The problem is that you are using your definition of "I see X" (such that it is true only if X is a real object in the environment) to (mis-)interpret their claim "I see mental phenomena" (and is why your accusation that indirect realism entails an homunculus is a strawman).

The indirect realist might argue that "I see X" just describes the visual cortex being active in the right kind of way, regardless of what the eyes are doing or what distal objects exist, and so I see things when I have visual hallucinations and hear things when I have auditory hallucinations (and don't see or hear anything if I have brain damage but otherwise functional eyes and ears). This is an ordinary use of English vocabulary.

And the things I see and hear when I hallucinate have properties that can be described, such as their colour, and is how we distinguish between hallucinating one thing and hallucinating something else. Given that there is no real object in the environment when I hallucinate, the colours I see when I hallucinate are not microstructural properties of something's surface, or wavelengths of light, or anything of the sort; the colours I see when I hallucinate are mental phenomena, and it is acceptable to say that I see these colours.

You're just defining "seeing X" as "seeing some distal X" but obviously that's not a definition that indirect realists agree with. — Michael

Nor does it match how native English speakers use the word seeing. People suffering from psychosis may see things that aren't there. That's a completely normal sentence in English. Seeing is the experience, not the stuff out there.

In fact the colloquial phrase to say that you're experiencing hallucinations is to say "I'm seeing things".

Thanks for the clarification. I should just note that my earlier point wasn’t meant as a defense of indirect realism of any sort, nor as an argument that we never perceive external objects. The claim was narrower: given your own explanation of indistinguishability, an indirect realist can accept everything you say about mental imagery and hallucination while declining to posit direct perception in the good case on grounds of parsimony.

In other words, given your explanation of indistinguishability, mental imagery is sufficient to explain the phenomenal character in the hallucination case, and the presence of an external object makes no difference to that phenomenal character in the veridical case. That is what gives the indirect realist a foothold: they can accept everything you say while treating the external object as explanatorily superfluous with respect to phenomenal experience.

Thanks, that’s helpful. I think where we still differ is that the argument you quote builds in a phenomenological notion of “direct presence” from the outset. On the view I’m defending, epistemic directness is not a matter of what is phenomenally present to the mind at all.

I don’t accept (1), but not because I think mind-external objects are phenomenally present. Rather, I reject the assumption that perceptual justification must be grounded in phenomenology in the first place. Directness, on my view, concerns what our judgments are about, not what appears in experience.

So I’m not accepting the Indirectness Principle; I’m rejecting the framing in which it is formulated. That’s why I don’t see my position as either naïve realism or indirect realism as characterized here.

Yes, that’s broadly how I see it. Phenomenal experience is particular and non-conceptual, and for that reason it isn’t the kind of thing that can represent the world accurately or inaccurately. Representation, justification, and inference all belong at the conceptual level. Experience can condition and constrain judgment, but it doesn’t itself do representational or justificatory work.

That's good, because I hope there are no ships in your head. — Banno

Something is in my head, where "thing" is not meant to suggest physical, or not. It's like asking what's in the box. Is it a beetle, smoke, empty? The point is that it doesn't matter.

The hallucination of a ship has no referent, if our domain is ships and such. This is not a difference between the objects seen, since the hallucinator, by the very fact that they are hallucinating, does not see some thing; they have the hallucination of seeing something. That's kinda what hallucinations are. — Banno

I don't see why words with referents are to be treated differently than words without as long as both have publicly confirmable rules. The metaphysical constitution of the referent remains irrelevant.

The idea of a Mental image must surely be anathema to someone who has an understanding of the private language argument. — Banno

This statement feels like an over committment of what Wittgenstein is trying to say. There are mental images per Witt. The PLA problem arises if you try to establish meaning of the term based upon that image without correlating it to use.

We have mental images under any scenario. Wittgenstein can't deny reality, admit reality, do anything with reality. He's a grammarian. It's what we can talk about, not what is.

