Decision does not precede the registering of sense data. — Leontiskos

As noted, that doesn't appear to be the case. And, either way, that's not actually operative here. A space for a decision need exist only prior to experience, not 'registering sense data' whcih can be entirely unconscious.

I've never held another position, so if i've misspoken, apologies. I don't see it though. This just seems like you spitting the dummy a little given that I've never pretended that 'objects' are what we receive in experience. That's Banno's position, and my points about language solve the daylight between our collective comments.
No idea why such resistance has been met with on an empirical fact coupled with an attempt at congruent and accurate language to represent it.

Well, no. I feel the different grit of the sandpaper. I don't feel my nerves. I feel using nerves — Banno

No. You don't. You feel electrical impulses taking on a certain character when decoded into conscious experience - and given we don't know anything abou tthat process, your conclusion is wanting for support. So is mine, though. Its just more parsimonious on the facts.

Feeling only one's nerves would provide you with no information about the sandpaper. — Banno

Luckily, you've missed what i'm trying to say here. Whether that's my fault or yours, you have. This hasn't been suggested. You feel the experience, not the object. That much is plain - it could be no other way without the intercession of magic. The process in getting there is the problem of direct/indirectness.

I'm unsure how to approach this without just saying 'Well, it appears rto me you are clearly wrong and you're not paying much attention to my posts. I recognize very little of what I've said in your replies'.

But that's basically a tantrum, so I want to avoid it. Unfortunately, you have not pointed out any inconsistency at all - rather, you have made it quite clear you are not actually engaging with the account on the terms i've put forward. So, i'll ignore that little discrepancy and see if I can't tease something out of you instead...

If what you mean to say is that I cannot rely on the "empirical facts" of our sight system to deduce that we do not directly experience an object (of sight) then you've proved my case far better than I ever could. We cannot. And if we cannot, then the entire concept of 'Direct Realism' is laughable.

So, either you accept that our sight system is factually an indirect system (which, on what's considered the empirical facts, it is without debate) or you think there's something other than what is considered the empirical facts of our system of sight is going on.

in either case, I can do little more than wait for your life raft to arrive :)

So, either you accept that our sight system is factually an indirect system (which, on what's considered the empirical facts, it is without debate) — AmadeusD

If what you mean to say is that I cannot rely on the "empirical facts" of our sight system to deduce that we do not directly experience an object (of sight) then you've proved my case far better than I ever could. — AmadeusD

You have it backwards: I'm saying you cannot rely on empirical facts to support any conclusion at all if you assume we have no access to empirical facts, so in assuming you have access to empirical facts you are assuming you have access to the world, which is contradictory to your stated position.

If you were consistent, you would say we have no access to empirical facts and therefore cannot draw any justifiable conclusions at all about perception, the world or anything else.

I don't accept the whole 'direct/ indirect' framing and to me all your comments are, to quote Dostoevsky, "pouring from the empty into the void", or to alter Chaucer a little "Thy drasty thinking is nat worth a toord".

That said, I'll leave you to the sophistry so appropriate to the lower quarters of your profession, as I have no illusions that your mind might be even a little open to correction.

In order to feel sandpaper:
The sandpaper must contact our skin.
The contact must register with sensory nerves.
The nervous signal must conduct to our brain.
Our brain must translate the nervous signal to sensation. — hypericin

This strictly one-way input -output model of sensation contrasts with recent approaches. Evan Thompson explains:

“…traditional neuroscience has tried to map brain organization onto a hierarchical, input-output processing model in which the sensory end is taken as the starting point. Perception is described as proceeding through a series of feedforward or bottom-up processing stages, and top-down influences are equated with back-projections or feedback from higher to lower areas. Freeman aptly describes this view as the "passivist-cognitivist view" of the brain.

From an enactive viewpoint, things look rather different. Brain processes are recursive, reentrant, and self-activating, and do not start or stop anywhere. Instead of treating perception as a later stage of sensation and taking the sensory receptors as the starting point for analysis, the enactive approach treats perception and emotion as dependent aspects of intentional action, and takes the brain's self-generated, endogenous activity as the starting point for neurobiological analysis. This activity arises far from the sensors—in the frontal lobes, limbic system, or temporal and associative cortices—and reflects the organism's overall protentional set—its states of expectancy, preparation, affective tone, attention, and so on. These states are necessarily active at the same time as the sensory inflow.

