Obviously you disagree with all the talk about "mental re-creations" and "images" and "percepts", but there's nothing objectionable about the use of "distal object" to refer to the object that reflects the light and "proximal stimulus" to refer to the light absorbed by the photoreceptors in the eye.

According to the definition you provided, light is a distal object, an “object in the real world”.

If the “proximal stimulus” is the “stimulation”, you’ve begun to talk about the perceiver, in this case what he does when he contacts light with his retina. There appears to be no other referent for these terms once we’re able to scratch through the cloak of neologisms. It’s clear to me, at least, that we’re no longer talking about the object of perception, which is the light bouncing off an apple.

Of course there's light beyond the proximal stimulus, but according to your theory it isn't directly perceived because it isn't in physical contact with our sense organs.

It will be in physical contact with our senses, just as the apple will be when we pick it up and eat it.

But you can’t know any of this because you can only directly perceive yourself.

According to your theory something is directly perceived only when it's in physical contact with our sense organs, in which case it is no longer a distal object but a proximal stimulus.

Objects don’t turn from one thing to another according to its proximity of the body. It’s a distinction without a difference.

Fair enough, Javi. No offence meant to you personally. But in the same vein, American politics ought to be irrelevant to Europeans, yet here we are.

No, it's a proximal stimulus. Distal objects are things like apples that reflect the light.

Light is not a “distal object”. So beyond the “proximal stimulus” there is no light? You’re repeating phrases, that’s it, making distinctions where there are none. It’s pure nounism.

Is light not a “distal object”?

We directly perceive light. Light is a member/instance/object of the mind-independent world. Therefore, we directly perceive the mind-independent world.

The species hasn’t evolved much in the last couple hundred years, I’m afraid.

Spaniards want to live in a country with affordable houses and better salaries. Our history cannot fix this.

Yet you keep electing people who want to take a large part of your income in order to spend it on illegals, other people, themselves, knowing full well that if you find a higher salary they’ll just take more.

Then what you mean by "direct perception" isn't what most other direct realists mean by it.

1. I don’t really care
2. That’s not entirely true.

According to everyone’s favorite, the SEP:

A.D. Smith claims that what most authors have in mind in talking about the Problem of Perception is the “question of whether we can ever directly perceive the physical world”, where “the physical world” is understood in a realist way: as having “an existence that is not in any way dependent upon its being... perceived or thought about” (2002: 1). The arguments at the heart of the Problem of Perception challenge this direct realist perspective on perceptual experience.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem

So I understand the problem similar to “most authors”, according to AD Smith. If I take a different approach to solving that problem that shouldn’t be an issue, at least for someone who doesn’t require other people’s arguments to pad their own.

So my solution is something like this. We directly perceive light. Light is a member/instance/object of the mind-independent world. Therefore, we directly perceive the mind-independent world.

I say the “directness” of perception is simple contact because it leaves zero space for mediation. As you show with your false analogies, once you allow space between objects there is a necessary mediation because light has to travel through that space and is at the mercy of anything in there (air, water). Contact is the only situation where there is nothing standing in the way of, or in between, the perceiver and the perceived. This relationship is “unmediated”, by which I mean there is no intervening thing or object. If you can come up with a better account of “directness”, by all means, I’d love to hear it.

On the other hand, you say you directly perceive sensations, or “images”, or “characters of experience”and a whole host of objects that no one else could ever perceive but you promise are there nonetheless. But that, to me, just means you consider yourself perceiver and the object of perception at the same time, a relationship that contradicts any realist position, and one that looks silly given the simple fact that the senses point outward, away from the mind-dependent world towards the mind-independent world.

Relax... leave my country alone.

We don't have law enforcement agencies which shoot people in the streets or folks who jump from the balcony every bloody summer. We are not perfect, but at least we are not like you.

Spain colonized the Americas. Spanish is the most widely spoken language on this side of the pond. Do they not teach history there?

But do we directly perceive the apple? Is (1) true or false?

Not with our eyes. There is light and space in between the apple and the perceiver.

What is the light and other mind-independent mediators supposed to represent in your analogy of mind-dependent perception? What does the indirect realist directly perceive?

Why did the British laborer run to the industrialists for jobs in the first place? Because of the “enclosure acts”; the government dispossessed the people from their traditional lands, so these people had to go work for subsistence wages in the towns and factories. It was either that or starve to death, after all. Had the industrialists not had a ready-made force of starving and sickly laborers to choose from they would have had to provide decent wages so as to entice the workers to work for them. All of this was occurring while the disastrous Poor Laws were already in place.

For every Josiah Bounderby there is bureaucrat behind him.