Austin is better here, going into sense and sensibilia in some detail. And not incompatible with Wittgenstein. — Banno

Yes, I picked up on the move away from Wittgenstein and (not coincidentally) just ordered Sense and Sensibilia prior to this post. It was clear your explicit discussion of metaphysics was motivated by something and I figured Austin or Putnam based upon your other references. But this is clearly not Wittgenstein (to the extent clear and Wittgenstein go in the same sentence).

Very generally I see this as just another iteration of the dualism problem, as in how can we figure out to fit minds and bodies within the same system. Witt doesn't eliminate the mind (like a materialist), but he just says it's not something we can rely upon for understanding meaning. Austin, as I take it, is trying to find a way to put his toe in the water by allowing us to do some metaphysics without running into the problems shown by the PLA. But, I don't know, my copy of his book hasn't yet arrived.

Yes, that’s broadly how I see it. Phenomenal experience is particular and non-conceptual, and for that reason it isn’t the kind of thing that can represent the world accurately or inaccurately. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes, in this respect, your position and that of the Indirect Realist is the same, in that phenomenal experience is non-conceptual and therefore cannot represent the world at all.

The Indirect Realist avoids external world scepticism by deriving concepts based on consistencies in these phenomenal experiences. Using these concepts, which can represent, the Indirect Realist can then rationally employ "inference to the best explanation” to draw conclusions about an external world causing these phenomenal experiences.

I see what you mean, but I’d suggest that the position you describe differs from indirect realism as it was classically articulated by Locke, Hume, and later sense-datum theorists. Traditionally, sense contents were taken to be mental items that represented the world in some way, and knowledge of the external world was understood to be inferred from them in an epistemically basic way.

Your view seems to reject the representational aspect while still treating experience as epistemically primary, whereas I would want to reject both.

On the view I’m defending, epistemic directness is not a matter of what is phenomenally present to the mind at all.

...

Directness, on my view, concerns what our judgments are about, not what appears in experience. — Esse Quam Videri

But direct (naive) and indirect realism, as traditionally understood, are concerned with what sorts of things are phenomenally present to the mind (and the epistemological implications). That's the nature of their disagreement.

I've addressed this elsewhere, but I think part of the problem here is that there are newer brands of "direct realism" that, in adopting the term "direct realism" to mean something else, have fabricated a dispute with indirect realists that isn't really there. Indirect realists aren't necessarily in conflict with every position that calls itself "direct realism". We need to look past superficial labels to the substance of the claims made.

An article I often refer to in these discussions is Semantic Direct Realism:

The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR). PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism (SDR), the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories.

But direct (naive) and indirect realism, as traditionally understood, are concerned with what sorts of things are phenomenally present to the mind (and the epistemological implications). — Michael

Yes, and I’ve acknowledged that. I’ve also acknowledged that my own view does not count as traditional naïve realism. My point is that it does not count as traditional indirect realism either.

…newer brands of “direct realism” … have fabricated a dispute with indirect realists that isn’t really there… — Michael

I agree that these other views don’t adhere to the traditional rendering, but that doesn’t mean their disputes with indirect realism are fabricated. Rather, they reject a set of core assumptions that have often driven both direct and indirect realism as traditionally understood, such as:

(1) Sensory content is the direct object of perception
(2) Sensory content misrepresents the world
(3) Knowledge of the world is inferred from sensory content
(4) (Therefore) our knowledge of the world is deeply uncertain

These are all claims that have come up in this discussion, and my responses have simply been directed at those assumptions as they’ve arisen.

The indirect realist might argue that "I see X" just describes the visual cortex being active in the right kind of way, regardless of what the eyes are doing or what distal objects exist, and so I see things when I have visual hallucinations and hear things when I have auditory hallucinations (and don't see or hear anything if I have brain damage but otherwise functional eyes and ears). This is a perfectly ordinary use of English vocabulary. — Michael

Always get rid of the idea of the private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you. — PI (Anscombe) page 207

If the thing one sees is only ever "the visual cortex being active in the right kind of way" then we would have no basis for agreeing that there is a ship. If what one really sees is always private — cortex states, sense-data, whatever — then nothing in experience can fix reference to a public object. Memory deception, constant change, or cortical activity all make no difference: there is still no criterion for this rather than that object.

