Then you're just splitting hairs over the meaning of the term "qualia". There's a reason I started the discussion by using the term "mental phenomena". It's a bit more inclusive. — Michael

I don't think it's hair splitting to contest your claim that qualia are the direct objects of perception, or to press the point that determinate objecthood is necessary for reference.

But it sounds like what you really mean is that all perceptual content — not just qualitative feel, but also structural features like unity, identity, persistence, relationality, and modality — is ultimately “mental stuff.” If so, a few questions arise:

(1) How can the normativity and public assessability of perception be explained if all perceptual content is inherently private?

(2) What explanatory work does the hypothesis that all perceptual content is “mental stuff” actually do that cannot be done otherwise?

(3) What reason is there to think that the “structural” contents of perception (identity, unity, relationality, modality, etc.) cannot in principle be explained as the mind grasping the structure of mind-independent reality?

Until those questions are answered, I don’t see why indirect realism should be regarded as obligatory rather than optional — or why it should be preferred over a direct realist account that treats perception as fallible but world-disclosing.

I don't think it's hair splitting to contest your claim that qualia are the direct objects of perception, or to press the point that determinate objecthood is necessary for reference. — Esse Quam Videri

I have always found this whole debate somewhat ridiculous. It has always seemed to me to be nothing more than arguing about terminology. We can say, without going in to any detail, that the visual environment stimulates the visual cortex such as to form a visual image, in some way analogous to how an image is formed on a photographic emulsion or digital sensor.

Then it may be said that the visual image just is the seeing of the environment―that's one way of talking about it. Or it may be said that the visual image is what is seen― and that's another way of talking about it. The latter way of talking, though, is more inherently dualistic because it invokes an homunculus that does the seeing, whereas in the former way of talking it is simply the sentient body that sees the environment.

So, we have two different ways of conceptualizing what is going on and no way of determining that one is true and the other false. Personally I prefer the "direct" description on the grounds of parsimony and a distaste for dualism. What I don't see any point in is arguing about it, because such arguments never pass the point of talking past one another. As far as I have read it, this whole thread has been an altogether wasteful and pointless exercise in each side talking past the other.

I have always found this whole debate somewhat ridiculous. It has always seemed to me to be nothing more than arguing about terminology.

...

So, we have two different ways of conceptualizing what is going on and no way of determining that one is true and the other false. — Janus

Yep, I mean this is how most people I know feel about philosophical debate in general. And to be honest, I often feel this way myself (especially after 43 pages). Personally, I still find it interesting and entertaining to engage in discussions like this because I like to explore and understand the nuances. But at the end of the day, I do think it's mostly an exercise in cost-benefit analysis in an attempt to build a philosophical outlook that one feels at home in. That's not to say that I don't stand by my opinions, but I don't really expect the debate to come to a tidy resolution either.

:up: I also stand by my preference for the DR view, and I totally get your interest in exploring the nuances of the various arguments even though I no longer share it.

Cheers :up:

Nicely worded and astute.

. The TLDR is that, on my view, perception is an intrinsically normative and publicly assessable act that is not fully reducible to causal analysis. In order for perception to be publicly assessable, whatever plays the role of "the object of perception" must satisfy criteria of re-identification and intersubjective reference that qualia, as such, cannot satisfy. — Esse Quam Videri

I see why @Michael was talking about the "multi-user VR goggles" case. It seems like your view precludes acknowledging the clear representationalism of the user-facing visualizations in this scenario. I'll try to take a look and see where this thread went.

The images absolutely do have criteria of identity and persistence. They can be re-identified across frames, inspected for artifacts, compared with other feeds, paused, replayed, etc. That’s precisely why they can function as intermediaries. They have a determinate structure independent of the distal apple. — Esse Quam Videri

Ok, I agree here.

I apologize if I have given the impression that I would accept the three of these claims. While I would accept the first with qualifications, I would not accept the other two. Those two claims are basically the whole indirect realist picture. If you assume them, then of course “qualia as intermediary” follows — but that’s exactly what’s at issue. — Esse Quam Videri

I didn't mean to imply you would accept these. I proposed these to show that the IR claim doesn't require a notion of qualia as objects to be fulfilled. And it sounds like you agree that if these claims are true, qualia are intermediaries.