And evidently you refuse to provide a consistent answer, and seemingly conflate (1) and (2). It's a simple question: is (1) true or false? I can't address your questions until I understand what you think "direct perception" means, and to do that I need an answer to this question.

I’ve already shown that I have never have conflated the two. I’ve explained that the directness of perception is the contact between the environment and our senses.

That leaves you with the answer that we directly perceive the light that directly reflects off the apple. If that does not provide enough information we directly pick up the apple, directly feel the apple, directly smell the molecules of the apple, directly taste it, and so on. This is possible because we have direct perception of the environment. But you knew this already.

We’ve already gone through this weeks ago. But you interjected about your belief in “images” before falling back into bad faith when you were asked to describe their properties.

If the apple is now disintegrated then what is the intact apple you see if not an image?

Is this image in the light or in your brain?

It looks like the Minnesota government is finally cracking down on the shitty behavior of the usual suspects.

https://wgme.com/news/nation-world/police-arrest-26-anti-ice-protesters-for-riotous-conduct-outside-minnesota-hotel-riots-greg-bovino

Meanwhile, Spain moves to legalize the illegals.

“ Madrid points to ‘positive impact’ of migration as it moves to grant 500,000 undocumented people legal status.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/1/28/as-western-powers-crack-down-on-migrants-spain-embraces-500000

We get to watch in real time as a once-powerful empire turns into a commie shithole.

Alexis de Tocqueville came up with a good little concept called “soft despotism” that I think describes well the Western condition. We are fed the illusion of control (“representative” democracy), when in fact each of us have very little.

Rather, we are no more than serfs exploited for our resources. Some countries have such high tax burdens that such a livelihood is tantamount to forced labor, and I think many people are starting to realize that their governments are violating any and all contractual obligations to the people they lord over.

You previously said "Yes, we directly see the environment. That includes the things in that environment."

Contextomy is a fallacy where you rip a phrase from its context in an attempt to distort the meaning. You can tell from what I wrote after the phrase quoted that my opinion hasn’t changed. You’re trying to create the illusion that I’m being inconsistent, flip-flopping, all while avoiding any and all questions and criticisms of your own view. This bad faith suggests to me that you’re running out of reasonable options. Amadeus had to do the same thing after not being able to produce the very facts he claimed to be in possession of.

Here is the context of the quote for posterity.

Yes, we directly see the environment. That includes the things in that environment. That’s what the idealists call the “mind-independent world” and is the only thing under discussion in the debate. But the question is what are we directly seeing. I say the mediums that come into direct contact with the eyes, and are in fact absorbed by them. Indirect realism postulates sense-data, representations, and so on. We can examine light. We cannot examine sense-data.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1036606

Given the prevalence of this behavior by the indirect realists, the debate must move on to the question of “Why”? Why do this? What beliefs do you stand to lose with the repudiation of indirect realism?

I expect you know that there is no answer to that. These objects go by many names, which have in common that they are not reality, but are defined by their relationship to reality. To get anywhere with this debate, we have to look more closely at these various objects (concepts) and understand how they work, what jobs they do.

I’d be interested in understanding what ulterior motive lies behind their promotion. What do we stand to lose if we lose these concepts? I suspect it’s something like losing Zeus when we came to better understand the skies.

Your response to my thought experiment is that (2) is true, yet elsewhere you argue that (1) is true. Are you now willing to admit that (1) is false? (2) at least is prima facie consistent with the eliminative materialism you seem to favour.

I have never argued that we can directly perceive an object unless there is contact with the object, for instance touching it or eating it. And I don’t think anyone is disputing that the light reflecting off an apple has to travel to the eye, and so our sight is at the mercy of its speed. This is also true of odor molecules and sound waves, as well. Nonetheless, the light, odor molecules, and soundwaves travel from a specific and unique location in space and time, occupied by a certain object, your apple.

Can any of this be said about the image of the apple? Where is its location? With what sense are we perceiving it? What is its weight? Smell? Taste?

We’ve also shown that these analogies are false because they use mind-independent mediators to represent mind-dependent ones—one can be shown to exist while the other cannot. Are we to believe that some sort of similar process with light and distance and reflection occurs in the mind?

I'll repeat a thought experiment from earlier in the discussion.

Let's assume that we live in a world in which the air is thick and light has mass and travels at a slow 1m/s. An apple is placed 10m in front of you. After 5 seconds it is disintegrated. After a further 5 seconds the light reaches your eyes and you see an intact apple for 5 seconds.

In those 5 seconds in which you see an intact apple do you have direct perception of the now disintegrated apple? If the apple is now disintegrated then what is the intact apple you see if not an image?

