The capacity to experience colors and shapes is innate for people born with "normal" perceptual systems. But "yellow" and "circle" are more than just names, they are concepts that have to be understood through personal insight and stabilized through social practice. — Esse Quam Videri

We see the colour red when looking at a wavelength of between about 620nm to 750nm. We have the concept of the colour red through personal insight. We learn the word “red” through social practice.

As with the chicken and egg, which came first, i) we have the concept of the colour red through personal insight and then we learn the word “red” through social practice or ii) and we learn the word “red” through social practice and then have the concept of the colour red through personal insight?

I think i) is more reasonable.

I appreciate your feedback on my thesis.

3. Rejected: I would not claim that “content travels unchanged” through the chain. I would claim that perception is of the object via the chain, not that the chain preserves representational content. — Esse Quam Videri

You agree that the form of each link and the content of each link in the causal chain can change.

But all information about what initiated the causal chain must be contained within each link.

If both the form and content of each link can change, how exactly is this information about what initiated the causal chain expressed within each link?
======================================

5. Rejected: This establishes at most epistemic underdetermination, not logical impossibility; the examples show fallibility, not impossibility.
6. Rejected: Fallibility or inferential uncertainty does not entail logical impossibility; this confuses limits on reconstruction with limits on knowledge. — Esse Quam Videri

As there is an arrow of time, there is an arrow of causation. We can remember the past but not the future.

During a game of snooker, we observe snooker balls at rest on a snooker table. It is logically possible using the laws of physics to determine the position of the snooker balls a moment in the future. However, it is logically impossible to determine the position of the snooker balls a moment in the past.

This is not epistemic undetermination, this is logical impossibility.
===================================================

7. Rejected: Non-sequitur. Even if causal origins cannot be reconstructed with certainty, it does not follow that the object of perception is an inner phenomenal item rather than the external object. — Esse Quam Videri

My argument in 1 to 9 is that causal origins cannot be reconstructed at all, not reconstructed with uncertainty.

How can causal originals be reconstructed even with uncertainty when you agree that not only the form but the content also of each link in the causal chain can change, especially when you accept 8.

8 - As an IR, I accept that it is not logically possible to know either the form or content of a prior link in the causal chain.
8. Granted.

==================

9. Rejected: False attribution. I do not claim we can logically reconstruct prior causal links; I claim that perception is world-involving without requiring such reconstruction. — Esse Quam Videri

How does the Direct Realist know what initiated the causal chain, if we only know about what initiated the casual chain because of the causal chain itself, and you agree that we cannot reconstruct prior causal links.

What else is there?

You're still not explaining what it means for a biological organism to "see" a distant object. You're an eliminative materialist so there are no mental phenomena or first-person subjective experiences, just skin and bone and muscles and organs, with sense receptors absorbing the electromagnetic or kinetic or chemical energy they come into contact with and converting it into other forms, often causing the body to move.

That you want to be both an eliminative materialist and a direct realist (about distant objects) strikes me as being entirely inconsistent. You could maybe get away with this if you limited direct realism to touch and taste — as you did before when you tried to explain direct realism in terms of the body being in direct physical contact with the object perceived — but it just doesn't work when you include sight, hearing, and smell, where somehow the body’s reaction to proximal stimuli counts as “direct perception” of distal objects.

So when the bionic eye is being used to play a VR game, the direct object of perception — the "object" acting as intentional object — is not a mind-independent material object?

Is this also true when the eye is being used to help the wearer navigate the real world?

There's no such thing as what pixels "really" look like, if this is supposed to mean how they look when nobody is looking (which is why naive realism is false). But they exist (which is why idealism is false), and their behaviour is causally responsible for the mental phenomena that is brought into existence by neural activity in my brain; mental phenomena with characteristics and qualities that I refer to using such words as "red" and "circle", and in non-pixel related situations as "loud" and "hot" and "sour" and "painful" (which is why your suggestion that there's nothing more to meaning than public use is false).

