I have here a lump of 24 caret gold, a ruby, a sapphire, and an emerald. the lump is yellow, the ruby is red, the sapphire blue, and the emerald is green. If these 4 objects have no color, how do they reflect light at a particular wave length? If sun light passes through the emerald, how do the molecules composed of 4 or 5 elements absorb and re-emit green light that lands on your retina and triggers neuronal impulses that your brain decides is green IF there is no color there to start with? — Bitter Crank

What do you mean by "green" here? Do you mean it as in there is particular range of radiation wavelengths in the external world which the brain physical internally represents as the 'quaila' of green colour?

Or do you mean that there is green colour in the physical world as if the qualia of green, as if how green *looks* to us exists 'out there' in the physical world, which our physical brain internally represents as the visual perception of green?

I'm not suggesting the physical world is like this, but let's imagine a black and white traffic light in the physical world. Does the brain represent the colourless traffic light internally, presenting to us an internal model of that black and white traffic light which contains the qualia of red, orange, green? So here we would have a colourless physical traffic light in the external world, which emits radiation of different wavelengths. Physical retinas detect this radiation, and 'convert' the light waves into neuronal impulses. The neuronal impulses fire into the brain and the visual cortex generates a visual experience/perception of a traffic light which has the qualia of red, orange, and green. So we have here a colourless physical traffic light emitting physical radiation, and an internally generated representative experience of a coloured traffic light.

Or, as you appear to be saying, does the traffic light in the external world have a colour, as in it looks green even when nobody is perceiving it, so it would be like the qualia of green is there even when nobody is around? And our brains internally represent the externally existing quale of green, as a visual perception of green qualia?

I don't know what you're saying. The above seems to directly contradict with what you've said below:

The brain constructs a complex model of the world — Bitter Crank

The world seems real to me, though what it would actually look like if we were in direct mental contact with the world I do not know. — Bitter Crank

You don't know what the external physical world looks like, and yet it looks green, or red, or yellow?

It's like what I've said above:

I would also like to point out, as an aside, that people ought have no problem discussing the phenomenology of their visual experiences without getting caught up and bogged down by physical descriptions of light and of the physical explanation/description of how perception is generated. I think the only reason this has happened is you all subscribe to the physical description of visual perception while at the same time not grasping that it entails representionalism because you want it both ways - a physical account of perception, and the objects around you being the actual physical objects in the external world which you are directly seeing, much like the naive realist. — dukkha

Personally, I just don't see images on the surface of glass windows. Maybe you see things that way. If you do, and it works for you, fine. — Bitter Crank

Because you are falling for the illusion! We know it's an illusion because of things like the bent stick in water illusion, or how warped glass distorts the world, rose tinted glass makes the world red, magnifying glasses make the world bigger, telescopes bring the world closer to us, cracked mirrors splits the world, etc.

Just wind your car window down halfway and notice that when you look at the bottom half of the side mirror through the window it does not perfectly match and align (in terms of both the angle, and it just generally looks slightly different, it may be a little tinted or warped) with the top half of the side mirror which is seen through the open window. Or just drive along the road looking at/through the windscreen at the road and then stick your head out the window and look at the road. Keep doing this back and forward - they do not look the same! How can this be if it is the very same road which is being perceived as if we are looking *through* the windscreen? I mean what's the theory here if you say it's the same road, that our gaze somehow catches the refraction and tint of the windscreen as it travels through the windscreen and out into the world beyond? It makes no sense. My theory explains/can account for the change in how the road looks through the windscreen compared to how the road looks if a windscreen was not fitted. The theory makes far more sense and can account for illusions like bent sticks in water, or fish not being where they appear when you spear them, or the rocks on the bottom of the lake wobbling around with the water movement, or glasses giving the world more definition - you are merely seeing an image on the surface of the clear thing, and most people errenousoy mistake the image for being the world beyond.

I mean look at what is entailed by your understanding of glass in terms of mirrors - that you look through your eyes at the mirror which somehow turns your gaze around and shoots it back at you and behind your body so that you are looking straight ahead and yet literally looking at the world behind you directly. This makes no sense. What does make sense is that you see an image in the mirror and you mistake this for being the actual world behind you (eg in the case of a rear view mirror, you're not actually seeing the road behind you as if the mirror turns your gaze around and shoots it back at the road and world behind your car. My theory makes far more sense - you see an image in the mirror, an almost imperceptibly clear/crisp image, so clear that the majority of people can't even tell it's an image, but nonetheless it's an image seen on the surface of the mirror. People mistaking the image for the road behind the car is much like a cat seeing attacking a cat in the TV screen, or a dog watching in a television a ball being thrown off screen and searching for the ball in your house in the direction it was thrown in - they don't recognise that the depth is an illusion, that they are seeing an image and not an actual cat or an actual ball being thrown.

Again the analogy/metaphor here is that we can imagine a web cam on the other side of glass pointing outwards, and it feeds the light information which it is detecting, back to the glass as if it were a TV screen, and the glass displays what the webcam detects, an image on the other side of the glass than the webcam facing outwards. The image is so ultra crisp and high def (no matter how close you get you can't see the pixels, unlike a TV screen) that the vast majority of people can't even tell that they are being presented with an image. Like a dog moving his head off screen where a ball has been thrown (by people on TV), you are falling for an illusion.

