Decision does not precede the registering of sense data. — Leontiskos
Well, no. I feel the different grit of the sandpaper. I don't feel my nerves. I feel using nerves — Banno
Feeling only one's nerves would provide you with no information about the sandpaper. — Banno
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
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
“…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
As long as our perceptions are of the world, then we directly perceive the world, regardless of the qualitative features of those perceptions. — Luke
You did not answer my earlier question: What is the difference between directly seeing a representation and directly experiencing a representation? — Luke
If representations are not a part of our perceptions, then where do they come from and how do we know about them? — Luke
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
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
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
If you were consistent, you would say we have no access to empirical facts — Janus
I think the very framing of perception in terms of 'direct' and 'indirect' is wrongheaded from the get-go. — Janus
That said, I'll leave you to the sophistry so appropriate to the lower quarters of your profession — Janus
We feel the sandpaper, not the electrical impulses. — Banno
You do not say :"the impulses here have a finer character than the impulses there"; you say "This sandpaper is finer than that". — Banno
To feel electrical impulses, try sticking your fingers in a light socket. — Banno
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
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
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
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
"See" can refer both to the subjective sensation of looking and to the external object. While "experience" only refers to the subjective. — hypericin
I wanted to point out that we don't "see" representation in the same way we see objects. — hypericin
Perceptions are representations. — hypericin
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
My point to Amadeus was that if he denies we have access to the world, to empirical facts, — Janus
both of those views as far as I can tell are equally vulnerable to the same types of skeptical questions — flannel jesus
If the world is as it's perceived, there is no room for the world to be anything else. — 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?) — Luke
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
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
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
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
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
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
So, if the claim is that perception is indirect, against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it? — Janus
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