Correct me if I am wrong please, but it seems to me that you interpret Austin from a scientific perspective, and not from a philosophical point of view. To be honest, I think that Austin somehow embraces empiricism. I don't mean to say that he bases his point on this theory, but it goes beyond than just 'evidence'. Note that he states on page 60:

But here, of course, Ayer answers that, sometimes at least, there is real 'disagreement about the nature of the empirical facts'. But what kind of disagreement can this be?

I think the main issue regarding Austin is his ambiguity arguing about Ayer's points. At least, what I interpret is that there is empirical evidence that Austin gives as granted, and he is surprised of why Ayer actually believes in the existence of such a disagreement with 'empirical facts'.

On the other hand, if you believe that Austin is deconstructing metaphysics, then how should we get involved with his theory? Or at least an approach to. I interpret the verb 'deconstructing' as padding backwards on what others wrote on 'perception', 'real', 'external', 'internal'. So, do you believe that Austin took a step back from metaphysics?

Furthermore, I think Austin sates a very interesting point in page 49:

If dreams were not 'qualitatively' different from waking experiences, then every waking experience would be like a dream; the dream-like quality would be, not difficult to capture, but impossible to avoid. It is true, to repeat, that dreams are na"ated in the same terms as waking experiences: these terms, after all, are the best terms we have; but it would be wildly wrong to conclude from this that what is narrated in the two cases is exactly alike. When we are hit on the head we sometimes say that we 'see stars'; but for all that, seeing stars when you are hit on the head is not 'qualitatively' indistinguishable from seeing stars when you look at the sky

I think Austin drives us here to Idealism, or more specifically, a new use of language or Philosophy of Language. I think it is Ayer the one who embraces positivism rejecting metaphysics altogether. I beg your pardon if I am not explaining myself accurately. I attempt to understand Austin from a Philosophy of Language view, basically.

I ask because nothing in biology shows that we are viewing our own eyes. Rather, eyes are included in the act of perceiving, as necessary components of the perceiver. And the contact with light on the retina is quite direct—light hits the retina. This contact between perceiver and perceived suggests the directness of perception.

Austin is simply investigating Ayer's creation of the distinction in dismantling the whole framework of direct/indirect as well as "perception". — Antony Nickles

I find Austin and Ayer's account of the topic interesting and useful.  But I still feel the classic account of indirect perception which has been around from the time of Plato is more reasonable, even if Austin tried to dismiss the distinction of direct and indirect perception altogether, and even if there are still many folks who claim that direct realists' view on perception is correct.

As said, brain and eyes are not the main topic in the thread, but were brought in to show that the perception process is not direct. 

I would leave it at that, and move on to the next chapter of the book. I did read up on the delusion and illusion part in Austin last night, and also read the part where he discusses difference in usage of the words "looks" "seems" and "appears".  It was more like English semantic chapter rather than Philosophy, but was very useful.  I agreed with him on every point in the chapter.

I am going to prepare for pointing out some of the logical problems noticed in Austin's analysis on Delusion and Illusion in his book.

My point was just simply, eyes are the medium which passes the perceived lights into the retina, the retina forms images from the lights, converts to electric signal, and passes the converted electric signals into the brain. I am not sure if eyes can see itself. I suppose it doesn't.

It's classic. — Ludwig V

That's right. Austin was a classicist. He was drawn into philosophy by puzzlement at the things philosophers said. He brought his method over from Classics.

In the case of the camouflaged church what we see is not, as Austin claims, "a church that now looks like a barn". (30) What we see is a barn. If we didn't what would be the point of camouflaging it? — Fooloso4

Should, or even could, we bring out every nuance of this story? What is the building over there? It is a church. It has been made to look like a barn. So we see a church that has been made to look like a barn, A church that now looks like a barn. That seems reasonable. I think this account is clear.

We might prefer to avoid saying "What we see is a barn and what we see is a church." And if pressed, I'd have to agree with Austin, that what we see is a church, albeit one that looks like a barn.

I dunno. This doesn’t strike me as one of Austin’s better points. Suppose I said, “I see a collection of 7 to the 112th power molecules that looks like a bottle.” Am I being accurate? In a way: This is (let’s say) the exact number of molecules it takes to form the bottle. And go ahead and specify something about shape if that helps. But in another way it’s wildly inaccurate: I don’t, I can’t, see those molecules. So surely the right answer is, “I see a bottle, not a collection of invisible particles.” The bottle is constituted by the particles but we’re talking about perception here, not quiddity or whatever.