There's no such thing as what pixels "really" look like, if this is supposed to mean how they look when nobody is looking (which is why naive realism is false). But they exist (which is why idealism is false), and their behaviour is causally responsible for the mental phenomena that is brought into existence by neural activity in my brain; mental phenomena with characteristics and qualities that I refer to using such words as "red" and "circle", and in non-pixel related situations as "loud" and "hot" and "sour" and "painful" (which is why your suggestion that there's nothing more to meaning than public use is false). — Michael

So we have sensory data that is defined with the single quality as having the ability to create a qualitative state, which is the phenomenal state. So you have a perception that is created by your mind, with all sorts of internally created properties in addition to the stimulus because a bee sees the ship differently from the way I see it, for example. That's to say different minds impose different properties on this sensory data when it's perceived.

So then the ship in my mind's eye is a product of the external stimuli plus whatever is added by the measuring device (i.e. my eye, my nerves, my brain). There are certain stimuli that my internal components are not capable of interpreting, so we use external devices, like glasses, hearing aids, and even a Geiger counter. We can't see or feel radiation (unless in high enough amounts), so we hear the clicks of the Geiger counter, but do we say the clicks are the radiation? That seems strange that we would, considering the radiation has been translated. So maybe the unseen radiation is the radiation, but all our measurements and perceptions are just something else.

So, applying this reasoning, the sensory data of the ship is the ship and what we see is just our interpretation, modified in various ways to make it perceivable by us. The bird may or may not be red, may or may not be whatever shape it is (and it varies in flight as well), but the bird is that unprocessed data. We now know the bird for what it's not (as in not having any identifiable quality), but it's just an underlying causative substratum. I will call that bird "Polly", the underlying causative substratum that wants a cracker.

What this means is that I feel like the bird I see in my head is what I'm calling the bird, so now I'm confused as to what is the actual bird (the external sensory data) or the bird in my head (the one with the beak and all that). Are they both the bird?

So now I'll shift gears and change my mind. The bird is not the underying substratum, but is just my phenomenal state. But if that's the case, then the noumenal element does no semantic work and doesn't fix any standard of correctness, so in what sense is it relevant to a discussion of meaning at all rather than just a background causal hypothesis? That is, my dictionary doesn't seem to say anything about causative substratum when I look up "bird," so why are we talking about that when seeking meaning. That is, how does this answer the grammar question in how we use words? Why are we even talking about metaphysics for this inquiry?

That is, the exploration was is in finding out how to find the meaning to words (grammar), which you're changing into a search for understanding how things exist (metaphysics). And to be clear, I've not suggested any of the in and outs of how our brain sees objects I've set up above are false. I'm just saying they play no role in this inquiry for how we assign meaning to words.

The bird is not the underying substratum, but is just my phenomenal state. But if that's the case, then the noumenal element does no semantic work and doesn't fix any standard of correctness, so in what sense is it relevant to a discussion of meaning at all rather than just a background causal hypothesis? — Hanover

I'm very confused.

I'm saying that some of our words (e.g. "red") are referring to phenomenal states and some of our words (e.g. "bird") are referring to the mind-independent object that is causally responsible for phenomenal states.

At first you seemed to be saying that the word "red" doesn't refer to phenomenal states because meaning is public use and nobody knows anyone else's phenomenal state, whereas now you appear to be saying the opposite and that all words refer to phenomenal states and none to the mind-independent objects that are causally responsible for phenomenal states.

But then at the same time @Banno appears to agree with you even though my understanding of him is that he claims that the word "bird" refers to the mind-independent object and the word "red" refers to one of its mind-independent properties (e.g. a surface that reflects 700nm light?), and so that you and him are arguing for opposite positions, whereas I'm arguing for a middle ground.

So I really don't know what to make of any of this, or which claims of mine you are disagreeing with. Do you accept that the words "red" and "pain" (can) refer to phenomenal states (even if they can also refer to other things)?

I'm very confused. — Michael

I was just running through the consequences of your position, not offering mine.

But then at the same time Banno appears to agree with you, although my understanding of him is that the word "bird" refers to the mind-independent object and the word "red" refers to one of its mind-independent properties (e.g. a surface that reflects 700nm light?), and so you and him are arguing the exact opposite, whereas I'm arguing for a middle ground. — Michael

I'm pretty sure I've not attached meaning to either the phenomenal state or the noumenal state, but that I've consistently attached it to use.

