Direct realists recognize the difference between phenomenal experience and external world objects. So why do they still claim that perception of external world objects is direct? — Michael

I believe they variously misunderstand phenomenal experience and/or direct/indirect. But I admit I am not sure.

In the context of this debate, there is no such thing as a direct experience of an external world object, since all such experiences are mediated by phenomenal experience.

You seemed to be suggesting that if there is some third physical thing in the causal chain between the experience and the external world object then the experience is mediated. — Michael

I'm not talking about physical things in the casual chain. I'm talking about experiential mediation, not physical mediation.

So for example, if I see your reflection in a mirror, that would be physical mediation of your image; the mirror is a third party in the casual chain between us; but not experiential mediation in the sense I am taking about.

Some more examples of experiential mediation: by directly experiencing a speaker in my phone, I indirectly experience someone's voice. By directly experiencing blips on a radar screen, I indirectly experience the position of airplanes. By directly experiencing words on a page, I indirectly experience an author's thoughts.

And the indirect realist says, by directly experiencing phenomenal experience, I indirectly experience the world.

So when I'm watching at the stadium I have a direct perception of the game? — Michael

In an every day context yes, but not in the context of this debate. But the concept of direct/indirect is the same.

So an experience of an external world object is direct if and only if the atoms that constitute that object are physically touching the atoms in my brain that constitute my experience — Michael

I said nothing of the sort. Experience can be layered, so that something can be experienced indirectly via a primary experience. See my example of the baseball game.

So let's take olfactory experience. Do I smell a rose? Or do I smell the geraniol in the air, produced by the oils in a rose's petals? Must it be a case of either/or, or are they just different ways of talking about the same thing? — Michael

Same thing. Just as, "am I seeing the rose, or am I seeing the light reflected off its petals"?

After that, we should ask if there's such a thing as a correct smell. Perhaps the way a rose smells to me isn't the way a rose smells to you. If there is a difference, must it be that at least one of us is wrong? — Michael

It's hard to see how, if that difference cannot even be ascertained. The closest you could come would be a failure to distinguish. So, if someone claimed roses smelled just like oranges to them, you might surmise that a kind of partial smell blindness was going on. Or, the emotional valence might be off: if someone violently turned away in disgust when smelling a rose, it doesn't seem totally off base to say something might be wrong with their phenomenal experience. Other than that, all bets are off, not only do we have no basis for judging right or wrong, we can't even tell what anyone other than ourselves is experiencing.

This leads on to having to ask if, and in what way, smells are properties of roses. Do our noses enable us to experience a rose's "inherent" smell, or does a rose have a smell only because organisms have noses? — Michael

Clearly the latter.

If the latter then we might then ask if there's a difference between smelling a rose and experiencing a smell caused by a rose. — Michael

The former may refer to the mechanical act of sniffing a rose. The experience may or may not be present.

And finally, is there something unique about visual experience such that noses and smells are fundamentally different (in the relevant philosophical sense) to eyes and e.g. colours. — Michael

I would say scents are analogous to colors. Eyes also relay shape and depth, so it is a richer, more complex sense. Maybe philosophers should talk about scent by default, rather than sight.

Well, the first step is to
explain what it means to experience something directly and what it means to experience something indirectly. Can "direct" and "indirect" be explained without simply being defined as not being the other? — Michael

The distinction is about mediation. Is the experience mediated, so that it arrives second hand, via a more direct experience? Or is there no intervening layer of experience?

Are you watching the baseball game in the stadium, or on TV? In the latter case, the indirect experience of the game is mediated by the direct experience of the light and sound emitting box in your living room.

Note that in most contexts no one knows or cares about the mediation argued for by indirect realists. A lawyer would not argue that the witness did not directly experience the murder because she saw it only via her phenomenal experience of the event. But that doesn't make it any less real.

Realism is the concept in question, after all, its apparent dual nature, right? — Mww

Realism is what both sides agree upon, as suggested by direct/indirect realism.The difference is that it is assumed in indirect, and somehow directly known in direct.

Dunno why it should be that we perceive the world indirectly just because it’s first in a chain of events. — Mww

If there was just a casual chain, it would probably be a weak argument. The fact that the chain traverses "domains" I think strengthens it, but still I think there are better arguments.

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

But is this distinction somehow fundamental, or just bookkeeping by the brain? I think the latter. While I can't visualize clearly, I can mentally hear (audialize?) very clearly, so that the only thing that distinguishes my imagination from the environment is the binary bit of information, such that subjectively I just "know" it is coming from me.

