One is a plane. the other is something like an interaction between you and the plane. — Banno

This means: we have 2 things: (1) planes and (2) perceptions of planes.

(1) is the plane.
(2) is the plane + my interaction with it.

Am I right so far?

If the plane is the object and the perception is the object + my interaction with it, and I only know what I perceive, and I don't know which part of my perception is the added part and which is the plane part, then I don't know what the plane is. I only know what my perception is.

The logic follows right?

The notion of a thing-in-itself. This is a nonsense. — Banno

Then why did you talk about it above? You identified it as #1. If #1 is actually the plane + my interaction with it, it's #2.

This means when we speak of planes, assuming we don't speak nonsense, we speak only of what we perceive, and we make no claim about the airplane because we don't know how closely our perception matches the airplane.

But, should we deny there is an airplane absent our perception (i.e when the tree falls in the woods where no one is there to see it, there is no tree) we are no longer realists. The noumenal anchors us in realism. That the thing in itself is unknowable doesn't mean it's meaningless or nonsense. It serves the purpose of rooting reality in the world, not just in our head.

One is a plane. the other is something like an interaction between you and the plane. — Banno

Alright, we have 2 things: (1) the plane, and (2) (a) an interaction between me and (b) the plane.

What does #1 look like?
What does #2(a) look like?

My guess is that the only thing we know anything about is 2(a). I've said 100 times 2(b) is causative of 2(a), but I've also said the only thing we can know is 2(a).

#1 is a noumenal causative agent of #2, which is the phenomenal.

Your perception of the plane is not the actual plane. — Banno

What is the distinction between the two? Just location?

The fact that "none of this matters" would seem, to me, to establish something regarding its acceptability as an assessment of the world and out place in it. That it's incredible. — Ciceronianus

But lack of credibility and lack of relevance are different objections.

The question we're addressing is the probative value of evidence, which presupposes representations of "truth" whatever that may be, and which is the subject matter of this thread. That is, when I see something, of what probative value is my having seen the thing in terms of proving the thing exits? That is, does the evidence I possess prove the thing I assert, namely that the thing is as I say it is? It seems we need to know what the thing is if we seek to establish whether my claims about it are true.

The point made is that the blip can be used to refer to the plane in much the same way that word "plane" can be used to refer to the plane. — Banno

There is the plane and then there is the word "plane," so I'm counting 2 things here.
There is the plane and then there is the perception I have of the plane, so, again, I'm counting 2 things here.

Why must I use the word "plane" to refer to the plane, but I must consider my perception of the plane to be the actual plane?

More consistent would be that the word "plane" is the plane, but it's just another way of dealing with planes. That seems the @Ciceronianus approach (I think, and I'm truly not trying to misstate or put words in anyone's mouth.). This approach eliminates duality on all levels. There are just planes and they are however we experience them.

I'll entertain the idea of non-representationalism, but I think we need to do it consistently. That is, we have objects of unknown quality such that it's incoherent to speak of the thing in itself, so we therefore limit our "knowledge" of the objects in our world to how we interact with them. So, when we say "the plane is in the sky," the word "plane" is a direct experience of the plane equal to seeing it, touching it, licking it, and sensing it in every humanely possible way, just so long as it offers an understanding of the plane. The understanding of the plane is the plane.

I'm not sure this is realism, but I've at least formulated something consistent from all I've taken in here.

In short, we need not reduce the concept of “perception” to any other object in the world, whether faculty or organ. So why would we we? — NOS4A2

Because when one has a perceptual problem only that portion of the body that perceives need be addressed, much like when you are having a digestive disorder, treatment is focused upon the digestive system and not upon eardrum.

But why? If you can't see what a flower really is in the first place, why bother checking to see if you have an eye problem? — Ciceronianus

If my objective is to keep blips on the screen, then I'll do what is necessary to keep blips on the screen. That's a pragmatic pursuit.

