On the dyad:
You've reformulated my position as "perceptual act → correct perceptual act" and then objected that the intentional target of perception isn't a perceptual act. But that wasn't my claim. My dyad is: the act as performed, measured against a normative standard fixed by the world — the wall's stable reflectance properties, normal illumination conditions, etc. The second term isn't "another perceptual act"; it's the worldly conditions that determine what a successful perceptual act would disclose. So the dyad is act vs. world-anchored norm, not act vs. act.

You then propose your own dyad: perceptual act → world-state. And you say this is IR, because "the perceptual act discloses world-state without being world-state, and therefore intermediates between subject and world-state."

But look at what you've done. You've defined "intermediation" as: any cognitive act that discloses its target without being identical to its target. On that definition, every cognitive act is an intermediary — understanding intermediates between subject and meaning, memory intermediates between subject and past event, reasoning intermediates between subject and logical truth. You've made "indirect" trivially true of all cognition, which is exactly my objection.

The question was never whether the perceptual act is identical to the world-state. Obviously it isn't — an act of seeing a white wall is not the same thing as the wall's being white. The question is whether the act interposes an object between subject and world, or whether it constitutes the subject's openness to the world. You keep sliding from "the act is not identical to its target" to "therefore the act produces an intermediary entity." That inference is what I deny.

On "unlike types":
You claim perception is special because the two terms of the dyad are of unlike type — perceptual acts are not facts about world-states — whereas in other cases the terms are of like type. But I don't think this holds.

An interpretation is a mental act. The speaker's intended meaning is not a mental act of the listener — it's what the speaker meant, which is normatively fixed by their communicative intentions and the conventions of language. A recalled event is a present mental episode. The actual past event is a concrete historical occurrence that no longer exists. In both cases, the cognitive act and its target are of fundamentally unlike type — one is a present mental episode, the other is something in the world (a meaning, a past event, a logical relation) that the act aims to disclose.

You make these look "like" each other by using loose language: interpretation "is" meaning, memory "resembles" its target. But by that same loose standard, a perceptual act "is" a disclosure of world-state — just possibly an inaccurate one. If you tighten the standard, all the dyads involve unlike types. If you loosen it, none of them do — including perception.

On strong epistemic mediation:
You propose that perception involves “radical” multiple realizability—two possible realizers that share no properties whatsoever. A hallucinated apple and a real apple, you say, share no properties. But that’s overstated: hallucination and veridical perception share plenty of relevant properties (phenomenal character, inferential role, behavioral upshot). The difference is in fulfillment by the world, not in a total lack of shared properties. And in any case, the same kind of “radical” gap shows up wherever cognition can go wrong: a confabulated memory vs an actual past event, a delusional interpretation vs a speaker’s intended meaning, a fallacious inference vs a valid entailment. If your criterion tracks the mere possibility of empty vs fulfilled acts, it will generalize across cognition, not isolate perception as uniquely indirect.

On your response to my first objection:
You say: multiple realization requires an intermediary, the transformation must be "housed somehow," the subject must be aware of a "signal," and therefore the subject is aware of an intermediary.
But this just reasserts the conclusion. That the system transforms its input doesn't entail that the subject is aware of the transformation as an entity. I am causally mediated by my optic nerve, my visual cortex, and countless neural processes — these transformations are "housed" in my nervous system But I am not aware of my optic nerve. The processing occurs; I am not aware of the processing. I am aware of the world through the processing. You need an argument that the subject's awareness takes the transformation as its object, and you haven't provided one — you've simply inferred it from the existence of the transformation.

This is, at bottom, the same inference I've been resisting throughout: from "the system processes" to "the subject is aware of something processed." The first is a claim about subpersonal mechanism. The second is a claim about personal-level awareness. They are not the same claim, and the second does not follow from the first.

Right — phenomenal character is necessary for awareness of the apple. But necessity (or counterfactual dependence) is not mediation. I can’t see the apple without my eyes, but my eyes aren’t what I see. Phenomenal character is what my awareness of the apple consists in — the mode of perceiving — not a second object I perceive on my way to the apple. — Esse Quam Videri

I'm not saying that the colour red is an object, just as I wouldn't say that my headache is an object. I'm saying that I see the colour red, that the colour red is a mental phenomenon, and that seeing the colour red (usually) mediates seeing 700nm light and/or a surface that reflects 700nm light.

You might say that "the colour red is what my awareness of 700nm light and/or a surface that reflects 700nm light consists in", but notice that there's no "X is what my awareness of the colour red (or a headache) consists in". That's why my perception of the colour red (or a headache) is direct/unmediated/immediate in a way that my perception of 700nm light and/or a surface that reflects 700nm light isn't. This sense of direct/unmediated/immediate perception is the sense that the naive realist claims about our perception of apples — that there is no "X is what my awareness of apples consists in", only apples as literal constituents of first-person experience — and is the view that the indirect realist is opposing.

Apologies for my long silence. I needed to reflect and find some clarity. All quotations are from the message in the "reply to" link.

Then what would experience be of? If the objects you witness aren't part of your experience, and yet there are also no images in your mind that could be part of your experiences, where are you getting them? Here, image can simply mean "the image" of hte apple when you cast your eyes to it; it need not be mediated. I just want some story that doens't require an apple to be in your experience.