So, we have the ship picture I sent. You told me it was composed of pixels. You told me the pixels didn't look like anything unless it was being looked at. You deny idealism. You say the pixels are actually there, but all we can say about them is what we can't perceive about them because what we perceive about them is dependent upon their perception. So is the ship I uploaded the ship I see when I look at my screen, or is it the pixels? If it's the pixels, why are we assigning word meaning to something we know nothing about? Why can't I say the ship picture came from certain underlying things without having to ascribe the cause to the word?

I was just running through the consequences of your position — Hanover

It's not a consequence of my position. Direct perception of a mind-independent object is not required for our words to refer to it. I've never met Trump — only seen photos and videos of him — and yet when I use the word "Trump" I'm referring to the man, not the photos or videos. This way in which words can refer to things that aren't directly perceived does not change simply by moving the direct object of perception back "into the head", as the indirect realist does.

I've consistently attached it use. — Hanover

And I disagree. Words do, in fact, refer to things. The name "Donald Trump" refers to the man who is President of the United States. The phrase "Napolean's first wife" refers to Joséphine de Beauharnais. And the words "pain", "pleasure", "red", and "sour" refer to different types of first person phenomenal experience. If Wittgenstein and Austin disagree then they are wrong. If they don't disagree then whatever you're saying does not refute my claims.

Adding my tuppence worth.

I may regularly perceive in my mind a grey circle, which I infer to the best explanation has been caused by a regularity in the mind-external world

Such regularities of perceptions in the mind become concepts in the mind, where a concept is a regularity of perceptions in the mind.

Concepts, because they are regularities in the mind, may for convenience be given a name. The name is not important, but could be “bird”, for example.

The name “bird” therefore refers to not only i) a regularity of perceptions in my mind (aka concept) but also to ii) an unknown regularity in the mind-external world that causes such regularities of perceptions in my mind.

Such is the basic relation between concepts in the mind, naming in language and objects in the mind-external world.

So when the bionic eye is being used to play a VR game, the direct object of perception — the "object" acting as intentional object — is not a mind-independent material object? — Michael

I would say that the virtual game-object — the "object" acting as an intentional object — is:

(1) materially realized, but not reducible to a set of material objects, processes or structures
(2) socially constituted within norm-governed practice, but not a private mental item

Is this also true when the eye is being used to help the wearer navigate the real world? — Michael

No. When the bionic eye is used to help the wearer navigate the real world, the direct object of perception—the “object” acting as an intentional object—is a mind-independent, material object under a perceptual mode of access within norm-governed perception-and-action.

What varies between the two cases is the ontological category of the object. What remains invariant is that:

(1) there is an agent
(2) there is an object
(3) there are public norms of perception and action

The object functions as an intentional object when those norms are satisfied.

materially realized, but not reducible to a set of material objects, processes or structures — Esse Quam Videri

I’m not really sure what that means. Does the game object exist if the eye is functioning normally but the wearer is brain dead? Does it exist if the wearer is a p-zombie? Or does it only exist as a phenomenal and conceptual construct, i.e created and understood by a sufficiently intelligent mind during high level brain activity?

It means that, although the existence of the virtual object is materially realized, it cannot be explained entirely in terms of the material processes that realize it. An adequate explanation of its existence must also appeal to the norm-governed practices that brought the system about and that are embodied in the system's structure.

So, I would say that the game object still exists if the wearer is brain dead, is a p-zombie or even if human beings were to be eradicated, as long as the VR system is still running. Virtual objects exist when the VR system is running because the criteria of existence that originated within a norm-governed practice are now being realized by the system itself, even if no agent is present to participate in or interpret those norms.

Virtual objects exist when the VR system is running — Esse Quam Videri

Isn't there a difference between the "virtual object" as a collection of transistors turning on and off and the "virtual object" as the thing seen with shape, size, colour, and behaviour? I wouldn't say that the monster I see running towards me continues to be "materially realised" if I remove the eye and leave it on the table. Something essential seems to be missing if you subtract the phenomenal aspect. Our bodies and brains (and minds) are as much a part of the system as the eye itself is.

