It’s why Michael and Amadeus require analogies from what they can see in order to describe what they cannot. — NOS4A2

Thought experiments are a legitimate philosophical tool. They can show that a prima facie reasonable theory doesn’t actually work.

For example, you say that the direct object of visual perception is light, but then what if I don't have eyes, only a cortical visual prosthesis? I say that if the technology is sufficiently advanced then a) the visual experience of someone with a cortical visual prosthesis is indistinguishable from the visual experience of someone with eyes, that b) the direct object of perception for someone with a cortical visual prosthesis is the direct object of perception for someone with eyes, that c) the direct object of perception for someone with a cortical visual prosthesis is not light, and so that d) the direct object of perception for someone with eyes is not light.

It doesn't matter that we do have eyes and don't have sufficiently advanced cortical visual prostheses. The thought experiment is a reasonable rebuttal, and so your options are to either deny (b) or to deny (c). A denial of (c) seems untenable given your theory of perception and so a denial of (b) may be your only option, but this implies that you accept that the direct object of perception for someone with a cortical visual prosthesis is neither the apple nor light, and so should hopefully give you a better understanding of what indirect realists mean.

It’s fine to be skeptical of the senses and for the reasons you outline, but it is unprincipled and inconsistent to refuse that same level of skepticism towards so-called phenomenal experience. Then again we don’t really require thought experiments about impossible worlds in order to maintain the unreliability of first-person accounts of their own experiences, whereas that is exactly what is required to doubt the senses.

Before one considers the indirect realist’s thought experiments he ought to ask how an indirect realist can get from propositions about mental states to propositions about the physical world in the first place, and vice versa. As a first order of business they ought to be required to explain how the existence of a real world is more plausible than being deceived by an evil god or being a brain-in a vat, given that they have zero direct access to any of them.

Perhaps the only route for a realist conclusion that I could find is the Inference to the Best Explanation. But then they have to explain why inference, feelings, and intuition is more reliable than the senses. This ought to be the second order of business.

Perhaps a third order of business is to ask the indirect realist to use language consistent with his theory, for instance that instead of saying he sees an apple, he ought to maintain that he sees a sense-data of an apple.

Until then their thought experiments about the real world should be disregarded, at least until they can prove they are not idealists in disguise.

:cool: :up:

Before one considers the indirect realist’s thought experiments he ought to ask how an indirect realist can get from propositions about mental states to propositions about the physical world in the first place, and vice versa. As a first order of business they ought to be required to explain how the existence of a real world is more plausible than being deceived by an evil god or being a brain-in a vat, given that they have zero direct access to any of them.

Perhaps the only route for a realist conclusion that I could find is the Inference to the Best Explanation. But then they have to explain why inference, feelings, and intuition is more reliable than the senses. This ought to be the second order of business. — NOS4A2

You're implying that direct realism avoids scepticism, but that simply begs the question. It's entirely possible that both of these are true:

1. If we are bipedal organisms with eyes and if there are apples that reflect light into our eyes then we have direct perception of apples and/or light
2. We are brains in a vat and a cortical visual prosthesis causes us to have "false" experiences of us being bipedal organisms with eyes living in a world with apples

(1) being true does not make (2) less likely, and so (2) is no less a problem for direct realists than it is for indirect realists. If direct realists can just assume that (2) is false then so can indirect realists.

Perhaps a third order of business is to ask the indirect realist to use language consistent with his theory, for instance that instead of saying he sees an apple, he ought to maintain that he sees a sense-data of an apple. — NOS4A2

There's no "instead of". This is like saying that if I watch a football match on TV then instead of saying that I watched a football match I ought say that I watched moving images on a TV screen.

. The question is whether being conscious of phenomenal character entails being conscious of a brain-modeled object as an object. — Esse Quam Videri

BMOs are not objects in the everyday sense, so I don't think objecthood is the appropriate condition. Rather, I think the question is whether the BMO satisfies the requirements of an epistemic intermediary between the subject and object.