So we agree that the apple isn't part of our experience. It's not much, but it is something. Suppose I understand seeing something as relationship between the subject who sees and an object which is seen. Then the demand that the apple be in my eye is a misunderstanding of what "see" means. I think that is down to thinking of introspection as, in some way, a paradigm of how the senses work. In that case, perception and hearing are suspect, just because they work at a distance from their objects. For me, it is introspection that is suspect, just because it cannot be wrong and therefore cannot be right. I think the model of perception (as involving a subject and an object that is distinct from the subject) collapses in introspection. Hence I regard "I am in pain" as not a proposition like "I see an apple"'. I go with Wittgenstein in thinking of it as an expression, not a statement.
A picture of an apple is not an apple. "Picture" and "apple" are distinct objects. We can say that a picture of an apple contains an image of an apple. That's what the concept of an image is for - to articulate the way in which the picture is a picture of an apple. So it is not follow from the fact that I perceive an apple that there is an actual apple in my mind; in the case of perception, of course, there isn't an image of an apple - only apple-appropriate behaviour. But that's sufficient. If the experience is thought of as some sort of copy or model, it is needles reduplication.

I don't even understand how that could be the case. To me, it(the scientific story)'s a full analysis of what actually happens when we cast our eyes about us. I refuse, on grounds of consistency/incoherence, to call it Direct. There's nothing further needed imo. It's just slightly uncomfortable for those of us who require that the apple is in our eye.

Well, there are grounds for calling the scientific story "indirect" and grounds for call it "direct". I think the relationship is more complicated than that. "I see an apple" has what is called "success logic". It is only true I do see an apple. It is like "I won the race", that is, it is about outcomes, not processes. The running of the race stands to the winning of the race in the same logical relationship is the scientific story stands to "I see an apple".
When I said it was partial, I only meant that we do not yet understand the complete process, because our understanding of the brain is as yet, in its infancy. I wasn't suggesting that it would always be partial. But note, the scientific story has no place for the experience of seeing an apple - though it may well find correlates in the way that it has found correlates to the experience of pain.

The 'vulgar' ways of talking are heuristic/pragmatic/easier to parse but that doesn't make them right. They can just be wrong, but helpful.

Just to be clear, I don't think "I see an apple" is anywhere near being any kind of theory. It is where theory might start, but only as the question - no particular answer is implied. See above on success logic. It follows, I think, as @Banno suggests, or at least, as I interpret him as suggestng, "Direct realism" as a theory of perception is coined as a reaction to indirect realism.

So we agree that the apple isn't part of our experience. It's not much, but it is something. — Ludwig V

Yes, sure. Good stuff.

In that case, perception and hearing are suspect, just because they work at a distance from their objects. — Ludwig V

Yes, I think so. But suspect doesn't mean unreliable, I don't think. IT does mean liable to error, though I couldn't tell you what that would consist in particularly. I just find that gap non-worrying.

For me, it is introspection that is suspect, just because it cannot be wrong and therefore cannot be right — Ludwig V

Ok, i understand this and i think it has some serious force. Let's see where it goes..

Hence I regard "I am in pain" as not a proposition like "I see an apple"'. I go with Wittgenstein in thinking of it as an expression, not a statement. — Ludwig V

Yes, i'd say so. I think, and this is "think", I've not delved - that both are expressions of one's current phenomenal experience. Although, this could just be semantic: I often prefer to say "I look at" an object and then discuss what I see as part of my introspective (i guess?) phenomenal experience.

"Picture" and "apple" are distinct objects. — Ludwig V

Do you mean concepts?

only apple-appropriate behaviour. But that's sufficient. If the experience is thought of as some sort of copy or model, it is needles reduplication. — Ludwig V

Can you say more about this? If what you mean is that the experience causes the appropriate behaviour for when one looks toward that object, I have a lot of questions lol. If it just means that teh senses behave apple-appropriate when looking toward one, that makes total sense to me and is a clever wee statement imo.

It is like "I won the race", that is, it is about outcomes, not processes. — Ludwig V

Is this (and hte prior) suggesting that the model of use of "I see" should simply be when your experience tells you such? If so, I have no issue with that but it allows for hallucinations to be caught under the same banner as what the DRist would call direct awareness (or, i think better: veridical perception). That seems a bit of a shot-in-the-foot. But if this is something the DRist bites on, that's cool - It makes things tricky for my position for sure.

I wasn't suggesting that it would always be partial. — Ludwig V

Ah, okay, sorry. I definitely took more from that than I should have.

the scientific story has no place for the experience of seeing an apple - though it may well find correlates in the way that it has found correlates to the experience of pain. — Ludwig V

I disagree in a significant, but also probably a bit pedantic sense: that is the required end-point of the story and the only one we knew in advance. I do agree that theres something like this:

1. Reflection
2. Reception
3. Transmutation
4. ????????
5. Phenomenal experience

though, so that's fair to point out, I accept it.