This is not to say that the illusion is bad or anything, it's highly useful - it gives us a really good representation of what's beyond the pane, and it's probably a good thing we fall for the illusion while driving because it allows us to navigate the world beyond the windscreen (the 'image' is not only high definition but also an incredibly accurate representation of what we would be seeing were the windscreen not fitted, although not 100% accurate - there's minor flaws such as refraction, warping, tinting, etc). But the point is that it is an illusion that we are seeing the actual road and world beyond the windscreen directly - we are actually seeing a representation, an 'image' on the inner surface. I put 'image' in scare quotes because the depth experience is a lot better than say an image in a photograph or TV screen and I suspect the reason is that there is some sort of ultra high definition stereogram type illusion on the clear thing being perceived. I don't want people to think I'm saying glass perceptions have *literally* the exact same phenomenology as when we see TV screens, that is just an analogy.

I don't think there is any one here who supposes that his brain is in direct contact with objects. — Bitter Crank

Maybe they wouldn't word it like that but a lot of people in everyday life and it appears a lot of people in this thread seem to believe that we look *through* our eyes, as if we are peering through our retinas at the world. I certainly used to think/feel this way. This is the view of 'naive realism', which intuitively feels like it's the case. It really feels like my gaze is looking out from my eyes at a world which is distinct from myself and continues to exist in the very same way as when I am perceiving it and when I am not (i.e. things continue to 'look' red/blue/etc even when I am not perceiving them, or that sounds are out there at locations in the world, the car engine keeps making noise even when I'm in the house).

The direct realist, at least my understanding of him, does believe that his mind has direct contact with the physical world. When he perceives something he uses his mind (otherwise how would you be perceiving them), and it is physical objects in the external world which are being directly perceived. He uses his mind to directly come in contact with physical objects. He wouldn't hold that the physical world is within his brain, or his brain is literally touching physical objects, or some other absurdity like that - but because he doesn't subscribe to a representationalist account of perception (the things he sees are the actual physical objects) he would hold that the sensory organs and brain allow ones mind (perceptions are in the mind - note I'm not saying that mind is entirely within the physical brain) to access directly the external physical world.

The brain has no direct contact with any object or the sensing of it (though the sense of smell is pretty close to direct contact). The brain isn't in direct contact with the world outside the skull.

The brain constructs a complex model of the world that accounts for things like windows, twigs that appear bent in the water but are not, and so on. The process of model building starts in infancy, and progresses throughout life. If the model is wrong, we may get hurt, embarrass ourselves, or damage something. Feedback tells us whether our model of the world is right or wrong.

The world seems real to me, though what it would actually look like if we were in direct mental contact with the world I do not know. Our senses are limited, and though we have experience to help, some things we can not sense. I can not hear the high pitches of a bat. Bats are silent, as far as I am concerned. Some people say they can hear them. —

Agreed. So because you hold that all you perceptions have the same ontology - i.e. they're all internally constructed representations of the physical world (by a brain), the. there is nothing absurd about my theory. It could very well be that the brain constructs an internal model of glass in much the same way as it constructs models of images on a TV screen - whereby the light is travelling from the same depth (surface of TV) yet the brains model presents the image on the TV as if it has depth. Some things look further away than others, it's not like we're just seeing a 2D piece of paper. The difference though is we recognise that the depth in the television screen is merely a construction by the brain (we don't think there's actual people behind the TV in our living rooms that we're looking at, whereas with glass we (not me) do not recognise that the depth perceived is an illusion constructed by the brain, we think we are seeing the world beyond the glass.

Seeing as though my theory is not stupid or absurd, rather it's a competing account of glass, we need to decide between the accounts. How do we do that? We ought pick the theory, like the good scientists we are, that has the most explanatory value. Which account of glass can best account for all the perceptual 'quirks' associated with it? The answer is mine. I don't even know what precisely what the competing theory(s) are, someone will have to spell it out to me. I can't really make sense of it, I mean does our gaze somehow travel through glass and pick up the tint or refraction on the way through then force it onto the world beyond? Makes no sense.

I think that in a TV screen there is a source of light radiation, right there in the screen, but in the case of glass, the source of light is further beyond the glass itself. So these two are quite different with respect to the "illusion of depth". — Metaphysician Undercover

Your brain doesn't actually know how far the light travelled from an object to the retina. The retina is just presented with a 2D image on its surface. For a rod or cone one light wave is much the same as the other i.e. it does the same thing whether the light wave travelled 10 centimetres or 10km. The depth information, the distance the light wave travelled, is not included in the light wave. It doesn't carry that information with it and pass it on to the retina. Retinal cells just fire off in the same way regardless of how far the light travelled. It is the brain which interprets all the different neuronal impulses and builds this experience of depth.

