Cheers, . It appears we now agree as to almost everything. The flower has many properties, perception makes some of these - colour, smell, shape - salient. Other properties are accessed via background knowledge (life cycle, chemistry, ecology). No single mode of access exhausts an object. We now have no epistemic veil and no private content; public objects anchor meaning; interpretation is world-directed. We both acknowledge the distinction beteween causal and epistemic mediation.

Perception is interpretive, mediated, and embedded in the world — and none of that entails indirectness.

Shape as seen or shape as felt? — Michael

I’d say neither the look nor the feel of shape as such is identical to the mind-independent shape of an object. Shape is a structural property that can be accessed through different sensory modalities and at different scales, each of which presents only partial, resolution-bound aspects of that structure.

Molyneux-style results show that cross-modal access to the same structure is learned rather than innate, not that there is no shared object or that perception is indirect. Likewise, questions about “which scale is the real shape” rest on a false assumption that there must be a single privileged resolution. Shape descriptions are scale-relative but objective within a scale.

None of this requires that perceptual experience mirror shape as it is in the world, and none of it implies that perception proceeds via epistemic surrogates. It just means that perceptual access to structure is perspectival and modality-specific.

Then we're back to what I asked in this post (which I'll repeat below), which I don't think was addressed:

What's the difference between a bionic eye that is "integrated into perception such that judgments are still answerable to objects through ongoing interaction and correction" and a bionic eye that is "a surrogate whose adequacy depends on a generating process that stands in for the world"?

It just seems like there's a lot of special pleading here. — Michael

I think the reason this keeps sounding like special pleading is that you’re asking for a principled distinction I don’t think exists. On my view, there is no such thing as a physical process being an “epistemic intermediary” as opposed to a merely causal intermediary.

All perception—organic or bionic—involves deterministic transduction from the world to the nervous system. What makes something an epistemic intermediary is not its material constitution or causal role, but a theoretical decision to treat some inner item as what perception is of and as the standard against which correctness is assessed.

I reject that move. Perceptual error is explained by false world-directed judgment, not by mismatch with an inner surrogate. Once that assumption is dropped, the demand to distinguish epistemic from non-epistemic intermediaries simply dissolves.

As I said before, you can mean anything you like by "directness". I'm concerned with what it means in the context of the traditional dispute between direct and indirect realism, which I summarised here (which I'll repeat below), and which I also don't think was addressed: — Michael

And as I have said before, I'm rejecting a shared assumption (phenomenal mirroring) that the traditional framing is built on. I don't think direct realism requires taking on this assumption, but if you don't agree then that may be as far as we can go. I don't think re-litigating the traditional framing is likely to help move the discussion forward at this point.

But even in those cases, I don’t think truth requires that the phenomenal character of experience reproduce those properties as they are in the world. — Esse Quam Videri

(i'm going to reply to this, then move on to your reply directly to me).

Interesting. So, is your position that even if tout court perception is indirect, we can derive truth from coherent experiences of properties we presume are out there in the world? Seems pretty murky to me, so assume I'm missing something there..

In neither case does perceptual truth require that properties be “directly present” in experience in the sense the naïve realist needs. — Esse Quam Videri

The reason I assume I'm missing something on hte murkiness, is because this doesn't actually say anything to me. Both situations require that the thinker determines their position on veridicality and then practicality and decide to which the term "true" should be applied (conceptually, they maybe contradictory 'objects' of thought, and so cannot be run together).
This seems intellectually expedient at the expense of truth. That said, "humans, under normal circumstances, look at the sky and see it as the colour we call blue" can be considered true, and so in a sense "the sky is blue" is going to be trivially true. But I do not think - and this may be where I diverge from much of the discussion - that that is any of interesting, complex or worthy of debate.

Are we maybe talking about two different things? There's a great paper that came out last year discussing this exact issue and concludes that the question of IR v DR needs to be set aside, as both are non-scientific, folk views which derive from equally substantial pre-scientific belief structures. I found that extremely unsatisfying and seemed more to be geared at sounding profound than anything to do with actually figuring the problem out. Although, I do think it's true among lay people (which the paper was talking about... very, very strangely).

My take has always been that perception is "near enough" reflecting the world to allow for intense, robust co-operation and for memory to function - but that doesn't give me naive realism. Hence, at some stage accepting some of Banno's takes - and at times having to just imagine he hasn't left his house.

"Perception is interpretive, mediated, and embedded in the world — and none of that entails indirectness"

Perfect example. This is total nonsense.

Identity is not comparison. — Esse Quam Videri

Hmm. I can't figure out what you're trying to say. I said that you haven't responded to what I've said there, as you restated the same thing I objected to without further elucidation. This doesn't help either. Can you clarify?

What I mean is that causal mediation does not by itself settle what perception is of. — Esse Quam Videri

Sure. That much is true - Kantian or not, we can't rely on our senses to tell us about what's out there by definition (this is important, though, for my objection) - so it could be a 1:1 match, or a 0:1 match, or a 0:0 match in the case of genuine hallucination. Definitely agree. But as I understand, that isn't the debate. It's whether or not one or other possibilityis the case. There are people who will deny the mediation of the senses to support a DR position. Banno avoids this (i am talking about him a lot because we've had several exchanges on this, at the expense of perhaps engaging with others on it and he did a great job of outlining a position I found totally incoherent to begin with) and it was that which had me move towards the understanding that many people have already set aside the debate I'm trying to have without telling anyone.

