I note you have not replied to any of my objections to that very point.

Again, I understand the objection. But your position is entirely incoherent and unless you are happy to bite the bullets i've outlined, Why would I take it seriously as your position? Do you bite those bullets, or are you just having a stab at a theory?

Unless you bite the bullet that an agent is something other than a collection of causes and effects, I'm not interested. If you don't bite that bullet, your position isn't even available to you despite your discomfort.

What causes are you speaking of that go into an agent and determine his actions? — NOS4A2

I've posed you several questions. I await thsoe answers before embarking on another avenue.

Is there some other cause besides you that raised your arm? — NOS4A2

You'll notice, upon any amount of reflection, you've stated an effect and asked there's a different 'cause'. So, I could leave off here. But..

If you’re saying the agent who he was 1 second ago caused the action, then so much the better. The anterior state to the agent is still the agent. — NOS4A2

I'm not, though I understand the objection I think it fails the first hurdle: You have to have a further fact view about hte agent for this to be coherent. Unless you can delineate out hte agent from 'its' prior causes, we have no discussion. Do causes go 'into' an agent, and then die? Leaving the agent at it's own whim? This seems absurd unless you're using theology to explain it. What happens to these causes? Are their effect non-existent qua conscious motivator?? It doesn't seem to me open to claim causation is real, but doesn't effect conscious agents.

You've used Vox as a source. Its probably better you have me on Ignore in this case.

In terms of perception I'd say AI demonstrates some of the more dry and functional ways of putting "perception", but I don't believe the internet is conscious for all that. — Moliere

THis is a really interesting thing to think about. IN some regard, I deny its possible - there is, intuitively, a definite difference between inputs to a biological system, and inputs to a digital system. I would think the Hard Problem is where it lies. So, back to vagueness hahaha.

I am not sure I would say that the hard problem is the crux of the problem - if anything, the hard problem probably presupposes indirect realism. It's also an interesting question whether indirect realism is a construct that can be applied to things that don't have experience. — Apustimelogist

In principle, I think I'm getting you - though it's not all that satisfying to me to say that the hard problem presupposes anything. It's just a gap in our understanding; I don't think it supposes anything other than we currently don't know. Are you able to elucidate how you're posing this element?

The bold: Yes, very interesting, but I think its a straight forward: no. If there's no conscious experience, there's nothing to compare with mind-independence. Though, this goes to the Hard Problem, again. We can't know whether that's true, in any particular case, I don't think.

guess under that definition I could equally ask whether anything could count as direct which seems quite difficult imo under modern understandings of science and partly why I wasn't sure what people were meaning by direct realism. — Apustimelogist

I'll admit, I have no problem with supposing nothing is direct with regard to experience. Just less mediated, in certain ways.

I'd believe that if we recreated the conditions for creating perception then we'd produce the same results — Moliere

A lot of people take this line, but it seems plainly available to deny that there's any necessity between awareness and experience.

2020 was probably the most clean and fair in US history) — Mikie

:death:

Of course. I've been monitoring this rather weird left-wing authoritarianism for a while now.

NZ is so small its almost a joke, and doesn't really matter.
Luckily, one of my courses next semester (ours run Feb-June and July-Nov) has this disclaimer on the course guide page (that I, naturally, cannot locate to quote**) which basically says if you take this course, you're agreeing to hear people's views you don't like, and its up to you to deal with that. I quite like that the Phil department at UoA at least isn't particularly far down this avenue yet. Hopefully, it remains so.


** Found it:

"This course will treat you as adults. We will discuss a wide range of themes which may well challenge some of your beliefs, and we expect you to be civil and reasonable when engaging with this material."; and

"Trigger Warnings
The University doesn't support a blanket policy of trigger warnings. Trigger warnings may be appropriate for in-depth or graphic depictions of events. In this course, we will refer to a wide range of horrors, atrocities, and distasteful events as examples. We don't believe passing mention of controversial issues generally requires trigger warnings. They may include:

Murder, sexual assault, child abuse, maiming, suicide, torturing people and animals, war crimes, massacres, oppression of individuals and cultures, sexism, racism, terrorism, cancers, abortion, euthanasia, religion, political events, sports, magic, alternative medicines, autism, mental health, disabilities, natural disasters, and anything else that may occur to the lecturer, tutor, or other students.

