I think the way the point is characterized isn't so important as long as the point is understood that there is no metaphysical difference between the two. Whether one wants to say that this is because wha we consider virtual is in fact 'realer' than we admit, or conversely to say that what we consider real is 'more virtual' than we admit, is a rhetorical matter that might affect how one interprets the consequences of this lack of a divide, but I don't think it mars the original point.

The point is, they are not in principle phenomenologically different, and there is no reason to consider them metaphysically different. — The Great Whatever

Don't we treat them as "metaphysically" different precisely on the basis of what we know about how the two experiences were causally mediated? We call the one object "real" and the other "virtual" because of the different stories we can tell about the causal circumstances in which they were perceived. Phenomenal indistinguishability seems irrelevant.

But they're not causally mediated in a different way. In both cases, you hit your 'skin' with certain stimuli, and the result is that a spatial 'environment' is created for you. All that's happening is your 'skin' is being hit with different things.

It's the "different things" part that is relevant, though, isn't it? The reason we call the virtual roller coaster "virtual" rather than "real" is because it is not the same kind of thing as the real roller coaster. It's not 200 feet tall and made of 50,000 tons of wood and steel, and we know it's not

But if you were born 'plugged in,' and saw 'unplugging' as the exception, the roller coaster we deem 'real' would be the 'virtual' one, and vice-versa.

But if you were born 'plugged in,' and saw 'unplugging' as the exception, the roller coaster we deem 'real' would be the 'virtual' one, and vice-versa. — The Great Whatever

No more or less than someone who lived in the other world. When someone is "unplugged," there experience is changes to the point where they know their body is not in the virtual roller coaster, where they know the virtual roller coster is not wood and steel rising many metre in the air. They know their body in the 'real' world can't fall out and die when the a riding the virtual roller coaster.

Here there are no question of "exceptions." Both experiences are "real" (they exist) and, when someone is thinking about it, they have experience of the relationships of those experiences. They know what they see on the screen can't run their body through. The question "real" or "virtual" is a non-starter because we never encounter a situation where there is doubt about that. If we have the experience of a "real" or "virtual" world, we don't have any doubt on the matter; the idea is the particular experience of that instance.

So the dilemma you propose is a joke. Who cares if the computer in front of you is "real" or "virtual?" If all you are experiencing in the moment is the sensation of the computer, you are not making any sort of comment of whether the computer is "real" or "virtual." It has no relevance. If, on the other hand, you are making comment on whether the computer is real of virtual, which is to say how it relates casually to other sensation you have had or might have, then you either have your answer or can wait it out until the relevant experience emerges (of fails to emerge). There is no significant to the dilemma of is it "real" or "virtual." Just what are you expecting to find in trying to answer that question?

The "problem of hallucination" is of no problem to the direct realist. They have no care for whether any sensation is "real" or "virtual." To merely have a sensation doesn't say anything about a real or virtual world at any time. They aren't looking out at an object and using something about it to tell whether it is real or virtual. "Real" and "virtual" are measures of the relationships of different things people have encountered. They are always given in themselves in the first instance. We don't understand there to be a real or virtual world by looking at an object (e.g. roller coster), we do it by having experience which identifies them (e.g. that my body remains unharmed and untouched by the twisting metal of the crashing virtual roller coster).

Who cares if the computer in front of you is "real" or "virtual?" — TheWillowOfDarkness

Realists.

No, they don't. Whether or not something is of a virtual world or a real one makes no difference to them. What they care about is the presence of things regardless of experience.

The "real" world is merely, for less the thorough realists, the representation of a world which is there even when experience is not. Since hallucinations are drawn into the opposition to the world we are experiencing (e.g. that dragon Willow hallucinates isn't actually going to breath fire on us), they express the presence of a world (the one NOT experienced in the hallucination) which is present despite it being outside the experience of the person who is hallucination. Realist like talking about the "real" world so much because it is a (somewhat poor) example of how things are still there even when not in experience.

When a realist says: "but there is a real world," they are imploring how existing of things isn't dependent on experience. They aren't obsessing about some quality of real or virtual which makes a profound difference to our experience irrespective of our experience (that's an oxymoron).

