Another word for a collection of human organs and processes is a human being. This is the perceiver and can be confirmed to perceive. Any thing less, for instance a subset of organs, cannot be said to perceive. Human perceivers also digest, metabolize, breathe, and grow hair. — NOS4A2
For these reasons it cannot be said that brains perceive. And since our eyes point outwards, it cannot be said we view are perceiving brain phenomena, whether we call them processes, configurations, qualia. — NOS4A2
If you’re not using eyes, how are you witness to the end result of this processed and interpreted information? — NOS4A2
We directly perceive sense data. — RussellA
Anything that is the “mechanics of human vision” is itself the perceiving…… — NOS4A2
…..and not the perceived. — NOS4A2
If indirect realism accepts this it is redundant. — NOS4A2
1. The transformation from sensory media (light, sound waves, chemicals) into nerve signals.
2: The transformation or interpretation of nerve signals into the abstract, fictive qualities of experience (colors, sounds, smells). — hypericin
It is reasonable to treat the mental act of categorization as part of the perception. It is also reasonable to distinguish it from the perception. — hypericin
"'So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?' It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life." — Richard B
It inevitably heads in the direction of a homunculus argument, which fails. It tries to account for phenomena in terms of the very phenomenon that it is supposed to explain. — NOS4A2
The only way out of this, I think, is to say that “interpreting” and “configuring” reality are acts of perceiving, and abandon the idea that these interpretations and configurations of reality are the objects of perception. But then again, that would imply direct realism, making indirect realism redundant.
If direct realism is saying we are perceiving reality as it is, then indirect realism is perceiving reality exactly as it isn’t. But these qualifiers are essentially nonsensical and unnecessary. Though the problem of the external world is related to the problem of perception, I am speaking strictly of the problem of perception. — NOS4A2
I've been watching, but I wasn't much interested in joining in. The progress here was predictable, with those who reject realism insisting on expounding a version of it that is not held by those who more or less agree with it.I was hoping you'd drop by. — Tom Storm
I'm fond of Austin's take-down of sense-data accounts. Searle extends and renovates Austin's basic intuition that when we talk about, say, a tree or a kettle, it is the tree or the kettle we are discussing and not something like our perceptions or mental images or whatever. When one says the tree has leaves, that's about the tree, not anything else.Is your take on the conversation about realism informed by Austin and Searle? — Tom Storm
Most assuredly.My memory is that you would have no truck with the idea of a tree 'as it is in itself', finding this qualifier redundant. — Tom Storm
Sure. For those interested in doing some actual thinking about the issue, a sample can be found at The Philosophy of Perception and the Bad Argument. Variations of the bad argument have already been used in this thread, but perhaps Searle sets out the logic more clearly (@Isaac has previously set out much the same refutation in terms of Markov Blankets).Do you agree with Searle's account of 'the bad argument' as being a key fallacy driving these sorts of discussions that inevitable end up talking about visual illusions, etc? — Tom Storm
My diagnosis is that hereabouts - that is, on this forum - there are folk who begin by dividing things into a private world and a public world. They sometimes phrase this as internal vs external, or object vs subject, first person vs third person, and so on. They then proceed to conclude that there are two worlds, or to collapse the whole of the "external" world to some internal characteristic - the will, for example. they think they have presented an argument for one of the varieties of idealism when all they have done is to assume idealism.Is there a fallacy found in that we are not seeing the seeing, the visual experience? — Tom Storm
Well, sure, when you look at a tree, there are various physiological and psychological processes that go along with seeing the tree. Nevertheless, there is a tree. It's the tree that either does or does not have leaves, regardless of our perceptions and representations.What do you say to the person who asserts that when a human regards an object, that object is to a greater or lesser extent created in the experience of perception, which brings with it anticipatory notions and memories, along with a particular cognitive apparatus which sees colours and other attributes which are present in the experience of looking but not in the object being seen. — Tom Storm
It's the tree that either does or does not have leaves, regardless of our perceptions and representations. — Banno
1. The transformation from sensory media (light, sound waves, chemicals) into nerve signals.
2: The transformation or interpretation of nerve signals into the abstract, fictive qualities of experience (colors, sounds, smells).
This double transformation is the precondition of perception and rules out direct realism.
Direct vs. indirect realism becomes about whatever the caller wants apparently. — schopenhauer1
transformations you listed are transformations of the perceiver, not the perceived. — NOS4A2
Overwhelmingly, philosophers, like the general population, will if asked say that they are realists (80% in the PhilPapers survey, with idealism garnering less than 6%.) — Banno
Sure, it's complex. And you? Do you think that there is indeed a tree with leaves? Is there something about your view that opposes it to direct realism, or perhaps even realism? What? — Banno
We've two ways of talking, one involving trees, the other - and here my expression will be loose - some sort of nested Markov Blankets setting out the relations between physical systems. And neither of these is complete, neither contains the other, and they do not, cannot, stand contrary to each other. Hence anomalous monism, or some variation thereof.For me, when modelling, there's no 'tree'. I don't even have a step in the process where there's a thing I could call a tree. It's just about signals and responses. One of those responses might be to form the word 'tree', or to act in such a way I'd personally recognise as responding to a tree, but in the model, there's no tree. It's just data>>response. — Isaac
Exactly right, the tree transforms the light that reflects off it, which transforms the chemical activity of the light receptors, which transforms electrical activity in the nervous system, which transforms subjective experience.
What exactly about this process is "direct"?
Before I get to my view, I'd like to defend indirect realism, at least as it opposes direct realism. — schopenhauer1
Demonstrably, @Isaac and his friends do stand outside of the act of cognition, looking in. If you start by dividing a thing in twain, you ought not be surprised that you have two pieces.You can't stand outside the act of cognition. Put another way, you can't cognise the cogniser. The act of cognition involves subjective and objective poles, but both of those poles arise as aspects of the conscious act. But framing the question the way you have introduces a kind of realist premise which is not commensurable with the kind of question you're asking, you're trying to treat 'the perceiver' as an object, which it never is. — Wayfarer
to myI’d go along wth that... — Wayfarer
So there must be more to be said.I suspect we (Wayfarer, Tom, Isaac) see mind as embedded in the world, and reject the hard distinction between perceiver and perceived that underpins the question of the OP — Banno
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