Looking at these two claims you don't accept again:

1 Qualia are logically prior to apprehension of the object
2 Qualia the sole constituent of experience, such that were it removed from experience, nothing would remain

If qualia are "how the distal object presents itself to the subject": Doesn't 1 have to be true? If qualia are how the distal object presents itself, the distal object cannot present itself without qualia. Yet, qualia can be experienced without a distal object. The perception of qualia has no precondition, but the perception of distal objects require qualia.

And, doesn't 2 have to be true, following from 1? If qualia are necessary for object apprehension, the removal of qualia from experience removes any perception of the object as well. Leaving, nothing.

In other words, aren't you already committed to qualia as an intermediary? Just not qualia as an intermediating "object"?

:up:

I see why @Michael was talking about the "multi-user VR goggles" case. It seems like your view precludes acknowledging the clear representationalism of the user-facing visualizations in this scenario. — hypericin

I actually fully acknowledge the representationalism of the user-facing visualizations in Michael’s VR goggle-scenario. Likewise, I fully acknowledge that the brain creates similar models/representations as part of its operations. My claim is that perception cannot be fully accounted for at this level of analysis.

For me, this is really a question of reductionism. There are many “levels” at which one might try analyze “perception”:

1. Quantum Physics
photon interactions, electron transitions, quantum electrodynamics

2. Statistical / Classical Physics
optics, wave propagation, thermodynamics, mechanics
(this is hugely important for perception — lenses, diffraction, sound waves, etc.)

3. Physical Chemistry
molecular bonding, electrochemical gradients, membrane potentials

4. Organic Chemistry
photopigments, neurotransmitters, receptor proteins

5. Biochemistry / Molecular Biology
signal transduction cascades (opsins, ion channels, second messengers)

6. Cellular Biology
neuron physiology, action potentials, synaptic transmission

7. Systems Neurobiology
retinal circuits, LGN, cortical pathways, dorsal/ventral streams

8. Computational Neuroscience
firing-rate models, spiking models, predictive coding, population coding

9. Machine Learning / Structured Neural Computation
structured connectionism, deep nets, feature hierarchies, representational learning

10. Cognitive Science / Psychology
attention, object recognition, gestalt grouping, perceptual constancies

11. Phenomenology / Conscious Experience
the “what-it’s-like,” figure/ground, presence/absence, salience
(this is a distinct layer from cognitive science, and leaving it out creates a gap)

12. Rational Agency (Space of Reasons)
perceptual judgment, justification, error, evidence-responsiveness

13. Practical Agency / Action (Space of Action)
decision, intention, responsibility, value-guided perception

@Michael seems to think that the question “what is the object of perception?” is settled by causal/functional analysis at levels 7 - 10.

I disagree. I think that at that level of analysis the question is left completely underdetermined. I think the question can only be settled at levels 11 - 13.

And while levels 11 - 13 are realized by the levels below them, they are not reducible to them. Yes, perception is mediated by levels 7 - 10, but this is causal mediation, not epistemic mediation.

It is only at levels 11 - 13 where epistemic normativity arises. This is where things like truth, reference, intentionaltiy and justification are found. The question “what is the object of perception?” is answered here, not at the levels below.

Michael will say that I’m just “changing the subject” by insisting that the question be answered at these levels. But historically, this is precisely where the debate took place.

If one actually takes the time to explore the work of the pre-modern realists - Aristotle, Aquinas, Scotus, Suarez, the Conimbricenses - none of them denied that perception was causally mediated, nor that the intellect works with “internal models” (e.g. “form”, “phantasm”, “formal sign”, “idea”, etc.). But for them, these aren’t what you see, they are what you see with (or, perhaps, how you see). This is in direct contrast with the indirect realism of Locke and Descartes (and their progeny) who maintained that we only ever see the idea itself. The external world must be inferred.

