Nah. I just worked 12 hours in an emergency department and I'm not interested in your bullshit.

That's cool. You are not obliged to respond.

Take care - get some sleep?

Intentionalism is a form of direct realism. While other direct realists might say one sees a cup, an intentionalist would more accurately say that one sees it as a cup. — Banno

This is pure Kantianism as I read this.

If the intentionalist insists upon drawing a distinction between "it" and the cup, but references only what he sees, the phenomenal obtains description and the "it" remains a descriptionless indescribable entity. This is classic phenomenal versus noumenal talk, just dressed up in a more palatable way.

On the other hand, if the referent of the intentionalist's "it " is simply the cup, it would be superfluous to say "I see the cup as the cup." He might as well just say "I see the cup," and stop repeating himself and making vague references to an "it."

This is to say you haven't found a comfy middle ground between direct and indirect realism. You must pick your poison

We could speak of an experience and of the experienced.
Sometimes they're the same, other times not.
When they're not, we tend to say the experienced is objective.
Experiences themselves are usually said to be subjective, and in a format we call qualia or whatever.

If I'm talking about my like of coffee, or an annoying headache, then the experience and the experienced are the same.
If I talk about the coffee, or the bump on my head, then they're not the same.

Then there are the errors...
A hallucination or phantom pain is when thinking the experience and the experienced aren't the same, but they are.
Idealism is thinking they're always the same, but sometimes they're not; talk about self-elevation/universalization.

And the occasional category mistakes...
Experiences are occurrences, more clearly temporal, are interruptible (interaction/event-causation), come and go, i.e. process-likes.
The experienced are often more clearly movable, locatable, breakable (under conservation), i.e. object-likes.
So, when we perceive things, process-likes are involved, interaction, causation, or something; it's not like we become the experienced, or have to.

At a glance, I don't see anything plain wrong with that account, but I do see some things going awry when ignoring parts of it.

The "it' is nothing more than a failure of mine, to express the notion clearly. The it is just the cup, the expression the difference being direction fo fit. The post was a mere musing, but one had by others besides myself.

Nor am I looking for a middle ground between direct and indirect realism; intentionalism is direct realism, only the direction is reversed.

Indirect realist, right? — frank

I'm not sure I have the meaning of that term right. @fdrake and @Banno both seem willing to accept that our brain guesses, filters and modifies sensory data prior to the next step (whatever that might be), yet are 'direct' realists. I've described my position before as model-dependant realism, which is a term I heard some chap use in a lecture I attended, but I'm wary of these labels, they've come back to bite me before, people says "Oh, so you believe..." where I don't.

I think I can believe those things and draw a direct realist conclusion from Friston's work. Direct in the sense of the contact in ( 8 ), rather than perceiving reality 'unfiltered'. I don't want to conclude that we 'perceive the objects of the external world as they are' from that, I want to conclude that the values of external states actually saturate the perception process. (Box 1 here). — fdrake

Yes, we're in agreement here. The hidden states have to form a part of the process. What's more, their properties have to be such that two people's models of them is at least in the same ballpark, we cannot possibly just 'make it all up' I don't see a way that a process which seems to mathematically match one aimed at reducing surprise could function in a state where no nodes were outside it's Markov boundary.

I've been lumping in sensory states with internal states and action states with external states. Hopefully that hasn't done too much damage to what I've said. — fdrake

No, not at all, but it's what I was getting at with my clumsy introduction of stochastic resonance. What's inside or outside any Markov blanket is not necessarily the same as indies or outside a skull. That's true of our sensory receptors (for whom their first 'inside' node os actually outside the body) and it's true for our internal models (which may have nodes outside their Markov boundary - my stochastic resonance example - but inside the brain)

I don't think it follows from what I said above that "I perceive the state of the external world exactly as it is", just that "I perceive the states of the external world (using some model process)" and "That modelling process is in direct contact with the external world". — fdrake

Yes. Completely agree. And if that's what 'direct' realism is, then you can sign me up, but if so, I'm left confused as to what 'indirect' realism could possibly be. Same for @Banno's use of the term. I don't think I've ever been clear on this.

