Ordinary Objects Caveat: perceptual experiences are directly of ordinary mind-independent objects in the sense that mind-independent objects reliably cause percept properties to hold which intersubjectively count as each other.

Presentation: perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of their objects in the sense that perceptual experiences are perceptions/percepts and that causes of percept properties are tightly constrained by distal object properties. Like reflectance spectra tightly constraining seen colour. — fdrake

But the indirect realist agrees that mental phenomena like smells and tastes and colours are causally determined by distal objects and their properties.

So clearly direct realism cannot be defined in this way.

As I see it indirect realism is nothing more than the rejection of naive realism, with naive realism claiming that distal objects are literal constituents of experience, entailing such things as the naive theory of colour.

According to indirect realists, these are all mental phenomena, no matter what you see or feel. What you see or feel can only be a representation, so it must all be mental phenomena. — Luke

No, according to indirect realists those statements are more specifically understood as:

I directly see colours and colours are a mental phenomenon.
I indirectly see trees and trees are not a mental phenomenon.
I directly feel pain and pain is a mental phenomenon.
I indirectly feel my hand burning and my hand burning is not a mental phenomenon.

Indirect realists claim that it is only mental phenomena that is directly experienced and that distal objects are indirectly experienced, with the distinction between "direct" and "indirect" being explained in my comment here.

Unless indirect realists are allowed to have both perceptions of a mental phenomena and perceptions not of a mental phenomena?

Yes. There are direct perceptions of mental phenomena and indirect perceptions of distal objects.

Where is the evidence for how neural activity interacts with the colors your experience? — Harry Hindu

Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway

There is no color in light. Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus. This distinction is critical for understanding neural representations, which must transition from a representation of a physical retinal image to a mental construct for what we see. Here, we dissociated the physical stimulus from the color seen by using an approach that causes changes in color without altering the light stimulus. We found a transition from a neural representation for retinal light stimulation, in early stages of the visual pathway (V1 and V2), to a representation corresponding to the color experienced at higher levels (V4 and VO1).

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I can't argue with you about something you have been vague and evasive about. If I don't know what you mean by your use of certain words, then I can't make any coherent argument about anything you've said. — Harry Hindu

See Perception # Process and terminology:

The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, known as the distal stimulus or distal object. By means of light, sound, or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called transduction. This raw pattern of neural activity is called the proximal stimulus. These neural signals are then transmitted to the brain and processed. The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the percept.

To explain the process of perception, an example could be an ordinary shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates the retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus. The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example could be a ringing telephone. The ringing of the phone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus. The brain's interpretation of this as the "ringing of a telephone" is the percept.

The different kinds of sensation (such as warmth, sound, and taste) are called sensory modalities or stimulus modalities.

I see trees, trees are a mental phenomenon... Wait, I thought you were a realist? — Luke

As I have repeatedly said, "I experience X" doesn't just mean one thing.

I see colours and colours are a mental phenomenon.
I see trees and trees are not a mental phenomenon.
I feel pain and pain is a mental phenomenon.
I feel my hand burning and my hand burning is not a mental phenomenon.

Both the direct and the indirect realist's grammar are correct. The phrases "I see" and "I feel" have more than one meaning.

The relevant question concerns which of these are correct:

I directly see trees
I indirectly see trees

Given this, one cannot simply define "I directly see a tree" as "I see a tree". Something else is required to make sense of the words "directly" and "indirectly", and that is what I have done in this comment.

That doesn't seem to be your position, though, nor that of indirect realists. Indirect realists do not claim that the visual experience is a mental phenomenon or representation of the world outside the body. Instead, they claim that we perceive this mental phenomenon or representation of the world outside the body. — Luke

I feel pain, pain is a mental phenomenon, therefore I feel a mental phenomenon.
I see colours, colours are a mental phenomenon, therefore I see a mental phenomenon.

You're getting so caught up in the grammar of "I experience X". It doesn't just mean one thing. It is perfectly appropriate to say that we see things when we dream and hear things when we hallucinate, and that the things we see and hear when we dream and hallucinate are percepts rather than distal objects. The indirect realist recognises that we see and hear these percepts when awake and not hallucinating too, and that these percepts can be thought of as mental representations of distal objects.