Your photograph analogy is helpful, but I think it quietly shifts the issue. A photograph is itself a public object that can be inspected, re-identified, and treated as the intentional terminus of an act. — Esse Quam Videri

It is true that the analogy does this. But this is not the thrust of the analogy. The photograph is meant to show that having an intermediary does not mean that "you only see the intermediary". We still see the subject, because the photograph discloses the subject, and there is an appropriate casual connection between subject and photograph.

If we were literally aware of BMOs as objects, then we should be able to distinguish (even in principle) “what the BMO is like” from “what the distal object is like.” But phenomenologically we don’t encounter two objects—an inner one and an outer one—we encounter one object as appearing. — Esse Quam Videri

Exactly, phenomenologically we encounter one object. This is the illusion IR aims to dispel. We already agree that phenomenological features of the object as it appears do not inhere in the distal object. But this is a contradiction: if there is only one object, that object must support all the features it presents as having.

P1: In perception, one object appears phenomenologically
P2: This object as it appears has qualitative features, like redness
P3: Distal objects do not support qualitative features like redness
C1: Therefore, the object as it appears (the BMO), cannot be the distal object.
P4: Distal objects are the target objects of perception.
C2: The object as it appears (BMO) must be intermediate between subject and distal object

You want to say that qualitative features are relations. That might be a valid metaphysical perspective. But this is not how they appear to us, phenomenologically. Phenomenologically, they are properties of the object as seen. The object as seen, the BMO, is object-like, has qualitative features, and cannot be the distal object.

Saying “normativity is correspondence” is like saying “truth is correspondence”: it redescribes the target rather than explaining how such correspondence is possible or intelligible for a subject. — Esse Quam Videri

Normativity is obviously a significant topic, and it is not fair to ask the IRist to solve it. Rather, we need to demonstrate that IR is consistent with normativity. Broadly, correspondence grounds truth, and failure of correspondence error. It is possible for the subject to establish this correspondence, or lack, because the DO and BMO are casually connected, and therefore epistemically connected. The subject does not live in a walled garden of BMOs.

Most of the time, the model of the world given to us is good enough, and we take it for granted that the BMO corresponds with the DO, at least in the relevant ways. When inconsistencies arise, within the BMO, between BMOs, or between BMOs and our prior understandings, we need to use reason and evidenc to determine what world and self conditions could lead to the constradictions we observe.

The actual conditions and mechanisms of how this works is beyond this topic, and I don't claim to have definitive answers.

You're implying that direct realism avoids scepticism, but that simply begs the question. It's entirely possible that both of these are true:

1. If we are bipedal organisms with eyes and if there are apples that reflect light into our eyes then we have direct visual perception of apples
2. We are brains in a vat and a cortical visual prosthesis causes us to have "false" experiences of us being bipedal organisms with eyes living in a world with apples

It isn’t possible that 2 is true unless one already assumes the premises of indirect realism. Moreover, it is rational to assume that things are the way they seem unless and until one has specific reasons for doubting them. That bar has yet to be reached in this discussion. It seems perceivers are not brains and there appears to be no vat.

There's no "instead of". This is like saying that if I watch a football match on TV then instead of saying that I watched a football match I ought say that I watched moving images on a TV screen.

Philosophy is a little different than sports, I’m afraid, and requires a little more precision.

It isn’t possible that 2 is true unless one already assumes the premises of indirect realism. — NOS4A2

No it doesn't.

Moreover, it is rational to assume that things are the way they seem unless and until one has specific reasons for doubting them. That bar has yet to be reached in this discussion. It seems perceivers are not brains and there appears to be no vat. — NOS4A2

Which is also true for the indirect realist.

Philosophy is a little different than sports, I’m afraid, and requires a little more precision. — NOS4A2

Then I'll respond a different way: you should use language consistent with your theory; for instance, instead of saying that you see an apple you ought maintain that you see light.

No it doesn't.

Yes it does. One has to assume he is a brain and little more. One has to assume that senses are little more than inputs. These assumptions regarding the identity of the perceiver and his relationship with other objects defines how and what he perceives.

Then I'll respond a different way: you should use language consistent with your theory; for instance, instead of saying that you see an apple you ought maintain that you see light.

