Ok, we don't have a whole lot to talk about then.

This is more of a conceptual distinction, I think what you call an "experience" I would call a "reaction" that is distinct from the smell as such. — goremand

I think it's an important distinction. The experience I call "blue", the qualia if you will, doesn't have to be assigned to the things I assign it to. The qualia you experience as blue, I could experience as green. My whole colour wheel could be rotated with respect to yours, and I would still have a fully in tact, self-consistent and useful sensory experience regardless.

Which illustrates that distinguishing between the experience of senses and the things being sensed is, I think, a meaningful, useful distinction to make.

You say maybe our smell experiences are the same, maybe our reactions are just difference, and I say maybe you're right, but also maybe you're not right, and I think most likely they're not the same. I think it's not just likely, it's well beyond likely that different living things have different experiences of smell, and they can't all be experiencing reality as it is if that's the case

That's a good question, but seems incredibly unlikely to me.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/we-all-experience-smells-differently-from-one-another-180948156/

Ah, let me rephrase. I meant that second part to not be referring to the entire process of smell, just the part of the process where you're consciously aware of it and having the experience.

Either you're experiencing reality as-it-really-is, OR your experience is something subjective and crafted for you by your brain. I think with smell it's clearly the second one. I think the experience you have when you're smelling things is clearly not just experiencing reality as-it-is.

The process of smelling, or seeing, or whatever, involves physical interactions with real things, and I'm a realist so I think those things are real and those physical interactions really happen. And then I think when that becomes an experience, that experience isn't just raw-reality-as-it-really-is, it's an experience concocted for you by your brain.

No, I didn't say it bears no relation, it's certainly correlated to some subset of the actual chemicals in the air around you (a subset because you obviously aren't sensitive to every chemical). Just like with colour - the way you experience colour is correlated to real facts, but it is not synonymous with those facts.

Do you not think smell is an experience built up by the brain? So who is smelling correctly, you when you feel viscerally repulsed by a pile of shit, or a fly when they feel viscerally drawn to it, appetized by it? Whose experience of that shit is reality-as-it-is?

yeah, if anything smell seems more acutely to be experienced in a way that's entirely distinct from reality-as-it-is even than sight. Smell is ENTIRELY an experience built up for us by our brains.

Think about how repulsive shit smells to you, and how delicious it must smell to a fly (or even how delicious it is to my naughty dog, who has a taste for cat shit apparently). We can't both be experiencing smells "as they are" considering how viscerally different our experiences are.

I thought you were arguing for representationalism earlier.

Actually, I've thought about it a bit and I do have something to say about the semantics:

I think it makes sense why semantically you would say "I see Mars" to not mean "I see my internal representation of mars", naturally,

BUT I do think there are situations in natural language where the most natural interpretation probably IS about "seeing" the representation and not the thing.

"Did you see how beautiful that sunset was?"

This isn't about the sunset itself, this is about the qualia experience of the sunset, which only happens when we experience and focus in on the representation.

I think in natural language, humans tend to use BOTH semantic meanings of "see", and it's usually obvious enough from context which one they mean.

That just turns it into the semantic debate, which I don't have any comments on.

I only disagree with direct realism to the extent that it says we see things "as they really are" - if you decide to call yourself a "direct realist" but aren't sticking to the "as they really are" idea, I really don't have much to say about the rest of the semantics.

I therefore think that indirect realists fail to acknowledge that perception necessarily involves representation. — Luke

Isn't that exactly what indirect realists are claiming? That perception involves representation?

However, I take direct realism to be the view that we do perceive real things but not things as they are in themselves — Luke

That's just what all versions on non skeptical realism have in common - direct and indirect realism are variations of that

Do you think indirect realists are incorrect regarding that reasoning? If so, why?

it's certainly more clearly and sensibly worded than what he did say, and was the first interpretation I would give to it, but the problem with how he's presented the idea is that he's taking it as a given somehow that indirect realists want direct realism to be true, which is a strange thing to take as a given.

If you just say "indirect realists want to be able to perceive reality as it is", without adding the necessary context of "... In order for them to accept direct realism", then it's just kinda nonsense.