We will also encourage you to question taboo topics. However, because almost all subjects can be discussed, we expect higher standards of understanding, empathy, and tolerance between people on sensitive topics."

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/academics-defend-cambridge-race-row-professor-s-right-to-free-speech/ar-AA1o0qP4?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=85a87ead231f4d52992d66edcc734f2a&ei=17

Cambridge Philosophy faculty member is being fired for having views. Rational views.

Simple example: 500 years ago, were iPhones possible? — Benj96

Yes. I have factored in everything you've outlined, and it doesn't touch my objection.

A extant 'world' cannot also not exist, and still instantiate any properties (such as existing). So, one or other of these options violates the 'possibility' condition.

Begging the question is when you assume your conclusion. E.g., something like: "our perception of objects is indirect because we don't perceive things directly." — Count Timothy von Icarus

That is what I pointed out you did.

There are many variants of chess, but what constitutes a legal move in a given chess tournament is still objective. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You have assumed objectivity by saying that which chess moves are legal moves is objective. Yet, your job was to show this to be the case, not state it. There's no description of why that's the case.

If your position boils down to your further paragraphs, then I simply reject that you've done anything at all to outline objectivity in these cases. They were weakly related, in any case, but they do no nothing but illustrate collective opinion.

BY eg, this would apply equally to your claim that:

If I raise my child to be a craven, licentious, covetous, and vicious glutton there is a sense in which people in my community can point to what I've done and talk about a "harmful upbringing," without having much difficulty agreeing with one another. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is nothing, whatsoever, objective in this, other than a statistical fact about agreement among members of a community. If this is what you take objective to refer to, alrighty. Not I.

It’s a source-hood argument. If his action is not determined by anything else, how is it compatible with determinism? — NOS4A2

I don't think you've quite groked what I'm using to object** - It says nothing about hte 'reality' that it seems indeterminate. The point being, that you feel the source of your decision is internal (in the sense that it is world-independent) has nothing to do with what's actually going on.

Which, obviously, on the contrary account it is, in fact determined and cannot be otherwise. This would be to deny causal relations entirely. If they hold, they hold. All actions/events have prior causes. If you're suggesting that an agent is able to conjure ex-nihilo motivation to act out of literal thin air (in fact, out of Ether) i'm finding that hard to grok. It leads to absurd notions like acting out a reactive behaviour you have not been caused to have. We, generally, call these breaks downs in causality mental illness (though, you'll not this does not change the causal relationship qua relationship, merely qua resulting behaviour - a misfire, as it were, on the causal basis).

Is the suggestion that there's some further fact about decision-making that separates it from the physical facts underlying the brain and body?

** if you in fact have understood this, and your response was the all the same, I'm unsure where to go. That seems to ignore the objection.

You post has no content. — Banno

Not sure what you're going through mate, but I really hope you come out of it better off :) You sometimes say things with substance, and I'd hate to think you'd devolved into a 180-style fuddy-duddyness.

I would ask whether anything could ever count as indirect under this view. — Apustimelogist

I would answer: Patently, yes. Unless we are irrational reductionists, there is no direct link between most things in the world and our experience of them. This is, in fact, the hard problem - and hand-waving away using arguments like this seems to me to entirely side-step the question, and assumes that the very concept of 'direct'ness is somehow intensional and not something which can be ascertained 'correctly' seems both unsatisfactory, and under-explanatory. We have facts that are not explained. Such as experience. Which you're using. To make the claim.
It's a really weird position, when one steps back. Though, i take it that since thinkers like Wittgenstein and Haabermas are taken seriously, this may be an uphill (albeit, risible) battle.

We don’t perceive both the object and the representation of the object. — Mww

(using this is a prompt - I'm not replying to your argument or position, just fyi, below:

This is a really, really good point that It hurts I didn't think to bring up. The DRist must hold that we experience both a physical object, and an empirically different representation of it in consciousness.

If that's the case, I'll need something separating the two in my experience. Otherwise, thsi is a ghost. And not even a very good one. It's totally opaque. There is no such connection in experience.

Yes it does, quite 'directly'.