Even a naive-color realist like Aquinas would not have denied the modern scientific analysis at levels 7 - 10. He probably would have tempered his color realism a bit, but he would have had no problem with the idea that the brain generates models of its environment.

And that’s because, for someone like Aquinas, the directness of perception simply is not decided by whether distal objects are coloured, or whether perception is causally mediated. For Aquinas, perception is direct because the external thing itself is the intentional object of the sensory act, while the internal models are merely the causal means by which that object is made present to the perceiver.

So the idea that the debate between IR and DR is “just about colour realism” or is “settled by modern science” is not only historically inaccurate, but fundamentally misguided. Not only does it mislocate the debate, but it doesn’t even address how many of the most sophisticated pre-modern direct realists actually cashed out “directness”.

Looking at these two claims you don't accept again:

1 Qualia are logically prior to apprehension of the object
2 Qualia the sole constituent of experience, such that were it removed from experience, nothing would remain

If qualia are "how the distal object presents itself to the subject": Doesn't 1 have to be true? — hypericin

No. When we perceive an object such as an apple we are presented with an apple – not with “apple + qualia”. The presentation of the apple has a qualitative aspect to it, but the qualitative aspect is not itself explicitly thematized or objectified independently of the apple within ordinary perception.

If qualia are how the distal object presents itself, the distal object cannot present itself without qualia. Yet, qualia can be experienced without a distal object. The perception of qualia has no precondition, but the perception of distal objects require qualia. — hypericin

The fact that perception of distal objects probably requires qualia does not entail that qualia are what we perceive. Perception of distal objects requires all kinds of things: light, sense organs, neural circuitry, computation of edge maps, contour maps, motion vectors, depth maps, color gradients, etc., etc., but none of these is what is perceived.

As discussed above, this kind of mistake results from trying to decide the question “what is the object of perception?” at the wrong level of analysis.

And, doesn't 2 have to be true, following from 1? If qualia are necessary for object apprehension, the removal of qualia from experience removes any perception of the object as well. Leaving, nothing. — hypericin

This doesn’t follow. That qualia are required for object apprehension does not entail that object apprehension is exhausted by qualia. There is more to the presentation of an object than just the qualitative aspect.

There are also things like identity, persistence, relationality, modality, presence, absence, temporality, locatedness, etc, etc. that all contribute to what we apprehend as an “object”.

This was Kant’s insight (though he wasn’t the first to see it): objects are not presented to us as bundles of qualia, they have a robust intelligible structure that is not reducible to bare sensation.

In other words, aren't you already committed to qualia as an intermediary? Just not qualia as an intermediating "object"? — hypericin

Yes, but the fact that something mediates perception is not sufficient to establish it as the object of perception. Again, all kinds of things mediate perception that we wouldn’t try to identify as the object of perception (light, sense organs, neural circuitry, etc., etc.)

(1) How can the normativity and public assessability of perception be explained if all perceptual content is inherently private? — Esse Quam Videri

You and I seem quite capable of having a conversation and talking about world affairs, the colour of the dress, and headaches without ever having direct perception of the same things given that we've never met in person. The same would be true even if I was raised alone in a room by people on monitors, or if we all wore those visors. So rather than asking me to explain how this is possible, I think the burden is on you to explain why it wouldn't be.

(2) What explanatory work does the hypothesis that all perceptual content is “mental stuff” actually do that cannot be done otherwise? — Esse Quam Videri

The "explanatory work" is that it's entailed by our understanding of physics, physiology, neuroscience, and psychology, hence indirect realism being the scientific view of perception.

(3) What reason is there to think that the “structural” contents of perception (identity, unity, relationality, modality, etc.) cannot in principle be explained as the mind grasping the structure of mind-independent reality? — Esse Quam Videri

The mind "grasping" the structure of mind-independent reality is a really vague claim. What exactly do you mean by it? Does my mind "grasp" the fact that quarks are fundamental particles with color charge and spin? To an extent perhaps, but I'm no physicist. Regardless, none of us has direct perception of quarks.