Since we think in terms of sensation (audio and visual for most people) things would get very confusing if the brain didn't do this bookkeeping.

Significantly, this bookkeeping does break down, most famously in schizophrenia, where the internal voice is sometimes perceived externally. But of course there are also visual hallucinations, phantom touch, taste, smell, and hallucinations of body awareness, with psychosomatic and conversion disorders. In these breakdowns, internal and external is (sometimes terrifyingly) indistinguishable.

The question arises, what is the “self”? — NOS4A2

I am referring to that which experiences, from the first person perspective. So nerves, while a part of our body, are not experienced as such.

I think this is part of the confusion of the question. The answer might vary between the first and third person's.

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

But this is factually untrue. I can, just by imagining it, picture the color "sky blue", in any environment I might be in. This suggests that the sensation is mine, and I am just fine tuned so that the environment can appropriately stimulate it.

Is the sound of a guitar the guitar's, or the player's? I think it makes more sense to say "the guitar's", but at least the guitar must be appropriately "stimulated" to be heard. But what if the guitar could self-stimulate and play itself?

What, then, of the senses? — Mww

Phenomenal experience is the first person perspective on the senses.

Agreed on the first, but how does the second follow? — Mww

My reasoning is, if the connection between the self and phenomenal experience is direct, and the world is several major casual steps prior to phenomenal experience, involving transitions between multiple domains (sensory input -> nervous signal, nervous signal -> phenomenal experience, to be very oversimplified), then the connection between the self and world must be indirect.

So really my question "against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it" — Janus

Phenomenal experience is direct. We perceive the world via phenomenal experience. The world is first in the chain of events leading to phenomenal experience, and the experience is last. Therefore, we perceive the world indirectly.

Why are you so certain of this? — Banno

Because logically these are the only possibilities.

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

Knowing the truth, getting things right, is completely orthogonal to the discussion. If I am an air force captain and my best radar operator tells me so, I can say with confidence that there is a plane at so and so location. Does this mean I know this "directly"? If so, the discussion is moot, everything is direct, "indirect" is a meaningless word.

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

I only doubt it to the extent that I am not absolutely certain of their existence. If I somehow had direct access to their inner lives, I could be absolutely certain.

dreaming of me — Banno

nightmare

Sure, certainty is overrated; but hereabouts, even more so, doubt. — Banno

There's just two possibilities: absolute certainty, or the possibility of doubt. You are placing yourself in the philosophically dubious absolute certainty camp.

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

That is difficult to doubt, because I experienced it directly. What can be coherently doubted is the realism; in principle, I might be in a very vivid dream. In practice, I don't waste my time on such doubts. But because we don't have direct access to reality, the door is open to this kind of doubt. Our experiences are multiply realizable: the familiar realist account might be (and probably is) true, or, we might be dreaming, living in a simulation, and so on.

This situation is not unique to perception. Take the case of other people. Since we only have direct access to people's behaviors, their inner lives can only be deduced, never known with certainty. Our loved ones might be who we think they are, or, they might be p-zombies, aliens inhabiting human bodies, or malignant psychopaths feigning normalcy. Any of these can in theory realize the behaviors we know with certainty.

The point is not to seriously entertain these possibilities, but to recognize the epistemic limitations imposed by our indirect relationships with the world.

I am at al loss here as I don't know what you are trying to say. — Janus

The indirection you mention happens, but it does not seem interesting or relevant to the problem of perception. The interesting part happens when sense data arrives at the organism's body, not before. The indirection in indirect realism happens in addition to the indirection you described.

Indirect realists claim that we see objects indirectly because we can only see their visual representations. — Luke

We can only directly "see" (I don't like this ambiguous usage of "see", I prefer "experience".)

You cannot attend either to objects or to their visual representation when you can only see their visual representation. — Luke

Not true. First, to the indirect realist we see objects in the everyday sense. It's just that everyday seeing involves indirection. Second, indirection does not preclude attention. Again, let's go to the example of a book. When reading a book, do you attend only to the physical shapes of letters on the page? No, you probably never do, and instead attend to words, sentences, and above all their meaning. Even though, only those shapes are directly available to you (I'm traveling in Taiwan atm, and this fact is painfully clear). Anything more you get from the book is your mental (re)construction.