But it does not follow from this that the object of perception must be an inner representation rather than a mind-external object. — Esse Quam Videri

That's true - and I don't immediately claim that's the case. It isn't required to support an IR position. It could be 1:1, but if IR is true, we can never know. That seems fine to me and I don't get the discomfort many have with it. Science isn't going to fall apart and stop predicting things because we can't be sure what it's predicting in-and-of-itself. It predicts our perceptions almost perfectly, and that's "near enough" to ensure we do not pull the floor out by saying "science proves that perception is indirect, by way of indirect and unreliable perceptions". This is a confusion. "unreliable" here doesn't relate to whether or not it will work, or cohere. It is unreliable as an indicator of the actual object. Which, on my view, it is even if it's (from God's view) 1:1 in every single case. That part doesn't change the debate between IR and DR.

Saying that the mind “constructs images from sense-data” is already a philosophical interpretation of the science, not something the science itself establishes. All that science requires is that perception depends on causal processes. It does not require that awareness terminates in sense-data or inner pictures rather than in the world itself. — Esse Quam Videri

I am pretty confident it in fact does do this. We can physically watch photons hit cones/rods and transmute to neural signals and move into the brain for interpretation. There is nothing in an object that results in it's image in our mind. I do not think this is philosophically interpretive until you start saying things like "therefore, there's no way to..." or "because of this, we must accept...".

I'm not quite doing that. I'm saying that objectively, we do not see "objects" but images of them. This isn't an interpretation - it's how the mind works (subject to my explanation of why this doesn't defeat my reliance on the scientific findings). The interpretive aspect would be to call it "indirect" and I fully cop to that. Many will accept everything I've said and still call it "direct". I just can't make sense of that - seems a convenient lie to get on with things. Which you can do without the lie.

So the “chasm” you’re describing is not something science forces on us; it’s the result of adopting a particular representationalist model of perception. — Esse Quam Videri

I quite vehemently, and with elucidation above, disagree. It is exactly what we are presented with and exactly what this debate it supposed to categorize in a way that can capture experience and fact. The DRist must find hte physical object in the mental image. That's a chasm science provides also. So, this isn't just a one-way issue of interpretation - both avenues must grapple with the physiology of the eye, vision, the perceptual process and indeed, aberration in any of those, to get a "direct" aspect in to the mix. We only ever see hand-waving at this point. I trust you'll be a little more engaging :) Again, though, we may be having separate conversations but with each other lmao.

how the human perceptual system presents things — Esse Quam Videri

Is the same, without content as:

the sky as it is in relation to the human perceptual system under normal conditions. — Esse Quam Videri

They are literally the same exact thing, but the second includes an example. If you did not mean this, please do clarify.

“humans tend to experience the sky as blue” — Esse Quam Videri

Is the same as

“the sky has properties such that, under normal conditions, it elicits blue-type responses” — Esse Quam Videri

I understand that you're trying to say that 1. is about perception, and 2. is about the sky. The sky isn't even an object. Both are about perception. Again, if you can clarify to tease these apart, I'd be happy to engage.

Those differ quite clearly in terms of:

subject matter (experience vs world), They do not differ. They both talk about (with a guise, in one example) how humans see things
truth conditions (facts about perceivers vs facts about the sky), Again, they amount to the same claim: Humans see things in X way (and then applied to the sky)
direction of explanation (mind → world vs world → mind) true, and doesn't change the content of the two claims being fundamentally the same thing. — Esse Quam Videri

For your claims to be different claims, you need to tell me something about hte sky sans human perceptions. Otherwise, that's all we're discussing as I see it. And probably should. Perhaps this is why i'm not groking you - that resistance is folly to me.

That is not true in ordinary perception — Esse Quam Videri

Yes it is. This may also be a fundamental we cannot come to terms on.

What do you mean by senses "pointing" outward? The physics and physiology is just nerve endings reacting to some proximal stimulus (e.g. electromagnetic radiation, vibrations in the air, molecules entering the nose, etc.) and then sending signals to the brain. If there's any kind of "motion" involved, it certainly does appear to be towards the head.

Senses have a direction that tends toward the outside of the body. It’s why we have those holes in our skull where our eyes, nose and mouth are, so they can better interact with the environment. It’s why you turn your head towards something or open your eyes in order to see it better. This simple common sense ought to inform one of what it is he is seeing.

Consider that there are two subspecies of humanity such that what one sees when standing upright is what the other sees when standing upside down. Both groups use the word "up" to describe the direction of the sky and "down" to describe the direction of the floor. Firstly, is this logically plausible? Secondly, is this physically plausible? Thirdly, does it make sense to argue that one subspecies is seeing the "correct" orientation and the other the "incorrect" orientation? Fourthly, if there is a "correct" orientation then how would we determine this without begging the question? — Michael

& , please excuse my interjecting. How would we be able to distinguish between these two populations?

Suppose Fred presents himself to your laboratory, and you are tasked with deciding which population he belongs to. How do you proceed?

I don't see that you can.

And the mistake here seems to be that of presuming there is a private notion of up and down; that is, there is no fact of the matter for Fred to belong to one population rather than the other.

So I'll opt for saying that Michael's scenario is incoherent.

Added: I think, although I haven't worked through it yet, that by treating "up" and "down" as indexicals we could show there to be only one population. Indexicals don’t tolerate private degrees of freedom. To master “up” is to participate competently in a network of practices: standing, pointing, correcting, navigating, explaining, and so on. If two groups are indistinguishable across those practices, then — by the criteria that individuate the concept — they are the same group.

If we would claim there to be two populations, then we must have a way to differentiate them. The set up of the scenario rules out behavioural and functional differences. Pointing out that "up" and "down" are indexical rules out private differences - what's up for me is just what is up for me.

The pull toward “two populations” comes from smuggling in a Cartesian picture: an inner orientation space that could be inverted independently of outer practice. Once that picture is rejected — as both Wittgenstein and Davidson would insist — the multiplicity evaporates.