But if you were born 'plugged in,' and saw 'unplugging' as the exception, the roller coaster we deem 'real' would be the 'virtual' one, and vice-versa. — The Great Whatever

Do you think so? If one believes that roller coasters are made out of thousands of tons of wood and metal, then to become unplugged is to be confronted with the realization that the roller coasters one had hitherto encountered were not real.

But regardless, the point remains that there'd be non-phenomenological reasons for distinguishing between real and unreal roller coasters.

But it would be just the opposite: unplugging would be going into the 'fake' world. You see?

One shouldn't have to 'side' with reality over virtual reality (as you are doing), or vice versa (in TGW's case), when the very line that demarcates the two is porous to begin with. — StreetlightX

If I gave the impression that I was "siding" "with reality over virtual reality' then it was probably due to poor expression on my part. I certainly agree that it may be possible in the future that the two will become phenomenologically indistinguishable, (but, does this indistinguishability apply only within the momentary experiences themselves?). So,to say the two might become phenomenologically indistinguishable is not, necessarily at least, to say that a participant would not know that she was a participant in a simulated reality. She might even be looking for immanent (that is immanent to the virtual experience itself, as opposed to the memory of having put on the equipment or whatever) distinguishing features that 'give away the game'.

Whatever we might think about the ontological or metaphysical statuses of the two experiences; I think that they can justifiably be said to be categorically different simply on the basis that we might think that people would know when they were leaving one and entering the other. It would always be the transitions from one to the other, if nothing else, that provides a phenomenological difference.

Although, is it plausible that it could reach a point where people might not (be able to) know they were leaving one and entering the other? Maybe....It certainly seems to have the potential to become a much more complex question than it might seem at first glance!

But it would be just the opposite: unplugging would be going into the 'fake' world. You see? — The Great Whatever

That's precisely what is under discussion, ins't it? I've proposed that the distinction between 'real' and 'fake' ought to be grounded in whatever causal story we are able tell about the circumstances of perception. So whether or not the unplugged world is considered to be 'real' is not a simple matter of whether it happens to be the world that we spend the majority of our time in, nor is it (necessarily) a matter of the discernment of some phenomenological distinction between the two. If the unplugged world is deemed to be fake, it will ultimately be deemed so on the basis of some story about how our sensory apparatuses are not causally related to anything like the objects we take ourselves to be perceiving.

Except, as I said, in both cases the causal story is already the same. Remember, you are still in the 'real world' and subject to its causal influence while in 'virtual reality.' Yet, someone who was born in opposite-land would say the same thing about VR.

But we weren't initially considering the possibility of being in "opposite-land", were we? We were initially just discussing the distinction between the objects we encounter in every day life vs. those we might encounter while hooked up to some virtual reality machine. That's where the causal stories will differ and ground the distinction between real and virtual objects.

As for the possibility that we are all living in the matrix, the possibility of global error is intelligible only against the conceptual backdrop of the appearance/reality (unreal/real) distinction. So I don't think you can leverage that possibility in order to invalidate that distinction without undermining your own argument.

My point is that the people living in the Matrix are no more in error about anything than people living outside of it. We already live in a Matrix, if you like, whether plugged in or not (all reality is virtual reality).

That doesn't seem right. The person living in the Matrix would deny that they are lying in a vat of goo attached to an electro-magnetic power generator amidst the ruins of some long-since-destroyed human city, etc. They are in error about that, are they not?

If you were from the non-Matrix world, you might say so. But then, they would tell you you're in error about not being in a 1990's metropolis.

@The Great Whatever, you make three important accusations:

1. That I misrepresent indirect realism or ignore its strongest versions
2. That I falsely oppose indirect realism to active, embodied theories of perception
3. That I or the direct realist cannot answer the argument from hallucination

1. That I misrepresent indirect realism or ignore its strongest versions

This is quite a good criticism, for which I am grateful. I have indeed failed to distinguish between two indirect realist positions:

A. We don't see everyday physical objects but merely internal representations
B. We do see everyday physical objects, but only indirectly

I think you're right to suggest that position B is at least as characteristic of indirect realism as A. This means that I've been attacking something different, a subset or merely a vulgarization of indirect realism.

First of all, I don't really mind the accusation that I've been attacking a vulgar form of indirect realism. As an entry into the direct-indirect realist debate, such an attack would be uncharitable--but that's not quite what I'm doing. Rather, I am critiquing a set of common prejudices that are operative in science and culture, by exposing their philosophical underpinnings.