If your claim is that the entire visual perception is created by the brain, without any influence from things external to the brain, then what's the point in discussing how the brain differentiates between one object and another, in any sense whatsoever? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure what you mean by "without any influence from things external to the brain"? In building a visual perception the brain uses neuronal impulses coming from the retina - which fire because light in the physical world is hittin it. Likewise for the other senses, for example in building the experience of sound the brain uses neuronal impulses which are fired off from sound waves hitting your eardrum. All our sensory organs do is convert various physical processes into neuronal impulses. The job of the brain is to use all these various impulses to build an internal representation of the external world - a guess or an approximation. The representation doesn't even need to be accurate or match how the external world is like, it only needs to be evolutionarily useful for the survival and propogation of the organisms genes. So take colour for example, physicalists don't generally believe physical things actually 'look' yellow or red in the physical world (and our brain internally generates a representation of how the objects 'look' which for us are colour experiences. Rather, in the physical world there just longer or shorter waves of radiation. Our retinas only respond to a narrow range of all the various lengths of radiation, firing off neuronal impulses only when radiation from that narrow range strikes it. The brains way of making sense of these impulses is to internally generate a perception which has colour in it. Things look red blue yellow etc. This is not because things in the external world actually look red blue etc, it's because internally representing the radiation the retinas fire off in response to *as a colour experience* is evolutionarily successful. It helps the organism move through the external world better or avoid poisonous plants, or spot the black panther in the green grass (these are just my guesses).

If all the objects are simply created by the brain, then there is no difference between the TV screen and the glass, because they are both simply creations of the brain. —

Yes, in terms of the physical description/explanation of sensory perception, all visual experiences have the same *ontology* - all are generated/created by a physical brain. But we're not talking about the ontology of visual perception itself - we're talking about phenomenology, how things are presented to us. So to couch it in physicalist terms, when we have a visual experience of glass, has the physical brain created a depth experience similar to the way it creates depth in a television screen experience (but better, so much better that most of us are fooled by it), or has the physical brain created a depth experience which is phenomenologically similar to the depth experience it creates with the objects around our bodies, i.e. the depth experience is NOT illusory - when we see glass the brain has presented to us a visual perception as if the glass is not there/invisible (like air) and we are seeing the various objects beyond the glass at differing depths.

Or put it like this, does it make a difference in terms of the visual phenomenology, when someone is driving a car with a windscreen or without one? Is the experience the same in both cases, as in the depth of our visual field does not terminate at the inner surface of the windscreen when the car has one, and the depth of your visual field - how far you can see ahead is not changed at all from having a windscreen and not having one. So when there's no windscreen we experience the depth of our visual field as extending all the way to the road beyond the car, and further onward. Is the extent of your visual field unaltered by a windscreen being fitted, so that you are still seeing the road and world ahead of the car, much like you were when there was no windscreen?

My answer is that it is altered by a windscreen being fitted, whereby the depth of your visual field is reduced from extending all the way out into the road and world, to extending only as far as the inner surface of the windscreen. The image on the inner surface (of the road beyond the windscreen) is so high quality that we (not me) mistake the image for not being an image on the glass, rather we think that what we are seeing is much the same as when there is no windscreen, that we are looking out at the road ahead of the car as if the windscreen was not fitted (in terms of depth - obviously we know there's a windscreen there, the illusion is that we are seeing through it much like (the brain presents the air around us as being 'see-through'.

Nor is there any real difference between any object created by the brain, in the sense that these are all fictions. —

I wouldn't say this. All experiential objects created by a physical are have the same ontology - they are all internally generated representations of the physical world. But this doesn't make our perceptions 'not-real'. Our perceptions exist they're not fictional. Regardless, this is probably just a debate on how we use the word 'fictional'.

However, the brain might create such a difference, dictate that X is different than Y. But then any difference is just a difference because the brain determines it as a difference.

Yes, this is the position entailed by the physical account of perception - our perceptions are representations internally generated by a physical brain (I made another thread recently discussing why this physical brain can't be located within the head we perceive). This does not mean that there's no difference between objects in the physical world, we are discussing how our perceptions are presented to us, and not how the physical world is structured, which is a different issue.

are the exact same ones that hit our retinas and we do see the stick. — Barry Etheridge

This is highly confused. Light from a physical object hits your retina, gets converted to a neuronal impulse which travels to the visual cortex... and then we see the physical stick in the external world directly. How? Light hits the retina and a neuronal impulse travels through the brain, some magic happens and then we look *through* our retinas like they're windows upon the world? This is utterly confused.

When I look out the window, the sky is blue because between me and the upper atmosphere there IS enough gas to refract light waves. — Bitter Crank

So, refracted light waves reach your retina. The retinal rods and cones convert the refracted light wave into a neuronal impulses. The impulses travel down the optic nerve, through the brain and into the visual cortex. The visual cortex generates a visual experience. This is a type of representationalism. *

It appears nobody can discuss phenomenology without bickering over physical descriptions of light and visual perception. So my strategy now is to show that the scientific view of perception entails representationalism, and therefore we can get back to discussing the OP because it isn't physical things that the representationalism is seeing around him. The world around him is a conscious experience generated by a physical brain, which represents the physical world (which contains refracted light waves) existing beyond the physical brain.

*http://m.pnas.org/content/98/22/12340.full

To spell it out; seeing as though the objects around us are not the physical objects that (we hypothesise to) exist in the external physical world, but rather are our physical brains *interpretation* of the physical world - an internal model, an internal visual representation of the physical world existing beyond it. Because it's not the actual physical object beyond the brain which we are directly looking at (as if our eyes are windows upon the world which we look 'through', but rather an internal visual perception - a representation of those (hypothesised) physical objects, then within the context of this thread we OUGHT have no problems with discussing the phenomenology of the physical brains internally generated visual perception. And the thing we are therefore discussing is whether the brain interprets glass much like it interprets the light coming from a television screen, whereby you are looking at a flat screen, but you also experience an illusion of depth beyond the screen. So to spell it out, if this is the same as how we see glass, when we look at glass we are looking at a flat surface but are experiencing an illusion of depth beyond the glass. Or when we look at glass are the things we see not an illusion od depth, but actual depth as in it is the objects beyond the pane of glass which are being internally represented by the brain.