"Direct realism" as a theory of perception is coined as a reaction to indirect realism. — Ludwig V

I more-or-less agree with this take, and as you'll have noted, very much respect Banno's approach over most comers - but it boils down to a semantic argument that misses the disagreement at hand imo. He thinks otherwise, and onward we go :P

Appreciate it!

Agreement

I apologize I misrepresented you, though I think you will see the ambiguity of you go back over what you wrote.

So we agree that the perceptual dyad is:

Perceptual act --> fact/world state/world-anchored norm

I will treat these as equivalent unless you think they need distinguishing.

I also agree that the formulation "the perceptual act discloses world-state without being world-state, and therefore intermediates between subject and world-state" is not a knock down argument. I was just pointing out that the structure resembles a standard IR formulation. I will stick to my current thesis for now, that "the structures of perception introduce (strong) epistemic mediation between the subject and distal object, where SEM is proposed as casual meditation that introduces radical multiple realizability."

Like and unlike types

It is not through loose language that the types of the dyads of interpretation and memory are alike. An interpretation is a meaning. A recalled memory of an experience is an experience.

One way to see this is through reversibility:

Communication:
The intentional target of an act of interpretation is a meaning consistent with the norms and context of the communication. Even if you are trying to match what is in the speakers head, the targeted ideal is a meaning matching the speakers meaning, not the literal content of the speakers mind.

interpretation --> intended meaning

"I saw the man with the telescope".
A: I saw the man through the telescope.
B: I saw the man holding the telescope.

It could be the listener interpreted A, but B was intended. Or the listener interpreted B, but A was intended.

Memory:
The intentional target of the act of recall is not a world event. It is a past experience. When you recall the pink wall, a re-experience of the pink wall correctly realizes the memory. Not a white wall. Memories can be of any past experience: thoughts, feelings, ideas, not just things that happen in the world.

Re-experience --> past experience

Recollection of wife's grocery instruction:
A: "Make sure to buy eggs"
B: "Make sure to buy Eggo waffles"

It could be you recalled A, but she said B. Or, you recalled B, but she said A.

This doesn't work for perception. The intentional target of perception is not a perception, it is a fact (or rather, a manifold of facts). And so you cannot reverse the perception of a red wall with the fact there is a white wall.

Another way to see this is to see that interpretation and recall are mental-->mental operations. You can put someone in a sensory deprivation tank and they can still recall and interpret all day. Only perception reaches out into the world, creating a mental-physical type disjunction.

Also note that the general indirection of cognition is not trivial. It is the structural reason why any cognition is never certain. The subject never knows whether the two terms of the dyad match.

Radical multiple realization

Strictly speaking you are right, it is impossible for two realizers to share zero properties. At the bare minimum, they must share the property of realizing in the same way. And so this is the minimal property that two realizers share. Phenomenal character, inferential role, behavioral upshot are properties of the realized, not the realizer, and so they are logically downstream of the minimal shared property.

Whereas, there is only one realizer of memories, and interpretation: the mind. It might properly realize these, or is might not. But there is not nearly the scope of possible realizers.

Objection 1 revisited

The logic is clear:

* Perception involves multiple realization
* The subject is aware of the realized, not the realizer, per hallucination
* Multiple realization must involve a transformation
* The subject is therefore aware of a transformation

I never arguued that the subject takes the transformation as it's object. The world is the object, the transformation meditates it's apprehension.

In that case, perception and hearing are suspect, just because they work at a distance from their objects.
— Ludwig V
Yes, I think so. But suspect doesn't mean unreliable, I don't think. IT does mean liable to error, though I couldn't tell you what that would consist in particularly. I just find that gap non-worrying. — AmadeusD

Perhaps "suspect" is the wrong word. If you mean that you are not bothered by the fact that we sometimes "see" (and "hear") things wrongly, neither am I. We can notice the mistakes and put them right.
Perhaps it would be better to say that because seeing and hearing work at a distance, there are questions that can be asked (and hopefully answered) that do not apply to the results of introspection. I'm inclined to say that it is being at a distance that creates the room for error - and, in my book, truth.
(Qualification - In one way, smell arguably also works at a distance. But, unlike seeing and hearing, it does not directly give us any information about distance or direction, and is dependent on actual molecules of the substance smelt entering the nose. So I'm treating it as like touch, etc.)

Hence I regard "I am in pain" as not a proposition like "I see an apple"'. I go with Wittgenstein in thinking of it as an expression, not a statement.
— Ludwig V
Yes, i'd say so. I think, and this is "think", I've not delved - that both are expressions of one's current phenomenal experience. Although, this could just be semantic: I often prefer to say "I look at" an object and then discuss what I see as part of my introspective (i guess?) phenomenal experience. — AmadeusD

I wouldn't disagree with the first sentence.
I'm not sure what you mean by the remark that this could be just semantic. Could you explain and especially why being semantic is not relevant.

"Picture" and "apple" are distinct objects.
— Ludwig V
Do you mean concepts? — AmadeusD

This was about the idea that my experience of an apple must contain an apple.

A picture of an apple is not an apple. "Picture" and "apple" are distinct objects. We can say that a picture of an apple contains an image of an apple. That's what the concept of an image is for - to articulate the way in which the picture is a picture of an apple. — Ludwig V

If a picture can be a picture of an apple without containing an apple, then I don't see why an actual apple must be part of the experience of seeing an apple. Of course, that depends on the idea that an experience is a kind of picture. If that's not the case, the argument lapses.

