Right, what does it mean for something to be in the mind? It makes sense to say it, and everyone understands when it is said, but no one really seems to know what it means. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep.

I sort of, kind of, agree. But I've become acutely aware of how 'post-Cartesian' our worldview instinctively is. Descartes is where the modern 'mind-body' problem comes from - along with a constellation of early moderns, notably Galileo, Locke, Newton, and so on, the division of mind and matter, 'primary' and 'secondary' attributes, religion and science. I see being modern as itself a state of being, a station of consciousness, shaped by these influences. Learning how to be aware of that is a big part of philosophy IMO. This is not to say that modernity, or Enlightenment rationalism, or what have you, is 'bad' or 'wrong' - sure prefer it to many alternatives - but the problems it has are like it's shadow, in the Jungian sense.

Also don't agree with the equivalence of materialism and idealism. Kastrup has a lot to say on that - materialism relies much more on abstractions than does idealism. Why? Because the concept of matter is itself an abstraction whereas the reality of first-person experience is apodictic. I don't have to copy in again that paragraph from Schopenhauer0 about how time and space only enter into reality through the brain. — Wayfarer

Yes, I know the rejection of the Cartesian thing. I get it. Essentially he just re-introduced the Platonic skepticism of what we deem as "real", and made it more solipsistic (mind) rather than outward-facing (Forms, matter, etc.). However, the problem was there, whether he introduced it more blatantly or not (in my opinion). We must get through the Cartesian problem. I don't think there was a pre-Cartesian "better". But it may be just a stage to deal with.

A way through (not necessarily endorsing but just providing an example), could be an extreme object-oriented realism whereby objects have ways of connecting whereby realization takes place (actualization from potentiality). And lo and behold, this philosophy starts looking like Whitehead's process philosophy. So maybe there is a framework there (not necessarily everything he posited, but the basic idea).

I think at the end of the day, the mind/body problem becomes the nexus point by which both sides meet. Things like the Cartesian Theater fallacy will always bewilder the inquiring mind. I think of a blue cube in my mind, even if this comes from sense impressions earlier, what does it mean to be "in my mind"? Neurons are firing, etc. Neural networks are connecting and computing. Yep. But this mental imagery is taking place. What is "that"?

We constantly say stuff like "two ways of looking at it", as if rephrasing gets at it.

We constantly kick the proverbial can down the road when we say, "Well it's information integrating", but "whence" is this integration? Where and what is this? Then we make analogies to some computer and we realize the interpreter is already in the equation. So not that either. Then we are back to where we began.

Idealists have a problem that it is corresponding to physical events and cannot pose the problem of whence mental events. So, they say everything must be mind.

Realists have a problem that it is corresponding to the mental events and cannot pose the problem of whence mental events,. So, they downplay mental some sort of "illusion" or cultural artifact. However, illusions are still a phenomenon to be explained in themselves. And on and on it goes.

observation, as the case may (or may not) be:
The forum has a (noticeably) different distribution than the world of academic philosophers in general.
If so, then how come?
Either way, I'm not going to pretend to speak on Banno's behalf. — jorndoe

I gave a theory.

I know this and agree. But it's a blip. — Tom Storm

I think a form of neutral monism or panpsychism has seen a rise in David Chalmers, Philip Goff, Galen Strawson. Then there are mathematical Platonists like Max Tegmark who argue for mathematical entities have some sort of reality (even though they are not physical).

Doesn't the observation stand on its own? — jorndoe

No. He's bringing it up. He is trying to say something with it. There are a lot of facts about the world. This doesn't mean I have to bring them up unless I am trying to say something with this fact. "Hey look at this..." implies "And so?"

But when did it start and what do we count as idealism - are you talking about various trends of mysticism believed in by certain groups or privileged communities? Or do you start in the West with Berkeley? When was idealism held by the average person in the West? — Tom Storm

It technically goes back to Plato in the West.

Not at all. The issue here is the difference in frequency of certain esoteric metaphysical views in the population of this forum compared to other communities of philosophers. — Banno

How is that an issue? That is what you are not answering. You are making an observation into a normative claim, but trying to say you aren't.

