So we can be honest in thought, but we will always be out of reach of existing as we truly are in real life when we act online. — Christoffer

But isn't "real life" just another venue for interpretation, of a presentation which is far from a transparent projection of a "true self"? Do we really ever know the other? Or are we interpreting words and gestures of someone operating under a dozen aims, proclivities, and consraints other than an urge to reveal their innermost being?

By this light, are our online personas really distortions of our authentic selves found in the flesh? Or are they just another presentation, in another medium? Whose own tempo, textual form and shared interest leads to a manifestation of the self which is not more or less true, but just different.

FWIW I thought the warning was uncalled for. I would have been annoyed as well.

Give it a try. What vocabulary can you come up with to talk about the objective pole that doesn’t already imply a contribution from the subjective pole? — Joshs

This sounds like a game where I come up with some awkward formulation that is supposedly free of subjectivity, and you point out that this and that element of my awkward formulation are supposedly still conditioned on subjectivity, then repeat.

But this is beside the point. After all we can still talk about objectivity using language which contains subjective elements. Language would be useless otherwise.

Your claim was more radical:

If you remove all of the idealizations that minds impose on the world of appearances, there is not much to say about the nature of what is mind-independent. — Joshs

So you will have to explain how, after subtracting all subjective elements from a claim such as:

The earth orbits the sun.

there is nothing left to the claim.

You still haven't explained why " object of perception" is necessary. Why doesn't, for instance "perceptual intermediary" suffice?

If it is established that qualia

* Is apprehensible
* Is logically prior to apprehension of the object
* Is the sole constituent of experience, such that were it removed from experience, nothing would remain

This seems sufficient to establish qualia as a perceptual intermediary. Why do we need these extra object criteria?

Do the images on the VS meet the criteria identity, persistence, affordance or counterfactuality? Keep in mind, it is not the housing, not the electronics, not the physical pixels that are the intermediary. These are the intermediary's implementation. It is the images themselves that intermediate.

If the images do not meet these criteria, yet they intermediate between the viewer and the subject, then these object criteria are irrelevant.

It seems like the discussion is starting to loop now. Perhaps we've hit bedrock. — Esse Quam Videri

I think some looping is inevitable. I actually don't think we have quite hit bedrock yet. But if you think it is getting repetitive, or you have just had enough, I certainly understand. It's been a hell of a discussion, either way.

If your answer is “the experience itself,” then you owe an account of why experience isn’t just the act’s manner of disclosing the world. — Esse Quam Videri

You know my answer is experience itself.

Your account seems to hinge on what appears to be a very thin distinction: the experience itself is not an "object of awareness", it is the "perceptual act's manner of disclosing the world". But there is a problem: I agree. I see nothing problematic in that phrasing.

At the same time, the image is the TV's manner of disclosing the "action". And, the TV image is an"object of awareness". There is nothing contradictory in these two descriptions.

Experience is an object of awareness, and perception's manner of disclosing the world. Where is the contradiction?

I'm not sure how evolution can explain intentionality, — Tom Storm

Symbols are intrinsically intentional. Models are intrinsically intentional. That evolution should arrive at advanced nervous systems demonstrating both doesn't seem inconceivable.

Does the apparent fit between human reason and the world require grounding in some kind of greater mind or God — Tom Storm

No.

If the world were unintelligable, it is hard to understand how it could support something as complex as life. If the world is intelligable, it is hard to understand how the evolutionary refinement of intelligence would not tightly track that intelligibility.

what......This seems a patent example of the types of biases being spoken about. — AmadeusD

No. This follows from my premise, that the nature of the right is a political orientation towards elite interests. You may think that is bias. I think it is systematically true, and thus far I haven't seen a counterexample.

There's no reason to think this unless you think that, conceptually, things like fiscal responsibility, military protection, law and order etc.. are not offers to the general pop. — AmadeusD

If you're going to discuss politics you have to at least distinguish rhetoric and substance. Rhetorically, that these are offered is beyond dispute.

So you have dropped intentionality as a criterion, and are back to what I was advocating for when I suggested a photograph as a model for the IR claim. But note the difficulties this creates. Just as intentionality is too broad a criterion, making everything direct, intermediating object is too broad, making everything indirect:

* Seeing through glass is indirect
* Wearing glasses renders vision indirect, as it introduces visible distortions and spots
* Smoke and fog make all seeing indirect

Moreover, you have to make some very counterintuitive claims in order to make perception, but not seeing through glass, "direct":

* Awareness of the red of a stop sign is "introspection"
* Awareness of the sound of a chime is "introspection"
* Awareness of the smell of ammonia is "introspection"
Even listening to music, which doesn't have a real distal object at all: "introspection"

I don't agree. I don't think there is any introspective cognitive act between hearing a chime and being aware of the sound of a chime. What is your evidence of this intermediary?

But, you are making an even stronger (and stranger) claim: that awareness is first of the object itself, and only secondarily, via introspection, of the sensation. Forget phenomenology, how does this even work on a systems level? How does awareness of the object come first, when the sensation is exactly what reveals it?

How would you answer a TV junkie who makes your argument for a TV? "I'm directly aware of the action on the TV, not the TV. The physical TV is the enablement of my awareness of the action. The TV is how the action presents itself to me. Awareness of the TV itself is possible, but only secondarily, as an act of introspection. It itself is not an independent object of perception."

I guess that some reality junkies would make the same arguments for reality should not be surprising.