I already have. I have explicitly stated that I can see mostly everything in my periphery: my own nose, light, apples, foreground, background. Everyone of those is a sense-datum, though, and so have the same properties according to indirect realism.

Yes it does. One has to assume he is a brain and little more. One has to assume that senses are little more than inputs. These assumptions regarding the identity of the perceiver and his relationship with other objects defines how and what he perceives. — NOS4A2

The possibility of (2) only depends on the possibility of a brain living in a vat and the possibility of a cortical visual prosthesis being able to stimulate the visual cortex in the same way that an eye's neurotransmitters do. I don't have to assume anything about what I am. (2) is no less a problem for direct realists than it is for indirect realists.

I have explicitly stated that I can see mostly everything in my periphery: my own nose, light, apples, foreground, background. — NOS4A2

You said this: "I believe we have indirect visual perception of apples through the direct visual perception of light."

Indirect realists say this: "I believe we have indirect visual perception of apples through the direct visual perception of sense-data".

If you're still allowed to say "I see apples" then so is the indirect realist. If the indirect realist is only allowed to say "I see sense-data" then you're only allowed to say "I see light".

The possibility of (2) only depends on the possibility of a brain living in a vat and the possibility of a cortical visual prosthesis being able to stimulate the visual cortex in the same way that an eye's neurotransmitters do. I don't have to assume anything about what I am. (2) is no less a problem for direct realists than it is for indirect realists.

None of those are possible unless he first believes he can survive as a disembodied brain, which is a huge leap.

If you're still allowed to say "I see apples" then so is the indirect realist. If the indirect realist is only allowed to say "I see sense-data" then you're only allowed to say "I see light".

Of course you’re allowed to say what you want. I just find it odd, or telling, that indirect realists never include their neologisms in the noun position of their own propositions.

Let’s quickly disambiguate the word “perception.” At minimum we need to distinguish (i) the sensory episode (experience), (ii) the act of grasping/identifying what is going on (understanding), and (iii) the commitment that something is the case (judgment). — Esse Quam Videri

But this just sounds like the standard IR picture: we experience sensations (i), on the basis of these we perform cognitive operations (ii) to arrive at judgements about the world (iii).

In that sense, the intentional object is the distal apple as it existed at the time the light was emitted (the apple-at-t0, not the apple-at-t1). — Esse Quam Videri

So then does DR entail a metaphysical commitment to eternalism? IR implies no such commitment, the BMO simply does not match the DO. Whereas, if there are not two objects, then perception in this case seems to involve time travel.

As I understand it, the apple argument is just a weaker form of the argument from hallucination. Weaker, because you can still say that the distal object is in the past. Whereas in hallucination there is no distal object at all. So then the DRist has to bend over backwards to say that hallucination and vertidical perception are fundamentally different process, in spite of the fact that the object as it appears can be (in principle) precisely identical in both cases.

BMOs are not objects in the everyday sense, so I don't think objecthood is the appropriate condition. Rather, I think the question is whether the BMO satisfies the requirements of an epistemic intermediary between the subject and object. — hypericin

Fair enough—but if the BMO is not an object of awareness in any ordinary sense, then I don’t see in what sense it is an epistemic intermediary rather than merely a causal implementation. “Epistemic intermediary” suggests something like: that which provides the subject’s evidence as such. But that is exactly what is at issue.

We still see the subject, because the photograph discloses the subject, and there is an appropriate causal connection between subject and photograph. — hypericin

I agree that mediation does not imply “we only see the intermediary.” But the photograph analogy is still misleading because a photograph is itself an inspectable object that can become the intentional terminus (we can notice glare, cropping, pixelation, etc.). In perception we do not encounter an “image” in that way. We encounter one world-directed presentation. So positing a BMO as an epistemic intermediary is not phenomenologically innocent—it adds a second object that is not given as such.

Exactly, phenomenologically we encounter one object. This is the illusion IR aims to dispel. — hypericin

But notice what you’ve done here: you’re now committed to the claim that phenomenology is systematically misleading about its own intentional structure. That’s not impossible, but it’s a much stronger thesis than “we sometimes misperceive,” and it’s not a neutral starting point either.