“Whereas a passivist-cognitivist view would describe such states as acting in a top-down manner on sensory processing, from an enactive perspective top down and bottom up are heuristic terms for what in reality is a large-scale network that integrates incoming and endogenous activities on the basis of its own internally established reference points. Hence, from an enactive viewpoint, we need to look to this large-scale dynamic network in order to understand how emotion and intentional action emerge through self-organizing neural activity

. You feel electrical impulses taking on a certain character when decoded into conscious experience — AmadeusD

No, we do not.

I touch the two pieces of sandpaper and choose the 200 grit for the fine work; I hand them to you and ask you to choose the 200 grit, you are able to do so.

You and I both feel the difference between the 40 grit and the 200 grit.

We feel the sandpaper, not the electrical impulses.

You do not say :"the impulses here have a finer character than the impulses there"; you say "This sandpaper is finer than that".

You might feel with or via those impulses, but they are not what you feel.

To feel electrical impulses, try sticking your fingers in a light socket.

As long as our perceptions are of the world, then we directly perceive the world, regardless of the qualitative features of those perceptions. — Luke

So in your account, qualitative features of perceptions are akin to a perceptual appendage? So for instance, to touch the world I need to use my hand. My hand is mine, not the world's, but this doesn't stop us from saying we directly touch the world. And so the same goes for the qualitative sensation of touching, this is just like the hand, another mechanism we need to touch the world?

You did not answer my earlier question: What is the difference between directly seeing a representation and directly experiencing a representation? — Luke

Really there is no difference. "See" can refer both to the subjective sensation of looking and to the external object. While "experience" only refers to the subjective. I wanted to point out that we don't "see" representation in the same way we see objects.

If representations are not a part of our perceptions, then where do they come from and how do we know about them? — Luke

This makes me wonder if you know what I and others mean by "representation". Perceptions are representations. They are a mapping of features of reality, arriving to us via sensory organs, into a form amenable to awareness.

They are like maps. Maps inform, becase they correspond to real features, but they are radically not those features. If all you had access to were maps, would you be directly aware of what those maps represent?

If you were consistent, you would say we have no access to empirical facts and therefore cannot draw any conclusions at all about perception, the world or anything else. — Janus

Maps, books, the Internet, other people, are all indirect ways of knowing things. For you to be consistent you would have to forego all knowledge that you don't experience with your five senses.

I think it is a matter of accuracy or reliability. "Are we able to form true propositions which accurately and reliably get at what truly exists in the world?" — Leontiskos

One thing we can be certain of is that is is not accuracy or reliability. No matter how indirect an information source is, it can still be accurate and reliable.

I do not forgo such knowledge but accept it provisionally to the degree it seems plausible.

My point to Amadeus was that if he denies we have access to the world, to empirical facts, then he has no justification based on the science of perception to claim that perception is either direct or direct.

I don't claim we have no access to empirical facts and I accept the science of perception (provisionally of course). I think the very framing of perception in terms of 'direct' and 'indirect' is wrongheaded from the get-go.

You have it backwards: I'm saying you cannot rely on empirical facts to support any conclusion at all if you assume we have no access to empirical facts — Janus

Then i have it completely right and cannot grok how its possible you could be saying something so opposite to the reality of this discussion. I'll leave it there.

If you were consistent, you would say we have no access to empirical facts — Janus

I do. And yuou've just responded to the comment in which I had to point that out, because no one seemed to be capable of figuring out that if you claim empirical knowledge, yet accept the 'fact' of our sight system scientifically, you are incoherent in your position. I have no clue how you could miss the intensity of the self-own you're putting forth here.

I've been using your own terms to defeat your posiition. And here, you're pretending to do the same in reverse? incoherent. However:

I think the very framing of perception in terms of 'direct' and 'indirect' is wrongheaded from the get-go. — Janus

Yet you (in the same comment) accept that sight is ipso fact indirect. So, yeah. Incoherent as anything posted here. If there were actually your position, I'd like to hear how you then deal with the issues we're talking about. But, your comments betray that this is essentially an attempt to get around your already-established reliance on the empirical facts to (erroneously, you'll notice) support a Direct Realist position. So weird.

That said, I'll leave you to the sophistry so appropriate to the lower quarters of your profession — Janus

It was inevitable you'd have to give up at some point. And here we are. Ad hominem and all.