On my usage, "direct" is intentional: what is directly grasped is what the act is of. — Esse Quam Videri

This then is the core disagreement. I believe your usage diverges totally from the larger debate.

So yes, I'm in full agreement that, by your usage, perception is "direct". But your usage is vacuous: by it, everything is direct, even our contact with Homer.

In your mind, is it possible to be indirectly aware of anything at all?

The real question remains: does the vehicle of perceptual access become an object of awareness? — Esse Quam Videri

Obviously we are aware of perceptual awareness, and obviously we can intentionally target it. To me, that is what matters. That under some definitions it is not an "object" I afford zero significance.

If you remove all of the idealizations that minds impose on the world of appearances, there is not much to say about the nature of what is mind-independent. — Joshs

We know the world as perceived and conceived is a synthesis of objective and subjective, even though it presents phenomenologically as something unitary. To say there is nothing to say about the objective pole of this relationship is frankly ridiculous.

But objects are contingent by nature - no really mind-independent object has ever been identified — Wayfarer

I feel like here, and throughout the site really, you are wont to derive marquee headlines from fairly prosaic conclusions. Of course, we have identified mind independent objects: objects which we have very good reasons to believe behave in a way much like we understand them to, whether or not we are watching them.

It's just that we cannot apprehend them as such. An object without quality, without perspective, is impossible to conceive. But, to ask anything other from a mind isn't fair. A mind can't help but apprehend mindfully.

I feel you have made the systematic mistake of transposing a limitation of minds onto a feature of the world. That a mind must apprehend the world by mind does not imply the world is mind dependent.

Type conflict and type coercion:

I think I am applying the same standard to all three operations: interpretation, memory, and perception. All three are acts. All three have outcomes. And all three have goals: what the outcome should be. The latter two are the terms of our dyad.

I think we are in agreement on the outcome: Focusing on the goal: What is the goal of interpretation? To produce a meaning consistent with intent, context, and norms. Or, to produce a meaning reflecting the meaning in the speakers head. Not to take the meaning out of the speaker's head, and somehow put it in our own. That is not possible. Success is when the first term of the dyad matches the second: when the interpretation produced reflects the appropriate norms, or the speaker's meaning. Note that under your interpretation, the terms of the dyad could never match, as the goal cannot be fulfilled.

What is the goal of memory? To produce an experience matching an experience that happened in the past. Not to somehow transpose a past experience into the present. That is not possible. Success is when the terms of the dyad match: the actual remembered experience matches the past experience. Again, under your interpretation the dyad could never match.

What is the goal of perception? To produce a relevant fact about the world that tracks the world's built in normative properties. What is the outcome? A perception. However you define it, a perception certainly is not a fact. There must be an additional operation: a type coercion, taking a perception, and producing a fact about the world. Only then can the dyad be matched.

This type coercion is what you call "inference". It is the mental operation whereby facts are derived from perception. It introduces the danger you are likely familiar with: there is no guarantee that the outcome is really a fact about the world at all. It might be derived from a hallucination, not a world tracking perception. This result is not just false, it is nonsense.

Note that this is not a concern with interpretation or memory at all. Good or bad, the result of interpretation must be an interpretation. True or false, a recall event must be an experience. There is no room for it to be otherwise. The "type coercion" which only features in perception is the root of radical multiple realizability, and thus strong epistemic mediation.

A curious analogy

The part of your response I found most surprising was the translation analogy. Either you made a mistake, or we have a major disagreement about what "direct" means. It is hard for me to imagine the perspective whereby a translation provides direct access to to Homer. The translation is exactly what we have direct access to, it is exactly through this "translation-object" that we access Homer. This is a striking example of one of the mistakes that run throughout your writing: the equation of intentional target and directness.

What indirect realism is not

IR does not say: "qualia are the intentional target of perception". IR is perfectly content with the distal object as the intentional target. Although importantly, qualia may be the target as well. Intention is orthogonal to directness, intention may target what is direct or indirect.

Just as, we usually intentionally focus on the action TV images portray, not the flickering 2d images as such. We usually focus on Homers meaning, not the qualities of the translation.

IR does not say: "the subject only sees qualia." Seeing is a relationship between subject and object whereby the subject sees the object through the experience of qualia. By experiencing qualia, the subject can see something that qualia themselves are not: the distal object.

Just as, we really do see the subject of a photograph, by seeing the photograph. We really do experience Homer's meanings by reading his translation.

IR does say: The relationship between experience and object is characterized by epistemic mediation, whereby experience meditates epistemic access to the object.

Epistemic mediation: a better definition

I think this gives a more intuitive picture of what epistemic mediation actually is:

Epistemic mediation is a special type of casual relationship between what is at hand and what is not, whereby what is at hand grants epistemic access to what is not.

The photograph and its subject are casually related in such a way that the photograph, at hand, grants epistemic access to the subject, not at hand. Homer and his translation are casually related in such a way that his translation, at hand, grants epistemic access to what is not at hand, Homer. And experience, the IRist claims, are casually related such that experience, at hand, grants epistemic access to distal objects, not at hand.

Do you agree with this definition?

Whereas I see two mutually incompatible accounts of perception that both happen to reject naive realism — one reifying phenomenal character into an inner intermediary, and one treating it as a mode of disclosure. — Esse Quam Videri

The problem is I agree with this. Qualia are modes of disclosure, and (in perception) exist in virtue of a relationship between observer and observed. This alone does not distinguish from A.