"Empirical" works for me. Mostly I just mean -- what would I believe, given what I know? A very limited case of "possible", but one we use. — Moliere

Indeed. In that section he's discussing A-level and B-level intensions for words which refer (in that context of supervenience) and distinguishes them so that A-level intension is how the reference a priori such that the reference gives logical necessity to that which it refers.
B-level being that which picks this concept out in the world as it is. Or "as the world turns out" as its put there. I think you're actually slightly closer to the bone, though.

It sounds to me you're giving a fairly vague account akin to compatibleism. Nothing in your account counters determinism - just illustrates that decisions appear to originate in an agent without prior cause.
That seems incoherent, on it's face, though. Further, the agent is deluded, on the accounts determinists wield. This is not implausible at all, and fits with your account.

There's three kinds of possibility I want to distinguish: Logical, metaphysical, and a third kind that I'm having a hard time naming but "actual" works. — Moliere

Empirical works well here too - Chalmers has a great discussion in his explanation of Supervenience in The Conscious Mind.

I often just have to pick an action for no reason just so I don't piss the other players off any more than I already have. — Patterner

Genuinely - get into poker. Getting 'in the tank' is a common thing and the reason some tournaments take a week to play out. Decisions are long, arduous processes in poker. Think you'll enjoy.

is still objective. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yet, arbitrary (in the sense needed to be accounted for here, i think). You can't index harm to an arbitrary set point to evoke 'objectivity'. That's kind of a demonstration of begging the question no? Its objective because you chose that as a quality in its description.

Of course, you're correct that what constitutes harm is, to at least some degree, bound up in the virtues, and the virtues are bound up in a given context, but I'm not sure how this leads to their not being at all objective. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This smells like talk about primary and secondary intensions ala Chalmers.
The concept 'harm' seems to only pick out that which is subjectively held to be the case in the real world. Some think 'harm' can consist in discomfort, or dislike. This is where trigger warnings appear. Some think 'harm' can only come from some arbitrary line in the sand about losses and gains in a utilitarian sense. Harm certainly doesn't have a rigid referent in the actual world. This says to me, it couldn't conceivably have a secondary intension that picks out anything analogous. So, i say it's implausible to suggest that harm has an objective meaning, other than from a subjective pov (i.e experiences, for me, will either meet, or not meet my internal benchmark for having received harm). 180's explication here merely lists some subjective factors that can go to that internal benchmark in a subject.

I think I would need to see that the word 'harm' has some a-level intension that referred categorically to something - which it doesn't seem to.

If you were right, and indirect realism is the only view compatible with the physics and physiology of perception, do you honestly think the folk here would have continued denying the science for over sixty pages? Is your opinion of your interlocutors that poor? — Banno

Yes. As it so happens, he's right and you've ignored it the entire thread long. Such is life.

I think Searle may agree with that sentiment. — creativesoul

You mean the dude whos career rests largely on literal hand-waving?

drop colour and re-phrase this in terms of shape. What happens? — Banno

Nothing changes for the argument, but you get less comfortable. This is beginning to show a rather nice pattern.

For my part, the issue is that some folk think there is a need to justify that they see this text, even as they read it. — Banno

"see"
"read"

And your position is that everyone who has well and truly knocked your position out of hte park are somehow linguistically stuck. Hehe. It would be funnier, if you were more humorous.

See what happens when one irrelevant comment is made? It becomes the focus. Easy to avoid the difficulty that way, I suppose. — creativesoul

I'm not sure how to explain the irony of this, in response to what I said. Quite a good chuckle here.

I strongly suspect you and I have different opinions on what the issue is. — creativesoul

Yes, very much agree. And I strongly suspect your 'opinion' on what the issue is sidesteps the issue. You can be fairly sure of this, reading your other responses.

If impressing one's own face into a custard pie does not count as directly perceiving the pie, then nothing will and one's framework falls apart if it is of the materialist/physicalist variety — creativesoul

More-or-less, yep - part of why Physicalism ultimately ends up being entirely unsatisfying for 98% of people I suspect.
But as noted, this is exactly the sidestep i'm losing patience with. Your face touching the pie physically is not a perception. It isn't even the process of perception if we're going to keep confusingly conflate the two. Your conscious experience, which lies at the end of process initiated by pressing your face into a pie - which, in this case, will include several sensory experiences, is (i prefer the term experience, because that's what it is). That these are being treated as either the same thing, or somehow supervenient in such a way that they are representing the experience in both cases is baffling, counter to the empirical considerations and very much a side-step. One is a state of affairs, one is an empirically removed shadow of that state of affairs in consciousness. That this is highly uncomfortable isn't that interesting. \

There we have it. Dualism — NOS4A2

You say this like it does anything other than show me what you think of Dualism. It says nothing at all for the position, the arguments or the glaring mystery we're all dancing around.