Can you say more about this (sc. apple-appropriate behaviour)? If what you mean is that the experience causes the appropriate behaviour for when one looks toward that object, I have a lot of questions lol. If it just means that teh senses behave apple-appropriate when looking toward one, that makes total sense to me and is a clever wee statement imo. — AmadeusD

Yes. I did mean the first. There is certainly more to be said.

I disagree in a significant, but also probably a bit pedantic sense: that is the required end-point of the story and the only one we knew in advance. — AmadeusD

No, I don't think that is pedantic. People often assume that the output of the system is an image or an experience or something. But that doesn't help at all. We can avoid the metaphysical arguments about what those things are if we stick to the obvious and say that the output of the sensory system is knowledge of the external world. Then we need to explain what effect that knowledge has on us. In combination with our needs and desires it initiates our actions and it guides them when they are under way. It's only a gesture towards a beginning, but it at least tells us something worth knowing.

It is like "I won the race", that is, it is about outcomes, not processes.
— Ludwig V
Is this (and hte prior) suggesting that the model of use of "I see" should simply be when your experience tells you such? — AmadeusD

Roughly, yes.

If so, I have no issue with that but it allows for hallucinations to be caught under the same banner as what the DRist would call direct awareness (or, i think better: veridical perception). That seems a bit of a shot-in-the-foot. — AmadeusD

I've worried a lot about hallucinations. I think my answer is roughly this. (This is the first time I have ever tried to articulate this, so it is provisonal. (My reference for hallucinations is the scene in Shakespeare's play when Macbeth hallucinates a dagger in front of him. It saves thinking.)
There is no dagger, so Macbeth does not see a dagger. But he thinks he sees a dagger. This is a puzzle. I think the answer has to lie in the fact that we can imagine things - not necessarily by conjuring up images in our heads, but sometimes in that way. People seem to vary in this. Some people have very weak visual imaginations (aphantasia) and some people much stronger ones. Often this process is under voluntary control - we decide what we will "see" and we create it (day-dreaming). But this is not always the case, as in night-time dreaming. Hallucinating is a process like dreaming - think of it as partial dreaming, in which an involuntary imagining is superimposed on reality.
So there's no shot-in-the-foot, just a graceful admission that imagining things is part of life. The philosophical argument is not about that. It is about the claim that everything that we see is an imagining. That's false. "Imagining" would lose its meaning if it were true.

For me, it is introspection that is suspect, just because it cannot be wrong and therefore cannot be right
— Ludwig V
Ok, i understand this and i think it has some serious force. Let's see where it goes.. — AmadeusD

There is a complication here, though I don't know how relevant it is. But it might bear on the meaning of "direct" and "indirect". I'm trying to avoid talking about that issue and I'm not sure how relevant people would think it is.
1 If we take introspection as our model of direct perception, we need to be aware that pain and similar sensations are just as dependent on physical machinery as seeing and hearing. We have specialized pain receptors and nerves for pain, heat and cold, body position and so on. So, if introspection is direct perception, it is not because there is no physical machinery involved. The difference between direct and indirect is just the boundaries of the physical body.
2 When I am in pain, that non-truth-functional event becomes a normal truth-functional event when it is recognized by other people. But I can see it in that way too, and so it becomes possible for me to assess right and wrong in the same way that they do. So I can know that my pain is a phantom pain in the same way that everyone else does. Separating these two points of view is very tricky.

I was quite nervous about my post. I'm very glad you thought it worth something.

You might say that "the colour red is what my awareness of 700nm light and/or a surface that reflects 700nm light consists in", but notice that there's no "X is what my awareness of the colour red (or a headache) consists in". — Michael

Neat move. But I think the problem is that you are blurring constitutive and meditative relationships. Batter and frosting is what my cake consists of, but it does not meditate between me and the cake. EQV, and direct realism on general, is claiming that sensations are constitutive, not meditative.

I'm not saying that the colour red is an object, just as I wouldn't say that my headache is an object. I'm saying that I see the colour red, that the colour red is a mental phenomenon, and that seeing the colour red (usually) mediates seeing 700nm light and/or a surface that reflects 700nm light. — Michael

is right. You’re treating “whatever my awareness consists in” as an intermediary by definition, but that is exactly the point under dispute.

On like and unlike types:
Your reversibility argument is interesting, so let me engage with it directly.

You say that in memory, the act and target are of like type: a recalled experience targets a past experience. And in interpretation, an interpretation targets a meaning. But in perception, the act and target are of unlike type: a perceptual act targets a world-state.

I think you're applying an asymmetric standard. When you say "a recalled experience is an experience targeting an experience," you're characterizing both terms at a high level of abstraction — they're both "experiential." But a present act of remembering is not the same kind of thing as a past lived experience. One is occurring now, the other no longer exists. One is reconstructive, the other was original. If I recall the pink wall, my present memory-act is not the past seeing — it's a present mental event that aims at something beyond itself, namely a determinate past episode that may or may not have occurred as recalled. That's structurally identical to what you say about perception: a present act aiming at something beyond itself.