But as I pointed out earlier, this is a one sided relationship, where the brain is working furiously, burning calories to instantiate the relationship, while the distal object just sits there. Qualia don't need distal objects, per hallucination, imagination and dreaming. Whereas without brains, there are no qualia. Qualia are features of brains, that instantiate (in perception) in relation to distal objects.

Do you disagree with any of the above?

Whereas I would prefer ‘indeterminate’. — Wayfarer

It's both indeterminate and determinate, depending on context. But it prefers indeterminacy, hence 'lazy '.

"Again, time has not been on Einstein's side in this regard, the so-called 'anti-realist' interpretations of physics seem to hold sway nowadays."

I don't think this is the case. Certainly I don't think that observer dependence commits one to anti realism. That the world at the micro scale works in ways that are very unintuitive to inhabitants of the macro scale shouldn't be too surprising.

There are obviously lots of interpretations. The one I prefer is that the world is fundamentally lazy. It commits to as little definite state as it can get away with. And if it does commit, that state remains as local as it can get away with. Interaction simply merges the local determinate state of both terms of the interaction. And observation is, definitionally, the interaction we are aware of. Nothing woo about it.

You might say that "the colour red is what my awareness of 700nm light and/or a surface that reflects 700nm light consists in", but notice that there's no "X is what my awareness of the colour red (or a headache) consists in". — Michael

Neat move. But I think the problem is that you are blurring constitutive and meditative relationships. Batter and frosting is what my cake consists of, but it does not meditate between me and the cake. EQV, and direct realism on general, is claiming that sensations are constitutive, not meditative.

A major strength of the model I have outlined is that it does not do this -- in either direction. — BenMcLean

Even handedness is not a strength of a model that is supposed to be rooted in fact.

immigration — BenMcLean

I was asking for a right wing party or government that is oriented toward popular, not elite interest, not an individual policy. Seeing the immigration policy of our present government through this lens would be bizarrely incongruous with their other policies. As I'm sure you know, this is the wrong lens.

Which leads to another very consistent feature of the right wing: outgrouping. By the nature of the right, they have little of substance to offer to the general population. The right therefore offers "protection", from the dangerous external enemy, and the dangerous internal enemy. Migrants straddle that line beautifully.

This "protection" from the internal enemy often takes the form of performative terrorization and abuse, so visible right now.

I can't come up with any counterexamples.

I think you completely misread the meaning of left and right. It has next to nothing to do with loving the past or the present.

Nor is the meaning of the right culturally relative. The right favors and serves the elite, in practice if not always in rhetoric. This can come in two forms: the reactionary right, which services the existing elite. And the revolutionary right, which aims to dominate it completely replace the existing elite. This is coupled with cultural conservatism: this is not a preference for the past as such. Rather, it is a preference for an idea of the cultural past, coupled with the notion that this cultural ideal ought to be predominant. The more radical the right, the more hallucinatory this idea can be.

Notice that this explains the incompatibility of the Western and Muslim right wings. While both favor the elites, these are not the same elites. And while both promote their brands of cultural conversatism, these are not compatible, especially as they both incorporate fundamentalist versions of their religions.

Whereas, the left favors and serves the broad population, in rhetoric if not always in practice. Instead of upholding an idealized past, the left relishes revising established cultural tradition, if they believe the revision serves a positive ideological outcome.

Agreement

I apologize I misrepresented you, though I think you will see the ambiguity of you go back over what you wrote.

So we agree that the perceptual dyad is:

Perceptual act --> fact/world state/world-anchored norm

I will treat these as equivalent unless you think they need distinguishing.

I also agree that the formulation "the perceptual act discloses world-state without being world-state, and therefore intermediates between subject and world-state" is not a knock down argument. I was just pointing out that the structure resembles a standard IR formulation. I will stick to my current thesis for now, that "the structures of perception introduce (strong) epistemic mediation between the subject and distal object, where SEM is proposed as casual meditation that introduces radical multiple realizability."

Like and unlike types

It is not through loose language that the types of the dyads of interpretation and memory are alike. An interpretation is a meaning. A recalled memory of an experience is an experience.

One way to see this is through reversibility:

Communication:
The intentional target of an act of interpretation is a meaning consistent with the norms and context of the communication. Even if you are trying to match what is in the speakers head, the targeted ideal is a meaning matching the speakers meaning, not the literal content of the speakers mind.

interpretation --> intended meaning

"I saw the man with the telescope".
A: I saw the man through the telescope.
B: I saw the man holding the telescope.

It could be the listener interpreted A, but B was intended. Or the listener interpreted B, but A was intended.

Memory:
The intentional target of the act of recall is not a world event. It is a past experience. When you recall the pink wall, a re-experience of the pink wall correctly realizes the memory. Not a white wall. Memories can be of any past experience: thoughts, feelings, ideas, not just things that happen in the world.

Re-experience --> past experience

Recollection of wife's grocery instruction:
A: "Make sure to buy eggs"
B: "Make sure to buy Eggo waffles"

It could be you recalled A, but she said B. Or, you recalled B, but she said A.

This doesn't work for perception. The intentional target of perception is not a perception, it is a fact (or rather, a manifold of facts). And so you cannot reverse the perception of a red wall with the fact there is a white wall.

Another way to see this is to see that interpretation and recall are mental-->mental operations. You can put someone in a sensory deprivation tank and they can still recall and interpret all day. Only perception reaches out into the world, creating a mental-physical type disjunction.