Your taxes fund an obscure government program that kills millions of wild animals to benefit Big Ag

Nice

I think the inference I'm driving at is that to bite this bullet would be to say something impossible is also possible. That seems logically not possible, to me.
If a Universe exists where "Everything is possible" the example I gave would remove this universe - which gives the ability for the possibility mentioned to exist - and we get an infinite recursive deletion. The Universe can't exist if we're trying to instantiate that it doesn't - but hte universe is required for that instantiation, so ... Incoherence! heh

What does our biological machinery do then, if not directly connect us to the world? Sometimes the causal chain is longer than others, but it is a direct link between the creature and the world nonetheless.

Biological machinery interacts physically with distal objects.

The indirect realist uses knowledge of how biological machinery works as ground to deny that we directly perceive distal objects. If we adhere strictly to the preferred framing of folk like Michael and perhaps yourself(?), we would have to deny any and all physical contact between cows and eyes. If we extend that criterion to other senses, we would be forced to say that physically forcing our face into a pudding pie and withdrawing it would not count as directly perceiving the pie. Even if and when our eyes were/are open. — creativesoul

This is a standard-sidestep that ignores, once again, the crux of the problem. I have bolded the absolute incoherent of this position. The bolded answers all of your incredulity quite well, I think.

I understand that there's a distinction without a difference here - A hand touching a cow is obviously direct (setting aside the weird physical nature of touch actually consisting in repelling forces). Our experience of it cannot be, on any account, direct. I beginning to lose patience with the move trying to be made here that because our body directly interacts with objects (in this one avenue of sense, anyway) that somehow our mind is doing the same thing. This is patently untrue, and at this stage it seems the burden is on the direct realist to explain how this is hte case.

There's a Hard Problem of Consciousness Solver badge in it for you ;)

Odd that all that color matching can be successfully achieved by a brainless machine. — creativesoul

The absolute epitome of trying to ignore the issue

This is all just hand-waving and insinuation. When you present an actual argument I'll address it. — Janus

The wildest of ironies.
My (quite direct and detailed) argument is that hand waving is all that “your side” has in this conflict. Which is why clearing up the language is such an unreasonably effective riposte. This has been illustrated. And is now clearly instantiated here in this exchange.

“I’ll leave you to it”.

And attempting to frame things in absolute terms, as though there is a real fact of the matter, rather than merely competing or alternative interpretations and their attendant ways of speaking is a lost cause in any case. — Janus

This is what I intimate strikes me as giving up.
I do not think you're adequately grappling with the problem. AS noted, when the language and grammar are clear, and we're not instantiating multiple concepts with one term or too-closely-related terms, two things happen: your position becomes untenable, because it is utterly clear that: DR is nonsensical, unless you refuse to get to the bottom of it, and return to misusing language (for that purpose, that is).

Obviously, I agree that large parts of the framing are wrong, and that most of the exchanges in this thread (largely Banno, unfortunately) ensure that this framing is adhered to, instead of progressing - but it is entirely counter to intuition and clear language that there is no appreciable distinction, or that its an issue of interpretation. We have an empirical consideration we are trying to name. There is nothing grey about htis.

So, we have every reason to reject the whole debate as being wrongheaded from the get-go. — Janus

This may be the case, if you don't like the conclusions intimated by cleaning up the discussion - and that seems a very common way to duck out in these, admittedly very, very trying, circumstances. But i push forward... I don't like the idea that we ahve no direct access to the world. It seems patent. Its uncomfortable. The two are not linked.

We have a reliable relationship with those objects, and with the world, and that is all that matters. — Janus

While I didn't skip over the line before this one, this strikes me as giving up. It's all that matters for every-day consideration, but within this thread that is wholly inadequate, I think.