If I want to know what the blips are and what the underlying structure of this whole enterprise is, I want to look behind the blip, find the airplane, look behind the airplane, find its structure. That's a metaphysical pursuit.

I'm saying all we have are representations. Blips are representations of airplanes and all you experience are blips. If we speak of representations, we must be admitting to a representation of something. That something is ultimately noumenal. That we cannot even speak of the composition of the noumenal is the definition of noumenal.

So you say why not just say that the phenomenal is all there is. I say because it's not. But I do agree, pragmatically, none of this matters, where "this" is 90% of what we talk about here. Of course, "this" is a referent; the antecedent is what actually is.

Do you deny a meaningful distinction between direct and indirect evidence?
— Hanover

No. — Banno

Very well, then let's work from here.

The blip on the radar screen is indirect evidence. If we were to challenge the accuracy of the statement "the plane has disappeared" based upon the radar screen feedback, we would look into the construction of the radar equipment and perhaps ask some experts in the field how could it be that there is an airplane in the sky, but not a blip on the radar. That is to say, the blip is not the airplane and we all know that, so before we start calling families and informing them that there will be one less plate to set at Christmas dinner, we check the accuracy of our indirect evidence. Before taking the radar apart, as I suggested, we radio the pilot. If the pilot responds, we now have indirect evidence of the airplane's continued existence, as generally pilots don't answer who are in disappeared airplanes.

If you claim to have seen the airplane in the sky, but it never lands and we can't find it, we might start to question what you saw, whether your interpretation of whatever you saw was actually the airplane. We might check your eyes, ask you how much you know about airplanes, whether you're schizophrenic, were drunk, or anything else that might have resulted in your misinterpreting the indirect evidence of the plane.

At some point, you might start denying the evidence is indirect, but that it is direct. For example, if you're sitting in the airplane and enjoying some of those really hard cookies, drinking from a small plastic cup. But, again, even then, calling that direct but the other examples indirect seems arbitrary. If it's not, then describe to me that bright line dividing the two, because your response to my question related to there being two different types of evidence was unequivocal. . You did previously claim the blip was direct evidence of the plane. That I don't follow.

I also don't understand the how the organism under your construct is a single holistic indivisible perceiver. Your objection to my claim that there are objects external to me is somehow an argument of multiverses or some such, isn't accurate. Admitting there are objects external to me is the only way to avoid solipsism . Humans possess parts that perceive and parts that don't, just as there are parts of us that digest food and other parts that don't. My point here is simply to say that should I perceive what I think to be a flower or airplane and there's some reason to dispute it, it makes perfect sense to check the health and accuracy of the perception equipment, whether that be running a diagnostic on the radar equipment or giving me an eye exam.

In the law, there is what is referred to as direct evidence and then there is indirect evidence. The latter is often referred to as circumstantial evidence. Me seeing you steal my car is direct evidence. Me seeing your fingerprint on my car is circumstantial. One is not considered more probative than the other. In fact, with DNA evidence, circumstantial evidence can be more powerful.

Do you deny a meaningful distinction between direct and indirect evidence? That is, the fingerprint is Banno as much as those two curious eyes that are your avatar are Banno as much as the old man in your mirror is Banno?

As if you could only talk about the dot, and not the plane — Banno

If the dot disappears, I think I'd say "the dot disappeared" as opposed to the plane disappeared because typically planes don't do that. I'd then radio the pilot to confirm the plane still exists. I'd do that because the dot isn't the plane.

The dot on the screen is the plane, much as the word "plane" in "the plane is airborne" is the plane - it's a way of using the dot, and a way of using the word. — Banno

"The plane", the dot, and the thing you sit in are all the same plane, right?

How does location play into identity? Not at all?

we don't see things as they are; if things in themselves are unknowable, then how do you know "that's exactly what happens". I posed this question earlier and you failed to respond—too difficult? — Janus

I can only describe the phenomenal.

