seemingly do that. Rather, it looks like objects are already colored.

But it doesn’t seemingly do that. Rather, it looks like objects are already colored. — NOS4A2

And it seems as if this coloured object exists beyond the body, but it is in fact a feature of the phenomenal experience that emerges from brain activity and does not extend beyond the body. Similar to how when playing a VR game it seems as if there's a monster standing 100 feet in front of you.

If a bionic eye, as well as being able to help the otherwise-blind navigate the real world, can be used to play VR computer games, then what, if anything, do we see when we use it to play VR computer games?