Why are you so certain of this? — Banno

Because logically these are the only possibilities.

I put it to you that you also sometimes know how things are - not all the time, and sometimes you are indeed wrong, but sometimes, you get it right - which is to say, you occasionally speak the truth. I hope you will agree with me at least on this. — Banno

Knowing the truth, getting things right, is completely orthogonal to the discussion. If I am an air force captain and my best radar operator tells me so, I can say with confidence that there is a plane at so and so location. Does this mean I know this "directly"? If so, the discussion is moot, everything is direct, "indirect" is a meaningless word.

if you doubt their existence, then they should not stop you walking naked through the local shopping mall. Their gaze can be quite convincing. — Banno

I only doubt it to the extent that I am not absolutely certain of their existence. If I somehow had direct access to their inner lives, I could be absolutely certain.

dreaming of me — Banno

nightmare

So really my question "against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it" — Janus

Phenomenal experience is direct. We perceive the world via phenomenal experience. The world is first in the chain of events leading to phenomenal experience, and the experience is last. Therefore, we perceive the world indirectly.

We perceive the world via phenomenal experience. — hypericin

What, then, of the senses?

The world is first in the chain of events leading to phenomenal experience, and the experience is last. Therefore, we perceive the world indirectly. — hypericin

Agreed on the first, but how does the second follow?

Perhaps this is the source of much of the disagreement. The debate is a factual one; about whether we do or do not perceive the world directly. The direct realist position is that we do perceive the world directly; the indirect realist position is that we do not. — Luke

Well, the first step is to explain what it means to experience something directly and what it means to experience something indirectly. Can "direct" and "indirect" be explained without simply being defined as not being the other?

Once that's done, I think it useful to consider senses other than sight. The preoccupation with only visual experiences is an uncritical approach.

So let's take olfactory experience. Do I smell a rose? Or do I smell the geraniol in the air, produced by the oils in a rose's petals? Must it be a case of either/or, or are they just different ways of talking about the same thing?

After that, we should ask if there's such a thing as a correct smell. Perhaps the way a rose smells to me isn't the way a rose smells to you. If there is a difference, must it be that at least one of us is wrong? This leads on to having to ask if, and in what way, smells are properties of roses. Do our noses enable us to experience a rose's "inherent" smell, or does a rose have a smell only because organisms have noses? If the latter then we might then ask if there's a difference between smelling a rose and experiencing a smell caused by a rose.

How would the direct and indirect realist each answer these questions?

And finally, is there something unique about visual experience such that noses and smells are fundamentally different (in the relevant philosophical sense) to eyes and e.g. colours.

My experience, of sight or of smell and so on, is an experience entirely created inside my head. The data for the experience comes from outside, but the experience is crafted inside. And that's why I don't agree with "we experience reality as it is ".

I think this is exactly where the disagreement arises. If something essential to experience "comes from outside," is caused by what is "external" then:

A. It doesn't seem that experience is "created entirely inside the head."

B. It doesn't seem that these essential, "external" parts of the process can be dispensed with. They do not seem truly external to the process from which thought arises.

Consider that the human body does not produce any experience unless it is an extremely narrow environmental range; the enviornment is always essential to the processes that give rise to perception.

The nature of the "data" that comes from outside then is a hinge issue here. The data's introduction into the body does not seem indirect, in that the interaction is like anything else. Even in one billiard ball hitting another, it is only the surface of the ball that is contacted and interactions cascade through the balls' "parts" through the same sort of processes at work in the body.

But more important is the question of what this data amounts to. Is it Aristotlean form? Is it best described in terms of the conservation of mass energy (one attempted method to define cause)? Or is it best described as a transfer of information (another attempt to define cause that aims to correct weaknesses in the conservation explanation)?

If you buy into the popular pancomputationalist explanations of physics, particularly Wheeler's "It From Bit," the information-based approach has a lot going for it. Cause can be defined in terms of information transfer that affects future state evolution in some system. Given such a view, we could then say there is a relationship between information in conciousness and information in the enviornment in the same way that a billiard ball's path contains information about the cue ball that struck it, or in the same way fossils' contain information about past life forms.

But of course, we don't think all causal interactions have an element of subjective, first person experience. So what what do we as persons "add" to the process in being concious ?