More importantly: you treat the “one object appears” datum as forcing a choice between DO and BMO. But there is a third option you keep overlooking: the bearer of phenomenal character is not an object at all, but the perceptual act/episode.

“Redness-as-seen” can be a property of seeing, not a property of an inner object. That dissolves the alleged contradiction without requiring a BMO.

P3: Distal objects do not support qualitative features like redness — hypericin

P3 is doing all the work, but it’s not a phenomenological datum. It’s a metaphysical thesis. If you grant P3, IR follows. But that just means the argument is question-begging: it builds the conclusion into the premises by stripping DOs of sensible qualities in advance.

A direct realist can deny P3 in several ways without saying “redness is microphysical”: e.g., redness is dispositional/relational, or a way the apple manifests itself under normal conditions. None of that forces the postulation of an epistemic intermediary object.

Phenomenologically, they are properties of the object as seen. The object as seen, the BMO, is object-like... — hypericin

But this again assumes what needs to be argued. “Object as seen” is not automatically “an inner object.” It can just mean: the distal object under a mode of presentation. You are sliding from “the object as experienced” to “there exists an additional object, distinct from the distal one, that is experienced.” That inference is precisely what I’m resisting.

Broadly, correspondence grounds truth, and failure of correspondence error... The subject does not live in a walled garden of BMOs. — hypericin

I’m not demanding that IR “solve normativity” in full generality. But I do think IR inherits a structural difficulty: if the BMO is the immediate object of awareness, then the DO becomes something like a theoretical cause posited behind experience. In that case, “correspondence” risks becoming something asserted from the outside rather than something intelligible from within the first-person epistemic situation.

You say we can establish correspondence because DO and BMO are causally connected—but causal connection is not yet epistemic access. The normative question is not “how do I get from an inner item to an outer item?” but “how does my experience come with conditions of correctness at all?” On my view, the perceptual act is already world-directed in its intentionality, so normativity is a question about the success-conditions of an act that is constitutively oriented toward the world. On your view, normativity looks more like a bridge between two ontologically distinct items (BMO and DO), and it’s that bridge that remains obscure.

But this just sounds like the standard IR picture... — hypericin

It only sounds like IR if one assumes that “experience” is itself an object (a BMO) rather than a conscious act with a certain phenomenal character. My whole point is that the mediation here is in the operations (experiencing, understanding, judging), not in an intermediary object.

So then does DR entail a commitment to eternalism? — hypericin

No. “Seeing a past state of affairs” doesn’t require eternalism any more than memory or astronomy requires eternalism. All it requires is that the past was real and causally efficacious. Saying “the intentional object is the apple-at-t0” is not time travel; it’s just temporal indexing.

And note: IR has the exact same temporal situation. The BMO is also causally generated by the apple-at-t0, not by the apple-at-t1. So temporal lag cannot be a differential argument for IR over DR—it affects both views equally.

hallucination and veridical perception are fundamentally different process... — hypericin

Here I think you’re assuming a controversial principle: that if two experiences are introspectively indistinguishable, they must share the same intentional object or structure. But that doesn’t follow. Two acts can be phenomenally identical while differing in their fulfillment conditions—just as a forged key can feel identical to a real key while failing to open the door. Phenomenology alone does not settle whether the act is fulfilled by the world or empty.

So yes: hallucination and veridical perception can be phenomenally indistinguishable while still differing in whether they are world-fulfilled. That isn’t “bending over backwards”; it’s simply recognizing that phenomenology underdetermines ontology.

=========

Finally, I don’t deny that “the brain models the world” in the subpersonal, cognitive-scientific sense. But that’s a mechanistic explanatory posit. The philosophical question is whether such modeling constitutes the intentional object of awareness at the personal level. The inference from “there are subpersonal models” to “what I am directly aware of is a modeled object” is not forced, and I don’t think your argument establishes it without smuggling IR into P3 at the outset.

On Martin:
I’m fine with the naive realist’s position that the senses are that by which we are directly and immediately aware of things, but deny such direct awareness is necessarily as those things really are.

He talks of things in general, whereas you talk of specific named things. His things are real existents and belong to Nature, directly corresponding to perception; your apple is a valid cognition related to some real existent thing and belongs only to an intelligence, directly corresponding to experience, and for which perception is presupposed. They are not the same.