The PLA problem arises if you try to establish meaning of the term based upon that image without correlating it to use. — Hanover

Same. There is not path with which we might triangulate our beetles.

If the thing one sees is only ever "the visual cortex being active in the right kind of way" then we would have no basis for agreeing that there is a ship. — Banno

I didn't say only ever. I explicitly said here that "in the non-hallucinatory case there is both hearing voices-as-mental-phenomena and hearing voices-as-distal-stimulus", with the former satisfying the philosophical notion of directness — as explained here — and the latter not.

If what one really sees is always private — cortex states, sense-data, whatever — then nothing in experience can fix reference to a public object. — Banno

I object to this use of the word "really". It's a weasel word, as you said. The proper phrase in the context of this discussion is "directly see" — again, as explained here.

And we don't need to directly see something to "fix reference" to it. You and I can both talk about Napoleon.

Wittgenstein can't deny reality, — Hanover

It would be odd to read what has been said here as denying reality. Far from it. Indeed, it seems to be indirect realism that cannot tell the real ship from the hallucination, since both are mere phenomena.

Yes, this relates to the mind-body problem - well diagnosed. The indirect realist accepts the dualism of mind and world, and then finds that they can't explain how a mind sees things in the world - the congenital problem of dualism. Their solution is to invent a "something" that is what we see, but which is in the mind, not in the world. Of course this does not help them, since they now have to explain how the "something" comes about, usually by handwaving at physiology.

A better approach might be to think of mind as a process embedded in the world, and seeing as something minds do.


Enjoy Austin.

I didn't say only ever. I explicitly said here that "in the non-hallucinatory case there is both hearing voices-as-mental-phenomena and hearing voices-as-distal-stimulus", with the former satisfying the philosophical notion of directness — as explained here — and the latter not. — Michael

Pretty ad hoc. Now we have both direct and indirect perception happening in the same individual for the same event.

I object to this use of the word "really". — Michael

So do I. Take it out, if you like. If what one sees is always private — cortex states, sense-data, whatever — then nothing in experience can fix reference to a public object.

The objection stands.

You and I can both talk about Napoleon. — Michael

That's exactly right. We can talk about Napoleon because there is more to him than the firing of neutrons. He is not an hallucination.

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.

Now we have both direct and indirect perception happening in the same individual for the same event. — Banno

Yes? That's how indirect perception works. You directly perceive some X and because of that indirectly perceive some Y. Even the direct realist must accept that this is how television and telephones work.

That's exactly right. We can talk about Napoleon because there is more to him than the firing of neutrons. He is not an hallucination. — Banno

The point is that we don't need to directly see him to talk about him, and we don't need to directly see ships to talk about them.

Yes? That's how indirect perception works. You directly perceive some X and because of that indirectly perceive some Y. Even the direct realist must accept that this is how television and telephones work. — Michael

You are losing me here.

Sure, when we use a telephone we hear someone indirectly. Are you suggesting that undermines direct realism?

The point is that we don't need to directly[/i] see him to talk about him, and we don't need to directly see ships to talk about them. — Michael

Yep. But he is not only a mental image, or a firing of brain cells. He is public in a way that whatever indirect realists say they see, isn't.

It appears to me that you have moved on to equivocating about what it is that indirect realists suppose it is that is perceived.

You are losing me here.

Sure, when we use a telephone we hear someone indirectly. Are you suggesting that undermines direct realism? — Banno

You said this, as if it were objectionable:

"Pretty ad hoc. Now we have both direct and indirect perception happening in the same individual for the same event."

It's not objectionable. It's quite ordinary. We just disagree on which things fall within the category "direct" and which things fall within the category "indirect".

Yep. But he is not only a mental image, or a firing of brain cells. He is public in a way that whatever indirect realists say they see, isn't.