I'm not sure what you take a direct perception to be. Must a distal object become part of one's body in order to have a direct perception? Who thinks this is a perception? — Luke

It seems to me as if my visual experience literally extends beyond my body and that distal objects are literally present within my visual experience. This is the naive view that naive realists accepted as true, but which the science of perception has now shown to be false. Indirect realists rejected this naive view and claimed that the visual experience is a mental phenomenon that exists within the brain and is, at best, a representation of the world outside the body.

Then so-called "non-naive" direct realists accept this indirect realist view but for some reason call themselves direct realists, probably because that get confused by the grammar of "I see X".

They've just redefined the meaning of "direct perception".

In what sense is the mind-independent nature of distal objects and their properties not presented to us via perception? — Luke

To be presented is to be present. If some distal object is presented in experience then that distal object is present in experience. If that distal object is present in experience then it exists within experience.

But experience exists within the brain and distal objects exist outside the body. Therefore distal objects do not exist within experience and so are not presented in experience. The relationship between experience and distal objects is nothing more than causal.

You seem to indicate that unless perceptions provide us with complete and incorrigible knowledge about objects, then they don't provide us with any knowledge about objects. — Luke

They don't provide us with direct knowledge. Experience is the effect, distal objects are a cause. Knowledge of effects is not direct knowledge of causes. Knowledge of causes gained from knowledge of effects is inferential, i.e. indirect.

I'm finding it hard to see how the posts you're making are related, which probably means we have very different presuppositions and ways of thinking about the topic.

So if I'm hearing you right, you believe that knowledge is only of percepts, and thus access to the world is indirect? — fdrake

I only used the word "access" because it's the term Moliere used. He said "in terms of the epistemological problem of perception we have direct access to some kind of object". Given that he referenced the epistemological problem of perception I assumed by "access" he was referring to knowledge.

Right, so for you "access" is something like introspective awareness? — fdrake

The epistemological problem of perception concerns epistemology, i.e. knowledge.

I might know that I see the colour red and taste a sweet taste but not know that some object reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm and that the cake contains sugar (e.g. because I'm a young child who doesn't know anything about physics or chemistry).

I have knowledge of percepts but I don't have knowledge of the proximal stimulus or distal object.

Describe what you see that access as, please? — fdrake

Having a rational awareness/understanding of it. I can describe the colours I see as being red or green or blue or the taste I taste as being sweet or sour or bitter.

From this I then infer the existence of some object reflecting light of certain wavelengths or some foodstuff containing certain ingredients like sugar, given that I have some understanding of the usual relationship between stimulus and percept.

Mmm... You don't have "access" to a percept. A percept is identical with either the whole, or a part of, the conceptual-perceptual state of an organism at a given time. That's a numerical/definitional identity, rather than an equivalence. Like the percept is not what perception or experience is of, the percept is an instance of perception. The taste percept of my coffee is the same as how I taste it.

The distinction there is between saying that a percept is an instance of perception vs saying that a percept is what perception acts upon. — fdrake

I have access to colours and pain and smells and tastes. These are all percepts.

When I see things when I dream and hear things when I hallucinate I am seeing and hearing something.

We have access to percepts. And we have access to the world. It is through this access that we are able to determine when we are hallucinating or dreaming and when we are not.

So, direct realism. Both percepts and world are accessible. — Moliere

Our access to the wider-world is indirect with those percepts being the intermediary. If those percepts are missing (e.g. where someone has cortical blindness) then some access to the wider-world is lost.

All you're saying is that with a CCTV camera I have access to the inside of the bank vault. But it's indirect access.

I think much of the dispute between direct and indirect realists may revolve around the fact that direct realists limit the meaning of the word "perception" to sensory perceptions that are stimulated by distal objects, whereas indirect realists give the word "perception" a wider meaning that includes non-sensory "perceptions" that lack any external stimulus, such as hallucinations, dreams and imagininings. Neither side has the monopoly on correct usage, but given the question of whether or not I directly perceive some distal object, the former meaning would typically be assumed. — Luke

Which is precisely why I have argued that the dispute over the grammar of "I experience X" is a red herring.