You make memory and interpretation look "like-typed" by abstracting both terms to "mental." But by the same logic, I can make perception look "like-typed" by abstracting both terms to "disclosure" — the perceptual act is a disclosure, and the world-state is what the act purports to disclose. The abstraction level determines the result, not the underlying structure. So your "like-type" claim is not a structural insight into cognition; it's an artifact of shifting the grain of description mid-argument.
Even if I grant that the intentional target of memory is a past experience rather than a past event, the present act of remembering is still not identical to that past experience — so the dyad remains unlike-typed in exactly the way you say perception is.

Your sensory deprivation point — that memory and interpretation can proceed without concurrent world-contact — is true but cuts in my favor. Perception's constitutive involvement with the world is exactly what makes it a case of direct openness to reality. It's not a defect that introduces a special epistemic gap; it's the feature that grounds the epistemic contact the other cognitive acts lack.

On radical multiple realizability:
You've conceded that two realizers can't literally share zero properties, and that phenomenal character, inferential role, and behavioral upshot belong to the realized, not the realizer. So "radical" multiple realizability amounts to: the realizers differ in their physical-causal origins. But this is true of memory as well. A memory can be produced by faithful encoding, reconstructive inference, external suggestion, confabulation, or neurological malfunction. These causal pathways share no properties other than terminating in the same neural system — which is exactly the minimal shared property you identified for perception (realizing in the same way). You say "there is only one realizer of memories: the mind." But the mind is not one causal pathway — it's a system capable of generating the same output through radically different processes. "The mind" is doing the same work here as "the brain" does in the perception case. The distinction you're drawing is between where the causal chain starts (world vs. mind), not between the structures of realization.

On objection 1 revisited:
Your argument is:

(1) The subject is aware of the realized, not the realizer (per hallucination)
(2) Multiple realization involves a transformation
(3) Therefore the subject is aware of a transformation

This doesn't follow. From (1) and (2), you can conclude that the subject is aware of the product of a transformative process. But being aware of a product is not the same as being aware of it as mediated or as a transformation. A transformation can be a necessary causal condition for awareness without being an intentional term within awareness.

Consider translation: when I read Homer in English, my access to Homer is certainly "transformed" by the translator's activity. But it doesn't follow that I'm directly aware of an intermediary "translation-object" and only indirectly aware of Homer. The transformation is operational, not objectual. The translator's work is a necessary condition for my reading, but Homer — not the translation as such — is what I engage with.

You then say: "the world is the object, the transformation mediates its apprehension." But this is a restatement of IR, not an argument for it. I agree the perceptual system transforms its input. I agree the subject is aware of the result. I deny that the result is an intermediary entity standing between the subject and the world. It can equally be the subject's achieved awareness of the world — awareness that is world-directed in its intentionality even though it was produced by a transformative process.

And note something interesting about your own premises. You say "the subject is aware of the realized, not the realizer, per hallucination." In hallucination, the realizer is just the neural system. But in veridical perception, the realizer includes the world — the apple's reflectance properties, the ambient light, the entire causal chain from object to retina. If the subject is aware of what is realized by this process, and this process constitutively involves the world, then the subject is aware of something whose realization is worldly. That is direct realism.

The hallucination case is the one where the world drops out of the realization — it's the failure case. You're treating the failure case as the paradigm and then asking how the world gets back in. I'm treating the success case as the paradigm and noting that the failure case is precisely a failure — a perceptual act that lacks the world-involvement that would make it veridical.

You appear to accept that colours are mental phenomena and that seeing different colours is how we see different wavelengths of light and/or surfaces that reflect different wavelengths of light. I don't understand what else you think it would mean for mental phenomena to be an intermediary. This just is what I understand indirect realism to be, in contrast to the naive view that colours are not mental phenomena but mind-independent properties of distal objects which are more-than-causally constituents of first-person phenomenal experience.

I think we directly perceive the distal object as colored and shaped. You seem to think we directly perceive colors and shapes (as mental phenomena) and then infer the distal object as their cause. That’s the substantive disagreement.

Given that you agreed that naive color realism is false, I don't even know what you mean by saying "we directly perceive the distal object as colored". Once again, I think it's simply the case that you and I mean different things by the phrase "direct perception".

So I'm going to not use the words "direct", "indirect", or "intermediary" at all.

Group A believes that distal objects are constituents of first-person phenomenal experience such that the qualities of this first-person phenomenal experience are the mind-independent properties of these distal objects.

Group B believes that distal objects are only causally responsible for first-person phenomenal experience, that these distal objects and this first-person phenomenal experience are ontologically separate, and that at least some of the qualities (e.g. colour) of this first-person phenomenal experience are not the sort of things that can be mind-independent properties of these distal objects.

I am a member of Group B, and Group B is supported by our scientific understanding of physics, physiology, neuroscience, and psychology.

Nothing else is relevant to my position on the topic of perception.

Listening to NPR this morning, this woman told the story of her first flight. She asked the flight attendant how much longer until they started getting small.