P1: No. For any perception, its representation is the constituent of experience;
P2: No. For any constituent representation contained in an experience, the existence of the object represented, is given necessarily;
P3: No. That an object exists and causes representation from which an experience follows, proves that the object itself does not entail experience. The object does entail, not the constituency of, but the necessary, albeit empirical, condition for, experience.

People are wont to assert sensation is itself an experience. It isn’t; it is a feeling, in that experience presupposes logical function while mere sensation does not, from which follows they cannot be considered synonymous. The proper empirical constituent of experience is that representation called phenomenon. Without the affiliated logical function connected with it, nothing more can be said.
—————-

For you to carry on with a further exposition implies I’ve misunderstood what I was responding to. Be that as it may….

On your argument:
C1: You’ll see an apple 10s after the time light reflects from it, for whatever the duration of that reflection, determinable by t=d/r.
C2: The light from the destroyed apple takes its own 10s to be received, so the initial reflection sustains for 10s from the 5s change-of-state reflection.
To say an apple doesn’t exist when I see an apple is self-contradictory.
Sorry, I don’t know what to do with C3.
————-

So there is this thing in logic, that a condition is true iff its negation is also true. Consider the reverse: take the destroyed apple you see, back through time, to the re-assembly of it, to its whole. With the given parameters, that should take 10s, from which it is only for 5s that you will see the apple as a whole. Is there not a duration of 15s of light, not perceived but projected, by which two distinct conditions of a singular thing, is perceivable?

I suppose the concession must be made, insofar as science demands it, that the truth of the existence of a thing is not certified by immediate perception alone. But it remains a necessary condition that all that is perceived and from which experience is possible, must either exist or have existed. I don’t know how the experiment alters that necessity.

Anyway, I’ve reached the limit for defending myself, so I’ll quit here.

I just find it odd, or telling, that indirect realists never include their neologisms in the noun position of their own propositions. — NOS4A2

Do you not recognise your hypocrisy? If it's not odd or telling that you say "I see an apple" instead of "I see light" then it's not odd or telling that an indirect realist says "I see an apple" instead of "I see sense data".

You're refusing to hold yourself to the same standard that you demand of indirect realists.

None of those are possible unless he first believes he can survive as a disembodied brain, which is a huge leap. — NOS4A2

Then not a brain in a vat but a body in a vat, à la the Matrix. The indirect realist no more has to prove that this isn't the case than the direct realist does. Both just assume that we're not and proceed from there.

So then the DRist has to bend over backwards to say that hallucination and vertidical perception are fundamentally different process — hypericin

As an aside, this is why I think my example with the apple is actually a stronger argument than the argument from hallucination. Direct realists often do argue that veridical perceptions and hallucinations are fundamentally different (disjunctivism), but this counterargument doesn't seem to work against my example. Having to resort to the claim that we have direct perception of a distal object that no longer exists is much less convincing, and seems to be grasping at straws.

Saying “the intentional object is the apple-at-t0” is not time travel; it’s just temporal indexing. — Esse Quam Videri

Is there a difference between these two claims?

1. At t₁ the intentional object of perception is the apple-at-t₀
2. At t₁ I have direct perception of the apple-at-t₀?

Because I would say that (2) makes no sense. I agree with the naive realist that I cannot have direct perception of something that doesn't exist, and the apple-at-t₀ doesn't exist at t₁.

Which part do you reject? Colours and shapes as qualia or that I continue to believe that there is an intact red apple 10m in front of me because I continue to see an intact red apple 10m in front of me? — Michael

What I reject is the move from "the sensory character persists" to "therefore what I was aware of all along were qualia, and the apple was only ever inferred."

Let me take your two options in turn.

(1) Colours and shapes as qualia. I reject this characterization as the baseline description of what's going on. You're treating it as obvious that when I see a red apple, what I'm really aware of are inner qualitative items that happen to be red and round. But that redescription is precisely what's at issue. On my view, in the first interval, the redness and roundness I'm aware of are properties of the apple as it shows up for me from this vantage point. They are appearances of the apple, not freestanding inner objects that I then project outward. This is what I mean by distinguishing the object-as-intended from the object tout court: the apple-as-seen-from-here is not a second entity (a quale) but the apple itself given under a particular profile.