But you are asking me where the line is to be drawn between these mooted internal and external worlds. — Banno

They aren't worlds. They are objects in the world. You deny objects?

both, or either. There's no essence-of-plane, just ways of talking about planes. Air traffic controllers do talk about the blip as the plane, and they are not wrong — Banno

You think they mean it's the plane or they mean it's a representation of a plane?

Again, is a "plane" a plane? I'm just not seeing a difference between a symbol and a thing the way you're describing it.

Notice the air traffic controller sits looking at his screen.

But do you sit, looking at your perceptions? No. You have your perceptions. The alternative is the homunculus fallacy, the little man inside your head looking out.

You've mislead yourself with the analogy. — Banno

This again.

Alright, where is the metaphoric computer screen properly positioned for my analogy to be correct? Is it at the watery surface of my twinkling eye or is it on the front surface of my closed eyelid? It seems you wish to eliminate the homunculus by saying the person begins at some molecular point and instantly perceives when the light of the flower hits my body, even if it means denying the science, which says that hairs and eyelids don't perceive. It's odd to me that I perceive a flower when my eyes are closed, but I suppose I do because bodies perceive, not parts of bodies. That's what I'm told at least.

We have all seen the cartoon picture of a homunculus sitting inside the middle of the brain looking at what's delivered to him, with yet another man inside that man's head ad infinitum. That is not what I envision. What I envision is a faculty within the brain that processes the impulses received from the various sense organs. I envision that because that's exactly what happens. Sever the optic nerve, you'll stop the input of data. And that's not to say the only way to elicit the perception is through sensory input. You can stick electrodes in the brain, drug me up, let me sleep, do all sorts of things to make flowers appear to me.

But back to the other part of my analogy that has gotten lost in this discussion. I'm referring to the blip. If I should see a blip when you see an airplane as we know airplanes to look, then properly understood, as you've presented it, that blip is the airplane. It's not a representation, correct? To say otherwise leaves us asking the age old question of what is the airplane in and of itself, wings and jet engines, or blips? As long as our perception enables successful navigation in the world, then we have truth. Do I have this right?

I say "yes", you claim that direct realism is the belief that the perception and the flower are the same thing, I point out that this is not so, that direct realism holds that one's perception of a flower is of a flower, not of an unknown.

Let's take it from there. You now start constructing direct realist men of straw. — Banno

It's not men of straw, it's naive realism I describe, but not the naive realism you accept. Very well. I see your post above, and I'm not sure what you're saying is any different from my claim that the flower is causative of the perception. To state otherwise would be idealism, a position no one here has so far held.

To say the pain from my stubbed toe is the road is an odd way of saying it, as I see that pain as evidence of the road, but speak as you may. The blip on the radar screen isn't quite a plane to me, but is a representation of it. What is the plane? The air traffic controller stuck with his head only on that screen might be inclined to think the blip is an airplane, but others might disagree. Those who would disagree would be those who have seen actual airplanes. Bristle as you will with the world "actual" here, but it does have meaning in this context when comparing the airplane you sit it in against that blip on the screen. Which is more accurate would be hard to say, as we don't speak of things in themselves anymore, so we don't know what a true airplane is other than that we can figure out how to interact with.

But to ask this directly, which is the better representation of the airplane? The blip or the plane you're in? Or, are neither representations, but only airplanes? Curious question, right? And what of the word "airplane," is that not also the airplane, as its creation was caused by the airplane? Why wouldn't the word be the thing under this position, or do you hold that as well?

You keep missing the point. The flower is not the perception-of-flower. — Banno

I'm aware there are flowers and perceptions of flowers. The flower is in the garden and the perception in my head, up until I blink, at which time it's just in the garden.

Do you agree with this?

Don't have to make it too complicated. Employ common sense and ban the open carry of assault weapons in public places. — Baden

Toting a shotgun across your back would be equally intimidating. Maybe only allow pearl handled revolvers. Old school shootouts are in order.