Also note that the general indirection of cognition is not trivial. It is the structural reason why any cognition is never certain. The subject never knows whether the two terms of the dyad match.

Radical multiple realization

Strictly speaking you are right, it is impossible for two realizers to share zero properties. At the bare minimum, they must share the property of realizing in the same way. And so this is the minimal property that two realizers share. Phenomenal character, inferential role, behavioral upshot are properties of the realized, not the realizer, and so they are logically downstream of the minimal shared property.

Whereas, there is only one realizer of memories, and interpretation: the mind. It might properly realize these, or is might not. But there is not nearly the scope of possible realizers.

Objection 1 revisited

The logic is clear:

* Perception involves multiple realization
* The subject is aware of the realized, not the realizer, per hallucination
* Multiple realization must involve a transformation
* The subject is therefore aware of a transformation

I never arguued that the subject takes the transformation as it's object. The world is the object, the transformation meditates it's apprehension.

The error dyad and perception

We've been talking about various kinds of cognition. What are the two poles of the dyad, with cognition? I think they are:

1. The outcome of the cognitive act.
2. The intentional target of the cognitive act.

The aim of any cognitive act is to match 1 and 2. Error is a mismatch.

Breaking down the examples we've been discussing into 1 --> 2

Communication: interpretation -- >meaning
Reasoning: conclusion --> correct conclusion
Memory: recalled event --> actual event

You have broken down perception this way:

Perception: perceptual act --> "correct" perceptual act

This doesn't match the other examples, and is not right. As DRists love saying: the intentional target of perception is not a perceptual act.

So what is the intentional target of perception? I was saying it was the DO, but now I think that's not quite right. I think the target is the state of the world.

Perception: Perceptual act --> world state

In your wall example, the cognitive product is the perception, or the perceptual act as you prefer, of the pink wall. The intentional targetis the state of the wall's color. The wall's color is a fact, not a perception, and can be expressed as words: "the wall is white".

Note that this is IR: the perceptual act discloses world state without being world state, and therefore intermediates between subject and world state.

Critically: unlike the other examples, the two terms of the perception dyad are not of like type. Interpretation is meaning, logical results are conclusions, memories resemble their targets. But perceptual acts are not facts about world states.

This is why perception is a stronger, more interesting indirection than the other examples, leading to what I think was your strongest objection.

objection 3: "this definition proves too much"

It is true that all of these cognitive acts are indirect by my definition. It shouldn't be surprising that indirection is structurally pervasive in cognition. Yet, perception stands out. We don't have 40 page threads discussing whether reasoning is indirect! I think the reason perception stands out is the disjunction I mentioned: the terms of the dyad are not of like type. This disjunction enables a stronger form of epistemic mediation:

Strong Epistemic Mediation:
Casual meditation introducing radical multiple realizability, such that at least two possible realizers share no properties whatsoever.

This works for perception, a hallucination of an apple shares no properties with an organic apple. It also works for the VS: a computer simulation shares no properties with an organic apple. But it doesn't work for the three other types of cognition. Either perception or technology that mimics it's structure is needed.



Objection 1: a observed intermediary isn't entailed

Multiple realization requires an intermediary of some kind. If the mediator transforms the input, the transformation must exist in some form, it must be housed somehow, separate from the input. This doesn't have to be an intermediate object; it could be a signal emerging from the mediator. To be aware of the mediator, the subject must at least be aware of this signal. If they are, they are aware of an intermediary.

Objection 2: this criterion applies to perception itself

Yes. If I am right about the nature of epistemic mediation, it follows (not definitionally, but as a consequence) that perception introduces epistemic mediation, and therefore IR is true.

Interpretation and error

You are missing the dyadic structure of error. For there to be error, there must be at minimum that which is wrong, and a standard of correctness. If there is only one thing, there is no room for that one thing to be wrong. This is why I think DR struggles with error: it lacks an intermediate object/event/process which is allowed to be wrong, and therefore distinct from the DO.

So yes, there is interpretation and correct meaning. But the epistemic problem in meaning (as in perception) is that the subject has no direct access to meaning. All they know directly is interpretation. They cannot "apprehend an inner 'meaning-object' and then compare it to the speaker's intended meaning." The intended meaning is not at hand. And so error must be inferred: does the interpretation make sense? Is it consistent with what the speaker has said before? Does it contradict other things I know? Erroneous perception involves this same process.

"I simply understand wrongly", "Error is a failure of the perceptual act" feels very hand-wavy to me. Do you agree that error requires a dyad? If so how does DR provide for that?

The meaning of epistemic mediation

I was struggling with this too. For a while I thought as you did, that epistemic mediation meant passing through a distinct physical object. But this doesn't really work. I don't call what I see through a window epistemically mediated. This is only causally mediated, even though the window is a separate physical object that can be examined and interacted with.

I now have a much better definition:
Epistemic mediation is satisfied iff causal mediation introduces multiple realizability.

When you have epistemic mediation, the object you indirectly see might be as it appears. Or it might be something else entirely. The "live" image of the apple might be an authentic apple. Or, it might have been filmed last year. Or, it could be a computer simulation, not an apple at all.

Epistemic mediation introduces an additional possibility of doubt, such that the information it provides may not be what it appears to be. Whereas, causal mediation does no such thing. The apple is just as likely to be an apple whether or not you place it behind a window.

It is this introduction of doubt, not that a viewer watches a physical screen, that makes VS epistemically mediating.

