Realism is the concept in question, after all, its apparent dual nature, right? — Mww
Dunno why it should be that we perceive the world indirectly just because it’s first in a chain of events. — Mww
First, phenomenology distinguishes between imagined/pictured phenomena and sensory experience. This seems uncontroversial since we do not generally have trouble distinguishing our imaginings and reality, and indeed of we did much of philosophy would need to be reworked. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The question arises, what is the “self”? — NOS4A2
Consider that the human body does not produce any experience unless it is an extremely narrow environmental range; the enviornment is always essential to the processes that give rise to perception. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Thus, on sensory experience I'd tend to go with the relational-dispositional theories, that sensation of say "sky blue" requires both a disposition on the side of the experiencer, and a certain sort of environment. — Count Timothy von Icarus
What, then, of the senses? — Mww
Agreed on the first, but how does the second follow? — Mww
So really my question "against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it" — Janus
Why are you so certain of this? — Banno
I put it to you that you also sometimes know how things are - not all the time, and sometimes you are indeed wrong, but sometimes, you get it right - which is to say, you occasionally speak the truth. I hope you will agree with me at least on this. — Banno
if you doubt their existence, then they should not stop you walking naked through the local shopping mall. Their gaze can be quite convincing. — Banno
dreaming of me — Banno
Sure, certainty is overrated; but hereabouts, even more so, doubt. — Banno
You are presently reading this sentence. An empirical fact? Call it what you will, it is... difficult... to see how it might be coherently doubted. — Banno
I am at al loss here as I don't know what you are trying to say. — Janus
Indirect realists claim that we see objects indirectly because we can only see their visual representations. — Luke
You cannot attend either to objects or to their visual representation when you can only see their visual representation. — Luke
Wouldn't the position of the indirect realist be that we can only "attend to" (or "see") visual representations and are unable to choose otherwise? That is, the indirect realist can only ever directly "experience" or "attend to" or "see" representations and can never directly see objects. — Luke
Our ordinary perceptions, and against these the seeing things indirectly through tinted glasses, distorting mirrors, telescopes, radar, periscopes and so on make sense. — Janus
I still don't understand the difference. Why don't we "see" representations in the same way? (And why the use of scare quotes?) — Luke
both of those views as far as I can tell are equally vulnerable to the same types of skeptical questions — flannel jesus
My point to Amadeus was that if he denies we have access to the world, to empirical facts, — Janus
I think it is a matter of accuracy or reliability. "Are we able to form true propositions which accurately and reliably get at what truly exists in the world?" — Leontiskos
If you were consistent, you would say we have no access to empirical facts and therefore cannot draw any conclusions at all about perception, the world or anything else. — Janus
As long as our perceptions are of the world, then we directly perceive the world, regardless of the qualitative features of those perceptions. — Luke
You did not answer my earlier question: What is the difference between directly seeing a representation and directly experiencing a representation? — Luke
If representations are not a part of our perceptions, then where do they come from and how do we know about them? — Luke
How can the world possibly be perceived “independently of an observer”? — Luke
First, to echo Banno's question, what would the correlate to indirect, "direct," mean in the context of your claims? — Leontiskos
What would it take to directly see an object? — Luke
What would constitute a direct physical interaction? — Count Timothy von Icarus
- I don't believe that indirectness implies inaccuracy. — Leontiskos
It seems to me that your word here, "indirect," is being asked to do far too much work. — Leontiskos
Is that your theory, or is it something else? — Leontiskos
But you are importing a homunculus theory. Most obviously you are doing this by conflating mediation with indirectness, and this goes back to the same idea that reality could not be accurately mediated by sense organs. — Leontiskos
I don't think it's right to say you 'feel' the sandpaper itself, anyway. You feel it's impression on your nervous system, shunted through your nerves, into your brain where it is constructed into an experience. — AmadeusD
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. — flannel jesus
MUI theory states that "perceptual experiences do not match or approximate properties of the objective world, but instead provide a simplified, species-specific, user interface to that world." Hoffman argues that conscious beings have not evolved to perceive the world as it actually is but have evolved to perceive the world in a way that maximizes "fitness payoffs". — flannel jesus
Your homunculus is showing... — Banno
I think using the term 'seeing' that way (that you describe) is misleading. If 'seeing' is defined as the entire process, then it's a useless term in this discussion because there's no difference between a 'direct' and 'indirect' version of 'seeing'. — AmadeusD
What happens if you reconsider these issues in terms of touch or smell?
It becomes harder to insert a "representation" in those cases. — Banno
If "see" is the act of one's eye falling on/turning to an object, then "perception" must be the further event (i.e experiencing a representation). Otherwise, nothing occurs in consciousness. — AmadeusD
Representation is constitutive of seeing/perception. It doesn’t also need to be the thing seen. — Luke
I would say that "seeing objects" and being "mediated by the indirection of representation" are one and the same thing. If you eliminate the mediation (that indirect realists complain about), then you eliminate the seeing. — Luke
It’s a bit odd, but maybe just shows that indirect realism on the forum is often not thought through (not all of them think this way)...Thus Luke is right on the mark in accusing some indirect realists of a failure to let go of the mythical view from nowhere. — Jamal
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. — flannel jesus
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. — flannel jesus
Indirect realists disagree and say that the construction of a representation is not only the act of seeing, but is also the object that we see. — Luke
I said that indirect realists demand that you see your house as it is in itself. I was referring to the thing-in-itself in the Kantian sense. See here, for example. Or, as I said earlier, a God's-eye view. — Luke
Any change in the amount of force needed to define the on/off state (any change in M) requires that B-min(P) also change. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Suppose that we're only indirectly aware of reality. If so then how are we aware of our perceptions? Aren't we a step away from those too? — Moliere