And obviously position A is not merely a popular vulgarism, because real philosophers have argued for it. Looking again at Russell's version it's remarkable how easy it is for him to slip from one to the other, to be not quite clear on whether we are seeing physical objects by virtue of seeing representations, or seeing only the latter.

However, I do have my sights set on the stronger sorts of indirect realism too.

Claim B can be further divided between: (i) We see everyday physical objects through a medium, and (ii) We see everyday physical objects via intermediary objects such as mental representations. And I think that among the adherents of B, position (ii) is by far the most prevalent and characteristic, possibly because (i) is trivial or vague.

So I probably ought to concentrate on attacking B(ii). But I want to look at B(i), because that seems closest to your own view, or at least to the minimal version of indirect realism that you’re inclined to defend.

When touching a table-top, we can attend to it phenomenologically, discovering, for example, that without any movement of the fingers the wood has no textural feel at all, supplying only pressure. This is what you described as the medium that has its own properties: the way that we make contact with things in perception, which the direct realist apparently skips over. But who would conclude that we do not touch tables directly? Is the answer that this case is different because the surface of the table is contiguous with my skin, with nothing in between? But if this is all that is meant by direct, then of course all perception is indirect, so this cannot be what the direct-indirect dichotomy is about.

But maybe you will say that your perception of the table, qua table, is indirect, just as every other perception is; that the reason we do not say that touch per se is indirect is that "touch" and "see" are not quite parallel.

Be that as it may, the notion of a medium, and also that of directness, need some clarification. Surely one can speak of a perceptual medium that does not entail representations, inference, or sense-data, or sensations as raw input for the construction of models, and so on? Such a medium seems not to imply a relevant indirectness. Intuitively, a medium connects things as much as it separates them, and it encompasses both poles rather than standing between them like a more or less distorting window.

2. That I falsely oppose indirect realism to active, embodied theories of perception

I must admit I find this accusation puzzling. Indirect realism is almost synonymous with representational realism, which is also known as epistemological dualism. There is something out there, and a distinct something independently in here in my head that represents it.

Representational realism has it that the mind is essentially disembodied--hence the still-popular functionalism--and that its job is to manipulate representations. Perception is a function of mind, and a mental processes. Consciousness is an interior state standing in a linear causal relation with sensory input, mental inference and representation construction. The mind works with the sense-data that result from sensory impingements from the external world, but is logically disengaged from this world.

The argument from hallucination makes particularly clear the way that indirect realism introduces a chasm between mind and world, one that active embodied perceptual theories are designed to collapse. Hallucination is meant to show that perception is already complete without the external world. On this view, if there is an external world at all it is accidental. The only thing that can be certain, the only thing we can be confident in, is within us.

For indirect realism, to be a perceiver is to be a spectator. What is perceived is objects, and what we do in perception is observe them (notice how often the perceiver in the literature is called “the observer”). Merleau-Ponty, a great influence in active, embodied theories, argued repeatedly against this way of thinking about perception, the mind and consciousness:

For the player in action the football field is not an “object,” that is, the ideal term which can give rise to an indefinite multiplicity of perspectival views and remain equivalent under its apparent transformations. It is pervaded with lines of force (the “yard lines”; those which demarcate the “penalty area”) and articulated in sectors (for example, the “openings” between the adversaries) which call for a certain mode of action and which initiate and guide the action as if the player were unaware of it. The field itself is not given to him, but present as the immanent term of his practical intentions; the player becomes one with it and feels the direction of the “goal,” for example, just as immediately as the vertical and the horizontal planes of his own body. It would not be sufficient to say that consciousness inhabits this milieu. At this moment consciousness is nothing other than the dialectic of milieu and action. Each manoeuvre undertaken by the player modifies the character of the field and establishes in it new lines of force in which the action in turn unfolds and is accomplished, again altering the phenomenal field. — Merleau-Ponty, Structure of Behaviour

It is not a coincidence that this looks so radically different from the language of indirect realism, all the way from Descartes and Locke to Russell, Ayer, and now Robinson. It is different because they have entirely different views of what it is to perceive. The indirect realist will admit that yes, we move about and do things, but to him this is irrelevant to perception, which through all of our activity remains an internal matter of building representations from sense-data caused by the stimulus of the purely receptive senses. Here, activity and embodiment, far from being essential to perception as Merleau-Ponty, the enactivists and the ecological psychologists believe, is incidental.

