Science is based on human experience, it is a particular way of investigating and learning from human experience, so I can't see how it makes sense to say that science ignores human experience.

True, perceptions are of many things. I'm not sure what your point is though.

I would have thought it clear i was using your term here, hence the inverteds. — AmadeusD

I really don't know what you are talking about. You still haven't answered my question as to whether colour and seeing colour are the same thing. You seemed to be implying that they are. If you don't believe they are then fine, we agree on that much.

It's important insofar as it is the indirect cause of sensation — AmadeusD

I agree that it is the cause of sensation, I just don't see what the "indirect" is doing there. Perception is a complex process, and I haven't denied that. But sticking with the visual paradigm and according to the scientific analysis, the light reflected from perceptible objects affects our living sentient bodies and gives us information about the nature of the things we perceive. Thus, we see and can come to deeply understand those perceptible objects; I see no reason to doubt this. There would not seem to be any imaginable more direct ways of accessing perceptible objects (visually at least, since we might want to say that touching is more direct than seeing is).

I'm afraid there is a big problem. What "correspond" means is completely unclear. Consequently, this theory - paradoxically - is the basis of some very strange ideas, such as the idea that reality is, in some mysterious way, beyond our ken. — Ludwig V

The idea of correspondence is inherent In Tarski's approach, and it is only a problem if reality is considered to be something absolute and out of the reach of human experience and judgement. What is generally considered to be real is of course not out of the realm of human experience and judgement.

antidestablishmentarianism — Jack Cummins

Do you mean 'antiestablishmentarianism' or 'antidisestablishmentarianism'? I presume the former, since the latter means being against the idea of disestablishment. The former could also be 'disestablishmentarianism', the ideological principle of disestablishment.

These terms seem too absolute, too ideologistic. Am I always against the establishment, against the establishment in principle, or am I merely against those aspects of the establishment which entrench classism, racism. sexism. privelege and so on?

I would not class an hallucination as a perception because nothing is being perceived.

I don't think hallucinations are problematic. I have never experienced an hallucination, visual or otherwise, that I thought was a real object or from a real object, and that includes my copious experiences with hallucinogens.

Some might say that perception refers to our sensory experience of the world. — Luke

It seems that 'perception' is a polysemous term and is used to refer to the whole process as in 'science of perception'. However, the part of the process that is prior to awareness seems irrelevant to the question of whether we see things or merely representations of things. Of course, we can say either and there is no matter of fact there but just different interpretations. I think the point at issue is whether one way of speaking or the other is more coherent and consistent.

For me saying that we see representations is more problematic and less parsimonious than saying we simply see things. The fact that the process that leads to our seeing things is complex does not seem relevant. Life and existence itself is a complex web of causal processes, and it does not seem right to characterize any of these as "indirect" in any absolute sense, but only in comparison to alternative processes that are more direct.

There is no alternative, more direct process of perception that we know of or can imagine except the prescientific 'naive realist' one where the eyes were thought of as windows through which we look out on a world of objects that were thought to exist in themselves exactly as they appear to us.

I've addressed this. Restating the question in terms i've noted make no sense isn't helpful my guy. — AmadeusD

colours are obviously visual sensations. 'seeing a colour' is that sensation — AmadeusD

It's very simple—are you saying colours and seeing colours are the same thing? — Janus

You say colours are obviously visual sensations, and you say that seeing colours is a (presumably visual) sensation, so you seem to be saying that colours and seeing colours are the same thing. That's why I asked the question which you don't seem to be prepared to answer.

So, on this you're just wrong. — AmadeusD

And yet you seem to be completely incapable of saying why I am wrong. Odd that.

I'm unsure what exactly you're trying to ask. — AmadeusD

It's very simple—are you saying colours and seeing colours are the same thing?

Taking vision as the paradigmatic example, the science of vision includes light being reflected from objects and entering the retina, electrochemical processes in the optic nerve and neuronal processes in the visual cortex, none of these processes are perceived in vivo. These are causal physical processes which give rise to perception, but which are themselves prior to perception.

So colours and seeing colours are the same thing according to you?

This is where people are getting lost in the grammar.

I see colours. Colours are a visual sensation. — Michael

It seems to me you are getting lost in, by complicating, the grammar. Seeing colours is a visual sensation, colours are not visual sensations.