It's just difficult for me to accept that a "part of us adds" or a "part of us perceive", simply because such activities cannot be shown to be performed by parts. — NOS4A2

I don't see how you say this though. We can remove our arms, legs, many of our internal organs, and on and on and see that our ability to perceive is unaffected, yet when we alter our brain, something different happens. Our cognitive ability remains unaffected by damage to our sense organs, so it seems reasonable to conclude that my experience of the flower was not occurring in my eye. I also note that my sense organs do provide the stimulus to my brain because damage to the sense organ interferes with my ability to sense. If I put on red glasses, everything is red. I can then conclude that the lens within my eye offers its own alterations to the sense data being received.

This is just elementary stuff that I'm sure you fully accept, so I'm wondering why it need be explained and that there's this dropping back to some sort of holism that demands that every part of me is sentient and every part of me cognitive, from the hair on top of my head to the my toenails.

My hand picks things up, my nose smells, my mouth talks, my brain thinks. Organs each have functions, making up the complete organism, but each organ doesn't do everything.

His post, which did seem to come out of no where, started by describing his love of the Jew, which I was happy to hear because often "who do you hate" posts don't end that way. He then described those he hated, and it was women and some unidentified European ethnicity.

I'll admit that had it been Jewish people he hated because they'll never measure up to regular people and he further claimed he was unrepentant in that belief and any suggestion otherwise was absurd, I'd hope he'd be summarily banned. If he weren't, I'd feel unwelcome here.

So, think that one through guys, and realize mean spirited hateful statements have consequences beyond what you might think. This isn't the boys locker room. Everyone is welcome here. Excusing his conduct might seem kind hearted to him, but it wouldn't be to many others.

You’ll still be a living organism if you lose your pancreas or nose, at least with the aid of medication. The thing that perceives is, in every case, the living organism. The moment we eviscerate that organism, separate it into perceiving and non-perceiving faculties, there is no perceiving. A brain or faculty or any combination of disembodied organs in a vat cannot perceive. — NOS4A2

You can still be a living organism and not have the ability to perceive even without eviscerating it. You can simply fall asleep.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do here, but it seems like you're trying to decipher the essence of a perceiver, listing out what the essential elements must exist to perceive. Obviously you can remove some parts of the body and it still be able to perceive, so arguing that the perceiver is the entire organism isn't correct.

At any rate, to the extent it has bearing on what we're discussing:

"In 2011, Dutch scientists hooked an EEG (electroencephalography) machine to the brains of mice fated to decapitation. The results showed continued electrical activity in the severed brains, remaining at frequencies indicating conscious activity for nearly four seconds. Studies in other small mammals suggest even longer periods."

https://www.livescience.com/39219-can-severed-head-live.html

The science doesn't support a direct realist position. The direct realist position is a position that attempts to simplify the metaphysical debate by eliminating unknowables, like the fundamental composition of things. At best, it admits to a pragmatism by stating there is nothing gained by itemizing objects as unknowable (I see this as @Banno's approach). At worst, it insists the world really is as they say it is. I think that's what you're trying to do here.

We receive representations of objects and what those objects are without the representative quality imposed on them by us is unknowable. Who we are as perceivers is also not the whole indivisible person, but it's just part of us. This means part of us interprets, part of us adds, part of us subtracts, and part of us perceives. What this conscious perceiving thing is and how we have these phenomenological states is a complete mystery. We just know it happens, somewhere in the brain.

That’s empirically incorrect. Every being that perceives is an organism. Brains or parts of brains or noses or pancreases do not perceive. That’s just the way it works. — NOS4A2

You can remove a pancreas and a nose and still perceive. It's not the entire entity that perceives, any more than it's the entire entity that bends. That task is left to the joints. I do understand that the perceiving faculties must be supported by blood and other life sustaining functions, but that doesn't mean the blood is what is doing the perceiving. The car's headlights shine the light, not the bumper, even if you wish to insist it's the car that is lit up and the bumper is part of the car.