Who cares about what indirect realists want? I just don't see why that's a relevant part of the conversation.

I don't assume you're correct, I'm not assuming you have in fact cleared up what he's saying.

I take Luke to be saying that indirect realists think perception would have to be “untainted by representation” for it to be direct. — Jamal

I don't know why he's assuming indirect realists want or demand direct realism to be true. I think this framing of the conversation has so far only served to confuse and is therefore probably not a good one. We can focus less on what direct and indirect realists want or demand, and focus more on that they think.

Am I right in thinking that the Direct Realist believes that the apple is literally green, and if they do, how do they justify such a belief? — RussellA

If by "literally green" you mean "literally the qualia green" then I can't say, you'd have to ask a direct realist. If they just mean "the outer shell of this object reflects photons at a certain wavelength on average", then I would say most direct and indirect realists would agree with that sort of thing.

I try to avoid that argument altogether. I really don't care to argue what someone means, or should mean, by "I see x". My position in this thread is unconcerned with arguing the meaning of seeing, arguing what you're "really seeing" when you say you see something.

I'm concerned primarily with the experience of it all - if a direct realist says "I see things as they really are", I don't see that as some opportunity for a semantic argument, to me it looks like an unambiguous statement about their visual experience - my visual experience matches reality as it really is. And, for entirely non-semantic reasons, I think it's false. I don't think I'm saying it's false because I mean some obscure thing by the word "see", I think it's false because I think our visual experience is simply not reality as it really is. It's something else. It's a construct. It's a construct that's causally connected to reality, but it's not just reality-as-it-is.

They therefore desire a perception untainted by representation. Doesn’t that make sense? — Luke

No, you are tacking on that last bit yourself with seemingly no reason, is how it looks to me.

An indirect realist distinguishes themselves from a direct realist not because of what they want perception to be like, or how they demand perception works, but instead because of how they think perception actually works. What they want and what they demand seem entirely beside the point to me, it just seems like pure speculation from you about their psychological state.

The indirect realist desires a perception of the world as it is in itself, not the direct realist. — Luke

Where are you reading this stuff?

yeah, I fully agree, and that's the part of direct realism that doesn't sit with me.

for me, the question is "is the representation -the world as it is- or does it have some big differences from the world as it is?"

And I think the answer is that it obviously is very different. The representation built by our brains to present to our conscious self is not just "reality as it really is", and so that's why I can't agree with direct realism.

idk what you mean by "direct" here. Idk what your question is asking.

good luck with your writing

I agree with every word you said there

The fact that we perceive colour in a "colour wheel" at all is a great example of perceptual experience containing artifacts unique to our biology that don't belong to reality-as-it-is. There's no reason why we should see a colour wheel instead of a linear colour spectrum. It's a biological accident that our eyes turn the signals from light wavelengths into a wheel rather than a linear spectrum.

The qualia of colour, for example. There's no objective reason why I apply the qualia I call blue to the wavelength range of light that I apply it to - that's a semi-arbitrary assignment, and for all I know it could be different in another person. You could have your colour wheel rotated with respect to mine.

So we would both be having very different visual experiences while looking at the same object, and neither one of us would be objectively more right or wrong than the other - are both of these different visual experiences "reality as it really is"?

I guess we can say the indirect realist believes he perceives the world as it really isn’t. — NOS4A2

This phrasing is kind of odd, but if it works for you then that's fine.

I would say, there are features of our perceptual experience that cannot also be objective features of the the objects we perceived. Most indirect realists will accept that their perceptual experience is caused by the object, and in some important senses highly correlated to objective features of that object, but that that's nevertheless different from "the object as it really is".

And the qualifier “as it really is” doesn’t much pertain to direct realism — NOS4A2

And yet that seems to be a feature of every definition of direct realism.

I said that indirect realists demand that you see your house as it is in itself. — Luke

Yes, you did say that, and I don't know why. If I asked 100 indirect realists if they demand that, I don't think a single one would say yes.

The conversation between direct realism and indirect realism isn't about "demands", I don't think the word "demand" is helping with clarity here.