We allow that a stream bed contains information about the past flow of water, even if it becomes impossible to determine the past of any one raindrop. Likewise, we think a break in billiards can, in theory, be traced back to cue ball. In the human person, much is added to any interval of incoming sense "data" before that data would appear to reach self-aware conciousness. How can this be described? At what level of decomposition will we lose the context required to explain phenomenal experience?

I would argue that our conceptions of reducibility are key here. Can we reduce sensation to a discrete series of intermediate steps or would it be better say that something like "appearing green," is a relationship that obtains between a tree and healthy human person, as wholes?

A similar sort of problem crops up in scholastic philosophy. If theoretical, practical, and aesthetic reason are human faculties, what are they adding to the experience of their target. Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, each type of reason's respective target, are said to transcend categories, being essential aspects of Being itself, so what does the human person bring to the table that affects them so that they are not tautological (as Kant would later claim)? St. Thomas's solution was to say that Truth, Beauty, and Goodness do not add to Being in terms of content (ad rem), but only conceptually (ad rationem), that is, as refracted through human will and consciousness. I am not sure this was a good way of thinking of things though, and we seem to be recreating it in modern philosophy.

Our experiences are part of the world, and the property of "appearing yellow," or "feeling smooth," would thus should be part of the world. Claims of "anthropomorphizing," are ubiquitous in this area, but I can see no greater anthropomorphization then the starting presupposition that experiences must be described in terms of discrete objects and properties possessed by me. There is no such discrete separation in nature, and properties themselves are only revealed through process. Substance and property alone, without reference to process, get you absolutely nowhere in metaphysics.

Thus, on sensory experience I'd tend to go with the relational-dispositional theories, that sensation of say "sky blue" requires both a disposition on the side of the experiencer, and a certain sort of environment. But I think these only go halfway to what is required, which is a process metaphysics grounded view where the question of properties "inhering in external objects," versus being "constructed by brains," is overcome by the recognition that these are not separate "things," vis-á-vis how conciousness is produced.

a billiard ball's path contains information about the cue ball that struck it — Count Timothy von Icarus

Information flow is directional.

I hit a billiard ball on a billiard table and can calculate more or less where it will come to rest.

I see a billiard ball at rest on a billiard table, yet cannot determine its prior start position, which are innumerable.

The Direct Realist argues that just from knowing an effect it is possible to know its cause. Whether seeing a billiard ball at rest on a billiard table and directly knowing its prior state, or experiencing the colour yellow and directly knowing an object in the outside world that caused it.

I agree that from knowing a prior state it may be possible to unequivocally determine its later state, but the Direct Realist is in effect arguing that just from knowing a later state it is possible to unequivocally know its prior state.

Also there’s the photo of the dress that some see as black and blue and others as white and gold. Any “information” in the experience is influenced by the particulars of our bodies as well as the external stimulus.

How are we to know which parts of our experience provide us with “raw” information about the external world?

I had avoided pointing this out (and I had this example in mind because of its ubiquity). Thanks for doing so. It's a real issue for 'direct'ness of any kind. "Blue" is definitional, in terms of wavelengths and we ascertain an aberration from that definition. Not from disparate experiences themselves.

"Blue" is definitional, in terms of wavelengths — AmadeusD

I don’t think that’s right. Particular wavelengths cause most humans in normal lighting conditions to see blue, and so as a matter of convention we might describe those wavelengths as “blue light” but it’s important to recognise that the term “blue” now has two different meanings.

In fact the very claim that two people see the dress to be two different colours requires that colour words (in this context) refer to the quality of the experience and not the wavelength of the light as the wavelength is the same for all of us.

Some colour realists seem to conflate these meanings.

How are we to know which parts of our experience provide us with “raw” information about the external world?

Right, but I would challenge the entire legitimacy of distinctions like raw/doctored or internal/external. So many of the arguments for indirect realism rely on hitting home the difficulties with saying "color is out there," or "shapes exist simpliciter," pointing out all the ways the mind is said to "construct" all such categories. But then the categorization of mental/physical as discrete, different types of "thing," or of a world with discrete objects, e.g., apples versus brains, each of which possess properties and dispositions, is invoked anyhow, as if the suppositions underlying such categories hadn't just been fatally undermined. Brains are said to "construct" out of causal inputs because they are said to be one sort of discrete object, with x properties and y dispositions.