So with the barn and the church. What I see is a barn. You’d have to tell me about the church disguise before I could even loosely claim to “see” it, just as I need to be told about molecular structure before I could, loosely, claim to see it. And in both cases, it's a use of "seeing" divorced from ordinary perception.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to talk about this, necessarily, but I do think a defender of the value of ordinary language is going pretty far out on a limb here.

I myself, cannot quite understand how perception works directly, but I do understand how it works indirectly, i.e. via sense organs and sense-data. — Corvus

These are not easy issues to work through. One thing that might help is remembering that sight is not the only sense, and that an account of how we perceive must wok as well for touch and smell as for vision.

So are you sure you understand how it works to touch something indirectly? To smell the coffee, indirectly?

I certainly don't.

What you are seeing is a memory of the cup... — Corvus

There's a homunculus lurking here.

We need to get past the picture of a process called "perception". If nothing else, Austin has shown that this is a figment that is simply manufactured by philosophy. — Antony Nickles

Yes, but going on past experience on the fora, it won't happen. :wink:

A brief comment on the Butterfly Dream. The last two lines are important:

Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the transformation of things

.

Distinctions are made between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly and being awake and dreaming, but beyond the distinctions is the transformation of things. Throughout the Zhuangzi one thing becomes another. Often it is not simply a distinction between things, but from one thing to its opposite. Understanding comes through this transformation from the limited perspective of one thing to that of another. The story is told in Chapter Two: On Equalizing Things.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to talk about this, necessarily, but I do think a defender of the value of ordinary language is going pretty far out on a limb here. — J

"I see a barn" is not wrong. One might usefully say we will meet at the barn, and be understood by those who know it to be a church. Isn't the point that "I see a barn" is not the whole story?

But "I see a barn and I see a church" is problematic, if they are the very same. One feels entitled to ask, "So, which is it? Church or barn?". One presumes that it is not both. Despite this, a church might be used as a barn, or a barn as a church.

Again, detail and context are needed. "I see a church that looks like a barn" gives us more than "I see a barn".

We should try to avoid the interminable discussions that so often proceed from such differences. I take it that we agree there is a church, and that it looks like a barn, and that "I see a church" is OK, and so is "I see a barn", but that their conjunction needs some additional information - the fact of the camouflage - to avoid contradiction.

And if pressed, I'd have to agree with Austin, that what we see is a church, albeit one that looks like a barn. — Banno

If "a church were cunningly camouflaged so that it looked like a barn" why would you think that what you see is not a barn but a church? How would you respond when you saw it? Would you approach it with the intention of praying?

That depends on whether one is aware that it has been camouflaged, of course.

I'm not seeing(!) a point here, either in favour or against the arguments we are considering.

The cups exist independently of me, it's just that all I see is patches and blobs from which I infer(?) the existence of a cup.

Austin is pointing out flaws in some arguments for that scenario, particularly in the wording of the argument, which appears to be misusing common words. — frank

We don't just see cups, we pick them up, hold them, drink from them, wash them and store them in the cupboard.

We don't just see cups, we pick them up, hold them, drink from them, wash them and store them in the cupboard. — Janus

The only cups I own are used for holding pencils and paint brushes. I drink tea out of a metal tumbler that comes with a lid.

That depends on whether one is aware that it has been camouflaged, of course. — Banno

Right. What would be the point of camouflaging it if not to fool those who do not know that it is a church?

I'm not seeing(!) a point here, either in favour or against the arguments we are considering. — Banno

The point is about what it is that we see. What is the basis for the distinction between what something looks like and what we see? It seems as though Austin is basing the distinction on a questionable assumption about objectivity, as if we don't see a barn because it is a church.

...I still feel the classic account of indirect perception which has been around from the time of Plato is more reasonable. — Corvus

...where he discusses difference in usage of the words "looks" "seems" and "appears" ...was more like English semantic chapter rather than Philosophy... — Corvus

Well I'll leave you to it, only to say that taking these points as a matter of "semantics" is due to underestimating that he is dismantling the "classic account of indirect perception" from Plato through Descartes and as it remains these days, with Ayer as only one proponent but with the same reasons and same means.

The only cups I own are used for holding pencils and paint brushes. I drink tea out of a metal tumbler that comes with a lid. — frank

You filthy degenerate! :razz:

Is he dismantling anything or merely presenting a different way of thinking about it.

These are not easy issues to work through. One thing that might help is remembering that sight is not the only sense, and that an account of how we perceive must wok as well for touch and smell as for vision.

So are you sure you understand how it works to touch something indirectly? To smell the coffee, indirectly?