But I don’t admit that the presence of Y between object X and perceiver Z distorts, modifies, or alters perception. As I stated earlier it alters the environment. — NOS4A2

You're arguing perception is not alterable? Suppose you're knocked unconscious?

I'm abstracting that out. I don't think heavily armed BLM members should be allowed police Trump (or Klan) rallies either. Their presence would also likely be considered a threat and provoke violence. End result the same. You can't do that where I come from. Be like us. — Baden

Your argument that society would be less violent if we disarmed our citizenry sounds hopelessly unamerican.

We're probably fairly closely aligned in what gun control measures need to be instituted, but this really isn't a gun control debate. The laws as written were not violated and so he was properly acquitted. Keep in mind as well that of his assailants, there were two other handguns. One guy shot in the air offering a wise warning shot to the man with the assault rifle and the other pointed the gun at R's head. So, no angels on either side, and I'm not sure any involved in the fray stood for peace, love, and harmony.

But, should guns become illegal in our streets, and should someone have one, I still have a problem with anyone trying to disarm him by smacking him with a skateboard. That just seems like an assumption of risk, sort of like complaining that you were bitten when you jumped into a snake pit.

No, it certainly doesn’t. Is that what he was arguing for? — Joshs

I think so. i really don't want to misstate the positions here, but my understanding of a challenge with the direct realist position is that it cannot allow for any mediating influence between the object and the perceiver. The flower in the ground is replicated in the perception. If the direct realist allows for optic nerves, lenses, brain processes and other things to mediate the object, he must then allow for a final perceiver inside the brain to perceive the net result of the various processes. Not wanting to do that, he must insist the flower is just slammed into the holistic person as a perception unmediated and unchanged.

I don't get it. It seems like some concocted craziness designed not to cause interference with other deeply held philosophical positions, but that is just my commentary.

Scientific evidence doesn't support the claim that we can't know, or interact with, the rest of the world in which we live. If we could not, we wouldn't be alive. — Ciceronianus

The only word I disagree with in this post is the word "know." Remove that word, and we're in complete agreement.

Knowledge = Justified True Belief. Truth is the problem here. I see the flower as X, you as Y, the bee as Z, yet we're all seeing the same thing. What is that thing? Is it X, Y, or Z or an amalgamation of all of them?

My take is that the flower is the cause of your perceptions, but it does not consist of your perceptions. Your perceptions come from you and are a part of your consciousness. The passing car is not the blinking light, but it caused the blinking light. We react to our environment for the reasons you said, so that we can survive in our environment. How we evolved to do that, whether to see the flower as red, to smell its scent, to find it a thing of great beauty, is all part of our design to enable our survival.

I just don't see why we must dump our baggage on the flower. The flower is whatever it is making us do what we do, but it's not the things we do.

If he's not guilty (of anything) maybe you should revisit your laws as the precedent of allowing heavily armed self-styled militia onto the streets to kill people in conflicts they themselves provoke through the threat of their presence seems a bad one. — Baden

Provocation through presence alone is a problematic concept, and it's probably the defense Rittenhouse would have used to justified his killings if it were available to him. That is, he'd have said he was provoked to shoot by the disruptions in the streets and the advocacy of positions he disagreed with.

Entering into a volatile situation and advocating a position counter to the overwhelming majority is a dangerous idea, but it can't be criminalized unless you're willing to do it uniformly, as would require, for example, the arresting of BLM protestors at a volatile Klan rally.

The bottom line here is that Rittenhouse stands in opposition to what you believe in, but that doesn't make him a criminal. It makes him a piece of shit.

In a way, he’s right. We construct body schemes that participate in interpretating all of our perceptions.

The following article give a sense of how
“sensory and motor information, body representations, and perceptions (of the body and the world) are interdependent”. — Joshs

That there are multiple points of entry for the sensory data and that they are at some point processed into a single experience doesn't seem to offer support for the direct realist position.