I would be seeing the light reflected from the intact apple before I see the light reflected from the disintegrated apple.

In any case we don’t need to believe that a copy, image, or facsimile of the apple exists in the light, because light isn’t a copy of anything. It is its own thing.

We also don’t need to believe that an image of an apple stands between me and the actual apple because there is already plenty of verifiable things and substances that do. It is these things, not images, that mediate our perception of the apple and everything else in our periphery. It is why you have to alter the light and air in your thought experiments. They have properties we can discuss and alter in our imaginations. You can also do it with visors, mirrors, weird glasses, or any other mind-independent thing or substance.

I would much rather know what mind-dependent thing or substance the light or thick air or any other environmental mediator is supposed to represent in these analogies, because that is what the indirect realist proposes he is directly perceiving. What are their properties, their mass, their speed. Give us a thought-experiment about those things, if you wouldn’t mind.

I perceive the objects themselves. I don’t perceive images. I don’t know how else I can answer your loaded question.

Everything seems to be the exact opposite of what you claim. I can walk to an object and touch it, confirming its location and distance from my body. I can see and feel that a coffee cup, for instance, isn’t an image. It has a position in space and time, weight, shape, and absolutely zero properties of what you claim is an “image”, something you’re unable or unwilling to describe in the first place.

The images you claim exist and are facts have zero such properties. You cannot make your claims any truer by sheer force of repetition, and all you have left is the most blatant fallacy. You can huff and puff about how all tedious this is but that doesn’t change the fact that you have no argument or evidence.

There is new video out of Alex Pretti which displays an earlier confrontation with ICE. In hit he spits at officers, kicks their vehicle enough to smash their taillights, and then yells “Hit me, MF!” “Pepper spray me, MF!” before being tackled by the agents, confirming that the violent reaction to their antics is what they want.



The man was murdered unjustly by ICE, but like all saints of the Anti-Trump Movement, he isn’t as amazing as that crowd is portraying him. He was a part of an organized and mentally ill cult of goons who spend their free time stalking and assaulting agents of the federal government.

In my experience? I don’t see any images, mate. Perhaps I have aphantasia, or whatever it’s called, but I am absolutely ignorant to what you’re talking about. I can see, but my periphery consists only of what lies outside my skull, not inside. For instance I can see my own nose. My nose isn’t in a place called “experience”; it’s on my face. Things and places have locations in space and time, properties, and so on, but you can’t give me a single account of something you confidently assert is there. How is that possible?

So what's your take on the WSJ that Trump has benefitted 1,5 billion dollars in one year of his second term? What do you think about Trump asking 1 billion for a permanent seat on "Board of Peace", where he is chairman for life? Is that Presidential behavior? This from the guy that promised to "drain the swamp".

Do you mean the Trump Organization has benefited? That’s a business that has been around for 4 decades and has over 10,000 employees. I understand that anti-Trumpism doesn’t allow one to differentiate between Trump the president and Trump the organization, so I simply do not take the criticism seriously.

I think the Board of Peace is going to do better than the United Nations and the effete Rules-based International Order combined, mainly because they treat states as “legal persons”, complete with rights and duties, and Trump doesn’t. Besides, Trump alone has already done more to secure peaceful dialogue than all of Europe and the United Nations has ever done, anywhere, at any time, so maybe it will only prove to undermine those institutions further.

This is to misunderstand, entirely, even the fundamental basis for what we're talking. You seem to think you do not have any images of any kind available to you. That's fine. But it means the rest of this conversation is utterly pointless.

You have all the facts so it should be easy to explain, but you cannot even describe where this images are located, what these images look like, or describe any of their properties. That’s fine. I already knew the answer.

There can be no middle road on this issue. You either support fascism, or you do not.

You’re supporting crime. If Trump took out Hitler there would be riots. There was people out there protesting when he took out Maduro. This is what anti-Trumpism leads people to do.

Either you believe we literally take images into our heads from the outside, or we have absolutely, 100% without a shadow of a doubt, seen, in the brain, the infrastructure for creating mental images/representations. One of those needs to be true (but this doesn't determine an IR/DR perspective. It just is the two options available based on the fact that we aren't the images we 'see'). It would be helpful to know which you think is the case..

I believe neither of your two options. Why do you think we see images, take images into the head, or create images/representations, when neither of the above have been found in any skull in the history of mankind?

This is quite clearly incoherent: If we are veiled from the actions of our brain, we have no possible access to the outside world. We do not see things in our eyes - our eyes literally ships electrical signals to our brain. Without hte brain there is no possible mental image (or whatever you'd like to call it). Eyes (i.e the sense organ) objectively see/present nothing but "code" for lack of a better term. They do not contain or receive images. This much is an empirical truth and not part of the philosophical disagreement - which is why it seems to me you (and others) are not quite coming into contact with the facts prior to trying to determine some epistemic situation (there is a big spanner to this approach, but its not hard to overcome).