I certainly don't. — Banno

Sure. Touching someone indirectly is possible. Think of a dermatology doctor wearing thin surgical rubber gloves, and performing skin examination of a patient. His specially manufactured surgical gloves are made so thin, almost transparent and super sentient to the doctor's hands so he can feel the parts of the skin being touched just like with skin to skin, but there is a barrier between his hands and the patient's skin being touched and examined.

Indirect smelling? Well as Austin said, there are various types of smelling too. Forget coffees.
Think of your partner's underwear. You used to smell the body scent from the body directly, but you can smell the body scent from the underwear when it was taken off and left on the bedroom floor on one lazy Sunday morning. You are smelling the body scent indirectly via the underwear.

There's a homunculus lurking here. — Banno

The research paper about the topic was in a Psychology and Neurology article. I remember reading it.

The point is about what it is that we see. — Fooloso4

Sure. IS there a presumption that there is only one correct answer here? Those in on the joke see a church. The duped see a barn. The explanation is that the church has been made to look like a barn. I don't see a problem.

What would be the point of camouflaging it if not to fool those who do not know that it is a church? — Fooloso4

Exactly.

What is the basis for the distinction between what something looks like and what we see? — Fooloso4

The duped think they see a barn. They are mistaken. What they see is a church, made to look like a barn. I don't see a problem.

It seems as though Austin is basing the distinction on a questionable assumption about objectivity, as if we don't see a barn because it is a church. — Fooloso4

But we don't see a barn, we see a church that looks like a barn. How does dressing that up in terms of objectivity change that? Did camouflaging the church transform it into a barn? I don't think so. It just made it look like a barn.

Cool. In each example you give, you are able to set to clearly the indirect case that allows us to make sense of the direct case.

Is he dismantling anything or merely presenting a different way of thinking about it. — Janus

He is not presenting a different way of thinking (another answer or theory) about this (manufactured) problem of direct or indirect access (and all the related philosophical manifestations). He is showing us how things work to make it clear that the philosopher created this distinction (with pre-defined reasons for a certain answer). So, yes, he is dismantling, and not only the entire framework, but showing how errors in these related activities are normally resolved in different ways (showing that skepticism is not an issue for philosophy with just one face). He does also have important things to say, about: our variety of activities, the role of context, the different criteria for judgment of each thing, etc.

This might help, from William James via Owen Flanagan: "the idea that our simple perceptions are in fact generated by the binding of even simpler units is compatible with these simpler units making no phenomenological appearance whatsoever. We need to beware of imposing our views about how experiences are generated onto the phenomenological surface."

In other words, what something is, in terms of its deep structure or physical reduction, isn't necessarily perceptible at the phenomenological level. The church looks like a barn. My group-of-molecules looks like a bottle. Wouldn't Austin agree that this is just common sense? The confusion, if there is any, stems from the fact that we often fail to disambiguate perception-words like "see"; sometimes we want "see" to refer to the phenomenology, other times to the "simpler units" that create the phenomenology and, often, provide a reductive description. This latter use often gets combined with a view of how object X "really" is, scientifically.

Cool. In each example you give, you are able to set to clearly the indirect case that allows us to make sense of the direct case. — Banno

If you were asked who was smelling the body scent from the underwear, of course, you could say "I ( ) was smelling it directly from the underwear."

But if you were asked how does the smelling work, then I would expect you to say (if want to be reasonable), smelling works indirectly via the nose as the sense organ which is the main medium, and there was 2nd medium in this case (you could have more than one medium on perception) which was the underwear (because the scent was not originated from the underwear but from the body). The body scent you smelt was of course a sense-data.

He is not presenting a different way of thinking (another answer or theory) about this (manufactured) problem of direct or indirect access (and all the related philosophical manifestations). — Antony Nickles

As I see it, the problem is only "manufactured" if we buy into the idea that there is only one correct way to think about it. Otherwise, you just have different ways of thinking and talking about perception.

The duped see a barn. — Banno

Then we are in agreement.

We are also in agreement that they failed to correctly identify the building.

But we don't see a barn, we see a church that looks like a barn. — Banno

If by "we" you mean those who are not duped, then yes. But it may be that we would be among the duped, in which case we would see a barn.

I get that. But we are perceiving light, not electrical signals. We are our eyes, the signals, the brain, etc. We cannot be both perceivers and mediums.

Can't typ...

But it may be that we would be among the duped, in which case we would see a barn. — Fooloso4

Yes, in which case, as I said, we are mistaken. What we see is a church, made to look like a barn.

Do you see something deeper here, that I'm missing?