We feel the sandpaper, not the electrical impulses. — Banno

Nope. This is factually not the case. We 'feel' electrical impulses. That is the case. No idea how you're supporting a pretense that this isn't the case, and i've been asking for your(and others) account of that for pages and pages and yet nothing but obfuscation. The only reasonable response to this is to outline how it is the case that you feel ANYTHING without those electrical impulses. And you don't. So, maybe just adjust your position instead of having a short-circuit on a forum :)

You do not say :"the impulses here have a finer character than the impulses there"; you say "This sandpaper is finer than that". — Banno

Because you're having to simply reality in order to get on with things. But pretending that the fact isn't |Touch -> nerve->brain via electric impulse is either dishonest or so intensely wrong that I cannot take you seriously. (you'll need to see above for why this is so incredibly funny).

To feel electrical impulses, try sticking your fingers in a light socket. — Banno

Are you denying that nerves work by ferrying electrical impulses to the brain? Ha....ha?

My point to Amadeus was that if he denies we have access to the world, to empirical facts, then he has no justification based on the science of perception to claim that perception is either direct or direct. — Janus

Which is the exact case for you "realist"s. You rely on the exact same form of sense. For some reason, you do not get that using your own account is how to show your account as incoherent. We cannot access empirical facts. I know this. Because we cannot access objects as they are. You seem to accept hte latter, and deny the former. Suffice to say, this is not a reaosnable position and you're not saying anything other than 1+1=54. Unfortuantely, though, you're still wrong. As an indirect realist I am able to claim there are actual objects in teh world, but that we do not have reliable data about them.
I cannot grasp why you are so intense resistant to the obvious. Unless you have a physically coherent account of how our experience is informed by objects, rather than our sense data, I can , again, do nothing more than laugh. It is silly, on its face, and on further investigation.
|
You might even be right - You'll notice, i'm not claiming to be 'right' - i'm making it patently clear that the position od Direct Realism is self-contradictory. You rely on 'sight' to establish it, while accepting that sight is indirect. Patently incongruent. So weird. Indirect Realism allows for both knowledge OF objects, and rejecting empirical knowledge ABOUT objects. Again, that this has been missed seems to me obtuseness rather than that you and Banno aren't capable of moving beyond your commitments. I don't have much more time for plum contradicting yourself,

So if you'd like to move on from accepting that our sight system is indirect, and yet claiming a direct realist account of hte world, I'm all ears. But if you continue to hold two contradictory positions in service of laying out adhominems, I'm out my dude, unless you want to stop fucking about and actually put forward you position (since, you apparently reject this entire formulation).

Nope. This is factually not the case. We 'feel' electrical impulses. That is the case. No idea how you're supporting a pretense that this isn't the case, and i've been asking for your(and others) account of that for pages and pages and yet nothing but obfuscation. The only reasonable response to this is to outline how it is the case that you feel ANYTHING without those electrical impulses. And you don't. So, maybe just adjust your position instead of having a short-circuit on a forum :) — AmadeusD

If anything, that paragraph shows a simple failure of comprehension.

Sure, we only feel stuff because of nerve impulses. I never claimed otherwise.

But we do not feel the impulses, we feel the sandpaper.

Not much more that can be added.

But we do not feel the impulses, we feel the sandpaper. — Banno

Nothing can be done for you. Enjoy.

So in your account, qualitative features of perceptions are akin to a perceptual appendage? So for instance, to touch the world I need to use my hand. My hand is mine, not the world's, but this doesn't stop us from saying we directly touch the world. And so the same goes for the qualitative sensation of touching, this is just like the hand, another mechanism we need to touch the world? — hypericin

I think so, although I'm not exactly sure what you mean. To clarify: if the direct realist account is that we directly perceive the world, and if the indirect realist account is that we indirectly perceive the world, then, at the very least, our perceptions must be something other than the world in order for them to be perceptions of the world; 'the world' and 'our perceptions' must be separate. However, it seems that indirect realists want to re-locate some parts of 'our perceptions' (such as our representations) over to the side of 'the world' instead, such that we can perceive our representations.

You did not answer my earlier question: What is the difference between directly seeing a representation and directly experiencing a representation?
— Luke

Really there is no difference. — hypericin

This implies that we see/perceive our representations. I disagree.

"See" can refer both to the subjective sensation of looking and to the external object. While "experience" only refers to the subjective. — hypericin

How can "see" also refer to the external object?