But where are the actual discrete systems in nature? I'd argue you can find none. There is no boundary line to separate internal and external. There is a phenomenological boundary line in terms of what we as individuals experience, but that's it. This boundary can't be made equivalent with the body on pain of solipsism, for if this is the boundary it would imply we experience nothing outside of our body, either "directly" or "indirectly."

So, what you get is a portrait of one universal process giving rise to multiple phenomenological horizons, and much else that seems to "lie in between" any conscious awarenesses.

What causes minds within these horizons to experience similar things, such that they can communicate with one another? It would seem to be commonalities in the processes that give rise to experience themselves, commonalities that lie on either side of the external/internal distinction, or more appropriately, which seem to completely transcend this distinction and "act like it doesn't exist."

The reality/appearance distinction makes no sense outside of these phenomenological horizons, and deep problems emerge from trying to apply the distinction where its terms can have no content. So, there is on the one hand the attempt to use the distinctions proper to Mind/Geist outside the context wherein they derive their content, and on the other to solve the problem of the One and the Many by demoting Mind/Geist to the status of "appearance," a fallacy of composition.

In fact the very claim that two people see the dress to be two different colours requires that colour words (in this context) refer to the quality of the experience and not the wavelength of the light as the wavelength is the same for all of us. — Michael

it’s important to recognise that the term “blue” now has two different meanings. — Michael

This is exactly my point noted here:

"Blue" is definitional, in terms of wavelengths and we ascertain an aberration from that definition. Not from disparate experiences themselves. — AmadeusD

Only the wavelengths are defined. My point is this is arbitrary (or "convention") so we're speaking about hte same thing, I think. Blue is defined as a certain range of wavelengths. (I should have said..) but is understood within each specific personally private experience of blue.
Yet, we have disparate experiences, so whence comes the definition into play?
This is why I'm saying its a 'naive realist' position to suppose that, ipso facto, those who 'do not see a blue dress', for example, have aberrant perception. The reliance on a convention to deduce where teh aberration is doesn't sit too well with me.

This seems like an anti-realist view?

The Direct Realist argues that just from knowing an effect it is possible to know its cause. Whether seeing a billiard ball at rest on a billiard table and directly knowing its prior state — RussellA

This thread has been full of direct realists completely making up thoughts that indirect realists must have, but this is a great example in the opposite direction. Why in the world do you think direct realists think that?

Why are you so certain of this?
— Banno
Because logically these are the only possibilities. — hypericin

So it's not that you think we can never be certain; it's just that you think we can only be certain about some issues, not others. Good.

Knowing the truth, getting things right, is completely orthogonal to the discussion. — hypericin

Well, yes, in that it cuts right across our discussion; we want to get it right. It does not matter if you know of an enemy attack directly or indirectly, if you know that it is truly occurring: provided you get it right.

I only doubt it to the extent that I am not absolutely certain of their existence. If I somehow had direct access to their inner lives, I could be absolutely certain. — hypericin

Again, it is of little consequence whether your certainty is "absolute" or not, so long as you act as if....

You can be certain I read your post, since I quoted it and replied to it. The addition of "absolute" is unnecessary. Indeed, if it inspires you to doubt, I suggest that it is counterproductive.

So again, I'll point out that you do sometimes know how things are, and this despite your protestations to the contrary. Some of the things you say are true.

Ubiquitous doubt is misplaced.

You are certain of some things, but not of others, and you are right some of the time. It seems your supposition that certainty must be "absolute" or else must be doubted is somewhat overblown.

I put it to you that you do sometimes see, touch, hear or smell things as they are. Talk of having "absolute" certainty here is irrelevant.

What, then, of the senses? — Mww

Phenomenal experience is the first person perspective on the senses.

Agreed on the first, but how does the second follow? — Mww

My reasoning is, if the connection between the self and phenomenal experience is direct, and the world is several major casual steps prior to phenomenal experience, involving transitions between multiple domains (sensory input -> nervous signal, nervous signal -> phenomenal experience, to be very oversimplified), then the connection between the self and world must be indirect.

Some saw gold, some saw blue. Regardless, everyone saw a dress; on this there was agreement.

The dress is black and blue. The manufacturer and the photographer confirm this.

Sometimes we see things as they are; sometimes, not.

