So phenomenal qualities cannot function as objects standing between subject and world because they do not exhibit the characteristics required to play that epistemic role. — Esse Quam Videri

The fundamental difference seems to be how to schematically model perception. You (from my perspective) strip the mental object of its object like characteristics, retaining only bare phenomenality, and inappropriately assign those objective characteristics to the distal object itself. I (from your perspective) inappropriately reify phenomenal qualities, which are relations to distal objects, not objects in themselves, into pseudo objects standing between subject and object.

Indirect realism:
Subject -----> mental object (with phenomenal qualities) ------> distal object

Direct realism:
Subject ---- (phenomenal qualities) ----> distal object

Do you agree with this picture?

The same thing that enables the people with bionic eyes to do this? Unless you can point out exactly what the problem is I don't know how I can answer the question? — Michael

I am referring to the problem of perception. I'm simply asking for your positive account of how people come into possession of knowledge of distal objects.

I'm simply asking for your positive account of how people come into possession of knowledge of distal objects. — Esse Quam Videri

By them causally affecting our bodies, or causally affecting energies that causally affect our bodies, and then our bodies causally affecting our minds.

Isn't this exactly what you think too? You just call this "direct" perception because our experiences are "answerable" to distal objects and I call this "indirect" perception because distal objects are not "constituents" of experience.

You (from my perspective) strip the mental object of its object like characteristics, retaining only bare phenomenality, and inappropriately assign those objective characteristics to the distal object itself. — hypericin

I just want to clarify that I am not assuming that phenomenal qualities belong to the distal object. For instance, I wouldn't say that the redness belongs to the distal apple. My claim is that, in the case of perception, they are the manner in which the distal object is presented to us. They are presented as-of the distal object, but whether they inhere in the distal object is a further metaphysical question, distinct from the phenomenological point at issue here.

I (from your perspective) inappropriately reify phenomenal qualities, which are relations to distal objects, not objects in themselves, into a pseudo object. — hypericin

Yes, more-or-less.

Indirect realism:
Subject -----> mental object (with phenomenal qualities) ------> distal object

Direct realism:
Subject ---- (phenomenal qualities) ----> distal object

Do you agree with this picture? — hypericin

If I were to draw it, I'd put it like this:

IR:
Subject → object of awareness (mental item) → distal object

DR:
Subject → distal object (given-as / appearing-as)

The contested step, for me, is precisely the move from “appearing-as” to a distinct “object of awareness” with object-like characteristics.

And of course this is meant to characterize perception specifically. I agree that other intentional acts (memory, imagination, etc.) do not require a distal object in the same way.

I've no clear idea of what you are getting at here.

By them causally affecting our bodies, or causally affecting energies that causally affect our bodies, and then our bodies causally affecting our minds.

Isn't this exactly what you think to? You just call this "direct perception" and I call this "indirect perception". — Michael

I think this is the crux of our disagreement.

I agree with the causal story. But that story is not yet an account of knowledge. It tells us how experiences are produced, not how they are about distal objects or how they can be correct or incorrect.

If your “positive account” is just causal mediation, then I would argue you will be forced to distinguish veridical perception from systematic illusion by appealing to further causal facts. But epistemic correctness cannot be reduced to causal etiology.

So no, this is not merely a terminological dispute. The question is whether causal relations alone are sufficient to ground intentionality and normativity. I don’t think they are.

I think this is probably the crux of our disagreement. — Esse Quam Videri

I think the crux of the disagreement is that I don't think there is a disagreement, as I have been trying to explain since page 1. We both agree with the causal story, we both agree that naive realism is false — i.e. that distal objects are not constituents of experience — and we both agree that we have knowledge of the distal objects that cause our experiences.

So other than me calling this "indirect" perception and you calling this "direct" perception, what exactly are we disagreeing about?

...that distal objects are not constituents of experience... — Michael

, I hope you haven't conceded this - that we never see apples, or taste oysters, or hear birdsong.

I hope you haven't conceded this - that we never see apples, or taste oysters, or hear birdsong. — Banno

No worries—I’m not conceding that we don’t see apples. Personally, I reject the whole “constituents of experience” framing. From my perspective this framing results in an illicit reification of "experience". Apples are what we see; phenomenal character is how they are given. Treating phenomenal character as an intermediary object is exactly the indirect realist move I’m resisting.

So other than me calling this "indirect" perception and you calling this "direct" perception, what exactly are we disagreeing about? — Michael

It seems we disagree over whether the causal story is sufficient to cash out intentionality and epistemic normativity sufficient for an adequate theory of perception—i.e. perception as world-directed and answerable to correctness/error.

Treating phenomenal character as an intermediary object is exactly the indirect realist move I’m resisting. — Esse Quam Videri

Nice.

To my eye the mistake is to treat "phenomenal character" as an item, to quantify were quantification is illicit. To suppose that there exists a phenomenal character, it has such-and-such properties, it stands in relations to neural states, and so on, a whole ontology mushrooming from a grammatical slip.

“Phenomenal character” isn’t a thing over and above our perceptual and behavioural capacities, but a mode of description. We abstract from how someone sees, reacts, discriminates, reports, and then pretend the abstraction names an inner object. That’s exactly the move Wittgenstein warns against: turning an adjective or an adverbial construction into a noun and then asking what sort of thing the noun refers to.