We can put it like this, does the brain interpret light coming from a pane of glass as coming from a flat surface, much like a television screen (i.e. the brain does not present the TV as if the things on the screen are actually behind the television and we are looking *through* the screen at those objects as if the television is a 3d diorama). Or does the brain interpret light coming from glass in much the same way as it does interpret light coming from objects like chairs cups etc, whereby the depth you perceive is not an illusion on a flat surface.

Is the depth perception we perceive in a pane of glass an illusion on the surface of the glass which makes it look like we are seeing the objects/world beyond the pane of glass, or does the brain interpret light coming from a pane of glass as if the glass is invisible and the light is coming from the various objects beyond the pane which exist at varying depths?

I say that when we look at glass it is much like looking at an ultra high def television screen (no matter how close you go you can't see the pixels!) whereby we are looking at the surface of a flat object (pane of glass) but are experiencing an illusion of depth much like when we see the flat screen of a television but the image displayed appears to have some depth (i.e. some objects appear closer than others, it's not experienced as a 2D flat image it appears to have depth). Of course there is a difference between seeing an illusion of depth in a television screen and seeing one on a pane of glass, and that's that people don't 'believe' the TV screen illusion of depth - people don't think they're actually looking at things which exist behind the television screen - they recognise that it's an illusion and they're just seeing an illusion of depth on a flat screen, whereas MOST people (not me) do not recognise the illusion of depth on the surface of glass (because it's almost entirely seamless) and actually think that, much like someone seeing somebody on a TV screen and thinking that person is behind the television in their house, the depth perceived in glass is not an illusion and it is the objects beyond the pane that one is perceiving.

Basically you're all falling for an illusion and I'm not ;)

I would also like to point out, as an aside, that people ought have no problem discussing the phenomenology of their visual experiences without getting caught up and bogged down by physical descriptions of light and of the physical explanation/description of how perception is generated. I think the only reason this has happened is you all subscribe to the physical description of visual perception while at the same time not grasping that it entails representionalism because you want it both ways - a physical account of perception, and the objects around you being the actual physical objects in the external world which you are directly seeing, much like the naive realist.

Phenomenology has no ontological commitments, so there really should be no issue discussing it without bringing in the theory of physicalism.

I mean does Saudi Arabia needs us in their country spreading our "enlightened" values to their ignorant people? — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes.

The point is there is a racism in our insistence that we must know better — TheWillowOfDarkness

White people can be Muslims too, Islam is not a race.

And we DO know better. Homosexuality can be punished by death in Saudi Arabia. Surely you can't excuse this with an appeal to cultural relativism?

, we are really calling for a genocide of the tradition in a favour of our own. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes!

Yeah, which is called "see-through" or "transparent." Apparently you came to the conclusion that "see-through" or "transparent" implied "literally invisible," but why you would have come to that conclusion is rather the mystery. — Terrapin Station

So then you agree with me that clear things aren't see through?

But you are seeing the actual thing behind the surface. — Terrapin Station

Suppose not.

Yawn. Looks like once again Terrapin Station, you've made another argument which doesn't make any sense. And your inane condescending strawman above isn't even worth responding to.

Don't bother replying.

↪dukkha You need to realize that when we perceive anything, it's really just the reflection of photons traveling through a transparent gas or space. — darthbarracuda

This theory is wrong. But regardless it entails representationalism (i.e. photons travel through eye to retina, rods and cones convert photons to neuronal impulses, neuronal impulses travel through optic cord into the brain, into the visual cortex, visual cortex generates a visual perception), and therefore the argument still stands. We're discussing the phenomenology of clear things in the world around us. Your recourse to "physical objects are transparent" doesn't matter, because per your perceptual theory we don't perceive physical objects anyway.

Transparency, transparence or transparent most often refer to transparency and translucency, the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through a material. — Wikipedia

What's this got to do with the phenomenology of glass? Spell it out.

The argument here seems be, if some object has the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through it, when we look at this object, we therefore directly visually perceive the objects on the other side of it.

Why do you think this? Are you unfamiliar with any of the physics facts of life that darthbarracuda pointed out? — Bitter Crank

No. You need to spell out what a physical description of light and transparency has to do with whether we can see through clear objects or not.

The argument here seems to be, light waves travel through clear objects and are refracted, therefore we directly perceive what's on the other side of glass.

What does a physical description of light have to do with the phenomenology of clear things? Spell it out.

What you are seeing is a stream of light from the sun, bouncing off objects, and (some of it) continuing on to be absorbed at last by the cones and rods in your retina, blah blah blah. — Bitter Crank

Can you elaborate on this "blah blah blah"?

↪dukkha Because that's what it means to be see-through: photons are able to pass through the material. — darthbarracuda

That's what it means for a physical object to be transparent. But I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about whether we perceive directly what's on the other side of clear things (that is, whether clear things are 'see-through') or not.

So we see a pane of glass. A physicist might come along and say that the pane is physically transparent - light waves can travel through the object. You two seem to be making this giant leap from what the physicist is saying to concluding that we directly visually perceive what is on the other side of glass.

What does transparency and light waves have to do with the phenomenology of clear things? Can you spell it out?