Consider: in understanding a sentence, the listener does all the cognitive work — parsing syntax, activating semantic associations, resolving ambiguities. The sentence just sits there (or the sound waves just arrive). Understanding is a "unipolar process" in your sense. But we don't conclude that the listener is therefore aware of an intermediary "meaning-object" that stands between them and what the speaker said. The listener's active processing constitutes their grasp of the speaker's meaning. The processing is the medium, not an intermediary object. — Esse Quam Videri

The analogy is clarifying.

All this processing does something, it produces something: an intermediary meaning, though "object" is problematic. This intermediary meaning is called an "interpretation". And precisely like perception: the subject has indirect access to the meaning of words, via direct access to their own interpretation. Interpretation is not an object, and the intentional target is meaning, not interpretation. But It is naive to claim that we can directly access meaning, all access to meaning must traverse interpretation.

And note: any analysis that leaves out interpretation struggles to handle error. With interpretation as part of the analysis, error is simply misinterpretation.

.

But the analogy has a crucial structural feature that perception lacks: the TV has a screen. There is a spatially distinct surface where the image is literally inscribed, and this surface can itself become an object of inspection — you can notice the pixels, the refresh rate, the bezel. This is what makes it natural to say "there is an image, and it is an intermediary between you and the apple." — Esse Quam Videri

Yes, I agree, there is no physical screen, no spatially distinct object that can be independently examined. But the physical screen is not what is important. The images on the screen are. These images represent by analogy what I call the brain-modeled-object, the object-as-seen, the qualitative object. Note that the image of the apple is not an object, it is an event; just as we agreed moments of perception are events, not objects. And this event is how the VS presents the apple, it fulfills the relation between VS and apple. Yet, the image of the apple is an epistemically mediated presentation of the apple.

The TV analogy works precisely because there is a viewer external to the system (the person sitting on the couch). In — Esse Quam Videri

I think there is a viewer in perception: what I called the conscious subset of the brain. But this is a can of worms, so let's just omit the viewer. Even without a viewer, the TV image is still epistemically mediated. A viewer does not make this so, mediation doesn't happen only conditionally on a viewer watching the physical screen. The relationship between image and apple, passing through a transformative system such as the VS, constitutes the mediation.

One dis-analogy: in perception, to appear is to be apprehended. There is no "absent viewer" case. Either there is always a viewer, or there never is. But the VS analogy shows there is no necessary viewer for epistemic mediation.

(a) They are features of an intermediary object that the system constructs and the subject inspects.
(b) They are features of the system's activity of presenting the apple to the subject.

On reading (a), you get IR: the subject is immediately aware of the constructed object. On reading (b), you get my view: the subject is immediately aware of the apple, but the way it is aware — the qualitative character of the awareness — is shaped by the system's processing. The apple is what is seen; the "transformations" characterize the seeing. — Esse Quam Videri

The point of the example of the VS is to constrain you. I'm assuming that we agree with my claim above, that the image processesed by VS, presented on the TV, is epistemically mediated. If you thought the TV somehow "directly" presented the apple, we would need to discuss what "indirect" could even mean. And so, for a claim you make about perception's "directness" to have any strength, it cannot apply to the VS.

Here, (b) seems reasonable enough for VS: the transformations of the VS are features of the system's activity of presenting the apple. Yet, we agree (I assume) that VS introduces epistemic mediation. So you need to explain why (b) does not apply to VS, or concede that (b) is irrelevant: it applies to a system that clearly involves epistemic mediation.

Of course — and I've never denied causal mediation. The question was never "is perception causally mediated?" (obviously yes) but "does causal mediation entail an epistemic intermediary object?" — Esse Quam Videri

No, I don't agree this is quite the question. I do agree that casual meditation alone does not entail an epistemic intermediary object. The question as I see it is "do the structures of perception entail epistemic mediation between subject and object?"

It's like analyzing genuine currency by starting from counterfeits: the counterfeit is only intelligible as a counterfeit of something. — Esse Quam Videri

But look what counterfeits reveal: money cannot just be physical form, physical form can remain exactly constant, while moneyness is present or absent. And, moneyness can be present without physical form in digital money. Physical form is therefore not moneyness, physical form must be something else in addition to moneyness.

Just as, the distal object cannot be qualia. Qualia can remain exactly constant, while the distal object is present or absent. And, the distal object can be present without qualia, if there are no capable observers. Qualia is therefore not the distal object, qualia must be something else in addition to the distal object.

But notice what you’ve done here: you’re now committed to the claim that phenomenology is systematically misleading about its own intentional structure. That’s not impossible, but it’s a much stronger thesis than “we sometimes misperceive,” and it’s not a neutral starting point either. — Esse Quam Videri

Interesting point of contention. This is not a neutral starting point, it is a conclusion. That phenomenology should mislead in general should not be surprising. But I don't think phenomenology is misleading about its intentional structure. Intention is the same, the distal object. Phenomenology misleads about form, not content. It presents form, qualitative features, as features of the content. When in reality, they are descriptors. Map, not territory.

P3 is doing all the work, but it’s not a phenomenological datum. It’s a metaphysical thesis. If you grant P3, IR follows. But that just means the argument is question-begging: it builds the conclusion into the premises by stripping DOs of sensible qualities in advance. — Esse Quam Videri

Good, lets focus on P3:
Distal objects do not support qualitative features like redness.