From the evidence I heard, Ritten

Jesus man. The kid is a fucking racist. Just like all the Proud Boys and Boogaloo dicks he's been hanging with before and after. — Benkei

I have no idea what the guy really thinks about black people, but I don't think he's a psychotic murderer. From what I saw and heard, he had an inflated sense of importance and thought he might go down to ground zero and protect the streets with his bad ass weapon, only to end up seeing real action and shooting some people and dealing with the legal and emotional consequences.

If he wanted to go out and shoot black people, he would have just gone out and shot black people. He's not a sociopath and he's not some evil genius who figured out a way to kill and be acquitted. He's a stupid kid and now he's a symbol for whatever side wants to use him, either as a racist vigilante and resurrected civil war solider or as a freedom fighter taking back "our" streets.

The only question of the trial was whether he was guilty and he wasn't. If a guilty verdict would have better served societal interests and helped bridge the gap between the races or if it would have taught a racist not to be racist, that would still have not changed the fact that a not guilty person should be found not guilty.

I'm sure Rittenhouse was very sad about that fact. — Benkei

What evidence do you have of that?

He was hunting black people! — Benkei

Yet he only killed white people.

Rittenhouse was acquitted from carrying an AR. Noice! — Benkei

The judge threw the charge out before it got to the jury because the law didn't apply to the facts. The State makes the laws. It could have written it however it wanted, but it chose to write it how it did.

19 white jurors and 1 Hispanic. Based on demopgraphics alone at least 1 juror should've been black. — Benkei

Do you have any facts supportive of a juror being excused on the basis of race or are suggesting that there be a quota system where they disqualify a jury if they can't get exact statistical correlation to the population in general?

Anyone who doesn't think this wasn't about race again is just looking for excuses to not see the forest for the trees. — Benkei

The protestors were rallying as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, so that part dealt with race. His acquittal had nothing to do with his being white that I can see, unless you've seen some evidence I haven't. I don't see how the facts as presented, and they really weren't contested, could have led to a conviction.

I don’t know if any of this factors into it, but for me the locus of perception is the entire organism — NOS4A2

That's just scientifically incorrect. My nose doesn't see things, nor does my pancreas.

You do in fact, regardless of how messy it makes philosophical analysis, have a part or parts of your brain that perceive. The perception occurs when that faculty receives sensory input, either through impulses from your sensory organs, artificial electrodes in the brain, drug abuse, psychological disturbance, damage to the brain, or even through purely internal processes like dreams.

That's just the way it works. If it's easier to think it another way, do that, but it'll be wrong and you'll need to stay a philosopher, as opposed to a doctor.

If a wall stands between an observer and a flower, we no longer perceive the flower, we perceive the wall — NOS4A2

I think you overlook a serious problem here. If you admit that the presence of Y between object X and perceiver Z distorts, modifies, or alters the perception, then you admit to indirect realism as X is no longer what you perceive, but it's instead the conglomerate of everything between X and Z, including all biological processes prior to being perceived.

The wall example is just too obvious to deny, but it's no different in principle than any other impediment to direct perception. That is, it's not as if there is a vacuum of nothingness between the flower and your final perception. You simply don't see a flower. You see all sorts of walls, some in the environment and some in you.

my understanding of direct realism there are no differing representations of the flower to present and there is no observer beyond the lens to present them to. I think at the very least indirect realists need to prove that there is some sort of barrier between observer and observed. — NOS4A2

If the flower is 100 feet away, there's that barrier, especially if it's foggy outside or if a tree is in the way, and then there's the lens of the eye and then nerves and such along the way, any of which if you alter, so you'll alter the perception of the flower. Stick an electrode in the brain and that too will alter the perception, and actually could create the perception with no flower at all.

But everyone knows this, so I don't know why I'm having to recite it.

The perception is manipulated by all different parts of me, but not all. The flower looks the same with or without my gall bladder and I can sneeze out all sorts of internal mucus and the flower is the same.