Can you flesh out why from that it follows that we perceive mental images, memories, concepts etc? I don't see the connection. — fdrake

If I've said 'perceive' then I've messed up somewhere. My intention here is to give a model (only one among others) of what we talk about, act on, believe etc. I wouldn't (shouldn't have!) describe this as what we 'perceive' because perception is a process which involves parts of the brain which are outside of the Markov blanket for the models which produces the objects we talk about, act on and believe (in this model).

I'm probably labouring many of these points, but to get it clear;

We have a model which assumes there are hidden states causing our conscious states (those we log). I don't think we can do anything about this model and doubting it or pretending it's up for discussion is disingenuous - I think we all agree there.
We make further models that are guesses as to what those hidden states will do next. Guesses based on priors and sensory inputs.
Note (this is really important for understanding my position) it's not that we guess what they are, we're not interested at this stage in what they are, only what they'll do next of we prod them (or not).
We then check that model by looking again, fiddling with it (and sometime making it fit the model better), this being, as you say, a continuous process - guess, fiddle, re-guess
One of these checks is to interact with these hidden states in social environment (we could say to pick it up and throw it at some other hidden states - people)
For this particular test, we use a combination of object recognition and social meaning (things like the name for it, what we in our culture use it for, etc.). One could simplify this as saying "I'm currently modelling this thing as a 'cup', if that's right, I should be able to say 'pass me the cup' and it work, I should be able to pour tea into it and not have everyone look at me funny". The social function is one of the continual tests we use to update our models.

So I see the social world of objects as a kind of current mutual agreement about how we're going to treat hidden sates, kind of an insurance policy against hallucination, insanity, or just plain bad eyesight. It makes sense to have our models pretty close to those of the people around us we want to co-operate with so we include those people in our modelling process. Thing like language are part of that inclusions, which is why I tend to put word meanings within the top level modelling process, not outside of it (as the object of it).

I see "the grass is green" as meaning (from the perspective of our world-modelling mental processes) "if I say 'grass' do you look at the thin leaves sticking up there, and if is say 'is green' do you nod in assent or do you look at me confused". This is not to say that confirmatory behaviour is the only option, I might (as part of my surprise reduction process) try to get you to agree, or try to get you to change the grass so it fits my model better, but either way, I'm using the social interaction with the modelling process, not as an object of it and the 'word for it' is a token used in the social interaction, so also within the model, not the object of it.

I should stress though, that treating things this way is just a frame I find useful, not a claim to the way things are.

This seems to fit quite neatly into...

...the intentionalist approach to the problem of perception. intentionalist approaches draw on the intentional character of perception: seeing things as a cup or as a tree or as a person. — Banno

...have I got that right?

Missed this...

A more straightforward question relating to the OP: Do you see a place for some notion like "qualia" in your work? — Banno

Frankly, none at all. When I was doing research, I studied the role of social construction in beliefs, toward the latter end of my academic career, I became interested in the social influences on perception, and got peripherally involved with some neuroscientists looking at the same problem (hence my interest here). At no point did we use 'qualia', the term was considered as archaic as 'phlogiston'. But, that's a very limited experience, I know many in the field do use it, although in my experience they do so primarily to communicate with others, rather than as a modelling commitment.

If I brought it up in my current work, I think I'd be shown the door.

Like the Snark there are many still hunting the quale, and good luck to them, but I've neither seen any compelling evidence it exists nor any reason to think it might.

Dennet is a computer guy. I'm not interested in computers. I know what he tries to do. He projects computational processes on an area where they don't apply. Humans. Well, humans calculate, off course. But not like computers. What do you think qualia are?

The "it" you refer to can be something that combines matter and qualia. The "it" can be matter as well as quale.

I've described my position before as model-dependant realism, which is a term I heard some chap use in a lecture I attended, but I'm wary of these labels, they've come back to bite me before, people says "Oh, so you believe..." where I don't. — Isaac

I'll take a wild guess that the point of calling your view "direct" realism is to rule out a static intermediary while accepting a dynamic one.

For my purposes that contributes confusion without any payoff.

The differences of opinion concerning naive realism, direct realism, indirect realism and so on gain traction from failure to adequately set out the various claims. — Banno

The ideas of direct vs indirect realism themselves are problematic. What type of access do we have to our own conscious minds? It seems to me that we have direct access to our mind and indirect access to the world via the mind - the one and only way we have access to and know about the world. We have direct access to our mind because we are our minds. Minds are a part of the world, so in a sense we have direct access to part of the world and indirect access to the rest of it. Now the boundary between indirect and direct realism becomes blurred and meaningless.