And your take:
"... redness is dispositional/relational, or a way the apple manifests itself under normal conditions. "

"Relational" seems passive (i.e. "to the left of"), while "way the apple manifests itself under normal conditions." makes it sound like the apple is the active agent in the relationship. But the apple has no more requirements in fulfilling this perceptual relationship than it does in fulfilling "to the left of". It just has to sit there. The viewer is doing all the work: they have to fulfill extraordinary biological requirements for the relationship to manifest.

Lets call perception a "unipolar relational process". "Process" because it is an active, ongoing, effortful relationship, not a passive one. "Unipolar" because one side of the relationship is doing all the processing.

Consider this scenario: There is a live TV broadcast of an apple. A camera continuously captures the apple's image, and the signal is transmitted to the broadcaster, which then sends the signal to the TV. Call this entire complex, of Camera/Broadcaster/TV the "Viewing System" (VS). These two elements, VS and apple, form a unipolar relational process.

You want to say: the image of the apple on the screen is not an object. It is an event, the way the apple disposes itself to VS. I mostly agree. But I would flip the agency: the image of the apple is the way VS presents the apple.

You want to say: the VS is "intentionally directed" at the apple. Not at the image on the screen. I agree. The apple is what the image is of. Not the pixels.

Yet: I say, P3 holds. The apple does not support the image on the screen. The apple is passive. The image on the screen is an active construction of VS. The fact that the apple on the screen looks like the apple in real life is not only contingent, it is the result of very effortful, difficult and precise engineering. VS could present the apple any which way: distorted, with inverted colors, or with infinite possible other transformations, which could leave the apple unintelligible to a human viewer. None of these transformations belong to the apple, they belong to VS. VS is doing them.

The light which emerges from VS is not the same as light reflecting off the apple. While the light is still of the apple, it is also mediated by VS.

As an aside, this is why I think my example with the apple is actually a stronger argument than the argument from hallucination. — Michael

But this argument does not survive any casual intermediary at all, since everything casual takes some amount of time. For IR to be substantive I think it needs some plausible notion of directness to contrast with. Here effectively no relationship beyond physical collisions can be direct.

I won't bother to do it but I could post a digital painting and a watercolor painting where you couldn't tell which was which. Your 'consumption' would be the same. The digital could be printed and again your experience would be the same in terms of medium. — praxis

I was pointing out that the method of consumption of real and faux meat is also the same.

For synthetic meat to be comparable, it would need to be nearly indistinguishable from meat (like a chicken leg for example) in experience and nutrition. More significantly, the methods used to create it would need to be comparable. — praxis

That indistinguishability is not there yet, but close. The methods used to create it is not comparable, but neither are the methods of creating digital and physical art. It is the technique that is similar.

Let’s quickly disambiguate the word “perception.” At minimum we need to distinguish (i) the sensory episode (experience), (ii) the act of grasping/identifying what is going on (understanding), and (iii) the commitment that something is the case (judgment). — Esse Quam Videri

But this just sounds like the standard IR picture: we experience sensations (i), on the basis of these we perform cognitive operations (ii) to arrive at judgements about the world (iii).

In that sense, the intentional object is the distal apple as it existed at the time the light was emitted (the apple-at-t0, not the apple-at-t1). — Esse Quam Videri

So then does DR entail a metaphysical commitment to eternalism? IR implies no such commitment, the BMO simply does not match the DO. Whereas, if there are not two objects, then perception in this case seems to involve time travel.

As I understand it, the apple argument is just a weaker form of the argument from hallucination. Weaker, because you can still say that the distal object is in the past. Whereas in hallucination there is no distal object at all. So then the DRist has to bend over backwards to say that hallucination and vertidical perception are fundamentally different process, in spite of the fact that the object as it appears can be (in principle) precisely identical in both cases.

. The question is whether being conscious of phenomenal character entails being conscious of a brain-modeled object as an object. — Esse Quam Videri

BMOs are not objects in the everyday sense, so I don't think objecthood is the appropriate condition. Rather, I think the question is whether the BMO satisfies the requirements of an epistemic intermediary between the subject and object.

Your photograph analogy is helpful, but I think it quietly shifts the issue. A photograph is itself a public object that can be inspected, re-identified, and treated as the intentional terminus of an act. — Esse Quam Videri

It is true that the analogy does this. But this is not the thrust of the analogy. The photograph is meant to show that having an intermediary does not mean that "you only see the intermediary". We still see the subject, because the photograph discloses the subject, and there is an appropriate casual connection between subject and photograph.

If we were literally aware of BMOs as objects, then we should be able to distinguish (even in principle) “what the BMO is like” from “what the distal object is like.” But phenomenologically we don’t encounter two objects—an inner one and an outer one—we encounter one object as appearing. — Esse Quam Videri

Exactly, phenomenologically we encounter one object. This is the illusion IR aims to dispel. We already agree that phenomenological features of the object as it appears do not inhere in the distal object. But this is a contradiction: if there is only one object, that object must support all the features it presents as having.

P1: In perception, one object appears phenomenologically
P2: This object as it appears has qualitative features, like redness
P3: Distal objects do not support qualitative features like redness
C1: Therefore, the object as it appears (the BMO), cannot be the distal object.
P4: Distal objects are the target objects of perception.
C2: The object as it appears (BMO) must be intermediate between subject and distal object

You want to say that qualitative features are relations. That might be a valid metaphysical perspective. But this is not how they appear to us, phenomenologically. Phenomenologically, they are properties of the object as seen. The object as seen, the BMO, is object-like, has qualitative features, and cannot be the distal object.