And I'm not saying that we cannot in principle do whatever it is. I'm saying that whatever it is only in practice achieved indirectly. These same "structural" contents occur even if subjective idealism true, even if we're Boltzmann brains, even if we're dreaming, even if we're hallucinating, and even if light is slow and the apple was disintegrated five seconds ago. So these mind-independent objects are not necessary (except to whatever extent they're causally necessary).

Taking your points in order:

You and I seem quite capable of having a conversation and talking about world affairs, the colour of the dress, and headaches without ever having direct perception of the same things given that we've never met in person. The same would be true even if I was raised alone in a room by people on monitors, or if we all wore those visors. So rather than asking me to explain how this is possible, I think the burden is on you to explain why it wouldn't be — Michael

The burden-shifting move here doesn't quite work. The question isn't whether we can talk about the world — of course we can coordinate linguistically even under highly degraded conditions. The question is what grounds the normativity of that coordination. When I say the dress is blue and you say it's gold, we treat that as a genuine disagreement about how the dress is, not merely a discrepancy between two private mental states. But if all perceptual content is inherently private, then there's nothing we're both directed toward that could make one of us right and the other wrong. You'd need to reconstruct normativity from scratch out of private representations plus some coordination mechanism — and every attempt to do that either smuggles in a shared world or collapses into mere behavioral agreement with no genuine correctness conditions.

Your monitor-room scenario actually illustrates the problem. The person raised in that room could still make true or false claims about what's on the monitors. But could they make true or false claims about the world beyond the monitors? Only if you grant that their cognitive operations are in some way answerable to how things actually are — and that answerability is precisely what I mean by the mind being directed toward mind-independent reality. If you deny that, you lose the normative dimension entirely.

The "explanatory work" is that it's entailed by our understanding of physics, physiology, neuroscience, and psychology, hence indirect realism being the scientific view of perception. — Michael

This conflates two very different claims. Physics, physiology, and neuroscience tell us that perception is causally mediated — that there's a complex causal chain from object to experience. No one disputes that. But causal mediation doesn't entail that what we are aware of in perception is a mental intermediary rather than the world itself. That's a further philosophical inference, and it's precisely the one I'm questioning.

Consider: the fact that I see the tree by means of light waves, retinal stimulation, and neural processing doesn't by itself tell me whether I'm aware of the tree or aware of a mental representation of the tree. The causal story is equally compatible with a view on which the whole causal apparatus is the means by which the world itself becomes present to a knower. Treating "indirectness of causal mechanism" as equivalent to "indirectness of awareness" is a non sequitur, and one that the sciences themselves don't actually commit to — it's a philosophical gloss on the science, not a deliverable of the science.

The mind "grasping" the structure of mind-independent reality is a really vague claim. What exactly do you mean by it? Does my mind "grasp" the fact that quarks are fundamental particles with color charge and spin? To an extent perhaps, but I'm no physicist. Regardless, none of us has direct perception of quarks.

And I'm not saying that we cannot in principle do whatever it is. I'm saying that whatever it is only in practice achieved indirectly. These same "structural" contents occur even if subjective idealism true, even if we're Boltzmann brains, even if we're dreaming, even if we're hallucinating, and even if light is slow and the apple was disintegrated five seconds ago. So these mind-independent objects are not necessary (except to whatever extent they're causally necessary). — Michael

By the mind "grasping" the structure of mind-independent reality, I mean something fairly precise: that in acts of understanding, we identify intelligible patterns (relations, unities, regularities, dependencies) that hold in reality itself, not just in our representations. When a physicist understands color charge, they aren't just manipulating symbols — they've grasped something about how quarks actually behave, and that grasp is confirmed (or disconfirmed) by whether the predictions it generates pan out. The fact that none of us perceives quarks directly is beside the point; the structure of reality is grasped through inquiry which is mediated by direct perception the world. It's success conditions are set by how things are, not by how they appear.