Gibson’s theory of ecological perception is particularly opposed to representationalism. For indirect realists, the environment supplies no information to perception, but merely neutral atomic stimuli specifiable by intrinsic physical metrics such as wavelength, out of which the mind ultimately constructs something meaningful. For Gibson, perception is the detection of meaningful information which is not in the mind, but in the environment itself, such that there is no need for anything like internal inference, an ongoing dynamic attunement and sensitivity to the environment being enough.


3. That I or the direct realist cannot answer the argument from hallucination

(1) how does he [the indirect realist] know so much about perception, that he can give us a whole theory about it, when he has never experienced one case of it that he can in principle tell it apart from cases that are not perception? (2) What on Earth is even the relevance of his metaphysical thesis about the objectivity and perceiver-independence of objects, if all perceptual experience is equally coherent and behaves experientially the same way whether that status obtains or not? — The Great Whatever

First, the argument from hallucination doesn't work. It simply does not follow from subjective indistinguishability and the fact that in hallucination the object of awareness is mental, that the objects of awareness in perception are always mental, or that objects of awareness in perception are perceived only through such intermediaries. In other words, phenomenal indistinguishability does not entail ontological indistinguishability.

Even in the “causal argument from hallucination” there is a hidden premise, which is that in hallucination the subject is directly presented with a sense-datum or mental image, a conception clearly deriving from the model of perception itself. Thus the argument assumes that in all cases in which one seems to be perceiving something, there is an object of which one is aware.

Now, we’ve discussed this issue already, and I accepted that one can intelligibly say that “I see an X” even if X is an illusion or an hallucination. But this is a consequence of indistinguishability. If I am not aware of an object--because the hallucination constitutes the awareness rather than presenting sense-data for inference or synthesis--then the argument fails.

That an apparent hallucinatory object of awareness in fact constitutes one’s awareness means that the subjective report, “I see an X”, can be taken in two ways: if the subject knows there is no X, the use of the word “see” is de dicto; and if not, then the report may simply be wrong, i.e., in Austin's sense you do not see an X, if that is the sense you meant. Neither in the case where there is an X, nor in the case where there is not, is there a mental object of awareness.

Anyway, all this is to say that I do rely on the distinction between genuine and ostensible visual experience. And this is what you see as the nail in the coffin for direct realism. In other words, it is not the argument from hallucination that you seem to think is the big problem for direct realists, but just the phenomenal indistinguishability of hallucinations. Your target here then is just realism, and your method of attack is just hyperbolic doubt.

Well, okay, you got me. The thing is, I do not seek certainty in an epistemological foundation and I am not trying to prove that a mind-independent world exists. The article is pretty much saying, assuming realism, here's why I think perception is not indirect in any relevant sense. I take it for granted that hallucination is a disruption of veridical perception, and can often be explained in terms of neurological anomalies; and that I and other people share a world, one that is irreducible to me.

But no doubt there is a correlationist flavour to my view, and that's why I tend to downplay the realism. Although they're eager to emphasize their realism, ecological psychologists claim that it is affordances that we perceive, rather than objects per se. The relation between agent and environment is reciprocal, and what could be more correlational than that? Of course, in so far as they are taking a stand on metaphysics they will often say (e.g., Carello & Michaels, Direct Perception) that this correlation supervenes on the brute physical world, but all the same this is very far from a common sense "see it like it is" realism.

A more philosophically sensitive thinker who takes an active and embodied approach is Evan Thomson, who makes the transcendental in all of this explicit (to use a quotation I used elsewhere on the forum a couple of hours ago):

When we ask the constitutional question of how objects are disclosed to us, then any object, including any scientific object, must be regarded in its correlation to the mental activity that intends it. This transcendental orientation in no way denies the existence of a real physical world, but rather rejects an objectivist conception of our relation to it. The world is never given to us as a brute fact detachable from our conceptual framework. Rather, it shows up in all the describable ways it does thanks to the structure of our subjectivity and our intentional activities. — Evan Thomson, Mind in Life

If the unplugged world is deemed to be fake, it will ultimately be deemed so on the basis of some story about how our sensory apparatuses are not causally related to anything like the objects we take ourselves to be perceiving. — Aaron R

I'd have thought that quantum mechanics has already shown that our sensory apparatuses are not causally related to anything like the objects we take ourselves to be perceiving (instead they're causally related to things very unlike the objects we take ourselves to be perceiving). But it doesn't then follow that the apple we see is fake.