So, applying this reasoning, the sensory data of the shipis the ship and what we see is just our interpretation, modified in various ways to make it perceivable by us. — Hanover

That doesn't follow. The sensory data of the ship is (repeat oneself). Entering a new form into a straight descriptor doesn't really work. If you're talking about the sensory data derived from "an object, we know not what, but call a ship" then that's what you're talking about. Not the ship. This is the key problem for any version of this game which supposes we have access to the ship itself. We simply label our representations. This doesn't seem amenable to disagreement, really. The disagreement comes in when you try to get around this by just shifting the epistemic benchmark. I'd prefer not to. The assumption is there's an actual object out there. Our perceptual system surely puts us in direct contact with the objects in order to derive stimulus (and, I take it, to avoid Idealism) - but that does not carry through to the images we receive. Nor could it. Banno makes this mistake talking about his wife on the phone.
That you hear your wife through the phone (and are directly in touch with that voice you know to be your wife's voice) does not mean that hte audible sensation you receive is her voice. Nor could it.

I'm saying that some of our words (e.g. "red") are referring to phenomenal states and some of our words (e.g. "bird") are referring to the mind-independent object that is causally responsible for phenomenal states. — Michael

Exactly this is in play.

Alright, consider this statement, "One should eat his vegetables should he wish to stay healthy."

I would expect you would reject naive referentialism, appreciating that there is no referent for "one," for the generic "vegetables" I mention, and surely not purely phenomenal states like "wish" (even though this mention of "wish" refers to no particular wish in any particular person, so it's not actually a phenomenal state).

Does it therefore not follow that the statement "Michael is from England" logically could also have meaning in the very same way without reliance upon reference? That is, sure, there is a Michael and there is an England, both of which have referents, but the meaning of that sentence needn't be reliant upon those referents. The sentence "Bjanglo is from Habversam" also has meaning, despite there being no referent. We know what could count as it being true or false and what sort of claim it is, even though it is in fact false.

What this means is that sentences of the same logical form can have meaning with or without referents.

And the point of that is to show that meaning is not dependent upon referent, which means there is something else underwriting meaning that is always there, even where there are also referents available.

If usage is that always present as a non-referent that supplies meaning, can I not then ignore the referrent and still obtain meaning?

That doesn't follow. The sensory data of the ship is (repeat oneself). Entering a new form into a straight descriptor doesn't really work. If you're talking about the sensory data derived from "an object, we know not what, but call a ship" then that's what you're talking about. Not the ship. This is the key problem for any version of this game which supposes we have access to the ship itself. We simply label our representations. This doesn't seem amenable to disagreement, really. The disagreement comes in when you try to get around this by just shifting the epistemic benchmark. I'd prefer not to. The assumption is there's an actual object out there. Our perceptual system surely puts us in direct contact with the objects in order to derive stimulus (and, I take it, to avoid Idealism) - but that does not carry through to the images we receive. Nor could it. Banno makes this mistake talking about his wife on the phone.
That you hear your wife through the phone (and are directly in touch with that voice you know to be your wife's voice) does not mean that hte audible sensation you receive is her voice. Nor could it. — AmadeusD

And so you've not pointed out anything that has to do with what it means to say "ship." You've just told me about the hopeless difficulty in distinguishing the noumenal from the phenomenal. When I ask "what is the ship" my very point was to avoid the conversation you just had about how metaphyics gets us no where. I'm not suggesting you can't amuse yourself with those conversations, but I am saying that we don't have to reach any metaphysical conclusion as to whether @Banno's wife's voice is the vibration in her larynx, the sound waves as they leave her mouth, the electronic goings on in the phone, the vibration of the ear drum, the nerves doing whatever they do in the brain, or the magical presentation of phenomenal state. It's all good stuff, but it has nothing to do with what "voice" means.

If "voice" meant all the complex underwriting that causes voices to exist, do you suggest we use the term that way? Isn't it problematic that the word means something entirely different from the way we all use it? The issue here is not (to be very clear) that the voice as science might describe it might be entirely correct. I am not, nor have I ever made a metaphysical claim here. My point is that it is irrelevant. Meaning is a grammatical term regarding how we speak and it based upon use.

here's no such thing as what pixels "really" look like, if this is supposed to mean how they look when nobody is looking (which is why naive realism is false). — Michael

I agree that this is what indirect realism is saying, but it makes more sense to me to say that pixels is one way to divide up the world. There could be others.