Saying “normativity is correspondence” is like saying “truth is correspondence”: it redescribes the target rather than explaining how such correspondence is possible or intelligible for a subject. — Esse Quam Videri

Normativity is obviously a significant topic, and it is not fair to ask the IRist to solve it. Rather, we need to demonstrate that IR is consistent with normativity. Broadly, correspondence grounds truth, and failure of correspondence error. It is possible for the subject to establish this correspondence, or lack, because the DO and BMO are casually connected, and therefore epistemically connected. The subject does not live in a walled garden of BMOs.

Most of the time, the model of the world given to us is good enough, and we take it for granted that the BMO corresponds with the DO, at least in the relevant ways. When inconsistencies arise, within the BMO, between BMOs, or between BMOs and our prior understandings, we need to use reason and evidenc to determine what world and self conditions could lead to the constradictions we observe.

The actual conditions and mechanisms of how this works is beyond this topic, and I don't claim to have definitive answers.

If the subject is unaware of the offset, their judgment can be mistaken, but that doesn’t show the object perceived is an inner intermediary. — Esse Quam Videri

If the object perceived is not the distal object, and it is not an inner intermediary, then what is it?

Vegetarian meat is a poor analogy because both the method of production and consumption are fundamentally different from non-vegetarian meat. — praxis

Method of production maybe, but consumption?

While the technique might be similar in digital vs. Analog painting, the medium of the product couldn't be more different. 1's and 0's, vs paint and canvas. Whereas, vegetarian meat and meat are still ultimately textured protein and fat.

I think the analogy is apt: two categories that neither fully belong to one another, nor are fully distinct. There is no "ultimate answer" to either question: "is a digital painting a painting?", "is vegetarian meat, meat?" The answer is determined by how the categories are defined, nothing more.

The institutional degree; or
An image purposefully made by applying paint to a medium. — AmadeusD

A painting is an institutional degree??

Under the second definition, iconic caution signage on the freeway would be a painting.

The fourth option is that BMOs belong to the causal implementation of intentionality rather than being the objects of intentionality. They enable us to see, but they are not what is seen. — Esse Quam Videri

Except they are seen. Not in the sense of perceiving a distal object, but in the subjective sense. An example of the "casual implementation of intentionality" is the refraction of light through the lens of the eye. This is part of the casual story, but we are unconscious of it. You are lumping such processes with what we are very explicitly conscious of, a category mistake.

Otherwise we’d be forced to say that we see neural models (or retinal stimulations), rather than the world those processes disclose. To me, that seems like a clear category mistake. — Esse Quam Videri

Not "rather than". Perception is mediated by neural modelss, such that we see the world by way of the experience of neural models. Just as we see the subject by way of seeing the photograph. Not "we only see brain objects".

For me, it comes down to whether normativity is reducible to causation. I don’t think it is. — Esse Quam Videri

Normativity is another question. Given the nature of perception, how is normativity possible? This doesn't seem particularly problematic in IR: normativity is correspondence between BMO and DO. Epistemic problems exist, but they are real, not artifacts of IR. Radical scepticism cannot be ruled out. Whereas DR faces the familiar problem of error cases.

Are you arguing that normativity can only be satisfactorily explained in DR?

Treating phenomenal character as an intermediary object is exactly the indirect realist move I’m resisting. — Esse Quam Videri

But phenomenal character is not the right intermediary.

Your key argument has been that phenomenal character as-such is insufficiently object like to serve as intermediary between subject and distal object (DO). But it is not quite phenomenal character that does the intermediating. Rather, the brain-modeled object (BMO), which has phenomenal qualities as attributes, plays this role. The BMO is the object as it appears to you, including but not limited to it's phenomenal qualities.

That there is a BMO, distinct from the DO, seems clear:

BMO: has colors, tastes, feels
DO: has no such qualities

BMO: may be inaccurate or erroneous
DO: has no capacity for inaccuracy

BMO: has no casual properties
DO: has position, mass, volume

BMO: may be imagined independently of DO
DO: resists imagination

BMO: alters or disappears with changes in the subject
DO: indifferent to changes in the subject

BMO: There is one for every observer aware of the DO
DO: There is only ever one.


I see three responses: there is no such thing as BMOs. BMOs are the same as DOs. BMOs are also insufficiently object like to serve as intermediary. None of these seem appealing. Do you agree with one or more, and/or is there a fourth response I'm missing?

So phenomenal qualities cannot function as objects standing between subject and world because they do not exhibit the characteristics required to play that epistemic role. — Esse Quam Videri

The fundamental difference seems to be how to schematically model perception. You (from my perspective) strip the mental object of its object like characteristics, retaining only bare phenomenality, and inappropriately assign those objective characteristics to the distal object itself. I (from your perspective) inappropriately reify phenomenal qualities, which are relations to distal objects, not objects in themselves, into pseudo objects standing between subject and object.

Indirect realism:
Subject -----> mental object (with phenomenal qualities) ------> distal object

Direct realism:
Subject ---- (phenomenal qualities) ----> distal object

Do you agree with this picture?

On Talbott’s view, this marks the core limitation of naturalism as it is usually conceived: it attempts to reduce context-driven, interpretive behaviour to physical causation alone. That is the conflict in a nutshell. — Wayfarer

This doesn't seem right. A naturalist isn't restricted to casual explanations only. So long as any contextual, interpretive explanation can ultimately resolve to a casual explanation.