My point is that the people living in the Matrix are no more in error about anything than people living outside of it. We already live in a Matrix, if you like, whether plugged in or not (all reality is virtual reality). — The Great Whatever

That doesn't seem right. The person living in the Matrix would deny that they are lying in a vat of goo attached to an electro-magnetic power generator amidst the ruins of some long-since-destroyed human city, etc. They are in error about that, are they not? — Aaron R

If you were from the non-Matrix world, you might say so. But then, they would tell you you're in error about not being in a 1990's metropolis. — The Great Whatever

The problem with this hypothesis is that it's described as "being in the Matrix", and so it follows from the premise that the person living in the 1990s metropolis is living a lie, and I think that's where @Aaron R is coming from. However, @The Great Whatever's point is perhaps better explained with a different hypothesis; we have one person who has taken some pills and found himself waking up in an apocalyptic future where his previous life was a computer simulation and we have another person who hasn't taken any pills and has found his life continue as he's accustomed. Which is the real world?

If you were from the non-Matrix world, you might say so. But then, they would tell you you're in error about not being in a 1990's metropolis — The Great Whatever

I don't think this matters. The statement of yours that I initially responded to argued that we ought to drop the distinction between the real and the virtual because they are phenomenologically indistinguishable. You said there was "no reason" to treat them as "metaphyiscally" different, and that we interact with virtual and real objects in the same way. I am arguing that this is false, and that phenomenological indistinguishability is irrelevant. We actually don't interact with virtual and real objects in the same way precisely because we think of them as "metaphysically" different. For example, I would almost certainly be willing to take liberties with a virtual body that I would not be willing to take with my real body, and the reason I am willing to do so is because of the causal story that I base that distinction upon. Now, being able to tell such a story doesn't guarantee that I've made the distinction correctly. Something might happen that calls the truth of my causal story into question, prompting me to re-evaluate the way I have made the distinction. That's fine, but it's beside the point. The point is that we do have good reasons for making the distinction, and those reasons are not phenomenological ones.

Hi Michael. You raise some good questions, but I don't have time to reply at the moment. I'll try to get to it soon...

But if your 'real' body was generally invincible in daily life, but damaging your 'virtual' body had terrible, painful consequences, you'd take liberties with your 'real'
body, not the virtual one. (And so functionally, the 'virtual' one would begin to take its place as 'real').

A red-herring.

What matters is not whether there are painful consequences for the body. I get frustrated by the outcomes of virtual worlds all the time. My body is affected by what happens in a virtual world. When my character dies, when I missing is failed, it impacts on my body. The contents of a virtual world affects how I think and feel. Sometimes it does have terrible and painful consequences.

Rather the distinction between the "real" and "virtual" is about how someone is affected. It is about the ways in which a body interacts with objects. If my "real" body was invincible, it wouldn't necessarily mean a pain causing world was not virtual. If someone programmed a game to inflict pain on the body as my character got injured in-game, its world would still be "virtual," as it was still impossible for the dragon to take my real body in its mouth and ingest it. All an invincible "real" world body means is that someone couldn't be harmed by the things of "real" world. And yes, people would take liberties with their real bodies rather than actives in virtual worlds which caused them pain. This doesn't affect the difference between the "real" and "virtual." The pain causing dragon of the game still can't ingest my "real" body.

Functionally, any virtual world has already taken place of a real one. That happens the moment of experiencing the virtual world. When I step into a virtual world, I have no choice in whether i am affected by it. The moment I join it, it starts indicating with my body and impacting on my experience.

Is there any problem with saying the real world is the original one, the one the virtual world was modelled on?

Is there any problem with saying the real world is the original one, the one the virtual world was modelled on? — John

Yes.

The "real" and "virtual difference is about the relation of specific objects to each other. What world is "original" doesn't matter. If I began life hallucinating it will have always been "virtual" because it things cannot impact on my body the same way "real" things can. Not to mention "virtual worlds"are frequently not "modelled" on the real one at all. Dreams, imagination, etc.,etc. frequently break with the nature of the "real world" and have not been deliberately set to mimic one any part of the real world.