I agree that this is what indirect realism is saying — frank

but

“Direct realism” is not a position that emerged from philosophers asking how perception is best understood, so much as a reaction to dialectical pressure created by a certain picture of perception, roughly: the idea that what we are immediately aware of are internal intermediaries, be they sense-data, representations, appearances, mental images, from which the external world is inferred.

Once that picture is in place, a binary seems forced: either we perceive the world indirectly, via inner objects; or we perceive it directly, without intermediaries. “Direct realism” is then coined as the negation of the first horn. It is not so much a positive theory as a reactive label: not that. This already suggests the diagnosis: the term exists because something has gone wrong earlier in the framing. — Banno

But then at the same time Banno appears to agree with you even though my understanding of him is that he claims that the word "bird" refers to the mind-independent object and the word "red" refers to one of its mind-independent properties (e.g. a surface that reflects 700nm light?), and so that you and him are arguing for opposite positions, whereas I'm arguing for a middle ground. — Michael

Not quite. I don't use "mind independent", it's a term of philosophical art, not at all useful

"Bird" refers to the bird. Red is the colour of its head, chest and back, it being a male rosella.

These sentences are extensionally true.

We do not need a metaphysical contrast between “mind-dependent” and “mind-independent” to make sense of any of this. Doing so is philosophical hokum.

Ok? I'm not sure why you're repeating that.

Isn't there a difference between the "virtual object" as a collection of transistors turning on and off and the "virtual object" as the thing seen with shape, size, colour, and behaviour? — Michael

Yes, there is a difference, but I would say the difference is not explained by positing two different objects, one worldly and one mental. There is only one virtual game-object, considered under two different explanatory roles.

There are two different questions we can ask about the game-object:

(1) what kind of thing is the game-object?
(2) in what manner is the game-object phenomenally present to an embodied agent?

Answering the first question involves appealing to hardware, software and the normative rules embodied by the system that constitute the conditions of the object's identity, persistence, affordances and counterfactual constraints.

Answering the second question involves appealing to shape, size, colour, salience and motion. These are features of the perceptual episode not ingredients of a second "thing" over-and-above the game-object.

When you remove the bionic eye and set it on the table the game-object does not cease to exist as a virtual object: it's identity conditions do not disappear, its behavior in the game-world does not vanish. What disappears is its perceptual presence, its phenomenal articulation, its being-a-threat-for-you.

“Direct realism” is not a position that emerged from philosophers asking how perception is best understood, so much as a reaction to dialectical pressure created by a certain picture of perception, roughly: the idea that what we are immediately aware of are internal intermediaries, be they sense-data, representations, appearances, mental images, from which the external world is inferred.

Once that picture is in place, a binary seems forced: either we perceive the world indirectly, via inner objects; or we perceive it directly, without intermediaries. “Direct realism” is then coined as the negation of the first horn. It is not so much a positive theory as a reactive label: not that. This already suggests the diagnosis: the term exists because something has gone wrong earlier in the framing. — Banno

This is too good.

Moore took the bait from idealist, but at least he included showing us his hands.

Cheers.

Half the problem here is that those who are advocating indirect realism think the only alternative is a naive direct realism.

That, and mistaking a causal chain for an epistemic chain, make up most of the conceptual difficulties.

When I ask "what is the ship" my very point was to avoid the conversation you just had about how metaphyics gets us no where. — Hanover

Which, as should have been clear, doesn't seem to me to be a move open to anyone playing this game. It's a form of setting aside the issue. Which i'm not saying is necessarily hte wrong approach, but it quite clearly (to me) just ignores the issue - you use the term avoid, which is fine.

I am saying that we don't have to reach any metaphysical conclusion as to whether Banno's wife's voice is the vibration in her larynx, the sound waves as they leave her mouth, the electronic goings on in the phone, the vibration of the ear drum, the nerves doing whatever they do in the brain, or the magical presentation of phenomenal state. It's all good stuff, but it has nothing to do with what "voice" means. — Hanover

I know. IT should be clear I think this is giving up and retreating into Banno's world. It isn't one i, or many, recognize. It is setting aside the problem.