The trouble with this idea is that, thanks to modern physics, we already know what makes things transparent. Depending on the grain pattern of a substance, light may or may not be absorbed. That's what transparency is - something going through another thing without much friction.

So your theory becomes irrelevant because in this case, empirical evidence trumps a priori speculation. — darthbarracuda

So, light waves travel through transparent things.

What's this got to do with whether clear things are 'see-through' or not? Spell it out.

Your way of understanding is incorrect, then. You have a right to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. You have to think straight to pursue philosophy, and you're not doing that. — Wayfarer

This is not an argument. You're just stating your own opinion on clear things as if it's a fact, which you just said we don't have a right to do...

It is common for people to believe that concepts are produced as representations of what exists in the world, and this is what you imply in that passage. In reality though, concepts are produced as tools which help us to understand, and use the world, while the artefacts, the artificial parts of the world, are reflections of these concepts. That's from Plato's cave allegory. So we understand the line, which is a concept, by means of perceiving representations of it, in the world. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is conceptualism, right? I wouldn't argue against this. Poor word choice on my part, I should have said our understanding of straight lines is ''ideal'' rather than perceptual.

A stock example is a straight stick appearing to be bent when half-immersed in water. So in that state, it appears to be bent, but when you take it out of the water, it isn't bent. — Wayfarer

As an aside, my way of understanding this illusion is that 'see-through' things (eg, water, glasses, glass, plastic, quartz, etc) are not actually see-through. Rather they display what's behind them on their surfaces, and we make the mistake of thinking we're seeing the actual thing beyond/behind the surface because the display is so seamless.

So if we imagine a bent straw in a glass full of water. The explanation is that the part of the straw which protrudes above the glass we are seeing directly, whereas the lower half of the straw which appearss below the lip of the glass and looks kinked, is not the actual lower half of the straw within the water, but rather is a almost completely seamless image on the outer surface of the glass. Seamless as in, we mistake the image for being the actual world beyond the surface.

A way of understanding this is to imagine a pane of glass as like an ultra high-def television screen, which takes it's feed from a webcam situated on the other side of the glass and pointing outwards. And the image is so good we mistake the glass for being 'see-through' and it's the real objects beyond the glass which we are directly perceiving.

You're probably better off not believing this (or rather, realizing this is true - which I think it is) haha. Every time I drive now I feel like i'm driving blind. Because I'm not actually seeing the road/world beyond the windscreen. Rather, I'm 'using' a display on the inner surface of the windscreen to drive the car and not crash. The car might as well not have a windscreen, just a webcam on the hood and a t.v. screen inside displaying the image, because it's basically the same thing. Clear things display what's behind them on their surfaces, mirrors are the same but they display what's in front.

I'll make a separate thread about this. I'm going to assume a lot of people are going to think this idea is crazy.

I think you misunderstood me; what I meant is that there appear to be heads with brains in them; that's what actually appears to us. And they appear to be within certain paramaters as to size, constitution, shape, colour and so on. We don't have any say in what is perceived; what appears is what appears. — John

Well I've never seen the inside of my head and I doubt you've seen yours. It might seem silly but this is still theoretical. Our brains don't appear to us, we posit them. Even things like someone getting brained by the wheels of a school bus and painting the sidewalk - it's still theoretical that the brain existed within the guys head *before* it splattered out and was perceived.

What about the fact that our perceptions of things often turn out to be wrong? If perception is all that was real, then how is it that we can have mistaken perceptions? A stock example is a straight stick appearing to be bent when half-immersed in water. So in that state, it appears to be bent, but when you take it out of the water, it isn't bent. Don't such cases tell you that your perception might be simply mistaken? — Wayfarer

Yeah, but we can understand mistaken perceptions without recourse to an external world. Illusions, hallucinations, etc (or even this idea of perceptual relativity, a plate appears elliptical from one angle but circular from another, which is correct?), can be understood simply as a different *kind* of perception. As opposed to normal perceptions being veridical to an external world and illusions not. So an illusion is one particular type of perception, and 'normal' perception another. Neither is more real or truthful than the other (at least in terms of truthfully corresponding to an external world).

There's also a conceptual issue with the notion our everyday perceptions being veridical to an external world, and that's that how can conscious experience somehow accurately match what is not conscious experience? So lets take that arrow illusion, where one arrow appears shorter than the other when both lines are the same size. So what we'd be holding here is that there are two lines in an external world which exists separate to our conscious experience of two lines (and the two lines are the same size). But our understanding of lines is perceptual, is it not? A line is something which *looks* straight. I believe what's happening when we think of lines in an external world, is we're imagining how straight things appear to us (horizontal lines) as existing in the absence of a perceiver. What's our justification in thinking that lines in an external world are basically like visual perceptions of lines but existing without someone perceiving it? I mean when I think about external world lines I am imagining a straight thing existing beyond my visual perception (I might imagine it as say lacking colour, or 'being made of atoms', etc, but the point is these are all still my imaginings). But, my understanding of what a 'straight thing' is, comes about through conscious experience (I see straight lines, I feel straight edges, I do maths with its notion of parallel, non curved, etc). It doesn't even really make sense to imagine what the external world is like, because the external world is devoid of imagination.