Now, you say these "structural contents" would be present even under subjective idealism, Boltzmann brain scenarios, dreaming, and so on. This is just the classical skeptical move, and it proves far too much. By the same reasoning, you could say that no belief is justified, since any belief is compatible with a skeptical scenario. The force of skeptical possibilities depends entirely on whether we have positive reasons to take them seriously, and in the normal case we don't. More importantly, the fact that something could in principle be produced without the object doesn't show that in the actual case it is produced without the object. My visual experience of the apple could in principle be produced by a demon, but the relevant question is whether, in the normal case, the best explanation of the experience's specific content, its systematic revisability, and its integration with successful action is that it puts me in contact with an actual apple.

The slow-light scenario is instructive here. Yes, if light has a travel time, then the object might have changed by the time I see it. But this is a limitation on perceptual currency, not evidence that I'm perceiving a mental object rather than a physical one. When I look at a star and see it as it was eight years ago, I'm still seeing the star — I'm just seeing it as it was, not as it is. Temporal lag doesn't convert direct awareness of objects into awareness of mental intermediaries.

But could they make true or false claims about the world beyond the monitors? Only if you grant that their cognitive operations are in some way answerable to how things actually are — and that answerability is precisely what I mean by the mind being directed toward mind-independent reality. If you deny that, you lose the normative dimension entirely. — Esse Quam Videri

This highlights the precise problem with your approach. Both of these are true in this scenario:

1. Their mind is "directed" towards the world beyond the monitors
2. They do not have direct perception of the world beyond the monitors

So even if our minds are "directed" towards a mind-independent world it does not follow that we have direct perception of it. The former is a red herring.

But causal mediation doesn't entail that what we are aware of in perception is a mental intermediary rather than the world itself. — Esse Quam Videri

It's not a case of either/or. We need to distinguish between direct awareness and indirect awareness. We can be indirectly aware of the world without being directly aware it.

So the question is; does our perceptual awareness of the world qualify as direct perception? Again, like with the monitor above, that our minds are "directed" towards the world does not entail that we have direct perception of it. More is required, and as I've argued before, this "more" concerns the constituents of first-person phenomenal experience. Modern science has firmly established that distal objects are not constituents of first-person phenomenal experience — hence the fall of naive realism — and so that we do not have direct perception of them.

By the mind "grasping" the structure of mind-independent reality, I mean something fairly precise: that in acts of understanding, we identify intelligible patterns (relations, unities, regularities, dependencies) that hold in reality itself, not just in our representations. — Esse Quam Videri

I haven't said that they only hold in our representations; I have only said that they do hold in our representations. A common argument you seem to make is that a) the direct objects of perception have structure, that b) mental phenomena can't have structure, and so that c) the direct objects of perception can't be mental phenomena. I reject (b); they can and they do.

So as you don't like to say that we have direct perception of qualia, I will instead say that we have direct perception of structured mental phenomena with (mind-dependent) qualitative properties and which erroneously seem to be distal objects — hence the allure of naive realism, and why our minds are "directed" towards a putative mind-independent world. And in the case that subjective idealism is false and we are not Boltzmann brains, this direct perception mediates indirect perception of appropriate distal causes (with structures which might "mirror" in some sense the structure of the mental phenomena — given their causal role — hence representational realism).

I think there's a crucial equivocation running through your response that's worth surfacing, because it's doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

So even if our minds are "directed" towards a mind-independent world it does not follow that we have direct perception of it — Michael

You're right that in the monitor scenario, the person's mind is directed toward the world beyond the monitors without having direct perception of it. But the analogy breaks down at the decisive point. In the monitor case, we can independently specify both the monitors and the world beyond them — we can walk around the room, inspect the cameras, trace the causal chain, and verify that the monitors are intermediaries. The distinction between "what's on the screen" and "what's out there" is itself something we establish through further acts of perception and inquiry.

But in the perceptual case as you describe it, no such independent access is even in principle available. The "mental phenomena" you posit as the direct objects of perception are not something we discover between ourselves and the world the way we discover monitors between a person and an outside scene. They're postulated precisely because of a prior philosophical commitment — that the causal mediation of perception entails an intermediary object of awareness. The monitor analogy presupposes the very framework of direct perceptual access to a mind-independent world (we see the room, the monitors, the cameras) in order to motivate the claim that such access is never available. That's self-undermining.