Intentinalist explanations potentially show how a neurological account and an intentional folk-account can both be true.

Intentionalism is a form of direct realism. While other direct realists might say one sees a cup, an intentionalist would more accurately say that one sees it as a cup.

More duck-rabbits, of course. And this needs filling out. But it fits fairly neatly with the neuroscience, avoids the silliness of qualia and shows that we refer to flowers and not perceptions-of-flowers. — Banno

Avoiding the "silliness" of qualia is ignoring the way the intentionalist sees the world. It fails to explain how one can confuse a hallucination, or a dream, for the real thing. How can they be confused for the same thing if they didn't appear similarly (their form and behavior is identical as qualia).

Is the intentionalist referring to flowers, or what they see as flowers? Mirages and hallucinations show that what the intentionalist sees something as isn't always what it is. Using the behavior of others as a means to determine what one is seeing is part of the shared world and not a figment of the mind is just as problematic as your only means of observing others is by the same means that the doubt is attributed to. There is also the issue of different levels of subjectivity - on the level of the individual and on the level of species. Not only are there differences in how individual humans perceive the world, but also a difference in how different species perceive the world. Which species has direct access to the world?

So I've read the first paragraphs, and as I thought, Dennet doesn't convince. As usual for materialists, he siphons the burden of proof to the shoulders of quale defenders, who have nothing to proof at all because the kind of proof he means isn't used by the defenders of qualia. Material processes are part of the world of qualia and as such the can't be used in a defense or proof of the qualia. Qualia might differ from person to person, while material processes are objective and the same for everyone, but that's just a tactic used in their defense. Supporters of qualia don't need such claims of independent objectivity to infer their real existence. Qualia differ from person to person, and it's only in very specific conditions that stable qualia corresponding to a material process are formed.

DNA exists, of course. It is not made of qualia either. But viewing it as matter is invoking qualia too. The difference with everyday qualia being that they are standarized and seemingly the same for everyone. Everýbody agrees that DNA is a 2-meter long connection of two negatively coupled strings of 4 repeating units (themselves fixed structures particles), folded up intricately to fit in a nucleus. You can look at them under a microscope, make a (partial) colored model, or imagine them. However you present it, you are bound by qualia.

But then, what is a DNA molecule, If no matter or quaĺe?

Yes. Completely agree. And if that's what 'direct' realism is, then you can sign me up, but if so, I'm left confused as to what 'indirect' realism could possibly be. Same for Banno's use of the term. I don't think I've ever been clear on this. — Isaac

I don't think the literature is clear on the distinction either AFAIK. Proponents of direct realism seem to do one of two mutually exclusive things:
( 1 ) Believe that when you see a red cup, you really are seeing the red cup, and was red cup before anybody interacted with it. Properties get 'read off' the world and logged into perception without transformation.
( 2 ) Believe that when you see a red cup, seeing it as a red cup is a useful summary/condensation and reflection of its real properties. You see it as a red cup, but you nevertheless see it.

Arguments against direct realism seem to focus on two points - that properties like being red aren't mind independent (notice this only targets ( 1 ) ), and exposing directly seeing the red cup (perceptual state is in direct relation with red cup) to various paradoxes (argument from hallucination, illusion etc). The purpose of this second flavour of argument seems to be to undermine direct realism in support of indirect (usually indirect representational) realism, because those paradoxes are seen to have more elegant solutions when you use (representational) perceptual intermediaries.

I believe it's also possible to construe ( 2 ) as a type of representation - a direct relationship of representation between red cup states and perceptual states of the red cup. Though it's a type of representation without perceptual intermediaries. I think Dennett's alluded to holding a position sympathetic to this (I can go quote hunting if required), something about body behaviours representing world behaviours without perceptual intermediaries. I'm not going to speculate further in this direction though.

I am quite sure that the forum is a non-representative sample of people who enjoy philosophy of perception. Philosophers of mind tend to be representationalist (at time poll was taken). I think the regular discussers in these threads are more likely than real philosophers to be sympathetic to embodied cognition, which seems to have a lot of overlap with ecological psychology approaches to perception, which are direct and possibly non-representational realist.

