Baloney.

Baloney — frank

...as bait? Maybe. Oily, so it'll attract something...

catfish

LOL fair enough.

I agree with Banno, except that straw man (IRists explicitly reject that we know the truth about the world, and instead respect that we know nothing of it besides its triggering tendency to our percepts), and concluding that what he says supports DR.

I also agree with Hanover, and have again, made it explicitly clear that it isn't metaphysics unless you want semantic commitment to override physics. That would be a metaphysical commitment, conceptually.

I agree with Michael about most of what he's said.

That is why it is not a definitional issue. It is one of wilfully ignoring the question in service of either comfort, or really shining Austin's shoes (its the latter - and i am Joking).

X is the mind-independent world. Contact with it is constant and immediate. One cannot disprove that with false analogies, formal hocus-pocus, and imagining off into strange worlds. You have no argument; there is no justification for your position; and it comes from a limited view which seeks to limit itself further by pretending something mediates his contact with the world immediately outside himself.

You have no argument; there is no justification for your position; and it comes from a limited view which seeks to limit itself further by pretending something mediate his contact with the world immediately outside himself. — NOS4A2

You don't even know what you're saying, let alone what the dispute is. You think your intuitions are arguments and deal with complex empirical issues that humans are not disposed to solve. Craziness.

I agree with Banno, except that straw man (IRists explicitly reject that we know the truth about the world, and instead respect that we know nothing of it besides its triggering tendency to our percepts), and concluding that what he says supports DR. — AmadeusD

Right. It's a strawman that indirect realists deny that we know truths about the world. That's what you mean, right?

The straw man to which I referred is the one proffered as the only alternative to indirect realism, is the contentious "direct realism" of their imaginings.

The straw man to which I referred is the one proffered as the only alternative to indirect realism, is the contentious "direct realism" of their imaginings. — Banno

I'm confused then. They're both realists.

Here:

“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.

What those who reject indirect realism are actually rejecting may not be indirectness as such, but the reification of something “given” — an object of awareness that is prior to, or independent of, our conceptual, practical, and normative engagement with the world. Once you posit sense-data, qualia as objects, appearances as inner items, you generate the “veil of perception” problem automatically. “Direct realism” then looks like the heroic attempt to tear down the veil. But if you never put the veil there in the first place, there is nothing to tear down.

You see the cat. Perhaps you see it in the mirror, or turn to see it directly. And here the word "directly" has a use. You see the ship indirectly through the screen of your camera, but directly when you look over the top; and here the word "directly" has a use. The philosophical use of ‘indirect’ is parasitic on ordinary contrasts that do not support the theory. “Directly” is contrastive and context-bound, it does not name a metaphysical relation of mind to object, it does not imply the absence of causal mediation.

What you do not see is a sense datum, a representation, an appearance, or a mental image. You might well see by constructing such a representation, and all the physics and physiology that involves. But to claim that what you see is that construct and not the cat is a mistake.

One can admit that neural representations exist and denying that such things are the objects of perception. These neural representations are our seeing, not what we see. — Banno

C3 literally says "I do not have direct perception of the apple during the first 10 seconds". — Michael

OK. Now I ask you whether you think that we have indirect perception of the apple during the first 10 seconds.

If P4 is false, and the apple continues to exist for the entire 30 seconds of the experiment, does the experiment not become a case of direct perception?
— Ludwig V
No, because as per C3 I do not have direct perception of the apple during the first 10 seconds, even though the apple exists during the first 10 seconds. — Michael

You misunderstand me. I'm proposing a variant of your thought experiment in which the apple continues to exist for the entire 30 seconds of the experiment. In that variant, it seems that you might be committed to saying that we have direct perception of the apple.

Here 's a variant of your argument, making a different assumption about the fate of the apple.
P4a. The apple exists during the second 10 seconds
C1a. Therefore, the apple is a constituent of the experience during the second 10 seconds
C2a. Therefore, the apple is a constituent of the experience during the first 10 seconds
C3a. Therefore, I do have direct perception of the apple during the first 10 seconds
I think, on that different assumption, C3a follows.

2. We have direct visual perception of mental phenomena — Michael

That's compatible with our having direct visual perception of other people's mental phenomena. I don't believe you mean that. I think you mean to say that we have direct visual perception
of our own mental phenomena.

I agree. But the way I'm seeing things, the former is how things actually are, and the latter is intuition without analysis in the way "vulgar" was used in 18th/19thC philosophy. That's why I say that use isn't problematic, it just isn't all that relevant to us here. — AmadeusD

Is that where you think I've gone wrong?
The question is whether you want to say that the vulgar account of the matter is just a different account for different purposes in a different context or that it is wrong. I understand IR to be saying that DR is wrong.
There is also the question how far a theoretical stance is appropriate in philosophy. I have severe doubts about that. But even if it is ok, the vulgar stance takes account of things that the theoretical stance neglects - that we are not simply observers in the world but agents in it and part of it. I'm not sure how, exactly, that plays into the argument, but I am sure it should be important to philosophy.

the difference doesn't have anything to do with your experience - they function the same in each example. If you watched the game on a five-minute delay (common, even for "live" broadcasts) you would be seeing something older when you looked at the window at the Sun. This does not sit well with the idea that the Sun is the direct one, and not the other. But I reject both, so that's cool. — AmadeusD

H'm. One difference is that the recording can be replayed many times and places. The light arriving from the sun cannot be replayed at all. Putting it another way, being there makes a difference, in a sort of "what it is like to be a bat" way.

"So what?" is definitely the simplest, easiest and least analytical conclusion. I also think it's true - so what? I don't care that my perception of the Sun is indirect. This can cut both ways. — AmadeusD

If the difference between IR and DR doesn't make any difference, why are we so bothered about it?

Direct perception is the concept that first-personal experience is constituted by objects in the world. IR is that this experience is constituted by mental images derived from sense data. — AmadeusD

Well, that helps me a lot. I don't understand what it would mean to say that first-person experience is constituted by anything, never mind objects in the world and the reification of mental images seems to me to be a mistake. [/quote]

But if you think about it , our visual experience of the phenomena is perfectly compatible with both stories.
— Ludwig V
Oh yes. If it wasn't as clear as I thought, this was one central tenet of that long reply. The stories we tell don't answer anything, which is why relying on semantics or word use to sort this particular issue out to me is quite unattractive. Possibly dysfunctional. — AmadeusD

That's right. For me, the scientific story is a partial analysis of how perception (DR) works. So what do you think we can appeal to?

You don't even know what you're saying, let alone what the dispute is. You think your intuitions are arguments and deal with complex empirical issues that humans are not disposed to solve. Craziness.

You believe you can’t see the real world. Bizarre.

X is the mind-independent world. — NOS4A2

You're committing a fallacy of association. Your argument is:

P1. We have direct perception of X iff our sense organs are in direct physical contact with X
P2. Our visual sense organs are in direct physical contact with light
C1. Therefore, we have direct visual perception of light
P3. Light is a part of the mind-independent world
C2. Therefore, we have direct visual perception of a part of the mind-independent world
P4. Apples are a part of the mind-independent world
C3. Therefore, we have direct visual perception of apples

C3 does not follow from C2 and P4 (and contradicts P1 given that our eyes are not in direct physical contact with apples).

To explain the fallacy more clearly, compare with:

P1. I am a man
P2. Men are human
C1. Therefore, I am human
P3. Women are human
C2. Therefore, I am a woman

You must accept that if "we have direct perception of X iff our sense organs are in direct physical contact with X" is true then "we have direct visual perception of apples" is false.