Pray tell what is my fundamental misunderstanding? — hypericin

This:

When you see a tree, you are seeing not the tree but it's reflected light. — hypericin

they accept the Bad Argument. They think that somehow or other, the experiences are themselves the object of the experiences. — Searle

When I see a photo of a tree, I indirectly perceive the tree, but directly perceive the photo, for example. — NOS4A2

Does the camera, producing the photo, directly perceive the tree?

Also.

Is it different for words? When you see the name "Fido", do you indirectly perceive the dog?

Or is it more relevant to ask: when you read a description of Fido, do you indirectly perceive the dog?

If I take the direct route to town, it still takes five minutes; I don't arrive instantaneously.

Are we directly affected by the light reflected off of objects? What would it mean to say we are indirectly affected by light?

And I agree that is a question that can be asked of all philosophy. Do you think philosophy, in the sense that it is being "practiced" here is anything more than an amusing pastime?

Does the camera, producing the photo, directly perceive the tree? — bongo fury

Do we seriously entertain the possibility that cameras perceive anything?

The point is methodological. The view of and is oddly passive. This becomes very clear when one starts to talk about our interactions with the things around us - like pruning the tree.

Some wordplay is more interesting and some less. — Janus

Yours is pretty ordinary at the moment.

Even Kant supposed a thing in itself — schopenhauer1

An appeal to the supposed authority of Kant will not carry much weight here — Banno

Kant was a direct realist. The external world is the “empirically real” and the tree is an empirical object that we experience “immediately”. See the “Refutation of Idealism”.

here it is proved that outer experience is really immediate — B276

Not that it’s remotely relevant.

Yours is pretty ordinary at the moment. — Banno

I'm actually quite gratified to hear that you consider my words to be ordinary; I'd be horrified if you found them interesting, just as I'd be concerned if I began to find your commonplace assertions interesting.

Kant was a direct realist. The external world is the “empirically real” and the tree is an empirical object that we experience “immediately”. See the “Refutation of Idealism”.

Not that it’s remotely relevant. — Jamal

Yet he posited that time/space/causality and the categories were in the "mind". So he doesn't deny the objects, just that we have access to what they are in-themselves (veridical correspondence), and thus I would say not a direct realist in that regard. We have access to our shaping of the tree, not the tree-in itself. I'd say that is Kant's main (mainstream?) idealist position.

Kant was a direct realist. The external world is the “empirically real” and the tree is an empirical object that we experience “immediately”. See the “Refutation of Idealism”. — Jamal

As I understand Kant the empirical world is real only in the sense of being a collective representation.

I admit that for Kant, objects of experience are real insofar as they are conditioned by the transcendental conditions of experience. In other words, we experience things that we are able to experience, as we are able to experience them.

It would be wrong to interpret him as saying that we just see things in our heads.

Kant was a direct realist. — Jamal

So you think his self-categorization as transcendental idealist was erroneous?

His refutation of idealism was intended to differentiate his Critique from what he called the ‘problematical idealism’ of Berkeley. He also said you could be at once an empirical realist AND a transcendental idealist and that these were not in conflict.

An appeal to the supposed authority of Kant will not carry much weight here.

Have you an argument? Your claim is that we cannot have veridical access to the tree. I have sufficient access to it to be able to prune it. What more do you need? If there is a "thing in itself" about which we can know nothing, then it is irrelevant and need not concern us. — Banno

The point is methodological. The view of ↪schopenhauer1 and ↪hypericin is oddly passive. This becomes very clear when one starts to talk about our interactions with the things around us - like pruning the tree. — Banno

What are you a freakn Hobbit in the Shire? "Oh that Kant-speak is for them 'queer folk' that ain't from around these parts". What an odd prejudice for a philosophy forum. Solipsistic indeed! The world of Banno!


You can prune the tree, you can interact with the tree. That doesn't mean you are verdically having access to the tree. You are thus perceiving the tree, cognizing with it, and there is an interplay between stimuli, sensory datum, and cognitive processing.

As I said before (and yet you conspicuously ignore because you might not see its import), the apple interacting with the table is different than the human interacting with the tree. What is the difference between cognition of an object and any old interaction with the object? Yet you do not have a good answer.

You are getting caught up in word games. The refutation isn't if something is "really" interacting per se (though arguments can be made against that), but rather if the interaction has a direct kind of "knowledge" of the tree without mediation.

Yes, he was a transcendental idealist; that’s implicit in what I’ve said already. I’m emphasizing his system in a particular way to bring out what I see is the thrust of his thinking on these matters.

Do you think philosophy, in the sense that it is being "practiced" here is anything more than an amusing pastime? — Janus

Are we directly affected by the light reflected off of objects? What would it mean to say we are indirectly affected by light? — Janus

Our eyes are directly affected.