“Phenomenal character” isn’t a thing over and above our perceptual and behavioural capacities, but a mode of description. We abstract from how someone sees, reacts, discriminates, reports, and then pretend the abstraction names an inner object. That’s exactly the move Wittgenstein warns against: turning an adjective or an adverbial construction into a noun and then asking what sort of thing the noun refers to. — Banno

Yes—this is exactly my worry. Once we treat “phenomenal character” as a constituent or item in an inner realm, we’ve already built the indirect realist ontology into the starting point. The grammar invites reification.

For the indirect realist, does the “mental image of an apple” refer to an apple, a neuron state, or some mental substance, or all three at the same time?

I think any realist would say the term “apple” refers to apple.

What say you?

Once we treat “phenomenal character” as a constituent or item in an inner realm, we’ve already built the indirect realist ontology into the starting point. The grammar invites reification. — Esse Quam Videri

So the point becomes one of pedagogy - how to have Michael or Amadeus understand their mistake. But his involves a change away from thinking of private mental states, a habit ingrained since before Descartes. Our comments get interpreted through that window.

There might be a place here for a discussion of pedagogic method.

I'd reject the term "mental image of an apple". It's already floating free of application, already private.

I do occasionally see apples. When I do so, there is invariably an apple. I can also imagine an apple, or perhaps I might hallucinate an apple, and such cases would be noteworthy, given a different grammar, precisely because there is no apple.

There might be a place here for a discussion of pedagogic method. — Banno

Perhaps—but I suspect that in this context it would come off as condescension rather than sincerity. These “picture change” issues are hard to address in a debate format without sounding like one is talking down.

I was kind of prodding what you would think a Kripkean analysis of the debate would reveal?

:meh:

What are your thoughts?

Treating phenomenal character as an intermediary object is exactly the indirect realist move I’m resisting. — Esse Quam Videri

But phenomenal character is not the right intermediary.

Your key argument has been that phenomenal character as-such is insufficiently object like to serve as intermediary between subject and distal object (DO). But it is not quite phenomenal character that does the intermediating. Rather, the brain-modeled object (BMO), which has phenomenal qualities as attributes, plays this role. The BMO is the object as it appears to you, including but not limited to it's phenomenal qualities.

That there is a BMO, distinct from the DO, seems clear:

BMO: has colors, tastes, feels
DO: has no such qualities

BMO: may be inaccurate or erroneous
DO: has no capacity for inaccuracy

BMO: has no casual properties
DO: has position, mass, volume

BMO: may be imagined independently of DO
DO: resists imagination

BMO: alters or disappears with changes in the subject
DO: indifferent to changes in the subject

BMO: There is one for every observer aware of the DO
DO: There is only ever one.


I see three responses: there is no such thing as BMOs. BMOs are the same as DOs. BMOs are also insufficiently object like to serve as intermediary. None of these seem appealing. Do you agree with one or more, and/or is there a fourth response I'm missing?

Damn complicated.

My guess would be he would go the “natural kind” direction. And that natural kind terms would refer directly to things in the world, not to descriptions or mental contents; basically, world-involving from the start, not mediated by sense-data.

However, his argument against mind-brain identity can make one pause. He seems to find talk of first person private phenomenon intelligible, that pain is privately, directly, and essentially felt. But this is not necessary identical with neuron’s firing. So could he not argue that talk of private, direct awareness of mental images of apples be intelligible but not necessary identical with neuron firing. But what about the mental image of the apple and the apple, do they not refer to the same kind in every possible world (including the actual world)?

For a start, Kripke's causal theory of reference plays against indirect realism in much the same way it plays against descriptivist theories of reference. A rigid designator picks out the extension, not some mental image or sense-data or whatever. That collapses much of the fussing between semantics and a supposed ontology. "Nixon" refers to Nixon, not to some intermediary.

Not a refutation, so much as a rejection of any advantage.

The pain and c- fibres firing stuff needs a detailed look. Pain has a different grammar to colour, despite what Michael seems to suppose. So it's tempting to say Kripke's argument assumes we have direct or immediate access to our own mental states; but take care - do we "access" our mental states, as if they were somehow seperate from us? Or is it more that we are our mental states - they are constitutive of us? And that's not so far from the distinction between only ever seeing a mental model of an apple, the indirect realist error, and seeing as constructing a model of an apple, the alternative.

Intersting offshoot.

It seems to me that you're moving the goalposts and contradicting yourself, and so this rejection of P3 is an ad hoc rationalization to avoid the conclusion, which seems rather dishonest. — Michael

Since I think the argument is valid, in its way, I would say that I'm looking for the limitations and weaknesses of your argument. If I were inclined to get personal, I might think that you are now avoiding replying to me and draw my own conclusions from that. I'll leave you alone now. You're quite safe.

I see three responses: there is no such thing as BMOs. BMOs are the same as DOs. BMOs are also insufficiently object like to serve as intermediary. None of these seem appealing. Do you agree with one or more, and/or is there a fourth response I'm missing? — hypericin

The fourth option is that BMOs belong to the causal implementation of intentionality rather than being the objects of intentionality. They enable us to see, but they are not what is seen.

For me, it comes down to whether normativity is reducible to causation. I don’t think it is. The causal/functional story that explains how perception is possible underdetermines the normative question of what perception is of. Otherwise we’d be forced to say that we see neural models (or retinal stimulations), rather than the world those processes disclose. To me, that seems like a clear category mistake.