I think this is a pretty good analogy to the indirect realist perspective.

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

No, this is a misconception. We see objects, just indirectly. Just as in another sense of indirection we see objects in a mirror. We can choose to attend to objects, or to their visual representation itself (with difficulty, since we are so accustomed to attending to objects).

There is nothing problematic about attending to things that are only available indirectly. When reading you attend to words and ideas, even though only glyphs on a page are directly available. When watching a movie you are attending to characters and action in a fictional world, even though only flickering images in your room are directly available.

Our ordinary perceptions, and against these the seeing things indirectly through tinted glasses, distorting mirrors, telescopes, radar, periscopes and so on make sense. — Janus

This is answering the wrong question: "what is the relationship between the world and the organism's body?" This can be direct, or indirect, per your examples. But this is trivial.

The problem of perception asks, "what is the relationship between perception and the world". In the indirect realist answer, there is an indirection in addition to the (potential) indirection you mention.

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

I need to be as clearer here. The verb "see" can have two kinds of targets:

* Things in the world, "I see a red ball".
* Our visual representations of (potentially) things in the world. Of that ball, "I see a red circle in my visual field."

Even though the same word "see" is used, these are not the same operations. We don't see our visual representations in the same way we see objects. Rather, we can choose to attend to the visual representation itself, instead of attending to the object it represents.

To treat visual representations as one object among others is not accurate, and leads to objections like yours, or about homunculi. Both the object in the world and the visual representation (aka perception) are part of the same act of seeing, the difference is in what is attended to. I prefer the word "experience" when talking about the representation, as it is less ambitious.

Did that clarify at all?

both of those views as far as I can tell are equally vulnerable to the same types of skeptical questions — flannel jesus

Why? If the world is as it's perceived, there is no room for the world to be anything else. The only option for skepticism is to be skeptical of direct realism itself. But the possibility of skepticism is built into indirect realism. All we know directly is perception, reality itself could potentially be anything. No need to doubt indirect realism.

My point to Amadeus was that if he denies we have access to the world, to empirical facts, — Janus

I don't see him claiming we have *no* access to the world, just no direct access. Indirection still allows access to empirical facts, just not absolute certainly about those facts: everything could always be a simulation, or whatnot. But absolute certainty is overrated.

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

One thing we can be certain of is that is is not accuracy or reliability. No matter how indirect an information source is, it can still be accurate and reliable.

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

Maps, books, the Internet, other people, are all indirect ways of knowing things. For you to be consistent you would have to forego all knowledge that you don't experience with your five senses.

As long as our perceptions are of the world, then we directly perceive the world, regardless of the qualitative features of those perceptions. — Luke

So in your account, qualitative features of perceptions are akin to a perceptual appendage? So for instance, to touch the world I need to use my hand. My hand is mine, not the world's, but this doesn't stop us from saying we directly touch the world. And so the same goes for the qualitative sensation of touching, this is just like the hand, another mechanism we need to touch the world?

You did not answer my earlier question: What is the difference between directly seeing a representation and directly experiencing a representation? — Luke

Really there is no difference. "See" can refer both to the subjective sensation of looking and to the external object. While "experience" only refers to the subjective. I wanted to point out that we don't "see" representation in the same way we see objects.

If representations are not a part of our perceptions, then where do they come from and how do we know about them? — Luke

This makes me wonder if you know what I and others mean by "representation". Perceptions are representations. They are a mapping of features of reality, arriving to us via sensory organs, into a form amenable to awareness.

They are like maps. Maps inform, becase they correspond to real features, but they are radically not those features. If all you had access to were maps, would you be directly aware of what those maps represent?

How can the world possibly be perceived “independently of an observer”? — Luke

Naive realism requires that the qualitative features of perception mirror the features of reality sans perception. But they do not. They only exist during perception, and are features of the perceiver, not the perceived. But these qualitative features are exactly what we directly experience.

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

I'm afraid I still only have one clear answer: for perception to be "direct", naïve realism should be true. The features of our perceptions must be present in reality, so that barns really look red, and violins sound as they do, independently of an observer. But we all agree this is not the case.

Failing that, it seems we are talking about different things. You must be talking about something other than the relationship between perceptions and reality. Such as, the relationship of two physical bodies when one interacts with the other. Yes, when I touch a chicken, my hand comes into direct contact with the chicken. But that is not the subject of discussion.