The perception faculty, wherever it may be within me, is somewhere, but I'm not sure exactly where, but it seems like a bullet to the brain would stop the perceiving, so I'm thinking it's there somewhere.

If I wore rose colored glasses, you'd understand that my claim that the world is rose colored is mediated by my glasses. For some reason though if you sewed the glasses to my face so that it was part of me, you'd have to deny there was a homunculus waiting for the light to shine upon the optic nerve and insist the perception of the flower was unmediated.

Let me ask this: if there's a flower behind a 100 foot wall, would you agree that that barrier alters my perception of the flower? If yes, then we've established that what is between my perception faculty and the flower determines what I perceive. If not, then what's the difference between staring at a wall and looking at a flower?

There's not one flower for us, another for the bee. — Ciceronianus

If the perception of the bee of the flower is blue and the perception of the flower to me is red, what color is the flower?

See how this assumes an external world? — Banno

"External world" simply references an object external to perception, which I assume you agree with, given your prior objection to solipsism.

There's no reason to think it becomes something different depending on whether a human or bee is involved in the interaction. There's no reason to think it is something different than what we interact with and what a bee interacts with. There's not one flower for us, another for the bee. — Ciceronianus

Of course there's a reason to think it's a different for us and for the bee. The lens of the bee presents it in an entirely different way. There's also reason to believe a bee presents differently to me than a bat, considering I don't have echolocation.

I also don't know where pollen is instinctively, yet a bee seems to, so our behavioral differences make me believe the bee sees the flower differently from me.

Does your position require that I actually believe bees and humans perceive in the same way? If it does, I think your position just fails to scientific evidence.

So you think the thread about the external world is not about the external world. — Banno

I think the question in this thread is how we know what the external world is (which was the part of the survey I referred to) and to a lesser extent as to whether there is an external world to begin with (which is the part of the survey you referred to).

Overwhelmingly, there is agreement that there is an external world. The highest percentage of philosophers believe the external world is known through representations of reality, which I take to be indirect realism.

I'm not sure what percentage of philosophers agree with what the survey means. Maybe they need to vote on what their vote meant.

As soon as we insert "the way something sees" (the flower as a blinking light, for example) in between seer and seen we presuppose indirect realism. So I think the question is somewhat loaded. — NOS4A2

But there's no question that this happens in real life. I look at the eye chart to take my eye exam. There are the letters that are there and there are the letters I see. How can we speak of perceptual errors if there is no distinction between the object and the perception of the object?

It's a tough question. I might be off here, but I would think direct realism would permit that different creatures, with differing biologies, see the same thing and that the experience is always veridical. — NOS4A2

Yeah, but you left out a key word here. Fill in the blank:

"I would think direct realism would permit that different creatures, with differing biologies, see the same thing _________ and that the experience is always veridical."

A. Similarly
B. Differently

If B, then what is veridical is not what is perceived but is something else, and you no longer have direct realism. What is "the thing" in this scenario?

If A, you're making a scientific claim about how varying species make observations, which means your theory of direct realism fails if the science contradicts you. If I can show that bee lenses could not possibly present flowers as human lenses do, does that defeat direct realism?

I cannot see how anyone can hold any opinion if there is nothing for it to conflict with. — I like sushi

I can't see how there can be any proposition that cannot be negated. That is, for any proposition A, there is a proposition not A. That would hold true for all propositions, those of opinion, those of fact, those of desire, hope and wish, or any proposition of any kind.

When we express an opinion or argument it is because we are annoyed/angry with something that causes us distress. We don't 'know' to what degree our view is right but we believe it to be better than other views posed. — I like sushi

It is my opinion that dark gray and black cars look the best. If you think light colored cars are better, that really wouldn't matter to me.

Indeed, idealism reduces to solipsism. — Banno

And realism, once we strip it of its subjectivity, reduces to idealism. All slippery slopes lead to solipsism.