Here's a link to simple neural network tutorial using Python that explains the basics, if you're curious about how actual code works (for simple examples):

https://medium.com/technology-invention-and-more/how-to-build-a-simple-neural-network-in-9-lines-of-python-code-cc8f23647ca1

Ok. I had always worked under the assumption that all binary code (Boolean logic) consists of true 'statements'. You're denying that? Right?

Ok. I had always worked under the assumption that all binary code consists of true 'statements'. You're denying that? Right? — creativesoul

Yeah, the binary code can be any statement that can be represented by 1s and 0s.

So maybe the statement would be (in human terms):

"There is a 94.57% probability there is a cat in this Youtube video."

Which represents the confidence the network has in making the classification, I think.

Cool. I just checked that site out and my computer crashed. Probably a coincidence, but I'm unwilling to try again.

What feature (or physical property) of a computer is analogous to physiological sensory perception?

What feature (or physical property) of a computer is analogous to physiological sensory perception? — creativesoul

There isn't. The equivalence would be functional. Someone could probably a hook a camera up to a physical artificial neural network, where the neurons are somehow realized physically, instead of just being software functions. But it still wouldn't be biological.

Let's make this really, really simple. What is the result of visually perceiving a tree?

A. Seeing a mental image.

B. Seeing the tree.

I'll let your unsupervised neural network categorize the two. — Marchesk

Are we talking about a dream tree? How does your own unsupervised neural network categorise those?

And is the greenness of this tree - either real or imagined - something true of the actual tree or a property of the mental image. (You seemed to agree that colours were A, but that shapes would be B.)

So good luck with your ambition making things really, really simple. These are deep philosophical issues, and not merely language games, for a reason.

As a stand in for all sorts of things from rudimentary seeing and hearing to complex linguistic conceptions... — creativesoul

A lot of familiar psychological terms are poorly defined. But we'll live. We can talk about the biological commonality with the laboratory animals into which we plunge our electrodes while also reminding of the particular difference that linguistic scaffolding makes to everything happening in a human mind.

So I'd agree that the standard jargon ought to reflect the distinctions better. Perhaps that is what you think you do with "thought/belief" and suchlike. I'm still waiting for you to explain. Somehow you never do.

So good luck with your ambition making things really, really simple. These are deep philosophical issues, and not merely language games, for a reason. — apokrisis

I didn't come up with the direct/indirect realism debate.

Are we talking about a dream tree? — apokrisis

No, we're talking about the perceived tree. Is it a mental image or not? That's what direct/indirect realism comes down to. All this other stuff is confusing the issue.

These are deep philosophical issues, and not merely language games, for a reason. — apokrisis

I agree, but it never helps in these discussions when the result is endless semantic dispute because nobody ever agrees on how the terms should be used.

It's weird, because I can go to SEP and it will clearly state what direct realism is about, but then I come here, and it's muddled semantic confusion the entire time.

And I understand that not everyone will agree with a philosophical position. That's fine. But when we can't even agree on what terms mean, then the debate just meanders all over the place with people talking past one another. And i'm speaking in general here. We've had 100 page long disputes over apples and cats on mats in the old forum which went the same way.

There was one thread which ended with antirealism being associated with direct access, whatever that could mean. Basically, a melding of Wittgenstein and direct realism.

It's weird, because I can go to SEP and it will clearly state what direct realism is about... — Marchesk

That one made me laugh. Show me the simple definition of direct realism, or even indirect realism, in this SEP entry - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/

There are 100 shades of opinion. And that ain't a dreadful thing. There is a reason Descartes is where modern philosophy finally woke up and took its business seriously. Progress on the central issue has been an arduous affair. In a deep way, it may be logically irresolvable due to its self-referential nature.

On the other hand, psychological science has been steering in a direction. Representationalism is on the wane. Embodied and semiotic approaches are increasingly popular. It is a big step towards accepting the complexity of the mind~world relationship by shifting up from a dualistic framing to one that is irreducibly triadic (the hierarchical view).

No, we're talking about the perceived tree. Is it a mental image or not? That's what direct/indirect realism comes down to. All this other stuff is confusing the issue. — Marchesk

How can it be illegitimate to talk about the tree perceived in a dream? If you can't tell reality just by looking, then direct realism is dead from the get-go.

Of course we can learn to dismiss dreams as imaginings. Folk used to believe in the reality of their spirit wandering while they were asleep happily enough. Now we categorise that kind of experience differently. But it is still just a categorisation from a hard epistemological point of view. We are not justified in taking short-cuts just for the sake of argumentative convenience.

So again, it was your OP that wanted to use machine intelligence as an argument for direct realism. You clearly felt there was an issue at stake because a doubt is in play. You didn't just ignore the doubt. You felt it worthy of that attack.