The philosophical dispute between direct and indirect realists concerns the epistemological problem of perception. Are distal objects and their properties constituents of experience such that their mind-independent nature is presented to us or is experience nothing more than a mental phenomenon, with is features being at best only causally-covariant representations of those mind-independent properties? Direct (naive) realists argued the former and indirect (non-naive) realists argued the latter.

The same as it means to perceive causes and effects -- one has to start somewhere. We can call that starting point "blotches of color", "cause-and-effect", "the cup", or any other such things. In terms of the epistemological problem of perception we have direct access to some kind of object, be it causes, cups, or color-blotches. — Moliere

We have access to percepts. Percepts are often the consequence of the body responding to some proximal stimulus (dreams and hallucinations being the notable exceptions). The proximal stimulus often originates from some distal object.

The nature of our percepts is determined by the structure and behaviour of our sense organs and brain such that different distal objects can cause the same percept and that the same distal object can cause different percepts (e.g. the dress that some see as white and gold and others as black and blue).

This is indirect realism. Any direct realist who claims that this is direct realism has simply redefined the meaning of "direct" into meaninglessness.

I directly perceive the entity. — Moliere

Which means what?

I'd also say there's no "distal object" -- that this is a conceit of indirect realism. — Moliere

It's a term used in the science of perception. See here:

The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, known as the distal stimulus or distal object. By means of light, sound, or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called transduction. This raw pattern of neural activity is called the proximal stimulus. These neural signals are then transmitted to the brain and processed. The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the percept.

To explain the process of perception, an example could be an ordinary shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates the retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus. The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example could be a ringing telephone. The ringing of the phone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus. The brain's interpretation of this as the "ringing of a telephone" is the percept.

The different kinds of sensation (such as warmth, sound, and taste) are called sensory modalities or stimulus modalities.

Practicality probably. Is that the source of the indirect realist's confidence? — frank

Perhaps, yes. Both direct and indirect realists are realists rather than subjective idealists because they believe that the existence and regularity and predictability of experience is best explained by the existence of a distal world which behaves according to regular and predictable laws.

Right. The question is: what is the source of the indirect realist's confidence that the mental phenomena are caused by the dot? — frank

What is the source of the direct realist's confidence that the dot is caused by some unobservable entity?

We see colours. Colours are mental phenomena, perhaps reducible to activity in the primary visual cortex, often caused by light interacting with the eyes (although not always given the cases of dreams and hallucinations). That's indirect realism.

Direct realism claims that colours are mind-independent properties of distal objects à la the naive realist theory of colour.

These are quite clearly different positions and at least one of them is wrong. I say that the scientific evidence supports the former and contradicts the latter, e.g. from here:

A stimulus produces an effect on the different sensory receptors, which is being transmitted to the sensory cortex, inducing sensation (De Ridder et al., 2011). Further processing of this sensory stimulation by other brain networks such as the default mode, salience network and frontoparietal control network generates an internal representation of the outer and inner world called a percept (De Ridder et al., 2011). Perception can thus be defined as the act of interpreting and organizing a sensory stimulus to produce a meaningful experience of the world and of oneself (De Ridder et al., 2011).

Arguing over the grammar of "I experience X" leads to confusion and misses the substance of the dispute entirely. See here.

But the direct realist relies on the observations that support belief in electrons (like the light dots on a CRT). The indirect realist has to say that those light dots are creations of the brain, and so may not reflect the facts. — frank

Both the direct and indirect realist infers the existence of some entity from some effect it is claimed to have caused. They just disagree on which effect is directly perceived. The direct realist claims to directly perceive the dot on the screen as caused by the unobservable entity. The indirect realist claims to directly perceive the mental phenomenon as caused by the dot on the screen as caused by the unobservable entity.

If a color is directly perceived and the wavelength is indirectly perceived, and your mind with all of it's colors and sounds and feelings, are part of reality, then isn't it safe to say that you directly experience part of the world? If so, then doesn't the distinction between indirect vs direct realism become irrelevant? — Harry Hindu

The question is whether or not I directly perceive some distal object. That I directly perceive some aspect of the world (i.e. my mental phenomena) isn't that I directly perceive the particular aspect of the world that direct realists claim we directly perceive (i.e. the distal object).