I don't see how a visual perception can accurately or truthfully represent/correspond to something which is not a visual perception, or any kind of experience at all. I think when we do think it's an accurate representation, all that's happening is we're imagining our visual perceptions (of eg, a straight line) existing in an external world in the absence of a perceiver. I suppose I'm just assuming other people do this, but I don't see how else you can understand your perceptions as being truthful representations without *imagining* the thing which is being represented. And there's no imagination in an external world, the external world is non-experiential, so this is conceptually wrong. The external world doesn't 'look like' anything, so how can how straight lines look to us accurately represent/correspond with the external world?

So, the question seems to comes down to whether we have good reason NOT to believe there is a real head with a real brain in it that causes the perception of a head with a brain in it as appears to be the case. — John

I don't see how that appears to be the case? We can't access this mind independent world, so where is the evidence? As in, what's appearing to us to make this idea seem correct? It's not at all obvious.

If we don't trust any of what we perceive and treat it all as a play of mere perceptual phenomena then there would seem to be no cause for anything since the notion of one mere perceptual phenomenon causing another is unintelligible. —

I'm not sure that not believing your experiences are caused by a physical brain means that you don't 'trust' your perceptions. That seems to be saying that conscious experience = unreal or untrue. As if the physical world is more 'real' than the perceptual one.

Regardless, let's say that I think conscious experience has no cause, or something separate from it which explains it's existence. So I think conscious experience is the 'brute' thing in reality, which has and needs no cause or explanation for its existence.

Well this is no different than what the physicalist does. He merely brings what's 'brute' out a level into a mind independent world and says the physical world just exists and has nothing outside it a which causes or brings/holds it in existence. The physicalist doesn't feel he needs to posit a world or cause beyond the physical world which explains the existence of it. He is perfectly comfortable just bringing what is held to exist by 'brute force' out a level from our experiences. So it's not that the physicalist has a problem with some level of reality being un caused and needing no explanation or cause or thing separate from it which is holding it in existence.

All the person who believes there's only phenomena is doing, is saying that there's really no explanatory value in positing an entire freaking world to explain the cause of our experiences. There's no need to bring what's 'brute' out a level when you can just hold that what is brute is our conscious experience. The physicalist has no problem with some level of reality being brute (i.e. he doesn't feel obliged to explain what is causing the physical world to exist, because he thinks the physical world is the 'uncaused thing' in reality), he just unnecessarily brings that uncaused thing out into a mind independent world. Surely parsimony applies and the entire separate physical world does not need to be posited.

So the point is that *some* level of reality is an uncaused 'brute' thing. Why bring it out a level from our consciousness into an entire mind independent world that doesn't need to be posited. It's only being posited because the physicalist believes that conscious experience needs a cause (and yet for some reason he believes the physical world doesn't...).

Why does the physicalist believe that consoles experience needs something outside it to explain/cause its existence, and yet he's perfectly comfortable with the physical world existing by brute force? Why is the physical world exempt from needing a cause but the phenomenal one isn't?

The question you are asking seems to boil down to 'Do we have good reason to believe that there is a real brain, independent of our representations, that is being ( more or less) accurately presented to us via perception?'.

Does that sound about right? — John

Yeah, the OP is an argument against the idea that your conscious experience is being caused by a brain. If there is a physical brain, independent of your conscious experience that is causing/giving rise to said experience, this brain can not coherently be located within your head. Rather, your experience of a head (which we might think contains a brain that is causing our experience) must already be located within a physical brain. And I have argued that this position has serious epistemic problems. Because from the position of your conscious experience, the brain which is causing your experience exists in a noumenal way, outside of your experience. There's a real issue of how on earth you can know *anything* about this brain, including that it even exists. What would it even mean to believe in the existence of this brain? We would have an idea in our

Sure, I can acknowledge that I may not get stopped by police, or receive bad service at a restaurant, or any number of other things that black people are in general much more likely to be subjected to. — Erik

Black people get stopped by police more often because they (on average) commit far more crime than other races. They don't get stopped because there's some racial conspiracy involving black hating cops inconveniencing people with needless traffic stops.

"Black people are more likely to receive bad service at a restaurant than other races because they are black"

Even if it were true that black people are more likely to receive bad service, it's probably for a different reason than waiters not liking black people due to their race and 'punishing' them with bad service. Blacks are notorious among waiters for being bad tippers, for example.

I really don't buy this ''white privilege systemic racism microagression invisible toolkit'' bullshit. Universities are cancer.

To simply be "white" isn't to do anything wrong. Sure, it means to have racial advantage in the West — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, it doesn't.

So long as you allow that there is a real separation between you and others, there is no such problem. The world around you is not constituted by your own perceptions. Your perceptions are within you, and as long as you allow that there is something real outside you, then this reality acts to separate what's within you from what's within others. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay but what we humans want to say and believe, is that the people we interact with in the world we perceive have conscious experiences. It is the actual people around us that are conscious, and not say, that the people around us are internal representations of conscious people in the world beyond my conscious experience. It is the people that I see which are conscious, but it's hard to reconcile this because the people that I see and interact with are *within* my conscious experience (the people I see
are within my conscious experience of a visual field).

It is only if you insist that there is absolutely nothing outside of your own conscious experience, that you would have the problem which you describe. But why would you think that your conscious experience comprises all that is? — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not a solipsist. I believe that the people I perceive and interact with are conscious. The people I see are not internal representations of conscious people in an external world beyond my experience. When someone moves their hand, it is the very same hand that is being moved which I perceive.