Ecological psychologists, on the other hand, deny that organisms encounter impoverished stimuli (Michaels and Palatinus 2014). Such a view, they believe, falsely identifies whole sensory systems with their parts—with eyes, or with retinal images, or with brain activity. Visual perceptual processes, for instance, are not exclusive to the eye or even the brain, but involve the whole organism as it moves about its environment. The motions of an organism create an ever-changing pattern of stimulation in which invariant features surface. The detection of these invariants, according to the ecological psychologist, provides all the information necessary for perception. Perception of an object’s shape, for instance, becomes apparent as a result of detecting the kinds of transformations in the stimulus pattern that occur when approaching or moving around the object. The edges of a square, for instance, will create patterns of light quite different from those that a diamond would reflect as one moves toward or around a square, thus eliminating the need for rule-guided inferences, drawing upon background knowledge, to distinguish the square from a diamond. Insights like these have encouraged embodied cognition proponents to seek explanations of cognition that minimize or disavow entirely the role of inference and, hence, the need for computation. Just as perception, according to the ecological psychologist, is an extended process involving whole organisms in motion through their environments, the same may well be true for many other cognitive achievements. — SEP on embodied cognition

Which can read like ( 1 ) or ( 2 ), Gibson's affordances are very similar to ( 2 ) (which afaik inspired Friston's work heavily?).

You will also find arguments between embodied cognition people (enactivists) and those who believe that perception is representational even without reference to the perceptual intermediary debate if you go looking.

Edit: meant to link this which talks about direct realism and enactivism.

...have I got that right? — Isaac

I'm working on what is involved in the intentionalist approach. It fits with Wittgenstein via Anscombe, and seems compatible with your comments about neuroscience, but there are some issues I'd like to clear up before committing to something like it. But yes, your account seems similar, if from a differing perspective.

On qualia:

Like the Snark there are many still hunting the quale, and good luck to them, but I've neither seen any compelling evidence it exists nor any reason to think it might. — Isaac

Thank you for setting this out. It's much as I had supposed. Qualia do not seem to have a useful place in these accounts.

What do you think qualia are? — AgentTangarine

Useless.

Just to repeat what I have been saying for years, qualia seem either to just be seeing red and feeling a smooth surface, things already accounted for in our language; or they are ineffable and hence outside of our language and of no use in our accounts. If you think there is a useful way to treat them, then it's up to you to present your account.

The view of Dennett you expressed is somewhat shallow - "he's a a computer guy, I don't do computers..." I'm not too keen on Dennett either, but the dismissiveness you present is of no use. Better that you stay out of the discussion.

Qualia differ from person to person, — AgentTangarine

That's why they are of little use in our accounts. I don't see that you are presenting anything of merit here. You seem to have a picture of an odd sort of dualism of material and qual, of which I can make little sense. If we take such a dualism seriously, how is it that qualia reflect what is happening in the "material" world?

The ideas of direct vs indirect realism themselves are problematic — Harry Hindu

On this I agree. It's an anachronism, and over-simplification.

What type of access do we have to our own conscious minds? — Harry Hindu

I don't think we "have access" to our own minds; we are our minds, at least in part - as you say. SO that way of speaking leads to confusion.

It fails to explain how one can confuse a hallucination, or a dream, for the real thing. — Harry Hindu

That's indeed a weak point. I suppose an intentionalsit account might talk about something like "persistence" being absent form hallucinations and dreams. Or better, that they are not shared in the way of veritable experiences.

On this I agree. It's an anachronism, and over-simplification. — Banno

:up:

There's too many ways of being direct or indirect to get into the specifics based on those terms alone I think.

That's it. We might finesse the account, but that is probably unneeded.

Just to repeat what I have been saying for years, qualia seem either to just be seeing red and feeling a smooth surface — Banno

Aha! Then it's small wonder indeed that you think they are useless. In reality though, qualia make up the whole world we live in.

Qualia differ from person to person,
— AgentTangarine

That's why they are of little use in our accounts. I — Banno

No, that's why they differ from person to person. You can't expect them to be all equal. Why should they? Because they differ they are even more useful in constructing an invariant picture of material processes behind them. If there would be only one common set of common qualia one couldn't even start looking for a common materialistic picture behind them.This picture is a subset of a much wider collection of qualia. Different and varying qualia can be reduced to a stable invariant set of common qualia, which are the qualia of the material processes.