Data, code, images. It seems to me you (and others) are just making stuff up because you have yet to tell me what those words refer to, their properties, or describe a single thing about them. If you’re beholden to the facts and I am not, then it should be easy; there are plenty of things in the body you could list that are worthy of those terms. We have fairly comprehensive, anatomically correct diagrams, scans, images of brains, so why won’t you educate me of those facts and point out what the image, the code, and the representation is? If it’s not an object, then what is it?

There are no "objects" in the head. That has never been claimed, so let's be clear: The images we see are there, whether or not you claim they are generated by the brain or not. If you're claiming they are not generated by the brain, you have a world of philosophy and neuroscience to battle against and an incredibly uphill battle it is, to explain how it is the apple on my table gets into my head(read: experience, i guess, noting hte empirical facts of perception).

The images we see are there…where? Grab an image of the brain (a real one and not one generated by your brain), and show us. It should be simple because you claim to already have these so-called facts.

Don’t you think it’s still a little premature to start making predictions given that them rest of the haven’t panned out yet? I’m still waiting for your recession, but then I read this morning that gdp growth is expected to keep climbing. It’s almost to the point that should ssu predict something, it would be wise for others to predict the exact opposite.

Oh my dear innocent, this has nothing to do with immigration

Do you know what ICE stands for? Do you head to the streets, riot in the Canadian streets, when they deport illegals and foreign criminals?

Back when Tom Homan did the same thing under Obama, and on a greater scale, he was given awards and glowing reviews. Now he’s a fascist. So clearly there is no principle involved here at all, so it’s just the defense of criminality and the tacit belligerence towards the law abiding taxpayer.

Americans live there, work there, and have to deal with this violence every day. Why won’t these insurrectionists stand up for them, and not the people who defraud the immigrations system? I’m just suggesting you guys are wrong.

See? Defending criminals and endorsing violence in the streets. You’d make a good blackshirt.

Protesting? They are blocking streets, lighting fires, waving foreign flags, and making “trans autonomous zones”, all to defend those who defraud the American people, actual immigrants, and the communities illegals subvert. Imagine if a bunch of Trumpers did that. By all means, go protest—I would rather they did. But this is sheer lunacy and I hope residents put them down.

You present as clueless as Trump.

It's about fascism

Fascists were always out in the streets protesting. Why don’t you guys just do a little putsch and be done with it?

This is exactly what they want. They know someone is filming. They know it riles up the rest of their cult, that they will hold vigils, make t-shirts, and engage in other collective displays of whatever you want to call this. They want to get hit. It’s why they stand in front of cars; it’s why they spit in faces: it’s why they scream in the ears of those authorized to use lethal force.

The glaring part of all of it is that it’s done in defense of criminal and immoral behavior. There are videos of people crying when pedophiles are captured, for Christ sake. Why don’t they ever protest for the innocent?

If I can talk about my headaches, and ChatGpt cannot, there seems to be something I have that I am talking about, that ChatGpt will always lack. If that something can be discussed, and it is mine alone, this seems enough to talk of this something as an entity, if not a physical "object".

That something is the your body. After all, it is the only object under discussion in any of these matters.

Rather, It is the nominalization of abstract terms in combination with the grammar that is leading us astray, since we know, just by looking, that when your “head aches” it does not thereby produce an object called a “headache”.

So I fear that the whole effort of indirect realism is to prey on the cognitive error of reification so as to rescue a waning subjectivism and idealism, finally in its death throes.

The Direct Realist has the untenable position that i) John cannot possibly feel the same private sensation when sitting in “hot” water that Jane feels when sitting in “cold” water and ii) John must feel the same private sensation when sitting in “hot” water that Jane feels when sitting in “hot” water.

That’s just not true. When someone has severe hypothermia they can get so cold that their blood rushes to the surface in a last ditch effort to warm the body, and they begin to feel hot; so hot, in fact, that they often strip off their clothes. This occurs precisely when their body is losing heat at fatal levels. So it is just a natural phenomenon that someone can feel hot when they are measurably cold.

I have a friend with severe neuropathy in his legs. One time he rested his foot on a heater of some sort and burned his foot. He said he noticed his foot burning only when he could smell his burning flesh. He never felt the sensation of heat but his foot became so hot that it burned.

These types of occurrences are well known and I’m not sure anyone holds the position you claim they do.