The trouble is that if other people's bodies are objects which I perceive, then it doesn't make sense to locate the other persons conscious experience within that object. But we always do this. As an example, when someone breaks their arm, we think their experience of pain is located in the broken arm we perceive. As if, by pointing at their broken arm I am directly pointing to the location of the other persons conscious experience of pain. This doesn't make sense because for them, my conscious experience of sight (seeing their broken arm) is for them located in (or in front of) my head which they perceive. But when I see someone point at me, they aren't pointing at my visual field, because their body is-itself *within* my visual field.

I believe this problem arises *because* I am conceiving of other people's bodies as if they are much like the other objects I experience in the world around me. As in, other peoples's bodies is the object which the biologist describes - a combination of physiological processes, or a collection of organs, a thing comprised of flesh, blood, and organs. Or even how the physicist describes, an object with mass, dimensions, etc. People's bodies must exist in a fundamentally different way than objects in the world like cars, cups, or roast legs of lamb (which *are* like the biologist describes - an object of flesh, bone, and blood, a mass of cells). It's as if, for the people around me to be conscious, they must be separate from my conscious experience (other people's conscious experience is not located inside my own), and yet other people's bodies are within my conscious experience (I see them, I feel them, etc).

So if people's bodies are not the objects described by biologists, what are they?

So brain states = conscious experience, in he same way water = h2o?

But it's hard to see how that could actually be, when one is a subjective lived experience and the other is an object in the world. How could they be the very same thing?

Perception is going to be different than the world around you in that the world around you isn't perception — Terrapin Station

So the colors in the world around you continue to still look the same even when nobody is looking at them? As in, we look *through* our eyes like they're windows onto he world?

Maybe there is a world around you and there is also your perception of the world that is different from the world itself. Isn't it a reasonable view? — Babbeus

But this representative/indirect realism doesn't solve the problem. Because if the people around you are internal representations of people, then they aren't conscious. You might say that's fine, that other consciousness exist in an external world beyond your perception. But this position requires some strange relationship between the bodies around you and conscious experiences which exist in the external world. Strange relationship as in, eg, another person wills his arm to move in his own represented world, and somehow this causes the persons arm you see in front of you move in a correlated way. Likewise there's this sort of strange correlation between all his other behaviors he does in his represented world and the person you see in front of you. I don't know how this relationship would work?

And I would have thought it obvious that we have no knowledge of our own brains. It could not be otherwise. — Barry Etheridge

My point is not that we can't perceive the brain in our heads.

and saying which were their favorites. — The Great Whatever

For me, it's the McChicken. The best fast food sandwich.

I think a big mistake the Clinton campaign made was to campaign as if voting democrat was the *morally correct* thing to do. People really don't like being told by someone that it's morally wrong to not do what they want. If someone feels they're being called a racist, sexist, deplorable, by someone, they're not likely to then vote for that person. A big part of why trump won is he tapped into the needs of a voting bloc that hadn't felt it's interests had been represented and advocated for in a long time - working class white people. I think a lot of people felt like holy shit someone is finally representing MY interests! Trumps not perfect, but you can afford to make a lot of mistakes when the alternative to voting for someone who appears to be advocating for you, is to be called a racist uneducated redneck for even considering voting in your own interest. It was a big mistake and alienated a lot of people.

It was as if the Clinton campaign had a horrible smugness to it - a lot of people voting democrat seemed CONVINCED of the moral righteousness of their choice. "Only a bigot would vote for Trump". It was crazy seeing not just how disappointed but utterly SHOCKED people were by the result. I mean the result was a little surprising given the polls showed a marginal Democratic lead right up until the vote, but it was as if people hadn't even thought it was possible Hillary might NOT become POTUS. I CANT EVEN HOW COULD THIS BE?!

You must be so completely out of touch with the desires of the ordinary American. It's as if people occupy this liberal bubble and can't even grasp there's a world beyond it!

And it's not the preservation of legacy I'm concerned with but tearing down something in its entirety that a slight majority of the people seem to support (or a slight minority, depending on how the popular vote will play out). But never mind them, because they lost, right? — Benkei

Sounds like you're sad because you don't believe in democracy!

I doubt you'd be crying over the electoral system right now if Hillary was POTUS!

I wonder if the months of poll after poll after poll right up to the vote showing a comfortable democratic lead was just a function of a corrupt and biased media, or there's actually something wrong with the way in which polls are conducted in America? How could they have been so wrong?

Crazy how Trump was right all along about the poll numbers not being right and he's campaigning with a silent majority. Although I'm not sure even he really believed it!

Donald Trumps win is a symptom of that problem, not the cause.

Maybe Trump can actually start mending the problem! A Hillary win would have just been another 4 (or God forbid, 8!) years of the same divided and polarised nation were living in right now. Literally nothing would have changed. For example, we have had a black president for 8 years and yet race relations are worse now than they were before Obama took office. Electing a more establishment (and corrupt) version of Obama wouldn't have made this any better.

You might say that things will be even worse and more divided under Trump, but we'll just have to wait and see! Trump made it this far against all odds, so what's to stop him going even further and actually making a greater country? I'm optimistic and you should be too!

MAGA!

Congrats to POTUS Donald. J. Trump!!

I cannot believe the madman actually did it haha. What an incredible achievement! With almost the entire world against him - Clinton, the democrats, Obama, the entire mainstream media, the polling companies, most world leaders, United Nations, most celebrities, the list goes on and on - he still managed through the will of the American people a decisive victory! Incredible! The American people have spoken loud and clear! Senate! Congress! White House wooooooo it's a clean sweep!