And now that you are encountering pushback, you ought to be prepared to deal with it in turn. Dream trees and experiences of colour become fair game. Where does the indirectness leave off so the directness can start?

My own arguments have gone further. I have made the case for why indirectness is an advantage. It is how a self is even formed to stand in relation to "the world".

Likewise it was interesting to me how some actual vaunted neural network project reveals the Kantian structure that must be smuggled in to get its Lockean tabula rasa up and running, recognising cute kitten faces on the interweb.

But dreams, hallucinations, illusions and all the standard stuff is still relevant if your own interest is in defending an understanding of perception where the mediation never gets in the way of the production of the mediated experience.

How can it be illegitimate to talk about the tree perceived in a dream? — apokrisis

Because perception doesn't occur in dreams. If you want to attack direct realism with dreams, then you need to say the experience is the same, That's the reason the argument from hallucination has bite.

That one made me laugh. Show me the simple definition of direct realism, or even indirect realism, in this SEP entry - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/ — apokrisis

It is simply stated as whether there is mental mediary we're aware of when perceiving an object. If no, then direct realism is the case.

The arguments for or against direct realism is where you get the "100 shades of gray". But the issue is stated simply, until everyone and their grandma goes off on tangents around the meaning of terms like direct, access, and realism. The semantic dispute over terms then gets conjoined with the arguments for and against the question of whether we behold a mental construct, or the thing itself.

So I ask you again, do we or do we not behold a mental construct of a tree when we see a tree? I honestly don't care which way you answer, since I'm not sure myself. But I do care about the argument being able to proceed without semantic muddle.

Because perception doesn't occur in dreams. If you want to attack direct realism with dreams, then you need to say the experience is the same, That's the reason the argument from hallucination has bite. — Marchesk

I would say that they're the same in that both waking and dream experiences are constituted of sense-data/qualia. They're different in that in the case of the former they are caused by external stimulation and in the case of the latter they are caused by internal stimulation.

I think there are two issues, referring to two different understandings of direct realism (the one which you and some others argue for, and the one which the Wikipedia article describes). The first issue is what is the immediate object of perception – the sense-data/qualia or the stimulation – and the second is whether or not the properties/features of the experience are properties/features of the stimulation.

For example, you might want to say that the immediate object of perception is the external-world chair but that the colour property/feature of the experience isn't a property/feature of the external-world chair
– instead it is a causally covariant effect of stimulation by a certain wavelength of light (a wavelength that is determined by the physical make-up of the chair).

From my understanding, the indirect realist argues that none (or perhaps just almost none) of the properties/features of the experience (e.g. colour, smell, sound, taste, etc.) are properties/features of the external stimulation – they are just causally covariant effects of external stimulation. They then argue that because of this, it doesn't make sense to claim that the immediate object of perception is the external stimulation. Our immediate awareness is of sense-data/qualia, which although causally covariant with and indicative of this external stimulation, isn't itself the external stimulation, hence why our perception of this external stimulation is indirect.

Personally, I'm inclined to this indirect realist view. I don't understand what it means to claim that perception is direct if not to say that the properties of the experience (e.g. the colour) are properties of this external stimulation, and I don't think that the properties of the experience (e.g. the colour) are properties of this external stimulation.

Even if this doesn't count as a critique of Kantianism, it does count against skepticism. And it shows how rudimentary perception can work on a direct realist account. — Marchesk

I'm not quite sure how that follows, for neuroscience and machine learning are both representationalist and neo-Kantian in the sense of being functionalist, at least in terms of their surface grammar. The upshot is that representations are internal and their designated truth labels are external and they aren't typically considered to be part of a unified single entity.

It might be enlightening to read about Kant's theory of cognitive judgement on the SEP to understand the precise differences of modern neuroscientific thinking to Kant's transcendental idealism.

If I recall correctly, Kant's views of perception are somewhat similar to direct realism in the sense of being roughly deflationary about consciousness in terms of its contents, but with some minor and irrelevant differences that relates to the normativity of judgements. In truth his views were probably somewhat vague and ambiguous but i believe they are deflationary in the critical sense of rejecting truth by correspondence in the empirical sense.

In other words, empirical doubt about the 'external' world 'as a whole' might be impossible for Kant, but not necessarily rational doubt concerning the transcendental reality or significance of the empirical world, since after all, Kant speaks of transcendental Noumenal entities that are rationally deducible, even if they are unimaginable and empty logical entities without empirical meaning and significance.

Hence it appears that direct realism, at least for Kant, even if eliminating empirical doubt 'as a whole', cannot defeat rational Scepticism.

That's the reason the argument from hallucination has bite. — Marchesk

Fine. Answer that version of the same question then.

Fine. Answer that version of the same question then. — apokrisis

I don't know. What makes perception qualitatively different from other mental experiences? It is remarkable how much a dream seems like you're perceiving. The disjunctivists deny that the experiences are the same. I'm not sold on that.