It appears to me that you have moved on to equivocating about what it is that indirect realists suppose it is that is perceived. — Banno

You claimed that it's impossible to talk about things unless we can see them directly, and so I provided an example of something that we can talk about but haven't seen directly. So your objection fails.

We don't directly see Napoleon but can still talk about him. We don't directly see ships but can still talk about them.

I hold no stock in the private language objection. A society of people born with unremovable visors on their heads with sensors on the outside and a screen on the inside displaying a computer-generated image of the environment could develop a language, talk about the environment, and lives their lives just as well as we can. Let's even throw in the inverted spectrum hypothesis and have different screens output different colours (but consistent for each individual), just for fun.

If the thing one sees is only ever "the visual cortex being active in the right kind of way" then we would have no basis for agreeing that there is a ship. If what one really sees is always private — cortex states, sense-data, whatever — then nothing in experience can fix reference to a public object. Memory deception, constant change, or cortical activity all make no difference: there is still no criterion for this rather than that object. — Banno

Usage remains constant regardless of what's going on out there, which is the point of the Wittgenstinian enterprise. It avoids the messiness of reliance of what's there. What your asking is to impose special rules upon certain categories of words and not others (i.e. referentially based ones versus non-referentially based ones). That is, what about unicorns? How do I deal with the words without references? If I were to assume internal meaning were in flux, then I cannot assume unicorns remain constant. And the point is it doesn't matter that words might change and that cultures with no recording devices might call "freedom" something different daily. The only question is whether while folks are talking whether they are playing the same game when they do.

In asking me to assume the external object is a constant so that we can be sure our perceptions are similar across one another is also problematic because it's false. Given the true nature of things, with every subatomic particle being in constant motion, that we see identity and consistency, is just a product of survival, not based upon any metaphysical truth. We have no reason to think the out there is not mediated by the in here.

But all this is problematic, specifically because it's metaphysics. What is important is that we all engage in a word game, play it according to rules we all comprehend, and we interact in the form of life we know. Maybe there's not a great answer here, but opening up the can of worms to what's out there versus what's in my brain is the whole thing we were trying to avoid.

You[/u] claimed that it's impossible to talk about things unless we can see them directly, — Michael

Well, no. Certainly not. I do agree with the private language argument in so far as talk about boxed beetles and images in brains is useless.

I hold no stock in the private language argument. A society of people born with unremovable visors on their head with sensors on the outside and a screen on the inside displaying a computer-generated image of the environment could develop a language, talk about the environment, and lives their lives just as well as we can. — Michael

How is that in any way contrary to the private language argument? These folk are talking about their shared environment, not their unshared screen time...

I hold no stock in the private language argument. A society of people born with unremovable visors on their head with sensors on the outside and a screen on the inside displaying a computer-generated image of the environment could develop a language, talk about the environment, and lives their lives just as well as we can. — Michael

And their language would be public and therfore not disproving the PLA. The PLA is not dependent upon unmediated access to the environment. In fact, Wittgenstein says nothing about whether the world is mediated through the senses or not. He's talking about words and how they can have meaning.

If I say, I feel S today, and you ask, what does that mean, and I say, "it's whatever I'm feeling right now." That's a private language. I offered no rule for its use and you have no idea how to play that language game with me. If I say "S feels like a vague headache," now it's has public criteria.

How is that in any way contrary to the private language argument? These folk are talking about their shared environment, not their unshared screen time... — Banno

I meant to say that I hold no stock in the argument that the PLA refutes indirect realism. You appear to be accepting that these people are talking about their shared environment even though none of them ever directly see it (which even the direct realist must accept given the visors). The only thing these people ever directly see (even assuming direct realism) is their private screen.

So your entire objection falls apart.

And their language would be public and therfore not disproving the PLA. The PLA is not dependent upon unmediated access to the environment. In fact, Wittgenstein says nothing about whether the world is mediated through the senses or not. He's talking about words and how they can have meaning. — Hanover

I slightly misworded my first sentence. See above.