Returning to the previous line, yes. But clearing up the language gives us every reason to reject DR so I can see why this is the case :)

I am, partially, joking. I realise this isn't cut and dried.

it follows that, contrary to your claims, we do have reliable knowledge of distal objects. — Janus

It does not. Though, your point is a good one for less-discursive IRists.

e have reliable, certain in the relative but not certain in the artificial "absolute" sense, knowledge of external objects. — Janus

This seems to betray the idea that we have some 'direct' relationship with those objects, no?

I thank you, at least, for making this one easy to respond to:

Suffice to say, in response to your clear implications, nothing you've provided gives me anything new. It may be worth stepping back from the constant internal accusations you throw at people, which undergird many of your responses :) — AmadeusD

It's a farm hand specific stud horse programmes, to my knowledge.

Imagine a universe where not only is everything possible, but that all possibilities must be fulfilled before its natural conclusion. — Benj96

Is the Universe not existing a possibility, in this universe? ;)

I take this to be irrelevant. AS was the initial comment. Hence, hoping it was Jest given how loaded it was. No one denies the disabled can function, per se.

Suffice to say, in response to your clear implications, nothing you've provided gives me anything new. It may be worth stepping back from the constant internal accusations you throw at people, which undergird many of your responses :)

Blind, illiterate mutes can herd cows. You account seems a bit ableist... — Banno

I very much hope this is pure jest.

Can you not see that these are both wrong? We use the word "see" in both ways. — Banno

It is obvious neither are 'wrong'. They are unhelpful, when used in both ways. That's the entire incoherence of your account/s. You are attempting to use a concept to represent both opposing versions of that element of the account to which it could refer.

"to look" cannot be hte same thing as "to see". And using those phrases as they actually occur viz. looking is turning one's eyes to an object, and seeing is experiencing the mental representation caused by the light reflected from it - solves the disagreement. You have to just accept that your objection doesn't lie in the facts, but the form you prefer to use to describe it.

Rather than flat-out denying the existence of human-caused climate change, delayers claim to accept the science, but downplay the seriousness of the threat or the need to act. The end result is an assertion that we should delay or resist entirely any efforts to mitigate the climate change threat through a reduction of fossil fuel burning and carbon emissions. Despite claiming to assent to the scientific evidence, delayers tend to downplay the climate change threat by assuming unrealistic, low-end projections of climate change, denying the reality of key climate change effects, and employing lowball estimates of the costs of those impacts.

This is a really smart way to make it quite clear that you have no patience for disagreement, and prefer alarmist 'I'm right' type arguments to enforce actions that make you personally feel better.
Weird way to approach science.

However, with food, every now and then someone serves up something that is rancid. In such cases, we are no longer talking about different combinations of taste buds or brain chemicals - such food is almost universally foul to almost anyone's taste buds. — jasonm

This isn't really distinguishable from events lower down the spectrum. Some people can't be in the same room as fish. There's nothing per se that separates these two examples, and so the thrust of the OP seems a bit misguided.
I'd say you've correctly summarized ethics, and shied away from giving us your moral framework into which that might feed. It's hard to know whether there's something to be objected to in your post.

Is anyone truly positing that the screen infront of me is part of my experience?

This went somewhere weird.

Can someone explain why the level of political discussion, generally, in America, is akin to Twitter users making up funny names for their teachers?

Imaginary friends aren't perceived. — Pierre-Normand

Then nothing is perceived.

I believe i understand what you're trying to point out, but this is not shown by what you claim to be showing support for the claim in that comment, though. It's not even partially relevant.
That some people have bad eyesight does nothing for the previous, lets call it 'layer of indirectness' posited by the IRist. A bad camera also receives bad data, and constructs a bad image. It does not perceive anything.

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

Because that's clearly true.

That we see illusions shows that we do not see the world exactly as it is; but it does not show that we never see the world. Nor does it show that what we see is not the world, but something else caused by the world.

That is those who advocate for indirect realism on this basis are grasping more than the situation will allow. That we sometimes see the world as other than it actually is does not imply that we never see the world as it is. — Banno

Its pretty astounding that these two utterances are included in the same person's account. If A is true, B is not possible. We cannot see the world as it is, if "we do not see the world exactly as it is". Your use of 'exactly' is doing 100% of the lifting. And nothing's off the ground.