Thanks, some interesting information that raises salient questions. In the standard ghost stories I have been most familiar with the ghost haunts the place they were murdered, and doesn't follow the murderer around so locality seems to be the central aspect of haunting, at least according to that particular line.

You'd think, given the atrocities committed against the aborigines by the white settlers, that their ghosts, if there were such actual entities, would haunt us plenty.

I have heard of bone-pointing deaths, not sure if they are well-documented.

We're not old enough to be haunted. — Wayfarer

That's right, the Aboriginal people had only been here for something like sixty thousand years. Your eurocentrism is showing.

How do you know ancient people talked coherently about their mental states? Did they think in terms of mental states at all? Do you have any textual examples that support the claim that they did think in these kinds of terms?

I searched a little and found this which seems to contradict your thesis.

Theist here: It should be about more than just "getting to heaven." The bible contains unbelievably sophisticated dialogues and discourses between "God" and "man" which helps man frame and understand his world/his self. — BitconnectCarlos

I agree much of the Bible is great literature and great literature may do as you suggest. It may help people to understand the human condition and live better lives. It is all about how best to live this life, and worrying about an imagined life to come after this one is not the best way.

IMHO remove those guideposts and we're in a very different type of world... human reason is very, very late to the scene, evolutionarily speaking, and as well as biased and if you rely on it for everything as the philosopher tends to do you just end up with an enormous faith in yourself and your own convictions as I've seen time and time again. Reason has its place but to say that one's entire worldview can be constructed from reason is just folly. — BitconnectCarlos

I disagree with this. The 'higher' animals also reason in their own ways in my opinion. You should have (provisional) faith in yourself and your convictions, while remaining open to other ideas and constantly testing them and your own ideas against your own experience.

Reason alone tells us nothing, it must be applied to experience. For the free spirit accepting dogma is the way down, the way back, not the way up or the way forward.

:up:

Unfortunately some also have a narcissistic need to believe themselves superior, and religions frequently feed such a need. — wonderer1

Yes, the insidious notion of the "elect", held fast by those who believe themselves favored in God's eyes. It is mind-boggling how long such childish delusions can survive.

I'm not sure I understand the question. We all live with the illusion of free will. Society demands moral responsibility, and this leads to the assigning of praise and blame, and of course in the process of socialization this assignation becomes introjected by individuals, such that they are prone to praise and blame themselves in various ways.

I don't believe this is the best way of living, but it is not so easy to become free of. Everyone is different and has different capabilities, and circumstantial luck has a lot to do with our lives as well. People do what they are capable of, and change or don't change in different ways accordingly.

I see concern about the "fate of the immortal soul" as a sad state of delusion. I don't deny that for those who cannot see their way clear of such delusions that faith in salvation of some kind may indeed be their only way forward.

That's why I don't condemn religious faith tout court. Belief in absurd things may indeed have benefits for individuals, although I think those beliefs are only salving wounds which have been inflicted by such beliefs in the first place.

The fact that this mostly or entirely occurs without conscious awareness does not belie the fact that there is an incredibly complex inferential process at work. — hypericin

I agree that perception is a complex process. I don't agree that "inferential" is a term that aptly characterizes it. Anyway, I have little use for the whole 'direct/ indirect' framing, this argument is ultimately reducible to terminological preference and usage, and it's just going pointlessly around and around in the realm of mere assertion, so I'm stepping of the merry-go-round on account of boredom.

Right on, brother!

As I understand there are deductive inferences, which if valid are necessary and inductive and abductive inferences, which are not logically necessary.

The former are purely logical and require symbolic language, whereas the latter do not require language and presumably have more in common with animal inferences.

What I am disagreeing with are ideas such as that my seeing a tree is an inference.

I don't think he was advocating a kind of quietism. — Paine

I agree and that wasn't at all what I had in mind.

As I understand it Spinoza was a thorough determinist. He denied freedom of will even to God (or nature). The freedom that may be enabled by reason is to come to understand that all our thoughts and actions are determined, and thus to become free of the troubling illusion of free will.

But this misses the point, which is that for those who actually believe in God, it has real consequences. Whereas to believe that it's simply a 'puzzle-solver is a meaningless hypothetical. — Wayfarer

That's a pointless point that deserves to be missed. Belief in anything, however absurd, (Nazism, scientism, Zionism, scientology, you name it) has real consequences, since belief is a primary driver of action.

Nicely set out!