Consider that the human body does not produce any experience unless it is an extremely narrow environmental range; the enviornment is always essential to the processes that give rise to perception. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thus, on sensory experience I'd tend to go with the relational-dispositional theories, that sensation of say "sky blue" requires both a disposition on the side of the experiencer, and a certain sort of environment. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But this is factually untrue. I can, just by imagining it, picture the color "sky blue", in any environment I might be in. This suggests that the sensation is mine, and I am just fine tuned so that the environment can appropriately stimulate it.

Is the sound of a guitar the guitar's, or the player's? I think it makes more sense to say "the guitar's", but at least the guitar must be appropriately "stimulated" to be heard. But what if the guitar could self-stimulate and play itself?

I see the good points of process philosophy as being, in some ways, anti-realist re substances (or at least they are made less fundemental), but allowing for realism re "the external world," and universals.

If the relational view re color blends together the best parts of dispositional and realist theories (covering brain and enviornment respectively), then the process view is able to blend the adverbial, constructivist (indirect) and relational views. For what it means to be red is defined in terms of just those processes that result in the experience of redness and the way they map to one another.

But this is factually untrue. I can, just by imagining it, picture the color "sky blue", in any environment I might be in. This suggests that the sensation is mine, and I am just fine tuned so that the environment can appropriately stimulate it.

First, phenomenology distinguishes between imagined/pictured phenomena and sensory experience. This seems uncontroversial since we do not generally have trouble distinguishing our imaginings and reality, and indeed of we did much of philosophy would need to be reworked. But here I am referring to sensory experience.

As to the environment being irrelevant, I would maintain that on the surface of a star, inside a gas giant, on the surface of Venus, at the bottom of the ocean, or in the vacuum of space, you'd not experience much of anything, being virtually instantly dead. Most of the universe is space in which human life consciousness would appear to be unsustainable.

Further, a person does not develop vision if they are gestated in a vacuum, they die. The claim that recalling sky blue doesn't require any prior exposure to any particular enviornment or any particular enviornment seems hard to sustain.

As to the guitars, a guitar string makes no sound in a vacuum. This is the problem with substances in general, their properties only exist via interaction.

Even if all that’s fine, with respect to the direct/indirect dichotomy alone, how does that, or how does each of them, relate to realism? Realism is the concept in question, after all, its apparent dual nature, right?
———

We perceive the world via phenomenal experience.
— hypericin

The world is first in the chain of events leading to phenomenal experience, and the experience is last. Therefore, we perceive the world indirectly.
— hypericin — Mww

I won’t say I reject the assertion that the world is perceived indirectly via phenomenal experience, but I will say I’m having trouble with how that would work. Dunno why it should be that we perceive the world indirectly just because it’s first in a chain of events.

Differences in understanding of the related conceptions, I guess.

Anyway….thanks.

My reasoning is, if the connection between the self and phenomenal experience is direct, and the world is several major casual steps prior to phenomenal experience, involving transitions between multiple domains (sensory input -> nervous signal, nervous signal -> phenomenal experience, to be very oversimplified), then the connection between the self and world must be indirect.

The question arises, what is the “self”? I have to ask because you place it behind “multiple domains” of the self itself, for instance the senses, nervous system, and so on, as if they were standing in between the self and the rest of the world.

The question arises, what is the “self”? — NOS4A2

I am referring to that which experiences, from the first person perspective. So nerves, while a part of our body, are not experienced as such.

I think this is part of the confusion of the question. The answer might vary between the first and third person's.

First, phenomenology distinguishes between imagined/pictured phenomena and sensory experience. This seems uncontroversial since we do not generally have trouble distinguishing our imaginings and reality, and indeed of we did much of philosophy would need to be reworked. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But is this distinction somehow fundamental, or just bookkeeping by the brain? I think the latter. While I can't visualize clearly, I can mentally hear (audialize?) very clearly, so that the only thing that distinguishes my imagination from the environment is the binary bit of information, such that subjectively I just "know" it is coming from me.

Since we think in terms of sensation (audio and visual for most people) things would get very confusing if the brain didn't do this bookkeeping.

Significantly, this bookkeeping does break down, most famously in schizophrenia, where the internal voice is sometimes perceived externally. But of course there are also visual hallucinations, phantom touch, taste, smell, and hallucinations of body awareness, with psychosomatic and conversion disorders. In these breakdowns, internal and external is (sometimes terrifyingly) indistinguishable.