I'm sure you don't, but do you mean that you can see your house as it is in itself, as (I believe) the indirect realist demands — Luke

I see it that indirect realism demands the literal exact opposite. An indirect realist would say your visual experience of your house is NOT just your house as it is. That's okay, that's not required for "seeing", it's just a fact

I've made a point previously in the thread that indirect realists can (and in real life, not in this thread, usually do) use the word "see" in a completely intuitive, conventional way. I don't need anybody to jump through hoops to know what I'm saying when I say "I can see my house from here".

I've explicitly disagreed with some of the indirect realists in this thread who insist "see" must mean something complex or metaphorical.

Yes, you've claimed that, but every example of skepticism you've provided applies equally well to direct realism.

I don't think you're making a very compelling case that indirect realists need to have any special skepticism in regards to what they see. We all live in the same world, were all subject to the same illusions and eye problems - that's not some particular point of disagreement between direct and indirect realists. So far, any skepticism you think should be applied to indirect realist perceptions can just be equally applied to direct realists.

It all just seems very ad-hoc applied.

Direct Realists are immune to eye problems? I thought cataracts were a thing regardless of if direct realism or indirect realism make more sense. If direct realism is incompatible with eye problems, then direct realism is incompatible with reality - eye problems exist. Same with hallucinations - some humans have hallucinations sometimes and that's just a fact, that's not specifically an indirect realism problem. If direct realism is incompatible with hallucinations, direct realism is incompatible with reality, because we know hallucinations happen.

And if direct realism IS compatible with eye problems and hallucinations, then a direct realist should question the red dot for those reasons to the same extent the indirect realist should.

While the direct realist may not always know what it is that he sees, it can usually be found out and explained. The indirect realist, however, assumes that he never sees things directly, only representations, e.g. 1 mm dots, and that has, in fact, epistemological consequences. As long as the assumption is that you never see things directly, then skepticism follows. Not so for the direct realist. — jkop

It doesn't seem that way to me. Any reason an indirect realist might have to be skeptical seems inherently applicable to direct realists as well.

You might ask an indirect realist, for example, "How do you know that red dot you're experiencing visually was REALLY caused by mars?" And... well, you can ask the exact same question to the direct realist, no? The direct realist doesn't have BETTER reasons to think the red dot in their visual experience is caused by mars.

Once you start asking 'why' of scientific inferences, you tend to head into philosophy and more metaphysical areas. — Tom Storm

I don't think you have to go that deep into ancient philosophy to understand all that. It is philosophical, yes, it's epistemology for sure.

Perhaps Kant can help us? Or phenomenology? What methodology do you think you have access too that can answer the above and determine what direction this enquiry should take? Or do you think straightforward empiricism can resolve this matter? — Tom Storm

I'm happy to start from my own intuition and go from there. I wouldn't personally consult Kant myself

But if I wanted to seek external opinions about if the universe is really "lawful" under the hood, I would seek the opinion of scientists first, physicists in particular, rather than ancient philosophers. I respect that that's not necessarily a popular opinion here

Can't we just say that humans observe regularities and patterns in nature? — Tom Storm

You are certainly free to just say that, but some of us like to go on to think about what the reasons might be that we do observe those regularities. I respect if you're not interested in that question

first of all, let me just say that it's not like I'm certain there even is the second kind of law. It makes the most sense to me, and I can't really conceptualise the negation of it, but I'm by no means expressing any kind of certainty about it. It's just what I think.

So in answer to your question, I wouldn't personally frame it as "obeying". Nature isn't obeying some laws defined from outside, rather nature IS those laws. There's not a separation between nature and the laws, our reality at its root is what it is because it is defined by those laws.

Our reality, I think, is probably in some sense a series of mathematical relationships between "things". Nature isn't being forced to obey those relationships, nature is the unfolding of those relationships (or if we're in a block universe, nature is maybe the crystallized structure of those relationships?).

no, I think you're failing to see that there are two very different things people mean when they say "law of nature". One of them is the so-called laws human scientists concoct in their theories, which may or may not be correct, and the other meaning of the word is *the actual real underlying rules*.

So yes, laws that scientists come up with are descriptive. That's the first type of law, not the second type.