I'm not seeing a point to this conversation.

No, that's why Flubberts differ from person to person. You can't expect them to be all equal. Why should they? Because they differ they are even more useful in constructing an invariant picture of material processes behind them. If there would be only one common set of common Flubberts one couldn't even start looking for a common materialistic picture behind them.This picture is a subset of a much wider collection of Flubberts. Different and varying Flubberts can be reduced to a stable invariant set of common Flubberts, which are the Flubberts of the material processes. — AgentTangarine

There's too many ways of being direct or indirect to get into the specifics based on those terms alone I think. — fdrake

Shouldn't be too hard to specify what you mean?

Shouldn't be too hard to specify what you mean? — frank

I told you previously what I mean by direct realism - at least the version of it I defend. It's a similar use of the term to the sensorimotor theory of perception paper I linked, and also similar to the description of perception in the enactivist section I referenced earlier.

There are other word meanings for direct realism, I gestured toward the 'reading off the world' one ('naive' realism) in thread too. Any particular position will be able to tell you what they mean when asked. The problem as I see it is threefold:

( A ) lots of contrary positions with the same broad labels, this might be because perception philosophies intersect with broader theory of mind ones and philosophy of language ones to a large degree.

( B ) the content ascribed to each position depends upon which position it's viewed from - the perspectives distort each other, you'll be able to find articles quibbling about presuppositions of certain word uses/argument patterns in the field (see how much of a quibbling preamble is required to determine what is meant by "qualia", "functional property", or a perception instantiating a property vs having a property inhere in a perception etc) to try and hedge against the history of theoretical baggage

( C ) it's probably not actually a misinterpretation to be supersensitive to theoretical baggage in the field because how experience is parsed depends upon how it's described, so something like vocabulary choice (or even whether an entity is conceivable) might have adverse consequences for articulating some other theory which needs a different vocabulary choice or labels that entity inconceivable/confused/a contradiction in terms. It makes it very difficult to make theories 'meet in an honest disagreement' when so much prefiguring/ground clearing jostling needs to be done.

(maybe also of interest to @Kenosha Kid).

It makes it very difficult to make theories 'meet in an honest disagreement' when so much prefiguring/ground clearing jostling needs to be done. — fdrake

I think that's only insurmountable when the people involved are full of antagonism and don't want honest disagreement.

That seems like an odd position to take. It implies that science is a pointless exercise, forever subsumed by whatever it was we 'reckoned' was the case prior to its discoveries. We used to talk as if the sun went around the earth, we talk of sunrise, the 'movement' of the stars. Should we then say that cosmology needs to change how it talks because we had a prior linguistic convention which assumed a geocentric universe? — Isaac

Ordinary language allows the revising of claims in the light of new discoveries. One can be mistaken about what they think they're perceiving, e.g., that the sun is literally rising. In your example, people agreed on what the term "movement" meant. The dispute was instead a substantial one about which objects were moving.

The "perception" dispute is not like that. It's instead a disagreement over how the term is defined.

I think its a logical/linguistic issue. Our (public) use of words derives from our interaction with things in the world that we find ourselves a part of.
— Andrew M

I don't think they do, at least not exclusively. Our public use of words is derived as much from social beliefs, dynamics and feedback (often chaotic), as it is from the properties of objects. — Isaac

Yes, language emerges within a dynamic, relational context. We don't stand outside the world perceiving things from a God-eye's perspective.

The "veil of perception" is an alternative conception that breaks that logical dependency.
— Andrew M

I don't see how. They just seem like two models to me. Why does the fact that one of them governs everyday interaction (including interaction with brains, fMRI scans, EEG etc) and one of them govern talk about how minds work mean that one breaks a logical dependency on the other? — Isaac

Because the "veil of perception" model takes the ordinary term "image" (or "veil", or "representation") which is defined in terms of perceptible objects and then defines "perception" in terms of images (or veils or representations), which is circular. Also see the example below.

If I use an instrument which relies on electricity to investigate electro-magnetism my results are thus constrained. I'm not told "you can discover anything you like, but you cannot change how we think electro-magnetism works because the machine you're using relies on electricity" — Isaac

As I see it, it's like being told that the instrument completes its function indirectly because it relies on electricity. The point is that the instrument does what it is designed to do and uses electricity (or perhaps some other yet-to-be discovered means) to do it. There isn't a barrier in the way.