It's not a case of either/or. We need to distinguish between direct awareness and indirect awareness. We can be indirectly aware of the world without being directly aware it. — Michael

You say we need to distinguish between direct and indirect awareness, and that modern science has "firmly established" that distal objects are not constituents of first-person phenomenal experience. But this is where I think you're moving too quickly from a scientific claim to a philosophical one. What science establishes is the causal story — photons, retinal transduction, neural processing. What science does not establish is a claim about the object of awareness. The claim that the direct object of awareness must be a "constituent" of experience in some quasi-mereological sense — that the apple must somehow be part of my experience in order for me to perceive it — is not a scientific finding. It's a philosophical assumption about what perception requires, and it's precisely the assumption I'm questioning.

On a different account of perception, awareness isn't a relation between a subject and an internal constituent but an act by which the subject is related to what is other than itself. The distal object doesn't need to be a "constituent" of experience; it needs to be what the experience is of, in a way that is specified by the intelligible content of the act. The demand that the object be a constituent is what generates the intermediary in the first place, and it's not obvious why we should accept that demand.

A common argument you seem to make is that a) the direct objects of perception have structure, that b) mental phenomena can't have structure, and so that c) the direct objects of perception can't be mental phenomena. I reject (b); they can and they do. — Michael

You say you reject my premise (b) — that mental phenomena can't have structure — and insist they can and do. I actually agree that mental phenomena have structure; that was never my claim. My claim is about the explanatory order. You're proposing that we start with structured mental phenomena that "erroneously seem to be distal objects," and that in favorable cases these mediate indirect perception of distal causes whose structure "mirrors" the structure of the mental phenomena. But this picture raises a serious question: what accounts for the structural mirroring?

On your view, the structural correspondence between mental phenomena and distal causes is something we discover after the fact — a happy coincidence or an evolved correlation that we posit to explain the reliability of our representations. But on the view I'm advancing, the structural correspondence isn't a coincidence requiring explanation; it's constitutive of what it means to understand. When an act of understanding grasps an intelligible pattern, the identity of the pattern grasped and the pattern in reality isn't a "mirroring" between two numerically distinct structures — it's one and the same intelligibility, accessed through different modes (being in reality, and being understood by a mind). The physicist's understanding of color charge and the actual behavior of quarks aren't two structurally similar items; the understanding is the intelligibility of the quark behavior as received in the mode of cognition.

This matters because your "mirroring" picture leaves you with an unbridgeable explanatory gap: how do you ever get from "my mental phenomena have this structure" to "the world has this structure" without already presupposing the cognitive access you're trying to explain? If all you ever directly perceive are structured mental phenomena, then the claim that distal causes have a mirroring structure is itself something you can only ever arrive at through those same mental phenomena — which means it's either circular or it requires some mode of cognitive access to reality that isn't reducible to perceiving mental intermediaries. And that mode of access is exactly what I've been pointing to all along.

We have direct visual perception of mental phenomena/qualia/sense data — Michael

Well "direct visual perception" carried as a metaphor and neuro-biological process that exhibits noticeable mentally storable events may come to know itself as phenomena, qualia and sense data from categorization as recognised patterns of meta data if it be chemical potentials or something like chemical electrical charges that consciousness as a mental event can perceive. Conceiving of it as neuro-biological but also as a plasticity of awareness and ordering reflects on some aspects of brain topographic specialism being able to relate with some degree of conscious reflection like a machine knowing its different parts are working at different times but then develops a patterning memory which becomes a repository of significance over time.

On the monitor

The crux of my point was that these are non sequiturs:

A1. Our minds are "directed" towards X
A2. Therefore, we have direct perception of X

B1. Our cognitive operations are “answerable” to X
B2. Therefore, we have direct perception of X

This is shown to be so when X is “the world beyond the monitor”.

So direct perception must be explained in some terms other than A1 or B1.

On the science of perception

We're just going around in circles meaning different things by "direct perception". Given what naive and indirect realists mean by "direct perception", indirect realism is the scientific view of perception. As above, it’s not about A1 or B1. It’s about phenomenology and the ontological separation between experience (and its qualities) and distal objects (and their properties). That’s all it means for our experience of distal objects to be indirect.