Looking at the behavior of playing chess. A naturalist might explain the how in terms of the neural architecture that supports this ability, and the dopaminergic reinforcement that drives the behavior. And the why, in an analysis of game playing, that it fosters social connection, reinforces hierarchy, and most importantly it is a platform for learning. Each of these in turn might be subject to a how and a why analysis. Eventually, the whys will resolve to hows: to a discussion of adaptive advantage, and how such advantage propagates across generations.

A naturalism that was restricted to purely casual explanations would be hopeless! This seems like a cartoon straw man.

That story can explain why certain representations work, but it doesn’t obviously explain aboutness—why representations are of the world rather than merely correlated with stimuli in ways that happen to be useful. After all, reptiles and birds of prey have survived for millions of years without any concern for whether their perceptions or internal representations are true. That preoccupation seems uniquely human, and it is not clear that evolutionary biology, as such, is equipped to explain it. — Wayfarer

What is this supplementary "aboutness" which supposedly demands explanation? For a perception to be correlated to stimulli in a way that happens to be useful, it must disclose something about the world. Whether or not the organism consciously considers the stimulli as "true" or not, a signal derived from the world cannot be useful if it does not inform. A bird of prey does not consider the metacognitive question "are my perceptions true?" Yet, it is critically important that it's perceptions are accurate in the ways that are relevant to it.



We and only we are able to ask the metacognitive questions "are perceptions true? are they real? how can they be about the world?" Such questions can only be posed by language. Only language can carve out concepts like perception, and then that these concepts themselves as objects of consideration. If you believe naturalism can explain language use, then it can explain such questions.

When I listen to music, I am still directed at something: sounds unfolding in time, with rhythm, pitch, and structure. Suspending concern with instruments or sources does not turn the experience into a free-floating phenomenal item. — Esse Quam Videri

What you are directed at is phenomenal experience unfolding in time. The rhythm, pitch, and structure are features of the phenomena, not a distal object. There are numerous candidates for distal object: speakers, player, band/creator, cd/lp/mp3 file. All of these are components of our causal understanding of the phenomena, but none of them somehow supersede the phenomena.

Imagining is paradigmatically an experience as of something—just not something presently existing. In that case the object is "irreal", not absent altogether. — Esse Quam Videri

Not necessarily. I can imagine the sound of chiming, without imagining any specific distal object (wind chime, door bell, phone, mp3 clip) realizing it. I can imagine the phenomenal experience of redness, and I "see" red in my minds eye, not attached to any object at all.

The question is not why organisms care about environmental cues, but why experiences are given as of something at all—why questions like “what is it?” arise from within experience itself. — Esse Quam Videri

What does this mean, "arise from experience itself". When I hear a chime, I might wonder, what is making the noise. But by no means is this wonderment somehow embedded within the phenomenal experience of chiming itself. It is something extra: given this experience, this chiming, I am led to wonder, "what made it"?

***

You want to argue that phenomenal experience is derivative of what is primary in the perceptual act: object direction. If it is derivative, then this disqualifies the phenomenal as intermediary between subject and object. I have presented several counterarguments.

* Phenomena with unknown object (chiming). The object must be explicitly inferred from the phenomena
* Phenomena where distal object is secondary: music
* Phenomena where distal object is unreal or absent: imagination

But what positive arguments do you have that the phenomenal is derivative? Earlier, when we were discussing ammonia, you claimed that the mental act "I am smelling something sharp and pungent" was introspective, and therefore secondary and derivative. But this is not introspection, it is articulation. Given the phenomenal experience, "pungent and sharp" translates it into words. That is secondary. But the phenomenal experience, the sensation that we might later describe as "pungent and sharp" is not, it cannot be. It is that which we describe, and that which we wonder about the cause.

If I am missing the main arguments please forgive me, feel free to quote yourself from our or other discussions.

Losing awareness of the object is not the same thing as phenomenology becoming the object of perception. It shows only that object-directedness can be bracketed or backgrounded, not that it was absent or secondary to begin with. — Esse Quam Videri

When I listen to music, I'm not in any way directed at a distal object, which I then bracket or background. The phenomenal music itself is the "object". The way the music sounds, it's specific phenomenal qualities, constitutes the musical experience.

When the observer hears the chime, that the chime presents as something is a consequence of the brain's organization of experience. Environmental sounds are " of something" because they are environmental, and the brain "tags" them as such. Environmental cues don't arise on their own, and it is important for survival to identify their origins. This is distinguished from internal experiences, such as imaginationary imagery, which are not of anything at all. They might conceptually represent objects, but they do not point to actual distal objects.

So, it does not seem that phenomenal experience is intrinsically object directed. It is only so when it is specifically an environmental cue. But there are phenomenal experiences such as music and imaginations that are not environment cues. These latter seem phenomenal on their own, without pointing to an object. And so, if phenomenal experience is able to float free of an object, it cannot be a secondary derivative of an object directed perceptual event, as you want to say.

. I would argue that meditation and music don’t undermine this structure; they presuppose it. — Esse Quam Videri

How does meditation and music presuppose this? When I listen to music, or meditate, I lose awareness of the object, and focus on the phenomenology. The phenomenology becomes the first-order subject of perception, the object secondary, if it is present at all. And so your idea of object-first perceptual structure must explain this. It certainly receives no support from it.

We are able to flexibly attend to phenomenology, or to object. But our attentional stance does not speak to the epistemological relationship between phenomenology and object.