As I said elsewhere,
The strange constituency of this forum might have you think there is a great philosophical debate between direct realism and idealism. It ain't so. Overwhelmingly, philosophers, like the general population, will if asked say that they are realists (80% in the PhilPapers survey, with idealism garnering less than 6%. Yes, we don't do philosophy via polls and it's a survey of English-speaking philosophers and so on, but that's a level of agreement which is for philosophers pretty much unheard of.) — Banno

Again, this to me, is committing the bandwagon fallacy, and now you are showing more evidence of (or reiterating it rather), not countering that.

And as I pointed out above, of greater significance is the fifty percent who would not commit to one of skepticism, idealism or realism. — Banno

Sure, why not be open to various interpretations in such a speculative realm? My guess is people haven't really taken a strong position more than defending various posters. This doesn't commit them to a position in any formal way.

But when you are forced to write papers to keep a position at an institution (in other words, it's your "job"), then yeah, you may be forced into defending and sticking to such claims as a matter of course, but the regular person on a philosophy forum has the luxury of exploring various avenues and trying out various hats with no real consequence. So it makes sense why the data is so disparate between here and academia. People change positions in academia too, but it seems like the stakes of doing so are much higher, especially when you are devoting loads of resources into it, and again, it's your livelihood.

However, as I stated earlier, if the implication is something like: "The consensus of the philosophy community is X and that makes it more reputable", I would hesitate to use that as evidence for anything other than the current trend of academia. Remember, idealism (like Kant's) does not deny things like empirical methods or science. It's speculative (metaphysical and/or epistemological). It's interpretations of ways of knowing and how things exist, and defending using various forms of inferencing, logic, arguments, propositions, thought experiments and the like. This is not amenable to the kind of evidence that a science might offer when that particular community coalesces on a theory or model.

Is idealism here the love that dare not speak its name? Are the idealists in their cupboard, hiding their true feelings behind excuses and lack of commitment? Or do these forums disproportionately attract contrarians? — Banno

Aren't you committing a bandwagon fallacy? Your claims must be true because a majority of X believe them? The very idea of empirical is at the root of the question you are asking, and so you can't so easily say, "Well, the 'experts' of philosophy are X, therefore anyone who is not X is a crazy kook". This isn't science or medicine where all they are using is a sort of verification/falsification from experimental evidence built up over time. So what are you trying to say by this survey?

Clearly you think your positions are realist. Clearly you think there are people who disagree with you here and are idealists. But what are you trying to imply here other than the actual survey? Why even post it?

Are you uncomfortable or irritated by the disagreement you are getting here? I mean, I deal with that all the time here being a philosophical pessimist! If I was in a nice cocoon of a fellowship of philosophical pessimists, indeed things might be different, but this forum is not that.

But you will say those are "outliers" and that you represent some respectable position that others do not, and that you are somehow presenting them as the weirdos they are (by not being the popular position of academic philosophers that took part in the linked survey). So again, what are you trying to imply?

Quoting Schopenhauer and Brian Magee on Schopenhauer, excellent :up:!

The idea that, outside perception, everything simply ceases, is to try and assume a viewpoint with no viewpoint. We can't imagine anything - not the apple, not 'the world' - outside the framework of concepts, somatic reactions and sensory perceptions within which the statement 'x exists' is meaningful. For the purposes of naturalism we assume a mind-independent domain of objects which has nothing to do with us, but that is a pragmatic judgement, not a metaphysical principle, and as such, one that surely quantum physics has well and truly torpedoed beneath the waterline. — Wayfarer

Nice! I will say though by mentioning quantum physics, you are going to allow other people to smuggle red herrings as they try to prove your “amateur” understanding of QM wrong. Your argument can stand without it though I get why you included it.

The difference is in individual bodies. If we want to explain the difference between the way a man sees and the way a bat sees we explain the body. We don’t need to say they see different things, we need only say that they have different bodies and see differently. — NOS4A2

I never said they see different things. They have a different cognitive framework based on their bodies.

You’re assuming inputs and outputs and the computational theory of mind. Computers and Turing machines may try to mimic human beings but they are not analogous to human beings, I’m afraid. Do you think computers can perceive? — NOS4A2

No, I don't. It was not analogous to mind but rather intended to be analogous for how outputs can be processed as different from their inputs, and not even in a 1-to-1 correspondence.