Did you notice the thread title or read the OP? — apokrisis

So, what are you saying, Apo - that you're just another sheep following the herd?

Your experience is your world, no? — apokrisis

If solipsism were the case, then "my experience" would be the world, or there would simply be the world, and to say that there would be an experience of it by me, would be incoherent.

If solipsism isn't the case, then there is the world and my experience of it, along with your experience of it, and everyone else's. If solipsism weren't the case, then there wouldn't be anything incoherent about using the terms, "my", "experience", etc., as that would be referring to real things, that are part of the whole world, which includes all experiences, like yours and not just mine.

If solipsism isn't the case, then there is only one world, and many experiences of that world.

If solipsism is the case, then there is only one world, and no experiences of it.

Good job then that the untenability of direct realism is matched by the unreasonableness of solipsism. That just leaves us to decide how to best characterise the indirectness that fills the gap in-between.

You can tag along if you like.

How could we argue that the world is coloured as we “directly experience” it when science assures us it is not? — apokrisis

So, going back to my question, which you avoided (yet again), is our experience part of the world, and if so, then isn't color part of the world?

Of course, your version of "my" corresponds to "you" - an object over there- in my field of perception.

And of course, MY version of "my" corresponds to nothing.

And of course, if anybody is rational they will agree with my statements as written, but draw exactly the opposite conclusion.

And the only reason this is appears inconsistent to the realist is because he insists on the semantic symmetry of propositions whose subject is the first-person; he assumes that enlightened individuals would all be in verbal agreement with each other when discussing the truths of philosophy; that their propositions of epistemology would all be phrased in terms of "we know this" as opposed to "I know this" whereas "you know that"

But the realist overlooks what is directly in front of his nose. For when describing one's use of words in relation to one's own experiences, one directly sees indirect realism when one watches other people perceiving their surroundings, whereas one can only think like a direct realist when it comes to one's own experiences. For one's own experience is the very basis in which indirect realism is interpreted.

one directly sees indirect realism — sime

This sounds like a contradiction. This sounds like you have direct access to reality to describe it with such detail and with such confidence, not indirect access.

one directly sees indirect realism
— sime
This sounds like a contradiction. This sounds like you have direct access to reality to describe it with such detail and with such confidence, not indirect access. — Harry Hindu

yes, *I* have direct access, in the sense that I cannot imagine what it means to have indirect access in my own case. Yet it is natural for me to describe everyone else as having indirect access, since I observe other people as being objects that are distinct from their objects of perception.

So I am afraid, it is direct realism for me and indirect realism for everyone else.

And surely you would agree. For isn't it obvious to you that my words can only refer to my representations of your world that I cannot possibly know or even meaningfully talk about?

What do you mean by being “part of the world”? Are you making a claim about the properties of physical objects or neurological processes?

Our conception of the physical world says wavelength and not colour is part of that world. Our conception of neurological processes is that colour is somehow part of what brains do. But that is actually quite a mysterious thing when considered as a “property”. Most folk would call it a property of the mind and not the world. This then leads to entrenched dualistic issues.

So you seem intent on bypassing the complexities of the question. That isn’t very useful.

This is one of those philosophical issues that I don't see the point in, but I don't think this is because of quietism, rather because I don't really see what's at stake in the issue.

What is a theory of perception? Presumably it's a way of assigning a description to the following kind of event: X perceives Y and set of properties and relations P(Y) influenced or deriving from the set of properties and relations P(X,Y). As an example.

I perceive a cup on my table, it is plain white and filled with coffee.

I (X) perceive a cup ( Y ) on my table ('on my table' is a relation between the cup and the table, a member of P(Y) ), it is plain white (a property of the cup, a member of P(Y)) and filled with coffee (being filled with coffee is another member of P(Y)).

I think any direct realist and any indirect realist would agree that indeed I do see a cup on my table, and that it is plain white and filled with coffee. What matters between them is how to analyse 'I see' in terms of the subject: me, X; the object: Y, the cup. Specifically, what matters are the properties of the relation 'sees' between X and Y. How does it arise? What does it mean for me to see X? What are the relations between the seen object and the object? (representational sense data or identity for indirect/direct examples). Answering these questions gives elements of P(X,Y)

Notably absent from this kind of analysis is any analysis of the performativity in the perceptual event, and this changes the kind of questions that would be asked of a perceptual theory. A contrastive question between direct and indirect realism, of specific sorts, might be 'do I see the cup of coffee or do I see a representational sense datum of the object?', an analysis inspired by the performativity of the perceptual act (it's a verb, c'mooooon) might ask "how is it that I see the coffee cup? what perceptual structures allow me to see the coffee cup?". It changes debates from, ultimately, a semantic theory of perceptual verbs or their conditions of possibility to 'what makes us perceive how we perceive and how do we perceive?'