Realism is the concept in question, after all, its apparent dual nature, right? — Mww

Realism is what both sides agree upon, as suggested by direct/indirect realism.The difference is that it is assumed in indirect, and somehow directly known in direct.

Dunno why it should be that we perceive the world indirectly just because it’s first in a chain of events. — Mww

If there was just a casual chain, it would probably be a weak argument. The fact that the chain traverses "domains" I think strengthens it, but still I think there are better arguments.

Even if all that’s fine, with respect to the direct/indirect dichotomy alone, how does that, or how does each of them, relate to realism? Realism is the concept in question, after all, its apparent dual nature, right? — Mww

Once we hit page 20 we will surely be able to say what it is we are arguing about. :grin:

Well, the first step is to
explain what it means to experience something directly and what it means to experience something indirectly. Can "direct" and "indirect" be explained without simply being defined as not being the other? — Michael

The distinction is about mediation. Is the experience mediated, so that it arrives second hand, via a more direct experience? Or is there no intervening layer of experience?

Are you watching the baseball game in the stadium, or on TV? In the latter case, the indirect experience of the game is mediated by the direct experience of the light and sound emitting box in your living room.

Note that in most contexts no one knows or cares about the mediation argued for by indirect realists. A lawyer would not argue that the witness did not directly experience the murder because she saw it only via her phenomenal experience of the event. But that doesn't make it any less real.

So let's take olfactory experience. Do I smell a rose? Or do I smell the geraniol in the air, produced by the oils in a rose's petals? Must it be a case of either/or, or are they just different ways of talking about the same thing? — Michael

Same thing. Just as, "am I seeing the rose, or am I seeing the light reflected off its petals"?

After that, we should ask if there's such a thing as a correct smell. Perhaps the way a rose smells to me isn't the way a rose smells to you. If there is a difference, must it be that at least one of us is wrong? — Michael

It's hard to see how, if that difference cannot even be ascertained. The closest you could come would be a failure to distinguish. So, if someone claimed roses smelled just like oranges to them, you might surmise that a kind of partial smell blindness was going on. Or, the emotional valence might be off: if someone violently turned away in disgust when smelling a rose, it doesn't seem totally off base to say something might be wrong with their phenomenal experience. Other than that, all bets are off, not only do we have no basis for judging right or wrong, we can't even tell what anyone other than ourselves is experiencing.

This leads on to having to ask if, and in what way, smells are properties of roses. Do our noses enable us to experience a rose's "inherent" smell, or does a rose have a smell only because organisms have noses? — Michael

Clearly the latter.

If the latter then we might then ask if there's a difference between smelling a rose and experiencing a smell caused by a rose. — Michael

The former may refer to the mechanical act of sniffing a rose. The experience may or may not be present.

And finally, is there something unique about visual experience such that noses and smells are fundamentally different (in the relevant philosophical sense) to eyes and e.g. colours. — Michael

I would say scents are analogous to colors. Eyes also relay shape and depth, so it is a richer, more complex sense. Maybe philosophers should talk about scent by default, rather than sight.

The distinction is about mediation. Is the experience mediated, so that it arrives second hand, via a more direct experience? Or is there no intervening layer of experience? — hypericin

So an experience of an external world object is direct if and only if the atoms that constitute that object are physically touching the atoms in my brain that constitute my experience (assuming, for the sake of argument, that experience is reducible to brain activity)? I don't think any direct realist claims that that is the case.

Direct realists claim that we directly experience objects that exist at a distance. So clearly they believe that experience is both mediated and direct, and so "direct" cannot simply mean "unmediated".

So an experience of an external world object is direct if and only if the atoms that constitute that object are physically touching the atoms in my brain that constitute my experience — Michael

I said nothing of the sort. Experience can be layered, so that something can be experienced indirectly via a primary experience. See my example of the baseball game.

I said nothing of the sort. — hypericin

You said that a direct experience is unmediated. You seemed to be suggesting that if there is some third physical thing in the causal chain between the experience and the external world object then the experience is mediated. The conclusion, then, is that the experience is direct if and only if there is no third physical thing in the causal chain between the experience and the external world object, i.e. that the external world object is in physical contact with the experience (or the brain activity upon which the experience supervenes?).

See my example of the baseball game. — hypericin

So when I'm watching at the stadium I have a direct perception of the game?