If Kant had said this, then he was just repeating what's already in his premise -- empirical statements are made by humans. — L'éléphant

Correct, I think? Humans make observations of the world. Insofar as these observations are contingently known through our experiences, they tell us facts about the world. Realists would agree with that. Yet Kant is an idealist. The structure is in yo head. So there are "real" facts, but their origin is not the external world. So that's why I said the "epistemological" part doesn't necessarily make a difference. It is needs both the epistemological and metaphysical for a complete picture.

This is a good point. It's easy to mistake the poll as a poll about existence, instead of epistemology or knowledge. — L'éléphant

I think once again, this doesn't capture the nuances of the argument whether it's metaphysics or epistemological realism. Kant would say that there are true empirical statements, but still claims those statements are true for the human observer. What is that? Well, transcendental idealism, but that label alone doesn't say much as both a realist an idealist might agree with him epistemologically. Both would agree in regards to synthetic posteriori statements about the world.

Understanding the ways that realism breaks down is most interesting I guess. But that doesn't entail being an idealist. Agnostic might make most sense, but that implies indifference. I'm going to be agnostic to the poll :grimace:

It’s direct because there is nothing between perceiver and perceived. The transformation and interpretation of “nervous activity” is indistinguishable from the perceiver and the act of perceiving, so is therefor not in between perceiver and perceived. It’s the same if one places the intermediary outside of the perceiver. It is indistinguishable from the perceived. So indirect realism is redundant. — NOS4A2

I just don't get how that is possible when you have a massive network, distributing sensory experience from different regions and rei-integrating them together. No one is going to have complete understanding of what is going on, but certainly, the medium matters, and the fact that there is a medium means that something is going on that isn't simply a mirror reflected of "reality". For example, an input in a computer becomes an electrical signal that then gets turned into a logic gate that affects the system and thus produces an output. I press a key on my keyboard and it almost instantaneously shows up on a computer screen. The physical stroke of my fingers is not the visual representation that shows up on my screen.

You are mixing the hard problem and the easy problem in wildly unproductive and invariant ways that confuse the whole issue. I am a pro-hard problem. That is to say, I think there is one. People like @Banno try to downplay it, it seems.

In this computer keyboard/monitor situation, for example, there is already an interpreter that interprets the letters as something meaningful. Therefore there is an extra layer in the equation beyond just input and output. Thus, as I've stated before, this is the Cartesian Theater problem whereby there is a constant regress whereby the mind "integrates" (aka the Homunculus Fallacy). However, direct realism doesn't solve the problem so much as raise questions as to how it is that sensory information is simply a mirror and that there is no processing involved as well. Again, certainly other animals process the world differently, as do babies when developing. There are differences in individual perception, etc. This to me indicates construction not wholesale mirroring.

The tree wraps its roots around the rock, and takes from the rock whatever it can get. Unbeknownst to the tree, the rock is also active, and may roll, killing the tree. This is the way of interaction between living things and inanimate things. The living being wants to take all that it can get from the inanimate. But the living being's inadequate knowledge of the activity of inanimate things makes this a very risky activity. So the being must develop a balanced approach between taking all that it can get, and producing the knowledge and capacity required to restrain itself, according to the dangers involved with the activities of inanimate things.

Beyond the problem of interaction between living beings and non-perceiving things, there is a further problem of interaction between distinct living beings. This problem is far more difficult because when the basic problem is complex, and unresolved, the difficulties tend to mount exponentially. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was more interested in non-living with non-living things. However, even this account, though fun to read, is simply the human view of a tree doing what it does. What is the event without a perceiver (like a human). Perhaps the tree "perceives" in some way, but it is precisely this difference whereby cognition (like an animal's) has something above and beyond some sort of "direct access" to the object. That is to say, there is "cognizing" happening which mediates the animals interactions based on evolutionary contingencies.

In order to talk about a non-perceived event, one first has to presuppose that we are able to perceive it. — RussellA

Interesting. Physical properties interacting with each other without perceivers, becomes oddly anthropomorphic in its conception. The objects become idealized as like placeholders. But surely how objects, forces and events are said to be interacting is metaphysically mysterious. At what localization is an event taking place? There is no view from the object. Our minds imagine one but that can’t actually be the case.