But also, let's assume that John's and Jane's screens output different colours in response to the same wavelengths of light, but in a consistent manner. Do you accept that a) they will both use the word "green" when asked to describe the colour of the grass and that b) there is a very real sense in which when they use the word "green" they are referring to the colour output by their screen (assuming, for the sake of argument, that naive realism is true).

Usage remains constant regardless of what's going on out there, which is the point of the Wittgenstinian enterprise. — Hanover

Not quite. Rather, what we use is what remains constant... with regard to "out there"; but note that we ought also reject the phenomenological/cartesian picture of out there and in here. Wittgenstein emphasises what we do with words, in the world. His is not a form of idealism.

That is, what about unicorns? How do I deal with the words without references? — Hanover

"Unicorns" has a use, if not a referent, and if only as an example in philosophy fora. See if you can turn that into an argument.

In asking me to assume the external object is a constant so that we can be sure our perceptions are similar across one another is also problematic because it's false. — Hanover

Not sure what this was - a reference to the quote from PI? You are not there being asked to assume the external object is constant, but to notice that you have no way of telling if your private object has changed.

What is important is that we all engage in a word game, play it according to rules we all comprehend, and we interact in the form of life we know. — Hanover

I'll agree with that, and note the corollary that private objects cannot have a use in the game.

I will oppose your position of indirect realism from a different angle. I often argued that there is no need to posit “mental entities”. My other criticism is that indirect realism ends up positing an external world. Specifically, indirect realism has a problem with causality. I would summarize my concern as follows:

If all causal relations that we can observe or describe occur within the mind/brain, then the supposed causal link to external objects is never actually experienced or justified.

To put it more specifically, the external cause is never part of the casual network you can access. Thus, the external world only becomes theoretical, which risk slipping into idealism or radical skepticism, which I think you do not want to assert.

Now we are stuck with an external world doing no epistemic work.

I meant to say that I hold no stock in the argument that the PLA refutes indirect realism. You appear to be accepting that these people are talking about their shared environment even though none of them ever directly see it (even the direct realist must accept this given the visors). — Michael

It's hard to see how the visor example counts against the private language argument. That's how you set the account up. You now want to use it as an example of indirect perception.

So back to this:

A direct realist believes that when we, say, look at a veritable ship, what we see is the ship. They hold that light is reflected from the ship, focused by the eye and incites certain neural pathways associated with things of that sort, and that this process is what we call seeing a ship. — Banno

Your visor users talk about the ship, and not what they see on the visor.

An indirect realist, in contrast, holds that what we see is not the ship, but something else, sometimes called a "mental image" of the ship, that is presented to us by the process of light being reflected from the ship, focused by the eye and inciting certain neural pathways associated with things of that sort. — Banno

An indirect realist says that all they see is the stuff on the visor.

So if we wish to talk about images on screens, we can adopt the perspective of the indirect realist. If we wish to talk about ships, we must bypass the visor and admit that we see the ship.

Hence:

Indirect realism effectively treats the Markov blanket as opaque, the system having only access to internal states in the form of the mooted "mental image". External states are inferred, never directly encountered, and what is “perceived” is confined to what is inside the blanket (representations, images, models).

Direct realism treats the Markov blanket as causally, but not epistemically, isolated, the system having access to external states through the mediation of the blanket. Seeing the ship is an interaction, not an appearance, and perception is a skilled engagement with environmental states across the blanket;
there is no inner object that perception terminates on. — Banno

So we are back to were we were four pages and 3 days ago. But yours is a much imporved argument. Indeed, it supports direct realism by showing that we routinely and intelligibly “see through” intermediaries without reifying them as perceptual objects.

is why the physiology is irrelevant. Even when the physiology is added to somewhat radically, the direct realist point remains.

But we need to add, neither direct realism nor indirect realism is the whole story - we can talk about the beetle in the box, the mental image; in Michael's world, someone might complain that their visor is faulty - and thereby change from the game of talking about ships to the game of talking 'bout visors - but having a faulty visor is to admit that there are functioning visors, and so to give the visor a place int he game.

It can't be beetles all the way down.