Have scientists been able to explain how a physical, colorless brain causes visual experiences, like visual depth and colors? How are colors come from something colorless?

What role does the observer effect in QM play here? — Harry Hindu

The hard problem of consciousness hasn't been resolved. Some believe that it is reducible to brain activity (e.g. pain just is the firing of c fibres), and some believe that it is some mental phenomenon that supervenes on such brain activity.

Either way, few (if any) believe that conscious experience extends beyond the body such that distal objects and their properties are literally present in conscious experience. At the very least there's no scientific evidence to suggest that it does. As referenced earlier, I suspect something like objective idealism would be required for that.

What part of you directly interacts with the world? What is "you" or "I" in this sense? If you define "you" and "I" as your body, then isn't your body directly interacting with objects by holding them and with light by opening your eyes? — Harry Hindu

Different parts of me directly interact with different parts of the world. My eyes directly interact with light, the neurons in my brain directly interact with each other, etc.

Indirect realism only makes sense if you define "you" and "I" as homunculus in your head.

"I feel pain" doesn't entail a homunculus. "I see shapes and colours when I hallucinate" doesn't entail a homunculus. Saying that these very same mental percepts occur when awake and not hallucinating doesn't entail a homunculus. You're just reading far too much into the grammar of "I experience X".

The question is about why you have confidence that your observations reflect the facts, when you've concluded that your observations are creations of your brain. — frank

If the direct realist can believe in the existence of unobservable entities like electrons and the Big Bang and in the veracity of a Geiger counter then the indirect realist can believe in the existence of unobservable entities like electrons and the Big Bang and in the veracity of a Geiger counter.

Direct perception of something is not required to be justified in believing in that thing.

It's that the scientist starts by assuming direct realism, then disproves direct realism. It's an ouroboros. — frank

I don't quite get what you're saying. Flat earthers assume that the Earth is flat, do experiments, and determine that the Earth is not flat. It's not a paradox; it's just that the experiments have proven them wrong.

Direct realists assume that colours are mind-independent properties of objects, do experiments, and determine that objects are bundles of atoms that reflect various wavelengths of light. They then study the brain and determine that we see colours in response to stimulating various areas of the primary visual cortex. They've determined that that colours are not mind-independent properties of objects but mental/neurological phenomena.

What exactly do you mean by "phenomenological character"? At the moment all you seem to be saying is that waking experiences are to dreams what a photorealistic portrait is to cubism. Either way it's all mental percepts and so by any reasonable definition indirect realism.

You don't actually see a distal object when you dream and the schizophrenic does not actually hear a distal object when hallucinating. That what makes them dreams and hallucinations instead of instances of seeing or hearing real objects.

An indirect realist would argue that imaginary friends are directly perceived but real friends are only indirectly perceived. — Luke

Correct.

The first sentence is a paradox, isn't it? — frank

I wouldn't say so. That scientific realism entails indirect realism is contingent on a posteriori facts, not a priori truths. Perhaps in some alternate universe the world works differently and direct realism is true (e.g. objective idealism may entail direct realism as it could allow for an extended consciousness within which "distal" objects are literally present).

But as it stands the science of perception supports indirect realism and so a direct realist must reject the science of perception, although I don't know how he can justify that rejection.

Indirect realism is the view that what we see is the representation. The alternate is that what we see is the tree, and that we see the tree by constructing a representation of the tree. — Banno

Seeing a representation of a tree and seeing a tree are not mutually exclusive, exactly as feeling pain and feeling my hand burning are not mutually exclusive. “I experience X” doesn’t just mean one thing.

The meaning of “see” in “I see a representation of a tree” is the meaning of “see” in “I see a cat in my dream” and the meaning of “hear” in “I hear a representation of thunder” is the meaning of “hear” in “the schizophrenic hears voices” and the meaning of “feel” in “I feel a representation of a rock” is the meaning of “feel” in “I feel pain”.

Naive realists reject the existence of mental percepts, indirect realists accept the existence of mental percepts, and then so-called “non-naive non-indirect” realists accept indirect realism but call it something else and then invent some strawman (“percepts of percepts”) to stand in for indirect realism.

In accepting the existence of mental representations you’re arguing for indirect realism, but for reasons unknown are refusing to call it what it is.