Yes, there is always the illusion of progress bolstered by the obvious progress of the sciences, but philosophy is not like that in my view. The idea of progress inherent in (and kind of contradictory to the spirit of) Hegels' philosophy is its weakness and possibly why both Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard reacted against it. — Janus

I also think there is a reification and exaltation of mundanity. If it's not about accuracy of numbers crunching, or a goal of some sort of complex culmination leading to outputs, it doesn't matter (think electronics, construction, and technology in general). Cue existentialists and meaning. I had this idea a while ago about instrumentality- we do to do to do to do. In this sense, Hegel has the illusion of being right. The mundaneites would say that the complexity of the modern world has a sort of axiological positive value. There is something inherently better about the complexity. I call it minutia-mongering. But some people will exalt in it. In that sense, the aesthetics of speculation is nonsensical derivations off the path of working towards more complexity of outputs. So to the mundane-ites, speculation is sinful as it doesn't contribute to outputs. There is no room for such. It is like metaphysical Marxism.. Marxism proposed that the superstructure is material. We must focus on the superstructure to change things. However, unlike the mundane-ites, his goal was so that we can enjoy life, perhaps in some Epicurean way (not sure exactly how that Communist utopia was supposed to look really). Certainly, drab grey uniforms and production outputs couldn't be it. If so, what a sad socioeconomic system.

The idea of progress inherent in (and kind of contradictory to the spirit of) Hegels' philosophy is its weakness and possibly why both Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard reacted against it.

It seems to me that those who get "persnickety" are those who "gave a dog in the race" and/ or are uncomfortable with uncertainty. I think uncertainty is, spiritually speaking, a blessing, because it makes for humility. — Janus

:up:

One of the books I keep referring up to is Charles Pinter. Mind and the Cosmic Order, published February 2021, He’s a mathematics emeritus whose only other published books are on set theory and algebra but has a deep interest in neural modelling. This book is a real breakthrough in philosophy of cognitive science in my view. Google it and just scan through the chapter abstracts, it’s about just this question. — Wayfarer

Cool I'll check it out.

We can only say what interaction between what we think of as non-perceiving objects is like for us. Personally I find metaphysical theories interesting in that they explore the possibilities that are (coherently or incoherently?) imaginable to us. I think that is worth exploring just for its own sake; it's aesthetic interest, if you like. — Janus

Yes indeed. Agreed. I think people get persnickety because it goes beyond the empirical descriptions of scientific textbooks. It is speculative and therefore abhorrent. To them, this makes philosophy garish and baroque rather than simply helping with some mathematical logic problems perhaps or simply clarifying terminology usage in service of the sciences. That's my guess anyways.

This is why I find Whitehead somewhat fascinating. Like Russell, he helped create complex proofs in mathematics like in Principia Mathematica, connecting them with symbolic logic. In that sense he was the most analytic of analytics. But then he wrote stuff like Process and Reality and Adventures in Ideas that couldn't be more baroque in its metaphysical system.

But going back to the rock interacting with the tree, I would like to at least ask the question how it is that physical properties obtain without perception. What is it that interaction between non-perceiving objects is like? And you see, this IS where this direct/indirect/ideal becomes kind of "personal" for those who care about metaphysical theories. As I said before, I think informs the perceiving interactions.

Personally, I think the whole direct/ indirect parlance is inapt. It's just another example of being bewitched by dualistic thinking. From different perspectives 'direct" and 'indirect' are both OK, but the idea that one or the other is "correct", in anything but a contextual sense is misguided in my view.

Philosophy delivers only contextual truths, and there are as many possible assumptions to begin from as there are philosophies. The idea that some are "correct" and others not, tout court, erroneously fails to acknowledge the different presuppositions in play, and the reality of talking past one another on account of that. — Janus

Yeah I'm with you. I don't like using direct or indirect realism either. I think oddly enough, we are all in agreement about the outdated/outmoded dichotomy that this presents. It simply doesn't capture the sophistication of the subject and makes it more confusing than helpful distinctions. It comes from a time when strict distinctions of idealism and realism were in play perhaps. More 18th century than 21st century.

I don’t understand what you’re saying here schop.

This discussion has gone off-topic. I have a feeling it was my fault. — Jamal

You seemed to indicate that Witty is saying philosophy is a hindrance to spiritual fulfillment, but what if it is part of it for some people? And thus bypassing would not be good, as you seem to be interpreting him.

Getting our house in order so we can all get on with whatever it is that we already, with no input from philosophy, regard as important in our social and spiritual lives. — Jamal

What if debating philosophy gives us social and spiritual fulfillment? Some philosophers like the perplexing madness of it (though dealing with shitty personalities of the pompous, egotistical, and trolling variety that might be drawn to philosophy I'd say ruins some of it). Certainly "going about your day" can be very mundane so not sure why he couldn't circle back to that idea at least pragmatically speaking, being that he was kind of a linguistic pragmatist.