What else can an organism do with this information but infer things (consciously or otherwise) about its environment? — hypericin

It seems odd to speak of simple organisms making inferences, conscious or otherwise, since the term usually applies to the deliverances of rational thought. I don't deny that so-called "higher organisms", cognitively complex organisms, including humans, can make inferences, but I don't see perceptions of anything in the environment as inferences, rather those perceptions are what inferences might be based upon.

What seems confused to me is this strange instance that seeing is this primordial thing, resistant to all analysis, such that "I think we see what the objects are" is somehow remotely adequate. Never mind what we actually understand about perception, that is

scientism
— Leontiskos — hypericin

We see objects as they are able to appear to us given their and our natures. The science of perception has shown us that naive realism does not take into account the relational character of perception. If those relations are as real as the percipients and the things perceived, then why should we speak in terms of indirectness or distortion?

See A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour and primitivism. Plenty of people thought – and probably still do, particularly if they are not taught science – that fire engines are red in the dark and that the presence of light simply "reveals" that colour. — Michael

It depends on what is meant by "are read". Obviously they cannot appear red in the dark. In any case even if, for the sake of argument, you assume there is a fact of the matter there, if you want to say that science, which is necessarily based on perception, shows us that fire engines are not red in the dark, then you are claiming that science, and by implication, perception shows us how things are, which is counter to your stated position.

:up: likewise

:up:

Cheers, I have also resonated with your recent explanations. I hope we are not in danger of finding ourselves with nothing to argue about! :smile:

I can’t justify receiving the lawful effects of light refraction while at the same time blaming my eyes for giving me blatant distortions. — Mww

I agree, but before a scientific understanding of what is going in it may have been puzzling, All I think these cases amount to are circumstances in which things appear to be different than they are when not found in the said circumstances.

It is an unusual use. I seem to remember coming across it before somewhere in a context where perceptions were being treated as inferences, but I can't recall the name of the philosopher.

I don't think we "infer the existence and nature of objects at a distance from the body" I think we see (if we are close enough to identify them) what the distant objects are. The way you are putting it seems confused to me, and liable, if taken seriously, to breed further confusion, and this may be the reason you cannot understand why others don't think about this the way you do.

Thanks for your articulate explanation. I have no argument with anything you've said there. I would use different language, though. I don't think I have a conviction that I have two hands, as if there could be any doubt. To my way of thinking 'conviction' like 'belief' suggests the possibility of being wrong. I know that I have two hands because I can see them, feel them, use them—there is no possibility of being wrong, no possibility of doubt.

Secondary qualities are the result of interactions between the body and the objects that display them. For example, of course colour considered as a visual phenomenon, cannot manifest as such except as seen. I see no puzzle in that.

For no particular reason….

”perception sometimes distorts reality. We know this to be so because mostly, it doesn't".
— Janus

How do we go about proving whatever distortion there may or may not have been, is caused by perception? — Mww

I agree with you, the phrasing is clumsy. It should have been put better. I was referring to things that proponents of IR usually cite such as sticks appearing bent when partly submerged in water. We perceive the stick as bent when it is really straight. It would have been better to say that we sometimes have distorted perceptions of reality (what is the case). The bent stick phenomenon is really no different than the kinds of things we see when we look into a convex or concave or badly distorted mirror.

I was arguing against the IR claim that perception always distorts reality. Our only access to reality, and hence where we derive the very notion of reality, is perception.

And to answer your question I don't want to try to prove that any distortion has been caused by distortion, because I think such perceptual distortions are caused by special circumstances.

The argument has nothing to do with the status of so-called 'secondary qualities' or particle physics and you seem to be conflating naive realism with direct realism, so I am a loss as to how to respond.

I think we can know when we are thinking a particular thought just as we can know when we are looking at any particular object. Those are about as certain as any certainty can get.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say Descartes' cogito is a counterfactual, if that is what you are saying, and if it isn't, then I don't know what you are saying.

As to the "intelligibility of nature' example, I think I agree with you since it would be absurd to demand that intelligibility be pointed to as an object of the senses.

I don't think certainty matters. What counts is what is most coherent and consistent with our experience.

Since, according to scientific understanding, thinking, like perceiving, is a process, I don't see why it would not, on the indirect realist argument, equally qualify as indirect. I also don't see why my direct knowledge that I am thinking a particualr thought is any less certain than my direct knowledge that I am perceiving, for example, a tree.