What would constitute a direct physical interaction? — Count Timothy von Icarus

What counts as a direct physical interaction totally depends on context. If we are talking about billiard balls in the ordinary way, one ball knocking another is clearly a direct interaction, while a ball knocking another via a third is indirect. But if we are talking about the atomic scale, almost every interaction is indirect.

There is no right or wrong answer independent of context. That is why in this discussion it is crucial to keep in mind what we are talking about: the relationship of perception to reality.

- I don't believe that indirectness implies inaccuracy. — Leontiskos

My simple example above demonstrates that indirectness does not imply inaccuracy. They are separate concepts.

It seems to me that your word here, "indirect," is being asked to do far too much work. — Leontiskos

Maybe so. "Indirect" describes the relationship between sensation and the world. Just like the number on the meter, sensation is correlated to features of the world, casually connected to features of the world, potentially accurate informationally. And yet, it is at a casual remove from what it measures, and completely unlike what it measures.

Is that your theory, or is it something else? — Leontiskos

More or less, yes.

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 think it is you that is conflating accuracy and directness.

Consider a photovoltaic sensor. The number on the sensor can be quite accurate. It is mediated by the functioning device, and very much an indirect measure of the light falling on the sensor.

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

Again, instead of violating natural language, I think it is better to respect it, and analysis it on its own terms. To do otherwise plays into Banno's incessant objection, "but we don't feel our nerves".

In order to feel sandpaper:
The sandpaper must contact our skin.
The contact must register with sensory nerves.
The nervous signal must conduct to our brain.
Our brain must translate the nervous signal to sensation.

If this process fails in any step; in the cases of missing the object, nerve damage, brain damage or unconsciousness; the feel process fails. In which case, there is no sensation.

Sensation is separated from the sandpaper by each of the above steps. So, it only makes sense to say we feel the sandpaper, but feeling/sensation is indirect.

Wow, crazy. It is hard for me to think beyond the idea that shapes can only look the way they do. For taste and smell it is easy, substitute any for any other, shift the whole palette, swap in totally new ones, and you still have consistency. But shape? Can you and I be walking around seeing circles where I see squares? It doesn't make sense, we would report different things, and one of us would feel corners where there should not be. Can you imagine any other visual shape that would work in place of a circle? I cannot.

As a confounding factor, these people must have massive visual-cognitive impairment; not only did their visual systems not get to develop normally, they must have atrophied badly over the years. I don't know how much that might play into the result.

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

Smell is akin to color perception, rather than sight as a whole, which does seem to bear a non arbitrary relation to reality wrt shapes and spatial relationships.

Whereas, sight/smell is to reality as sign is to signified. Both are correlated to what they represent, and yet both are completely arbitrary. Moreover, the relationship is one way: signs point to signified, smells point to their chemicals, and colors to their wavelengths, yet there is no smell in a fragrance, no color in light, no sign in the signified.

Dies that make sense?

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

I agree with this, apart from "perceive the world as it actually is"; there is no such way of perceiving.

Your homunculus is showing... — Banno

Nope, no homunculus, that's just the conscious part of my brain.

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

I think this way is faithful to the way we use the word in everyday life. An indirect account of seeing acknowledges the indirection involved in the process, the direct account for whatever reason does not.

What happens if you reconsider these issues in terms of touch or smell?

It becomes harder to insert a "representation" in those cases. — Banno

Not at all. The feel of sand through your fingers and the smell of a rose are exactly as representational as their visual appearances. They are all ways that your brain presents sense data to you, the conscious decision maker, so that you can then act on it if you decide it's necessary.

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

I see "seeing" as indicating the whole process: from light entering the pupil, to the experiential representation. If at any point this process is interrupted then seeing does not happen.

"Perception" is just a more general term, including all the senses, but otherwise similar to "seeing". "Experiencing" is the most apt general language term that points to the subjective representation component of perception.

Representation is constitutive of seeing/perception. It doesn’t also need to be the thing seen. — Luke

Nobody is saying that representation is the thing seen. Following language usage, objects are the things seen. But seeing is indirect. The only thing we experience directly is the representation.

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

So in other words, seeing is inherently indirect.

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

Which direct realists? By not quoting anyone, and just projecting this distorted view onto all direct realists in general, he is totally off base.

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

I'm not sure, you could think about the sunset itself having the quality of being beautiful, as we do of people.

But I agree with your point. Some clearer examples.

"I was hit on the head so hard I saw stars"
"Just draw what you see"