Group B is not a single position. It contains at least two very different interpretations:

B1 (your view): phenomenal qualities are inner mental items (qualia/sense-data) and perception of distal objects is mediated by direct awareness of these inner items.

B2 (my view): phenomenal qualities are modes of disclosure of the distal object. They are neither mind-independent intrinsic properties nor intermediary objects, but relational properties that obtain in virtue of the interaction between perceiver, object, and environment.

:rofl: :up:

I see two different ways of talking about the exact same physical, physiological, and mental facts. These two different ways of talking about it create the illusion of a disagreement where there is none. A rejection of A (naive realism) in favour of B — however you choose to "interpret" B — amounts to indirect realism as I understand it.

Whereas I see two mutually incompatible accounts of perception that both happen to reject naive realism — one reifying phenomenal character into an inner intermediary, and one treating it as a mode of disclosure.

I think your statement and mine sum up the disagreement between us quite well. I don't think we're going to get any further clarity on this.

Whereas I see two mutually incompatible accounts of perception that both happen to reject naive realism — one reifying phenomenal character into an inner intermediary, and one treating it as a mode of disclosure. — Esse Quam Videri

The problem is I agree with this. Qualia are modes of disclosure, and (in perception) exist in virtue of a relationship between observer and observed. This alone does not distinguish from A.

But as I pointed out earlier, this is a one sided relationship, where the brain is working furiously, burning calories to instantiate the relationship, while the distal object just sits there. Qualia don't need distal objects, per hallucination, imagination and dreaming. Whereas without brains, there are no qualia. Qualia are features of brains, that instantiate (in perception) in relation to distal objects.

Do you disagree with any of the above?

I agree: the brain does all the metabolic work. I agree: without brains, no qualia. I agree: qualia can occur endogenously — hallucination, dreaming, imagination. I agree: the distal object "just sits there." I agree: qualia exist in virtue of a relationship between observer and observed, and that this relationship is asymmetric.

Where I disagree is with the inference from all of the above to "qualia are features of brains." Qualia are features of conscious acts (modes of disclosure) that brains enable.

The question between us, then, is not whether the brain is necessary for qualia (obviously yes), or whether the brain is doing the causal work (obviously yes), but whether "enabled by the brain" entails "an inner item interposed between subject and world." I've been arguing throughout that it doesn't — that causal dependence on a system is not the same as epistemic mediation by an inner object of awareness.

Type conflict and type coercion:

I think I am applying the same standard to all three operations: interpretation, memory, and perception. All three are acts. All three have outcomes. And all three have goals: what the outcome should be. The latter two are the terms of our dyad.

I think we are in agreement on the outcome: Focusing on the goal: What is the goal of interpretation? To produce a meaning consistent with intent, context, and norms. Or, to produce a meaning reflecting the meaning in the speakers head. Not to take the meaning out of the speaker's head, and somehow put it in our own. That is not possible. Success is when the first term of the dyad matches the second: when the interpretation produced reflects the appropriate norms, or the speaker's meaning. Note that under your interpretation, the terms of the dyad could never match, as the goal cannot be fulfilled.

What is the goal of memory? To produce an experience matching an experience that happened in the past. Not to somehow transpose a past experience into the present. That is not possible. Success is when the terms of the dyad match: the actual remembered experience matches the past experience. Again, under your interpretation the dyad could never match.

What is the goal of perception? To produce a relevant fact about the world that tracks the world's built in normative properties. What is the outcome? A perception. However you define it, a perception certainly is not a fact. There must be an additional operation: a type coercion, taking a perception, and producing a fact about the world. Only then can the dyad be matched.

This type coercion is what you call "inference". It is the mental operation whereby facts are derived from perception. It introduces the danger you are likely familiar with: there is no guarantee that the outcome is really a fact about the world at all. It might be derived from a hallucination, not a world tracking perception. This result is not just false, it is nonsense.

Note that this is not a concern with interpretation or memory at all. Good or bad, the result of interpretation must be an interpretation. True or false, a recall event must be an experience. There is no room for it to be otherwise. The "type coercion" which only features in perception is the root of radical multiple realizability, and thus strong epistemic mediation.

A curious analogy

The part of your response I found most surprising was the translation analogy. Either you made a mistake, or we have a major disagreement about what "direct" means. It is hard for me to imagine the perspective whereby a translation provides direct access to to Homer. The translation is exactly what we have direct access to, it is exactly through this "translation-object" that we access Homer. This is a striking example of one of the mistakes that run throughout your writing: the equation of intentional target and directness.

What indirect realism is not

IR does not say: "qualia are the intentional target of perception". IR is perfectly content with the distal object as the intentional target. Although importantly, qualia may be the target as well. Intention is orthogonal to directness, intention may target what is direct or indirect.

Just as, we usually intentionally focus on the action TV images portray, not the flickering 2d images as such. We usually focus on Homers meaning, not the qualities of the translation.

IR does not say: "the subject only sees qualia." Seeing is a relationship between subject and object whereby the subject sees the object through the experience of qualia. By experiencing qualia, the subject can see something that qualia themselves are not: the distal object.

Just as, we really do see the subject of a photograph, by seeing the photograph. We really do experience Homer's meanings by reading his translation.