(similarly, the virtual world is just as real, as an existing state. It only differs form the "real" in the sense of how it has different impact. It is not somehow a "fake" moment which really means nothing- contrary to what some imply when the talk about the virtual world compared to a real one).

I was not thinking about dreams when I wrote that. Since you have raised them I will say that although dreams are obviously not deliberately modelled on the everyday world they are constituted by elements derived from it.

Virtual worlds are modelled on the everyday world, and I would say that since this is incontrovertibly always the case, this fact alone provides a sufficient criterion to distinguish the two. I would say that the same goes for distinguishing dream worlds from the real one.

I guess there's a sense in which I'm not really that interested in the first two points. I think I want to bypass the second one entirely, because the comment was more in passing, and in any case I'm not sure that 'embodied' is anything but a hoo-ha word. The stakes of the argument or what points are to be made are just unclear to me, and I can't see the debate being productive.

As for the first, okay, it's fine. If your target really is the lumpen neuroscientist or whatever, that still leaves the problem that your examples: Hume, Russell, and Ayer, don't hold this view on any plausible reading of them. Roughly, I think Hume is a sort of skeptic in the Greek sense, and that Russell and Ayer are ultimately Millian phenomenalists more concerned with logically analyzing perception, breaking down perceptual objects into 'logical fictions' constructed out of complexes of sense data and their dispositions. None of them to my mind are indirect realists in quite the way you suggest. And as I've said, even Descartes, who is supposed to be the representative realist par excellence, never said that we don't perceive tables and so on. He entertained the notion as part of hyperbolical doubt, but then abandoned it.

B(i), by the way, is not my view: my view is that, in the sense the philosopher is interested in perception, we do not perceive anything.

The third point is the really interesting one. I really don't want to post walls of text about this because it just obscures everything. I just want to say to begin, that your take on it seems to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the criticism being made, from a dialectical point of view. You seem to think the problem is that hallucination, and the admission of the phenomenological indistinguishability between it and veridical perception (between which the direct realist is, as you recognized, forced to draw a metaphysical distinction), yields some sort of lingering doubt on the part of the direct realist that any given thing, or everything, might be unreal in the sense the realist is interested in. But that is not the problem. This is not about certainty. It is about the realist's most basic claims being fundamentally incoherent by their own lights. It is not as if the realist leaves himself open to lingering doubts, but that's okay because we don't require certainty. No. It is that the realist's positions literally do not make sense when juxtaposed. The criticism is taken to be a devastating one in that if it obtains, direct realism cannot.

With that said, I think it's best to go back and forth about it rather than try to unpack the criticism itself all in one go. So I'll start by asking this. You claim that there is a difference between two sorts of experiences: one is ostensible perception, the other actual. However, you also claim that in principle these two are, or can be, phenomenologically indistinguishable. Let's make the reasonable assumption that if you ever were to tell the difference between them at some point, this would require some phenomenological difference, somewhere, in order to do so.

So now the question is: how can you tell the difference, if you can't tell the difference?

This is not about certainty. It is about the realist's most basic claims being fundamentally incoherent by their own lights. It is not as if the realist leaves himself open to lingering doubts, but that's okay because we don't require certainty. No. It is that the realist's positions literally do not make sense when juxtaposed. — The Great Whatever

I don't see the difference. Can you explain it? As far as I can see you're saying that the realist is not warranted in drawing a distinction between hallucination and perception, between ostensible and genuine. I don't see how this amounts to incoherence.

No, let's give you the fact that there's a difference. Now, how did you figure this out? That is, how can you, the realist tell the difference between two kinds of perception, when by your own admission you cannot tell the difference? What led you to believe there were two different types of experiences?

If we agree there's a difference, then I don't know what the problem is. Knowing there's a difference between hallucination and perception doesn't depend on my being able to tell the difference when I'm hallucinating. I can be fooled. But such episodes occur in the context of my life, in which most of the time I have no reason to suspect that what I see is merely the result of neurological disruption. Because that is what hallucination is, and I take it for granted. I've enjoyed our exchange so far, but this doesn't seem like a fruitful way to go. Am I missing something?

you, the realist — The Great Whatever

I don't want to be "the realist".