I wanted to point out that we don't "see" representation in the same way we see objects. — hypericin

I still don't understand the difference. Why don't we "see" representations in the same way? (And why the use of scare quotes?)

Perceptions are representations. — hypericin

This implies that we do not see/perceive our representations. We cannot see/perceive our representations if perceptions and representations are identical. Or, it at least indicates that perceptions and representations are on the same side, both opposed to 'the world'. If you are saying that perceptions and representations are both of 'the world', then I agree.

Maps inform, becase they correspond to real features, but they are radically not those features. If all you had access to were maps, would you be directly aware of what those maps represent? — hypericin

Maps are part of the world that we can have perceptions of. Maps are not part of our perceptions or human visual system, unlike our representations.

:roll:

My point to Amadeus was that if he denies we have access to the world, to empirical facts, — Janus

I don't see him claiming we have *no* access to the world, just no direct access. Indirection still allows access to empirical facts, just not absolute certainly about those facts: everything could always be a simulation, or whatnot. But absolute certainty is overrated.

I don't see that direct realism really gives you absolute certainty either.

A direct realist thinks they're directly perceiving the world as it is, an indirect realist believes they're experiencing the world through representations built up out of sensory data that comes from the real world, and both of those views as far as I can tell are equally vulnerable to the same types of skeptical questions

both of those views as far as I can tell are equally vulnerable to the same types of skeptical questions — flannel jesus

Why? If the world is as it's perceived, there is no room for the world to be anything else. The only option for skepticism is to be skeptical of direct realism itself. But the possibility of skepticism is built into indirect realism. All we know directly is perception, reality itself could potentially be anything. No need to doubt indirect realism.

If the world is as it's perceived, there is no room for the world to be anything else. — hypericin

And if you're okay with direct realists just assuming that they're perceiving the world as it is, you should be equally okay with indirect realists just assuming they're perceiving the world through their senses and their brain is creating their experience of the world. If direct realists just get to assume they are right, so do indirect realists. If indirect realists cannot just assume they're right, neither can direct realists.

I don't see a difference here in the applicability of skeptical questioning.

I still don't understand the difference. Why don't we "see" representations in the same way? (And why the use of scare quotes?) — Luke

I need to be as clearer here. The verb "see" can have two kinds of targets:

* Things in the world, "I see a red ball".
* Our visual representations of (potentially) things in the world. Of that ball, "I see a red circle in my visual field."

Even though the same word "see" is used, these are not the same operations. We don't see our visual representations in the same way we see objects. Rather, we can choose to attend to the visual representation itself, instead of attending to the object it represents.

To treat visual representations as one object among others is not accurate, and leads to objections like yours, or about homunculi. Both the object in the world and the visual representation (aka perception) are part of the same act of seeing, the difference is in what is attended to. I prefer the word "experience" when talking about the representation, as it is less ambitious.

Did that clarify at all?

I will attempt two more illustrations that might be helpful.

Can a person "drive a car," or can they only "move a steering wheel, push pedals, and adjust a gear shifter?"

When a carpenter cuts a piece of wood, does he really cut it, or does he merely "move a saw?"

One way to think of this might be to consider if acts of experiencing are infinitely decomposable. Can we afford to leave the sandpaper out of a complete description of feeling sandpaper?

For it would seem like the same problem you bring up could be applied to "feeling nerve impulses." We obviously can't feel the nerve impulses in our fingers, because those just work by stimulating other neurons closer to the brain. Nor do we experience that second set of neurons, for they only carry the signal to a third set of neurons, and so on.

Between each set of neurons, sits a synaptic cleft. Current doesn't jump across the cleft, rather neurotransmitters are released into the cleft, spurring on or halting depolarization. So, now we might say that we don't feel nerve signals from our fingers at all, but rather "feel the release of neurotransmitters into the synapse connecting our fingers to our brain." Thus, "we feel molecules in our synaptic cleft." But these molecules only perform this function in virtue of allowing variable rates of calcium and potassium ions to move across channels in the cell, so it might be that we actually "feel calcium and potassium ions." Yet these only work the way they do because of the valance electrons they possess, and the electrons only act as part of a field. Thus, we might be said to only experience "changes in quantum fields."

None of these is necessarily inaccurate, but they seem to be losing important details.