Not that the label really matters. Call it “Banno realism” if you want. Either way it entails the epistemological problem of perception and the warrant for scepticism. That’s the philosophical concern that gave rise to the dispute between direct and indirect realism in the first place.

But how does the cognition "see" anything? It is the mental image, the representation of the distal object, which is the "seeing"; the sensory perception. The cognition does not have its own set of sensory organs with which to perceive the mental image. — Luke

I see things when I dream and the schizophrenic hears voices when hallucinating. Sensory organs are not involved. Seeing and hearing occurs when the visual and auditory cortexes are active (which is why the cortical blind can’t see even though they have functioning eyes).

When I look at something I can see its qualities: height, width, shape, colours, textures; I don't need to infer those properties. — Janus

Those are the qualities of the experience, not the properties of the distal object.

Experience exists within the brain. Distal objects exist outside the body. Therefore distal objects (and their properties) do not exist within experience. Everything that is present in experience (smells, tastes, colours, etc.) is a mental phenomenon.

You might want to argue that some of these mental phenomena (e.g. visual geometry) resemble the properties of the distal object, but it is nonetheless the case that the mental phenomena is the intermediary from which the properties of the distal object are inferred.

One of the conundrums with indirect realism is that it seems to start as direct realism, where the scientist assumes he sees the world exactly as it is, then concludes from what he's observed that he's not seeing the world exactly as it is. How do you deal with that problem? — frank

I addressed this in a previous comment.

Firstly, if direct realism is true then scientific realism is true, and if scientific realism is true then direct realism is false. Therefore direct realism is false given that it entails a contradiction.

Secondly, given that scientific realism entails the existence of objects that cannot be directly observed (e.g. electrons), it is not a contradiction – performative or otherwise – for an indirect realist to be a scientific realist. Presumably even the direct realist can trust in a Geiger counter despite not claiming to directly see radiation. Direct perception is not required to accept something as true.

The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain. Similarly, if the experience of perceiving is an object of perceiving, then it becomes identical with the perceiving. Just as the pain is identical with the experience of pain, so the visual experience is identical with the experience of seeing.

The painting of some fictional landscape is identical with the painting – and identical to the paint itself. But the painting is still of something. So even if the experience of something is identical with the experience it is nonetheless the experience of something.

And what is the intentional object of perception if not whatever follows the word "of"? Perhaps Searle is being ambiguous with the phrase "object of perception".

Not that this really matters, as per my comment here, but I thought I should address it anyway.

I’m with you. As I’ve repeatedly argued, all these “non-naive direct” or “non-indirect” realisms are just describing indirect realism but refusing to call it what it is.

Both fall prey to the fallacy of ambiguity; there is some ambiguity with the verb "see", for example. In the case of hallucination there is no object of perception. If there was, it wouldn't be a hallucination. So we're confusing the object of perception with perception itself. — NOS4A2

Schizophrenics hear voices. I feel pain.

As I’ve said before, arguing over the grammar of “I see X” is a confusion, precisely because as you say the term is ambiguous.

The only relevant concern is the epistemological problem of perception. Conscious experience - percepts - do not extend beyond the body. Distal objects do not exist within conscious experience. Our knowledge of distal objects is indirect, inferred from the effects they have on our body (specifically from conscious experience and its qualities).

Any “intentionality” in experience is akin to the intentionality found in paintings and in books. This isn’t the kind of “directness” that indirect realists reject, that naive realists accept, and that would save us from scepticism. See Howard Robinson’s Semantic Direct Realism.

It is true that organisms perceive. It is untrue that brains do. — NOS4A2

If you define "perception" as the body responding to external stimulation then this is a truism, but this isn't at all relevant to the debate between direct and indirect realism.

We see things when we dream and hear things when we hallucinate. The things we see and hear when we dream and hallucinate are percepts – phenomena either reducible to or supervenient on brain activity – and these percepts exist when awake and not hallucinating, having been caused by the body responding to some appropriate external stimulation. Visual percepts are what the sighted have and the cortical blind lack, and this can be shown by comparing the activity in the primary visual cortex of the sighted and the cortical blind.