Husserl noticed the difference between these two styles of questioning, or something like it, with his idea of 'bracketing','reduction' or 'epoché'. This means, roughly, forgetting the objectivity or veridicality of our experiences and instead attempt to deal with their internal structures and webs of meaning.

If we already grant the 'world of perception' to a person, what remains is to give an account of its formation and stability rather than our conditions of access to it.

What do you mean by being “part of the world”? Are you making a claim about the properties of physical objects or neurological processes?

Our conception of the physical world says wavelength and not colour is part of that world. Our conception of neurological processes is that colour is somehow part of what brains do. But that is actually quite a mysterious thing when considered as a “property”. Most folk would call it a property of the mind and not the world. This then leads to entrenched dualistic issues.

So you seem intent on bypassing the complexities of the question. That isn’t very useful. — apokrisis

So the mind isn't part of the world? Then how do minds interact if not through the medium of the shared world? What is it that divides minds to call them separate? It seems that once you start down the path of claiming the mind isn't part of the world, you start down the path towards solipsism.

As a stand in for all sorts of things from rudimentary seeing and hearing to complex linguistic conceptions...
— creativesoul

A lot of familiar psychological terms are poorly defined. But we'll live. We can talk about the biological commonality with the laboratory animals... while also reminding of the particular difference that linguistic scaffolding makes to everything happening in a human mind. — apokrisis

Sure. We can say that a pigeon perceives precisely the same way that humans do. We can also offer adequate justificatory ground for doing so, by virtue of establishing a notion of perception that is universally applicable to any and all perceiving creatures.

Not all creatures have written language. Thus, if our notion of perception includes that which is existentially contingent upon written language, then we would be forced to deny any and all creatures without written language the very capability. Pigeons would not count.

If we do not possess a notion of perception that is sensibly said to be satisfied by a pigeon as well as a human, then we have no justificatory ground for claiming to know what we're talking about when we're talking about the particular difference that language makes to that aforementioned universally applicable base notion of perception. To know the differences between pigeon perception and human perception one must know what both respectively consist of and require.

So, with all that in mind... you're right, we'll live on even if we have no idea what we're talking about.

Nice post fdrake...

I miss your ultimate warrior avatar!

;)

So the mind isn't part of the world? Then how do minds interact if not through the medium of the shared world? What is it that divides minds to call them separate? It seems that once you start down the path of claiming the mind isn't part of the world, you start down the path towards solipsism. — Harry Hindu

You are confusing the epistemic issue of direct vs indirect realism with the ontological commitments I might then argue concerning the mind~world issue.

...I think any direct realist and any indirect realist would agree that indeed I do see a cup on my table, and that it is plain white and filled with coffee. What matters between them is how to analyse 'I see' in terms of the subject: me, X; the object: Y, the cup. Specifically, what matters are the properties of the relation 'sees' between X and Y. How does it arise? What does it mean for me to see X? What are the relations between the seen object and the object? (representational sense data or identity for indirect/direct examples). Answering these questions gives elements of P(X,Y)

Notably absent from this kind of analysis is any analysis of the performativity in the perceptual event, and this changes the kind of questions that would be asked of a perceptual theory. A contrastive question between direct and indirect realism, of specific sorts, might be 'do I see the cup of coffee or do I see a representational sense datum of the object?', an analysis inspired by the performativity of the perceptual act (it's a verb, c'mooooon) might ask "how is it that I see the coffee cup? what perceptual structures allow me to see the coffee cup?". It changes debates from, ultimately, a semantic theory of perceptual verbs or their conditions of possibility to 'what makes us perceive how we perceive and how do we perceive?'

Husserl noticed the difference between these two styles of questioning, or something like it, with his idea of 'bracketing','reduction' or 'epoché'. This means, roughly, forgetting the objectivity or veridicality of our experiences and instead attempt to deal with their internal structures and webs of meaning.

If we already grant the 'world of perception' to a person, what remains is to give an account of its formation and stability rather than our conditions of access to it. — fdrake

The following bit garners my attention, and has for quite some time...

...'what makes us perceive how we perceive and how do we perceive?'

We can say that a pigeon perceives precisely the same way that humans do — creativesoul

Or you could stop putting words like "precisely" in my mouth. That would be a good start.

Thus, if our notion of perception includes that which is existentially contingent upon written language, then we would be forced to deny any and all creatures without written language the very capability. — creativesoul

Well whoopsie-do. Again, making any claim about perception being existentially contingent on written language is a misconception of your own doing here. For whatever reason, you are again projecting you own baggage on to what I say.

To know the differences between pigeon perception and human perception one must know what both respectively consist of and require. — creativesoul

You are sounding particularly pompous today. Or should that be sounding/acting?