The central claim of direct or naive realism is that we perceive things "as the are". Apples look red because that's really how apples look. This is called naive because I think we all start from there, we intuitively take this for granted as children. In some people this perspective is never abandoned, and they try to buttress this unchallenged intuition with philosophical arguments.

Do you think philosophy, in the sense that it is being "practiced" here is anything more than an amusing pastime? — Janus

Not really.

It would be wrong to interpret him as saying that we just see things in our heads. — Jamal

Our heads are just collective representations like the rest. We don't experience things as being in our heads. but as being outside.

So, we could say that things are not in our phenomenal heads, but are in our noumenal 'heads'.

In other words, we experience things that we are able to experience, as we are able to experience them. — Jamal

And thus, I would say, not quite a direct realist. Perhaps he did think we had immediate access to the categories but I would say that is still a mediated one and thus indirect (idealist even more indirect than indirect realism in the sense that it isn't even material things we are immediately accessing, simply the structures of the background).

is oddly passive — Banno

Not at all, experience is actively constructed, it is not a passive process. It's the direct realist that believe experiences are passively received from the outside.

The central claim of direct or naive realism is that we perceive things "as the are". Apples look red because that's really how apples look. This is called naive because I think we all start from there, we intuitively take this for granted as children. In some people this perspective is never abandoned, and they try to buttress this unchallenged intuition with philosophical arguments. — hypericin

The idea that we perceive things "as they are' seems incoherent to me. But that is indeed the naive assumption; that our eyes are like windows through which we look out onto a world of real objects. Naive realists like @Banno don't seem to be able to let go of this primal picture.

Not at all, experience is actively constructed, it is not a passive process. It's the direct realist that believe experiences are passively received from the outside. — hypericin

:up:

And thus, I would say, not quite a direct realist — schopenhauer1

Ok, I confess: to describe Kant as a direct realist tout court is an exaggeration. But as Horkheimer said, sometimes only exaggeration is true.

By the way, it’s not immediate access to the categories that we have, but immediate access to things in the world around us.

Ok, I confess: to describe Kant as a direct realist tout court is an exaggeration. But as Horkheimer said, sometimes only exaggeration is true. — Jamal

:ok:

By the way, it’s not immediate access to the categories that we have, but immediate access to things in the world around us. — Jamal

Do we not, by our very thinking nature have "immediate" background structures of his categories? The things that structure the very world (cognition) itself? By immediate I guess I mean here, that it is entailed in the very structure of thought itself (and thus how world is presented).

The idea that we perceive things "as they are' seems incoherent to me. But that is indeed the naive assumption; that our eyes are like windows through which we look out onto a world of real objects. Naive realists like Banno don't seem to be able to let go of this primal picture. — Janus

I think it’s more that he is reacting to the equally incoherent claim that we don’t perceive things “as they (really) are”.

I think it’s more that he is reacting to the equally incoherent claim that we don’t perceive things “as they (really) are”. — Jamal

You can perceive, yet have a wrong notion of what is there. A simple mirage tells us that. Why should we have more direct access than is evolutionarily necessary to interact with that object?

Do we not, by our very thinking nature have "immediate" background structures of his categories? — schopenhauer1

I suppose you could say that. I felt it confused the issue to use “immediate” in that way, because Kant is using it specifically with regard to the perception of things in the world.

The idea that we perceive things "as they are' seems incoherent to me. — Janus

Exactly, it is incoherent.

Naive realists like Banno don't seem to be able to let go of this primal picture. — Janus

And yet they strut and prance as if their naivete were in fact sharp insight. That is what is most objectionable.

I suppose you could say that. I felt it confused the issue to use “immediate” in that way, because Kant is using it specifically with regard to the perception of things in the world. — Jamal

Got it. Well, I think his idea of "immediate intuitions" are "unmediated" awareness of sensory input, it's not necessarily an accurate picture of the external world. As you noted, his idea is that the things-in-themselves are always an unknown and can never be but non-revealed.

:lol:

I think it’s more that he is reacting to the equally incoherent claim that we don’t perceive things “as they (really) are”. — Jamal

Right, we perceive things as they really are for us, not as they really are for an ant or an aardvark. It's the idea that we see things as they really are "in themselves" (meaning as they really are independently of any and all percipients) which is absurd.

And yet they strut and prance as if their naivete were in fact sharp insight. That is what is most objectionable. — hypericin

True that!

That is what is most objectionable — hypericin

I’ll tell you what I think is most objectionable. It’s when people are explicitly and politely told that what they are attacking is a position that nobody holds, and they ignore the information completely. Or when someone helpfully cites the philosophical literature and sets out the state of philosophical debate on the issue, and likewise is ignored.

Direct/indirect realism is like grammar controversies: it attracts those who are sure of themselves but at the same time unwilling to do the most basic research.

I think it’s more that he is reacting to the equally incoherent claim that we don’t perceive things “as they (really) are”. — Jamal

Reacting to who's claim? His mental strawman he points at and shouts "Bad Argument! Stove's Gem!"