IR does say: The relationship between experience and object is characterized by epistemic mediation, whereby experience meditates epistemic access to the object.

Epistemic mediation: a better definition

I think this gives a more intuitive picture of what epistemic mediation actually is:

Epistemic mediation is a special type of casual relationship between what is at hand and what is not, whereby what is at hand grants epistemic access to what is not.

The photograph and its subject are casually related in such a way that the photograph, at hand, grants epistemic access to the subject, not at hand. Homer and his translation are casually related in such a way that his translation, at hand, grants epistemic access to what is not at hand, Homer. And experience, the IRist claims, are casually related such that experience, at hand, grants epistemic access to distal objects, not at hand.

Do you agree with this definition?

Whereas I see two mutually incompatible accounts of perception that both happen to reject naive realism — one reifying phenomenal character into an inner intermediary, and one treating it as a mode of disclosure. — Esse Quam Videri

It's an epistemic intermediary because my intellect cannot reach out beyond my body to grasp the mind-independent nature of distal objects. The phenomenal character of first-person experience is the only non-inferential "information" accessible to me. That's an unavoidable consequence of B over A.

And I'm not entirely sure what you mean by reifying phenomenal character. If you think that I think that phenomenal character is some material object with extension and mass, and that I'm a homunculus looking at and touching this phenomenal character as a Cartesian theatre, then you are clearly misunderstanding me.

1) On "type coercion" and inference
Your framing is interesting, but it assumes what needs to be argued. You say perception produces a perception, but its goal is a world-fact, so there must be an additional operation that "coerces" perception into a fact.

But this already presupposes that perceptual experience arrives typed as non-worldly — as a free-floating inner item that must be interpreted into world-directed content. On the phenomenology I'm defending, perceptual experience is not merely an inner episode that later gets coerced into a world-fact. It already purports to disclose the world, albeit defeasibly and corrigibly. Judgment is not a type-conversion from perception into fact; it is the normative ratification of what perception already presents.

So yes, judgment introduces explicit commitment. But the world-directedness is not added by inference; it is intrinsic to the perceptual act.

2) On "matching" in interpretation and memory
You suggest that on my view the dyad in interpretation or memory could never "match," because we can't literally transpose the speaker's meaning or the past experience into the present.

But matching does not require numerical identity, or even identity of ontological type. Interpretation succeeds when it grasps the same meaning — repeatable content, not the same mental token. Memory succeeds when it recalls what occurred, not when it recreates the past episode as numerically the same experience.

You say interpretation can match its target because both are meanings. But a perception can also match its target in the relevant sense: it can accurately disclose a state of affairs. "Matching" in every case means getting it right — grasping what is the case. That doesn't require the cognitive act and its target to be of the same ontological type. A measurement can be correct without the act of measuring being the same kind of thing as the quantity measured. No one treats a measurement as an intermediary object between the scientist and the measured quantity — it's a successful cognitive achievement.

3) On translation and "directness"
You say it's obvious that in translation we have direct access to the translation-object and only indirect access to Homer. But that presupposes that "direct" means "physically at hand."

On my usage, "direct" is intentional: what is directly grasped is what the act is of. When I read Homer in English, I am indeed reading English words. But what I understand through those words is Homer's meaning. The words are the vehicle of understanding, not its terminus. Similarly, neural activity is the vehicle of perception, not its terminus. In both cases, there is a causal and semantic vehicle that I operate through rather than an intermediary that I am aware of.

This is exactly the distinction I'm drawing in perception: the enabling vehicle is not automatically an epistemic intermediary object.

4) On your clarification of what IR is and isn't
I want to highlight something important. You now say that IR does not say qualia are the intentional target of perception — the distal object is the target. IR does not say the subject only sees qualia — the subject sees the distal object through qualia. Qualia are the medium through which seeing occurs.

But notice: the intentional target is the distal object, the subject sees the distal object, and qualia are the medium through which this seeing occurs. That is precisely what I have been calling operational mediation — the system's activity constitutes the subject's awareness of the world, and phenomenal character is the mode of that awareness. You are describing my view and labeling it IR.

So I'll ask directly: what is the substantive difference between your position and mine? If it is that you prefer the word "indirect" for any cognition that proceeds through a vehicle or medium, then the disagreement is terminological rather than philosophical.

5) On your definition of epistemic mediation
You propose: epistemic mediation is a causal relationship whereby what is at hand grants epistemic access to what is not at hand.

I agree with this as a definition of operational mediation. But if you mean it as a definition of indirect realism, it applies to all cognition — memory, reasoning, interpretation, perception alike — and the distinctive IR thesis drops out. "Experience grants epistemic access to the world" is just another way of saying perception is intentional. It doesn't yet establish that experience is an intermediary object.

You've now offered several definitions of epistemic mediation over the course of our exchange — physical intermediary, multiple realizability, radical multiple realizability, and now "what is at hand granting access to what is not." In each case, the definition has turned out to be either too broad (applying to all cognition, making IR trivially true) or question-begging (presupposing that the vehicle of awareness is an object of awareness). I don't think that pattern is accidental.

The real question remains: does the vehicle of perceptual access become an object of awareness? That is the step that separates IR from DR, and it is the step that has not been established.