There are things we do, and then there are the actual things. Calling the voice on the phone "my wife's voice" is what's known as an **idealization (ironically). You are hearing something different to your wife's voice. You can just shift this to be listening to a recording of your wife's voice. There isn't even a tenuous connection, at the time, to your wife uttering anything. Your wife's voice is the vibrations in the surrounding air upon her larynx engaging and producing sounds.

The recording cannot be your wife's voice. It can be a recording of it. But that's unweildy, so we idealize to get through conversations more efficiently.

This is why philosophers routinely use different meanings for words - to make them more consistent and accurate. You don't have to accept my position, I'm just explaining why the move to forego sorting this out isn't attractive to me.

** it is possible heuristic, in an awkward use, fits slightly better.

You're still not explaining what it means for a biological organism to "see" a distant object. You're an eliminative materialist so there are no mental phenomena or first-person subjective experiences, just skin and bone and muscles and organs, with sense receptors absorbing the electromagnetic or kinetic or chemical energy they come into contact with and converting it into other forms, often causing the body to move.

That you want to be both an eliminative materialist and a direct realist (about distant objects) strikes me as being entirely inconsistent. You could maybe get away with this if you limited direct realism to touch and taste — as you did before when you tried to explain direct realism in terms of the body being in direct physical contact with the object perceived — but it just doesn't work when you include sight, hearing, and smell, where somehow the body’s reaction to proximal stimuli counts as “direct perception” of distal objects.

It’s not inconsistent because the rest of the world is full of mediums through which to view, hear, and smell distant objects. Dealing with those mediums counts as direct perception of the world because our senses are in direct contact with those mediums, whatever information they afford us, and those mediums are features of the environment. The molecules in the air, the wavelengths in the light, the soundwaves in the water, come from the distant objects, affording us information about those distant objects.

On the other hand, you can’t show any of the mediums you deal with directly, and your words appear to have no referent that we can examine one way or another. You speak of things and places and their features as if they existed and expect others to believe the same, even impugning them as children or uneducated if they don’t. In fact, we have to take drugs or fall asleep or have our wires crossed in order to experience the things which are sure to lead us to indirect realism, and I don’t think being in those states counts much as a reliable description of anything, to be honest.

It’s not inconsistent because the rest of the world is full of mediums through which to view, hear, and smell distant objects. Dealing with those mediums counts as direct perception of the world because our senses are in direct contact with those mediums — NOS4A2

Just a clarifying point: Are you saying that the astronomer looking through a scope (or, lets go further: having generated an image from mathematical data) is in direct contact with the objects lets say lightyears away? Can you explain that? It seems to be the key example of indirect contact to me (and so dovetails into a perceptual account more generally). Just want to be sure that's what you're saying..

Half the problem here is that those who are advocating indirect realism think the only alternative is a naive direct realism. — Banno

My charitable reading is that direct realists believe a representational theory of mind entails mind ghosts.

Just a clarifying point: Are you saying that the astronomer looking through a scope (or, lets go further: having generated an image from mathematical data) is in direct contact with the objects lets say lightyears away? Can you explain that? It seems to be the key example of indirect contact to me (and so dovetails into a perceptual account more generally). Just want to be sure that's what you're saying..

No, it’s clear from what I wrote that we interact with the environment around us directly, not indirectly. For instance your eyes are in direct contact with the light from that generated image.

This does not dovetail into an indirect perceptual account at all because we do not have anything like computer generated images or telescopes in the brain. In my opinion the indirect realist ought to stop leaning on metaphors and analogies using “mind-independent” examples and finally tell us what medium they are interacting with directly in their brain. What is the telescope or computer screen supposed to represent in your analogy?

What do words mean?

Wittgenstein’s “meaning is use” suggests that the meaning of a word is determined by how the word is used in language in a language game. Each language game exists within a “form of life”. A “form of life” means human activities within the world and social interactions between humans within this world.

Wittgenstein is presupposing a world. If there was no world then there would be no form of life and no language game.

So what is the meaning of the word “world”. On the one hand, its meaning comes from how it is used in the language game, but on the other hand, its meaning is presupposed in order to have a language game in the first place.

Therefore, its meaning cannot be found within the language game, as its meaning is presupposed in order to have a language game in the first place.

Then how can the meaning of the word “world” be found if not from the language game itself. Only within the philosophy of metaphysics.