On the structural "mirroring"

It's "accounted for" by the fact that distal objects and their properties are (usually) causally responsible for first-person phenomenal experience, and if the cause changes then the effect often changes. The colour I see is determined by the wavelength of the light (and my biology), so when the wavelength changes to a sufficient degree the colour I see changes. But differences in biology can entail that a greater degree of change in the wavelength is “hidden” because it does not affect a change in the colour seen, hence this colour being an epistemic intermediary.

You keep reverting to talk of intentional target. But we previously agreed that intentional target has little place in the discussion. If when reading a translation of Homer, Homer is our intentional target, then there can be no relation between "direct object of perception" and "intentional target". There can be no perception less direct than our perception of Homer.

I actually fully acknowledge the representationalism of the user-facing visualizations in Michael’s VR goggle-scenario. Likewise, I fully acknowledge that the brain creates similar models/representations as part of its operations. — Esse Quam Videri

In your breakdown of levels of analysis, which number(s) do you think the brain's models fall under? I, and I assume most IRists, believe that these models are the objects of phenomenology. And so they straddle 7-10, in their third person, causal description, and 11, in their first person experience.
.
Either these models are the objects of perception of level 11, and so IR is true. Or, I'm not sure what you think these models are doing, and why you believe they exist.

The fact that perception of distal objects probably requires qualia does not entail that qualia are what we perceive. Perception of distal objects requires all kinds of things: light, sense organs, neural circuitry, computation of edge maps, contour maps, motion vectors, depth maps, color gradients, etc., etc., but none of these is what is perceived. — Esse Quam Videri

None of these other requirements (many of which sound more at home in computer graphics than neurology?) are themselves perceived. But qualia are.

Qualia are perceived, and are required to perceive distal objects. But distal objects are not required to perceive qualia. Therefore, the perception of qualia is logically prior to the perception of distal objects.

This doesn’t follow. That qualia are required for object apprehension does not entail that object apprehension is exhausted by qualia. There is more to the presentation of an object than just the qualitative aspect. — Esse Quam Videri

I'm granting that there is more to the presentation of the object than qualia. But, because qualia are logically prior to the perception of distal objects, if qualia were removed, so would all these other features of the perception of objects.

When an act of understanding grasps an intelligible pattern, the identity of the pattern grasped and the pattern in reality isn't a "mirroring" between two numerically distinct structures — it's one and the same intelligibility, accessed through different modes (being in reality, and being understood by a mind). — Esse Quam Videri

Scientific understanding is never identical with what it attempts to grasp, it is always an approximation. This is why science never ends, it is constantly being revised. And there is seldom a single universal understanding. 100 different physicists might have 100 different understandings of color charge, at various degrees of accuracy. Some may be entirely wrong. Only numerical distinctness between reality and understanding can support this diversity.

And the same is true of perception. A 100 different subjects, perhaps comprising of several different species, might have 100 different perspectives on an object. Each of these no doubt captures some structural features of the object; if perception does not provide mind independent information, it does no good, and would not have been selected for. But it is nonsensical to imagine that any of them discloses the entirety of the distal object. Necessarily, each is only a window onto partial features of the object. And none are perfect, none are free of error. Evolution favors good enough, not perfection. Each perspective may be wrong, in different ways. Again, this is only possible with numerical non-identify between perspective and object.

@Hypericin @Michael

I have decided to move the discussion over to the new site in consideration of the fact that this site will be made read-only as of 2/26.

The new thread can be found here. Thanks.

Alright, although I was hoping to take the move as a good point to end the discussion. It's gone on long enough for me.

Understood. I'm fine with bringing it to a close as well. If you're ready to be done, then I can either try to delete the thread on the new site, or you can provide one final reply to which I will not respond.

@Hypericin

I see that you are not yet a member of the new site. I will hold off on posting a reply until you join, unless you would also like to bring the discussion to a close, in which case I will not post a reply your last post.

I joined. Let's continue, though indeed the discussion is getting long in the tooth.

This discussion carried on in the new platform