(2) That you continue to believe there's an apple because you continue to see one. I don't reject that description — I just reject your analysis of it. Yes, during the second interval, my experience retains the character of "seeing a red apple 10m away," and yes, I form the (false) judgment that the apple is still there. But what this shows is that perceptual consciousness has an intentional structure that can be empty in the sense of lacking fulfillment by a presently existing object — it intends an object that is no longer there to fulfill it. It does not show that what I'm aware of in both intervals is a quale from which I infer the apple.

The difference matters because your picture requires a general ontological claim: that in every case of perception, the immediate objects are inner items. My picture requires only that perception is an intentional act that is normally fulfilled by its object and sometimes isn't. The disintegrated-apple case is a case of unfulfilled intention — analogous to a thought about a nonexistent object — not evidence that the object was never part of the perceptual situation in the first place.

So to answer your fork directly: I reject the inference step, and I reject the redescription of appearances as qualia. What I accept is that experience can persist when its object doesn't, and that this makes perception fallible. Fallibility is not indirect realism.

Is there a difference between these two claims? — Michael

Yes, there is a difference, and it's important.

(1) is a claim about the intentional structure of the perceptual act: what the act is directed toward, what it presents-as. At t1, my perceptual consciousness still has the character of presenting an apple at a certain location. The act intends the apple (as it was at t0). This is a phenomenological description of the act's directedness.

(2) is a claim about perceptual success — that I am in genuine epistemic contact with something that exists. And I agree with you: (2) is false during the second interval. I do not have successful perception of the apple at t1, because the apple no longer exists.

But here's the crucial point: I don't need (2) to be true in order to be a direct realist. Direct realism is the thesis that when perception succeeds, it is the distal object itself — not a mental intermediary — that is the object of awareness. It is not the thesis that perception always succeeds, or that it cannot present-as-there something that isn't there.

The distinction between (1) and (2) maps onto a familiar intentionality point: I can think about Sherlock Holmes without Sherlock Holmes existing. That doesn't mean my thought is "really" about an inner mental item from which I infer Holmes. It means the intentional act is directed toward Holmes and is unfulfilled — there's nothing in the world that satisfies it. Likewise, at t1 my perceptual act intends the apple and is unfulfilled. What it doesn't do is redirect onto a quale that serves as a proxy for the apple.

So your argument works against naïve realism, which holds that perception is always successfully world-involving. It doesn't work against the view I'm defending, which distinguishes the directedness of the act from the existence of its fulfilling object.

As an aside, this is why I think my example with the apple is actually a stronger argument than the argument from hallucination. — Michael

But this argument does not survive any casual intermediary at all, since everything casual takes some amount of time. For IR to be substantive I think it needs some plausible notion of directness to contrast with. Here effectively no relationship beyond physical collisions can be direct.

Yes, there is a difference, and it's important. — Esse Quam Videri

Which reaffirms what I have been saying since page 1.

Indirect realism is concerned with phenomenology, and which things in the world we have direct perception of. You're concerned with intentionality, which is prima facie consistent with indirect realism. Again, see Semantic Direct Realism.

For IR to be substantive I think it needs some plausible notion of directness to contrast with. — hypericin

The fleshed out argument is here.

On my view, in the first interval, the redness and roundness I'm aware of are properties of the apple as it shows up for me from this vantage point. — Esse Quam Videri

What does this even mean? Are you saying that these properties are properties that inhere in distal objects, but only when you exist and look at them from a certain vantage point? Because that strikes me as being absurd. I would say that this redness and roundness are subjective qualities of your first-person phenomenal experience, much like non-visual qualities involved in hearing, smell, taste, and touch, but which (erroneously) seem to be properties that inhere in distal objects.

All I see is a grammatical trick with your wording. The "apple as it shows up for me from this vantage point" just is a mental phenomenon caused by looking at the apple, but which (erroneously) seems to be the apple itself.