Similarly, the term "perception" does what it is designed to do. There's no barrier or veil in the way because the term "perceive" has been defined ostensively (which is to say, relationally between a perceiver and what is perceived). That is, this red flower here is the intended object of my perception. When I look and become aware that it is there, then I've perceived it. If I'm mistaken about what is there (because, like the above instrument's operation, things can sometimes go awry) then I haven't perceived anything.

Scientific investigation is a natural extension of everyday experience where the language and knowledge is simply more specialized. There doesn't need to be a conflict.

My impression is that reviving the use of "direct" realism was about rehabilitating empiricism after Kant's view had become dominant.

So it's not like champions of indirect realism are trying to push woo with the use of the term. It's more that people (maybe you to some extent?) are pushing the use of the word "direct" in a way that seems a little contorted.

I really don't think we're so far past the problems that gave rise to the terms that they're meaningless or somehow profoundly problematic. Are we?

I don't think we "have access" to our own minds; we are our minds, at least in part - as you say. SO that way of speaking leads to confusion. — Banno

I don't really know that we are our minds. What of our bodies? Are we not our bodies? If confusion results from saying that we have access to our minds, in what way do we have access to our own bodies, and then to the environment they are part of? Does this mean that "we" can exist apart from our bodies? If not, then wouldn't that mean that we are our bodies and not our minds?

That's indeed a weak point. I suppose an intentionalsit account might talk about something like "persistence" being absent form hallucinations and dreams. Or better, that they are not shared in the way of veritable experiences. — Banno

A schizophrenic's hallucinations are persistent. If they cannot be shared in the way of veritable experiences, then how is it possible to lie to others - to make others believe in things that are not true? How is it that we can get others to behave in ways as if they are hallucinating by lying to them? Asserting that the behavior of others an help you determine if you are hallucinating or not doesn't help at all when the others and their behaviors could be a hallucination as well. Think about how a schizophrenic will claim that everyone is out to get him and they don't believe his ideas about being hunted down by the government.

Besides, none of this addresses why there is even a moment in time where hallucinations can be misinterpreted as being real - because of the shared qualities of the experience itself - hallucinated spiders look just like real spiders. When looking at another brain, either directly or via a brain scan, is it easier to tell the difference when someone is hallucinating or not than it is when you're the one experiencing the hallucination? If so, why the discrepancy when your view of another's brain is always via your own mind? How is it that you can know more about someone else's state than they do if you can only access their state indirectly, and if they are their own mind then why wouldn't they have more direct and accurate knowledge of their own mental state than you?

the question is whether there is a genuine obstacle to taking our everyday experience at face value. There is a long history of philosophical objections to such naivety, and a considerable body of recent scientific objection. But related though they may be, there are two different issues here: one about the facts on the ground, that is, about how we get along in the world; and one about how we are to theorize how we get along in the world. If you object that we have no ‘direct access’ to things — whatever that means — that is a claim of theory, but it is a claim about how we get along, and implies that there is an obstacle between ‘us’ and ‘the world’. — Srap Tasmaner

When you're asking a question about the nature of qualia, you're really talking theory. Qualia _seem_ to happen whatever our theories about them. There is pragmatism though in understanding the limits of other pragmatisms. It may be pragmatic to proceed on the basis that qualia do or don't exist, but that just means it's extra important to be aware of when they don't or do seem to. Otherwise you end up rationalising facts to fit theories and you're just championing something willy nilly.

Same for the fidelity of our experiences. It's efficient to assume that our brains have this all covered for us by now, but when we hit something alarming remember that such pragmatisms are just that.

( A ) lots of contrary positions with the same broad labels, this might be because perception philosophies intersect with broader theory of mind ones and philosophy of language ones to a large degree. — fdrake

:up:

see how much of a quibbling preamble is required to determine what is meant by "qualia", "functional property", or a perception instantiating a property vs having a property inhere in a perception etc — fdrake

Guilty, but that's characteristic of a) only having the experience to work with, not it's causes, b) being largely ignorant of the nature of those causes, and c) too many theories. All the more reason for divorcing things from theories about things.

Qualia is useful for thinking outside the box while in the box.