I don't understand this comment; can you explain? — Janus

A human experience, a bat experience, and a slug experience of the tree is obviously very different. A rock's interacting with a tree is even more far afield (some would say a category error to group it with animal experience). I think @Banno isn't seeing the "realism" in "indirect realism". That is to say, the human, bat, and slug are experiencing a "real" tree, but each one "constructs" (and there is the indirect) the tree differently.

Now, once we add in non-perceiving/mon-animal/non-living forms that are simply "interacting" with the tree, that is where I feel things get interesting and metaphysical, and INFORMS the animal/perceiving/living interactions.

I think it pays to remember that there is no "accurate picture" of an external world, except relative to the context of our collective representation: the empirical world. — Janus

Correct, though if I was a good realist, I’d add in evolutionary fit regarding why this empirical world and not a bats, or a slug, let alone interaction without animal perception.

:lol:

I suppose you could say that. I felt it confused the issue to use “immediate” in that way, because Kant is using it specifically with regard to the perception of things in the world. — Jamal

Got it. Well, I think his idea of "immediate intuitions" are "unmediated" awareness of sensory input, it's not necessarily an accurate picture of the external world. As you noted, his idea is that the things-in-themselves are always an unknown and can never be but non-revealed.

I think it’s more that he is reacting to the equally incoherent claim that we don’t perceive things “as they (really) are”. — Jamal

You can perceive, yet have a wrong notion of what is there. A simple mirage tells us that. Why should we have more direct access than is evolutionarily necessary to interact with that object?

Ok, I confess: to describe Kant as a direct realist tout court is an exaggeration. But as Horkheimer said, sometimes only exaggeration is true. — Jamal

:ok:

By the way, it’s not immediate access to the categories that we have, but immediate access to things in the world around us. — Jamal

Do we not, by our very thinking nature have "immediate" background structures of his categories? The things that structure the very world (cognition) itself? By immediate I guess I mean here, that it is entailed in the very structure of thought itself (and thus how world is presented).

Not at all, experience is actively constructed, it is not a passive process. It's the direct realist that believe experiences are passively received from the outside. — hypericin

:up:

In other words, we experience things that we are able to experience, as we are able to experience them. — Jamal

And thus, I would say, not quite a direct realist. Perhaps he did think we had immediate access to the categories but I would say that is still a mediated one and thus indirect (idealist even more indirect than indirect realism in the sense that it isn't even material things we are immediately accessing, simply the structures of the background).

An appeal to the supposed authority of Kant will not carry much weight here.

Have you an argument? Your claim is that we cannot have veridical access to the tree. I have sufficient access to it to be able to prune it. What more do you need? If there is a "thing in itself" about which we can know nothing, then it is irrelevant and need not concern us. — Banno

The point is methodological. The view of ↪schopenhauer1 and ↪hypericin is oddly passive. This becomes very clear when one starts to talk about our interactions with the things around us - like pruning the tree. — Banno

What are you a freakn Hobbit in the Shire? "Oh that Kant-speak is for them 'queer folk' that ain't from around these parts". What an odd prejudice for a philosophy forum. Solipsistic indeed! The world of Banno!


You can prune the tree, you can interact with the tree. That doesn't mean you are verdically having access to the tree. You are thus perceiving the tree, cognizing with it, and there is an interplay between stimuli, sensory datum, and cognitive processing.

As I said before (and yet you conspicuously ignore because you might not see its import), the apple interacting with the table is different than the human interacting with the tree. What is the difference between cognition of an object and any old interaction with the object? Yet you do not have a good answer.

You are getting caught up in word games. The refutation isn't if something is "really" interacting per se (though arguments can be made against that), but rather if the interaction has a direct kind of "knowledge" of the tree without mediation.

Kant was a direct realist. The external world is the “empirically real” and the tree is an empirical object that we experience “immediately”. See the “Refutation of Idealism”.

Not that it’s remotely relevant. — Jamal

Yet he posited that time/space/causality and the categories were in the "mind". So he doesn't deny the objects, just that we have access to what they are in-themselves (veridical correspondence), and thus I would say not a direct realist in that regard. We have access to our shaping of the tree, not the tree-in itself. I'd say that is Kant's main (mainstream?) idealist position.