These percepts are the intermediary from which we infer the existence and nature of some external stimulus and/or some distal object (e.g. where the stimulus is light), given that conscious experience does not extend beyond the brain, let alone the body, and so these stimuli and distal objects do not exist within conscious experience.

This is what the science shows and this is quite clearly indirect realism.

Conscious experience, perception, or whatever other activity is impossible if one or the other is missing or deceased or uncoupled. That’s a brute fact we ought to consider, in my opinion. — NOS4A2

That's not at all relevant.

If my computer isn't plugged into the wall socket then it won't even start, but the operating system is to be found in the SSD, not in the wall socket.

That A depends on B isn't that B contains A.

The only thing a disembodied brain can do is rot. So brains do not think or experience or perceive. Only bodies do. And the body is, conveniently, the only thing standing between your perceiver and other objects in the world. — NOS4A2

Bodies are required to keep brains alive and functioning, but conscious experience is to be found in the brain activity. When there's no (higher) brain activity there's no conscious experience, e.g. those in a coma or in non-REM sleep, even if the bodies respond to stimulation.

The attempt to dismiss the rest of the body in the act of perception is clearly motivated by something other than scientific inquiry, and it would be interesting to find out what that motivation is. — NOS4A2

No, it's just what the science shows.

When we put a brain on a table it’s impossible to say the brain feels pain or experiences — NOS4A2

We can say anything we like.

therefor it is just untrue to say brains feel pain and experience. — NOS4A2

That's a non sequitur.

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Of relevance is the anatomy of pain and suffering in the brain and its clinical implications:

A stimulus produces an effect on the different sensory receptors, which is being transmitted to the sensory cortex, inducing sensation (De Ridder et al., 2011). Further processing of this sensory stimulation by other brain networks such as the default mode, salience network and frontoparietal control network generates an internal representation of the outer and inner world called a percept (De Ridder et al., 2011). Perception can thus be defined as the act of interpreting and organizing a sensory stimulus to produce a meaningful experience of the world and of oneself (De Ridder et al., 2011).

...

Pain is processed by three separable but interacting networks, each encoding a different pain characteristic. The lateral pathway, with as main hub the somatosensory cortex is responsible predominantly for painfulness. The medial pathway, with as main hubs the rdACC and insula are involved in the suffering component, and the descending pain inhibitory pathway is possibly related to the percentage of the time that the pain is present.

As I see it the science is very clearly in support of indirect realism (e.g. the first paragraph of the quote above). Any armchair philosophy that tries to defend direct realism is either contradicted by the science or has redefined the meaning of "direct perception" into meaninglessness and so is not in conflict with the actual substance of indirect realism.

Repeating yourself doesn't answer my question. You're just throwing in the word "directly" without any meaning or justification.

perceptible properties of distal objects are directly observed — Janus

Which means what? What does it mean to be directly observed? Given that conscious experience exists within the brain and given that the properties of distal objects exist outside the brain, the properties of distal objects do not exist within conscious experience.

Which means that everything that exists within conscious experience is the intermediary of which we have direct knowledge and from which the physically distant properties of distal objects are inferred.

What could direct perceptual knowledge be but reliable knowledge of its objects, as opposed to (presumably) indirect (because subject to intermediate distortions) unreliable perceptual appearances? And I'm talking about the vast amount of observational data in botany, zoology, geology, chemistry and so on, not about inferred, unobservable entities and events like electrons and the Big Bang. — Janus

Perception of distal objects is inference. Light from the sun travels to Earth, reflects off some object's surface, stimulates the sense receptors in the eyes, triggering activity in the brain, giving rise to conscious experience (which is either reducible to or supervenient on this brain activity). There are a multitude of mental/neurological/physical processes that exist and occur between the conscious experience and the distal object.

Distal objects and their properties are inferred from the effect (conscious experience).

I may have been overly simplistic in my account but the point stands: I feel pain, pain is not a distal object/property but a mental/neurological phenomena, and so the thing that I feel is not a distal object/property but a mental/neurological phenomena. The same for smells and tastes and colours.

You can argue that this mental/neurological phenomena involves a variety of different mental/neurological processes rather than just some simple sui generis qualia, but it still admits that it is some mental/neurological phenomena that is experienced rather than some distal object/property.