The fact that one feels hot when freezing, or not hot when burning, is a sign that something isn’t working in their body and it’s time to seek a doctor. We can understand that the hypothermic man feels “hot” but he is in fact cold. We can understand that a person with neuropathy can feel nothing but is in fact hot. We understand that it is a problem of the perceiver and not the perceived.

Light does not appear to you. It enters your eyes and, after some other intermediary activity mental images appear to you. Light stops being light at your eyes. Your brain literally constructs images from the data which your eyes derived from that light, as electrical signals, within your brain. This is why you can get after images, because your brain is still constructing an image due to an excess of light enter the eye and distorting the objects its reflected off. This should be sufficient to at least give you pause. You cannot see an object witout light - light is a medium which is not in or of the objects it reflects off of. There is no possible room to call mental images direct, unless you do the thing of saying "direct representations" which is a misnomer because representation already infers intermediacy.

If humans don’t see light why do we have lightbulbs?

It’s interesting stuff, sure, but it is not sufficient to give me pause because humans have looked in the brain and have seen no images or anything that constructs images.

Moreover, I do not rely on first person accounts to explain mental phenomena, including my own, because that view is inherently limited. If I’m having hallucinations I’m going to get a second opinion. I’m going to get someone to look in there and trust that he has a better grasp than I do.

While you and Michael claim there is the proverbial veil blocking us from direct access to the world, I say that the veil blocks your access to the goings on of your own brain. I say this for the simple reason that the senses point outward. I cannot even see my own ears, let alone what is occurring inside my head. All I can do with such a limited view of “mental phenomena” is to try to make sense of the fleeting feelings given to the closest sense receptors, and those are often unreliable. Again, this is why we have sophisticated imaging contraptions, specialized doctors, and brains in jars: so that we can better understand what is occurring in there.

So I believe you guys are the naive realists, not only for claiming there exists things in the head that cannot be proven to exist, but because you believe you have a superior epistemological grasp of what is occurring behind your senses rather than in front of them.

You say that hearing this sound means that I am in direct contact with whatever is outside the room.

I do not say that. I have only said that we are in direct contact with the air or atmosphere. That is the medium through which the soundwaves travel. Direct contact entails no distance, so I’m not sure why anyone would assume I am speaking of direct contact between a perceiver and distant objects.

I am in a room with the door closed, I hear a sound. I infer that the sound came from outside the room. I may be wrong, but I infer it.

In this case, is it the correct use of language to say “I have direct contact with what is outside the room”?

No, but you would have direct contact with the medium through which the waves travelled, the air. The air comes from and is a feature of the mind-independent world.

So point to where in the light and the organism's body I can look to see this "information"? If I open up your head can I see the information you have about the object's composition?

You’re right. “Information” is a verb-to-noun derivation. There is no referent. If I was to be more precise (and careful) I’d say “The molecules in the air, the wavelengths in the light, the soundwaves in the water, come from the distant objects, informing us about those distant objects.” There is no need to go on multiplying entities, after all.

Then your account is insufficient, because you said that we directly see an object if "our senses are in direct contact with the wavelengths in the light affording us information about those distant objects". This would entail that if we look at something through a CCTV camera on a screen then we are viewing that thing directly, which you admit we aren't. Therefore, direct perception isn't just "our senses being in direct contact with the wavelengths in the light that affords us information about those distant objects".

My account is quite different. Here’s what I actually said:

“Dealing with those mediums counts as direct perception of the world because our senses are in direct contact with those mediums, whatever information they afford us, and those mediums are features of the environment. The molecules in the air, the wavelengths in the light, the soundwaves in the water, come from the distant objects, affording us information about those distant objects.”

It would help me understand what my claim entails if you were to tell me what mental object the cctv is supposed to represent in your analogy, so that you can demonstrate that your analogy isn’t false.

Alright, perhaps we’re talking about different things. My understanding of the problem of perception is whether I can directly perceive the mind-independent world, or if I directly perceive some mind-dependent intermediary, like representations or sense-data. I didn’t know we were arguing about whether we were directly or indirectly seeing mind-independent things through other mind-independent intermediaries. For now, I’ll leave that one for you guys to has out.

Light is of the mind-independent world; it is absorbed by the eyes; and therefore each of us has direct contact with the “mind-independent world”. Since this contact is direct, so is access to the “mind-independent world”, and there is zero room in space and time for any intermediary. That’s my whole point, basically.

Simply put it: Danes have to keep the heads cool. Trump is a demented idiot and people around him will repeat everything what he says, but the US establishment aren't made of demented idiots. It's something we never should forget here.

Speaking of idiots, the Danes are sending troops to Greenland, ready to die for their monarchy and the last vestiges of their colonial empire.