One thing we can be certain of is that is is not accuracy or reliability. No matter how indirect an information source is, it can still be accurate and reliable. — hypericin

Already answered:

Well, perhaps I should have said that I don't believe that indirectness entails inaccuracy, because there is a correlation. On average, the more players we add to the telephone game, the more distorted will be the final result, but it is nevertheless possible to achieve an accurate result even with a large number of players. — Leontiskos

Also unanswered:

Second, if the direct realist agrees that fingers, nerves, and brain are involved in sensation, then what is it about your argument that makes us draw the conclusion of indirect realism instead of the conclusion of direct realism? Is it primarily that word, "potentially," along with that final sentence? — Leontiskos

It's fairly important that you be able to identify what it is about your claims that should make us favor indirect realism over direct realism. If you can't identify this then I'm not sure what we are doing.

I don't see him claiming we have *no* access to the world, just no direct access. Indirection still allows access to empirical facts, just not absolute certainly about those facts: everything could always be a simulation, or whatnot. But absolute certainty is overrated. — hypericin

He has said many times we have no access to the world. If all he meant was that we have no certainty about the world, or that we have no access to things as they are in themselves then I have already agreed with him regarding that, and he still disagreed.

We have direct access to things as they affect us and as they appear to us—there seems to be no puzzle in that. We have no access, direct or indirect, to those aspects of things which are not included in the possible ways we can be affected by them.

And if you're okay with direct realists just assuming that they're perceiving the world as it is, you should be equally okay with indirect realists just assuming they're perceiving the world through their senses and their brain is creating their experience of the world. If direct realists just get to assume they are right, so do indirect realists. If indirect realists cannot just assume they're right, neither can direct realists.

I don't see a difference here in the applicability of skeptical questioning. — flannel jesus

If indirect realists are OK with assuming they're perceiving the world through their senses and their brain is creating their experience of the world then they are accepting that the scientific picture of perception is accurate.

How does this differ from the direct realist claims that the scientific picture of the world is accurate? To me, indirectness suggests distortion—if there is distortion then we cannot rightly assume the scientific picture of perception is accurate.

How does this differ from the direct realist claims that the scientific picture of the world is accurate? To me, indirectness suggests distortion—if there is distortion then we cannot rightly assume the scientific picture of perception is accurate. — Janus

I'm not seeing the logic of all the pieces here personally

What's giving you trouble?

what kind of distortion are you talking about? For example

I don't think it's necessarily the case that an indirect realist MUST agree with the distortion claim.

I also don't think it's the case that if there is distortion, that means the scientific account is wrong.

Both of those arguments seem to be leaps of logic to me.

If we have direct access to the world then there is no distortion, if our access is indirect then it is distorted. Think about looking at the world through rose tinted glasses or reflected in a convex mirror for example.

Of course, distortion is without meaning except in relation to lack of distortion, just as indirectness has no meaning except in relation to directness. There is no absolute picture here to be found, it is all dialectic. The only choice to be made is between which way of speaking is most apt in particular contexts.

So those who claim it is a fact that we only have indirect access to the world are speaking in absolutes. Our ordinary perception must be the criterion of directness against which indirectness find its sense, otherwise the wheels are spinning but we are going nowhere. So, if the claim is that perception is indirect, against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it?

So, if the claim is that perception is indirect, against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it? — Janus

There might not be any coherent conception of directness. I don't understand why that would be a point against indirect realism, rather than direct realism.

There is a coherent conception of directness though. Our ordinary perceptions, and against these the seeing things indirectly through tinted glasses, distorting mirrors, telescopes, radar, periscopes and so on make sense.

If there were no coherent conception of directness, then there would be no coherent conception of indirectness. So really my question "against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it" implied against what coherent conception other than ordinary perception.

If someone says "I believe X", it makes sense to me to say "X is incoherent, so I'm gonna go with not-X".

But in any case, indirect realism doesn't necessarily rely on "distortion" per se, BUT there's clearly distortion in human perception. There's obviously optical distortion - like sticks looking bent in water - and then there's distortion that happens in the brain. https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/hermann-grid-illusion-is-it-an-illusion-or-hallucination-1659171065-1 Most people see grey dots appear at the intersections here, is that the kind of distortion you mean?

And why does that mean the scientific understanding of perception is incorrect? I'm pretty sure the scientific understanding of perception is aware of these illusions, these distortions.