MAGA!!! WOOOOOOO I AM ACTUALLY SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW

Haha cheer up you doomsdaying democrats above! Were you actually even *excited* for a Clinton victory? You're probably only disappointed that trump won, not that Hillary isn't Madame POTUS!

Also how ungracious was it for Hillary to not even give a concession speech?! If trump lost and did the same the entire freaking world would be outraged. She just had podesta send everyone home with a 'it's not over till it's over speech' and then right after called trump and conceded! Weak!

MAGA! What a historic day!

Pinch yourself, in what way is that subjective experience of pain physical?
— dukkha

It's a brain state. Whether one can give a blueprint of how it works so that someone thinks it's a satisfactory blueprint has no bearing on whether it's a brain state or whether it's physical. It's not as if something isn't physical just in case we can't produce a blueprint for it that someone finds satisfactory. — Terrapin Station

Do you have a reason for believing this? You seem to just be asserting/assuming the conclusion that conscious experience is physical.

Each time the devil's advocate concluded that since there is no known naturalistic explanation for the healing, then the healing was a confirmed miracle, he committed the logical fallacy, becasue it does not logically follow that if we don't have a naruralistic explanation for something, then, therefore Goddidit — Brainglitch

Isn't a miracle just something which doesn't have a naturalistic explanation? Claiming its a fallacy to invoke god to explain something which doesn't have a naturalistic explanation seems wrong. What principle of logic/reasoning is being violated here?

There might still be a conflict of a different kind: between professed belief/disbelief and behavioural expectation. In other words, there might be a performative contradiction at play. If you believe creationism, then act like it, and if you don't believe scientific theories, then act like it. Otherwise, it is suspicious, and might understandably lead to accusations of disingenuity. — Sapientia

I don't think there would be this conflict because for the scientific instrumentalist, scientific theories are simply not truth-apt. He doesn't not 'believe' in evolution because he thinks it's false, rather he doesn't believe in it because for him scientific theories are simply not the type of thing one believes (or not) in. There is no particular way the creationist here ought act in respect to what scientific theories he takes to be true or not, because for him they are not the kind of thing which are truth apt.

A tool is neither right or wrong so there can not be a contradiction with something which is.

Gigantic wall of text removed

by noting that, like usual Wittgenstein is wrong —

It's bad philosophy to just arrogantly assert things are right or wrong without argument or justification, which you have repeatedly done in this thread.

Well, yeah, I buy (basically disjunctive) naive realism. Why folks would have a difficult time reconciling that with identity theory, who knows. — Terrapin Station

How can you be looking directly at the (physical) world, when your sight is equal to a particular brain state? It's like you're saying that we look through our eyes like they're windows onto the world, and yet our conscious experience of sight exists within a brain. You've confined consciousness within a brain and yet you claim we are conscious of the world beyond this brain directly. You can't have your cake and eat it to.

You're claiming that when you touch the keyboard you're typing on you are directly feeling an object in an external physical world, and yet at the same time your experience of touch exists within/as a physical brain state. How can touch experiences be physically located within a brain, and yet when you experience touch/haptic perceptions, you are in direct contact with the physical world existing beyond this brain state.

If when you look at a table you are directly seeing what is physically there in an external world, your visual perception cannot at the same time be confined within/as a physical brain state. How can you directly be perceiving an external world if your perceptions are located within a brain?

I don't even know what you're implying

In my view, meaning is subjective. It's a mental association that a particular individual makes at a particular time. — Terrapin Station

How do you deal with the private language argument?

Yeah, definitely, but what other option do I have if I can't begin to make the slightest sense out of what a nonphysical existent is supposed to be? — Terrapin Station

And yet you accuse others of not having an understanding of "phil 101" ideas!

You seem to have a naive realist understanding of perception and people are finding it difficult to reconcile this with your identity theory.

Also I think this feigned "non physical things as a concept is just so incoherent like wow I can't even begin to grasp how that would work" inability is just silly. Pinch yourself, in what way is that subjective experience of pain physical? How can you account for that sensation in terms of atoms and forces, or neuronal cells and axon charges?

Also if mind=brain then isn't some sort of panpsychism necessary? If consciousness is the very same thing as a physical brain state then atoms must have as a part of them a conscious aspect, in order for the atoms in your brain to literally be equal to conscious experience.

Or if not, and say conscious experience is an emergent property of particular states of a brain, how do you explain this? How does something which is not conscious - atoms/neurochemical reactions in a physical brain- produce or give rise to consciousness? So a rock isn't conscious right? So why do the atoms/physical 'stuff' which make up a physical rock not give rise to conscious experience, whereas the atoms which make up a living, awake physical brain do? Why are some particular brain states conscious and some not? Why is the state of a physical brain of a person under general anaesthesia not conscious, whereas when it wears off, the particular brain state is conscious? What is so incredibly special about highly specific arrangements/processes of physical matter such that it produces this new magical property of consciousness? This position is basically that physical things are not conscious except when you arrange them in this incredibly specific manner (a living awake brain), which somehow gives rise to a new property of physical things (consciousness) not seen anywhere else in the physical world. How? Why? Where does this new property (consciousness) come from?

You're basically just glossing over the hard problem of consciousness, and then acting like everyone is totally illogical for not doing the same.