It's an epistemic intermediary because my intellect cannot reach out beyond my body to grasp the mind-independent nature of distal objects. — Michael

This is the core of our disagreement, and I think it's worth flagging that it's a metaphor, not an argument. It pictures the mind as an enclosed space and knowing as a kind of reaching. The entire "intentionality" tradition, from Brentano onward, challenges exactly this picture: to be conscious is already to be directed beyond oneself. The question "how does the mind get outside itself?" presupposes a separation that intentionality denies.

On reification: I don't think you're imagining a Cartesian theatre, per se. But when you say phenomenal character is "the only non-inferential information accessible to me," you're treating it as something to be accessed — an item the intellect has contact with. I'm saying it's not an item accessed but the accessing itself — the mode in which the world shows up. That's the distinction I mean by reification, and it doesn't require homunculi.

As explained before, I'm not concerned with intentionality; I'm concerned with distal objects and their properties not being constituents of first-person experience, and so with phenomenal qualities being mental phenomena and epistemic intermediaries. Describing these phenomenal qualities — whether colours, smells, tastes, or pains — as being "the mode in which the world shows up" doesn't make what I'm saying any less true. If anything, this phrasing is vacuous; nothing more than the truism that this is what the world causes me to experience.

Yes, we have now restated our divergence (once again): you see a vacuous terminological dispute, I see a substantive metaphysical disagreement. I think this is as far as we're going to get.

On my usage, "direct" is intentional: what is directly grasped is what the act is of. — Esse Quam Videri

This then is the core disagreement. I believe your usage diverges totally from the larger debate.

So yes, I'm in full agreement that, by your usage, perception is "direct". But your usage is vacuous: by it, everything is direct, even our contact with Homer.

In your mind, is it possible to be indirectly aware of anything at all?

The real question remains: does the vehicle of perceptual access become an object of awareness? — Esse Quam Videri

Obviously we are aware of perceptual awareness, and obviously we can intentionally target it. To me, that is what matters. That under some definitions it is not an "object" I afford zero significance.

I don't think my view has trouble accommodating indirect awareness. I am indirectly aware of a crime scene through eyewitness testimony; indirectly aware of what’s behind me through a mirror; indirectly aware of a distant galaxy through a telescope photograph.

In each case, there is a distinct intermediary that I am aware of, and through which I form beliefs about something further. The intermediary can be identified, inspected, and evaluated on its own terms. That is what makes the access indirect.

Perception is not like this. In ordinary perception there is no independently characterizable intermediary that I am aware of and through which I infer the world. The phenomenal character of the perceptual act is not something I first inspect and then use to reach the world — it is my awareness of the world. That’s the distinction, and it isn’t vacuous. It separates cases with a genuine epistemic intermediary from cases where the cognitive act just is the subject's engagement with its target.

And yes, I agree that contact with Homer through translation has the structure of indirectness on my account. You are aware of the English text as a distinct, inspectable intermediary, and you access Homer’s meaning through it. You can evaluate the translation on its own terms, compare translations, notice the translator’s choices, etc.

On your second point: you say “obviously we are aware of perceptual awareness, and obviously we can intentionally target it.” I agree — but that’s introspection, and it’s a distinct cognitive act. “I can attend to my seeing” is not the same as “in every act of seeing I am aware of an intermediary.” The possibility of introspection doesn’t entail that perception is always mediated by an object of introspective awareness.

So you have dropped intentionality as a criterion, and are back to what I was advocating for when I suggested a photograph as a model for the IR claim. But note the difficulties this creates. Just as intentionality is too broad a criterion, making everything direct, intermediating object is too broad, making everything indirect:

* Seeing through glass is indirect
* Wearing glasses renders vision indirect, as it introduces visible distortions and spots
* Smoke and fog make all seeing indirect

Moreover, you have to make some very counterintuitive claims in order to make perception, but not seeing through glass, "direct":

* Awareness of the red of a stop sign is "introspection"
* Awareness of the sound of a chime is "introspection"
* Awareness of the smell of ammonia is "introspection"
Even listening to music, which doesn't have a real distal object at all: "introspection"

I don't agree. I don't think there is any introspective cognitive act between hearing a chime and being aware of the sound of a chime. What is your evidence of this intermediary?

But, you are making an even stronger (and stranger) claim: that awareness is first of the object itself, and only secondarily, via introspection, of the sensation. Forget phenomenology, how does this even work on a systems level? How does awareness of the object come first, when the sensation is exactly what reveals it?

How would you answer a TV junkie who makes your argument for a TV? "I'm directly aware of the action on the TV, not the TV. The physical TV is the enablement of my awareness of the action. The TV is how the action presents itself to me. Awareness of the TV itself is possible, but only secondarily, as an act of introspection. It itself is not an independent object of perception."

I guess that some reality junkies would make the same arguments for reality should not be surprising.

...my intellect cannot reach out beyond my body to grasp the mind-independent nature of distal objects. — Michael

:meh:

...my intellect cannot reach out beyond my body to grasp the mind-independent nature of distal objects. — Michael

That's a strange thing to say. My reply would be that your actions in the world contradict this.