Usually.

What is risible is to suppose that one never sees the tree. — Banno

Even Kant supposed a thing in itself. Something may be there. An apple on a table- how do you suppose the apple interacts with the table? Certainly you would say it’s different than cognition and there a difference lies. What is that distinction? A constructed view of the tree for one.

He does take this distinction as granted, as well as that the folk he is addressing can, at least for the most part, tell the difference. But I suppose that RussellA and @schopenhauer1 cannot tell if they are hallucinating gives us an explanation for why there is not much hope of "penetrating the darkness here". — Banno

That is a straw man. There may be a tree, but is it the veridical access to the tree?
Rather, the human mind constructs a tree otherwise what is cognition versus any old interaction of the tree?

There is nothing left but space-time, elementary forces and elementary particles, along the lines of Neutral Monism and Panprotopsychism. Everything else exists in the mind, such as tables, mountains, apples, governments, morality, ethics and green trees.

"What is an event that is unperceived.................what does that even mean for space and time to be a placeholder for an event sans perceiver?"
— schopenhauer1

In conceptual terms, what is most widely accepted today is the giant-impact theory. It proposes that the Moon formed during a collision between the Earth and another small planet, about the size of Mars. The debris from this impact collected in an orbit around Earth to form the Moon.

In reductionist terms, there were changes to the elementary forces and elementary particles within space-time.

Wasn't this an event in space-time without a perceiver ? — RussellA

Yes indeed, it seems space-time is what saves realism for the events to obtain (or does it?). What does it mean to be a localized event or interaction? What comes to my mind is a large space-time space and grid and then zooms in on a particular event that is very small and keeps zooming in. But that is preposterously anthropomorphic and conceptual. Can we really talk about non-perceived events and interactions, even WITH the saving grace of the container of "space-time"? Certainly we can "talk" about it in entertaining the notion, as pragmatically, it fits our schema. But otherwise, I am skeptical.

Yes and I think I rather like@RussellA’s response to Searle https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/782060

You want me to defend direct realism, but insist in misdefining it. I have no need to play with your scarecrow.

Consider:
In recent years, therefore, “direct realism” has been usually reserved for the view that perceptual experience is constituted by the subject’s standing in certain relations to external objects, where this relation is not mediated by or analyzable in terms of further, inner states of the agent. Thus, the brain in the vat could not have the same experiences as a normal veridical perceiver, because experience is itself already world-involving.
— Stanford

Or instead of intentionalist or adverbialist views, should we we talk of disjunctivism, behaviouralism, functionalism?

Or embedded or embodied minds?

Or you could pay some attention to ↪Wayfarer's view, which will be more amenable to your anachronistic philosophical stand than anything I might offer you. — Banno

To be fair, I’m trying to play by the dichotomy setup by the OP. If he’s talking about a crude direct realism, whereby we have unfettered access to the external, then that’s what I’m debating. And yes, historically that is what it means. Your own reply here implies that even direct realists are mitigated direct realists. They are “direct-ish” and it’s a spectrum, but that is already drifting away from a fully direct view where we are pure window into reality.

Even with the more modern views you mention, surely “red” the visual qualia is not instantiated in the apple. A bat and a human perceive that apple differently. But certainly they are experiencing an apple. You change the ride and cones or cause aphasia, and that qualia changes. That’s not inverted qualia either as you can compare the two differences and note the change. And just by the nature of neurons, they are constructing perception via specific layers and neurons in the brain that are mapped. This mapping implies evolutionary response to stimuli that has constructed the object. Surely a slug constructing an apple is going to have a very different perception of the apple. The indirect doesn’t deny the apple simply that the access to the apple is not a window to the external object as it is in the world. And certainly it is unhelpful to object that the experience of an apple is still about the apple. The interaction of a table with an apple is no more direct access to the apple than a human. The table doesn’t perceive anything. Surely it is interacting with the apple in some way, or an aspect of it, but is that “access” to the apple? I’d be inclined to question interaction itself without perception but I step too far.

At the end of the day I may actually agree with your wanting to scrap the dichotomy setup here and this line if thinking but taking it at face value as this is what the debate at hand is and not changing it as Im going to suit a better framing. I’m just going with that original idea about directness vs indirectness.