As an Indirect Realist, I believe that I directly see a model or a representation of a tree in my mind. — RussellA

What is 'seeing' as a process for you? clearly it doesn't involve eyes (since you don't use your eyes to 'see' the model). It also doesn't involve external objects, since you 'see' the model. It doesn't even involve your visual cortex (that's involved in the modelling, and yet what you 'see' is somehow the finished model)

So what is it to 'see' something? My dictionary simply has...

see
verb
uk
/siː/ us
/siː/
present participle seeing | past tense saw | past participle seen
see verb (USE EYES)
A1 [ I or T ]
to be conscious of what is around you by using your eyes: — https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/see

I'm intrigued by what makes you want to alter that definition.

When I perceive a tree, I don't question that I am perceiving a tree — RussellA

You just said...

I directly see a model or a representation of a tree in my mind. — RussellA

...so are you seeing two things? One, the tree(indirectly) and two, the model (directly).

I do question that what I am perceiving as a tree exists in the world as a tree. — RussellA

What would it mean to exist 'as a tree'? As opposed to what?

I can treat the something I perceive as a tree as a tree in the world, act towards it as tree, and follow the consequences of my actions. — RussellA

I don't see how you would know what 'treating it like a tree' would entail if no-one has any veridical experience of trees.

I agree when you say that "all the while that interacting with it as if it were a tree yields the results you'd expect of it if it were a tree", but don't agree that your conclusion would logically follow "So we can conclude that virtually all the time we know what we see is the tree" — RussellA

It just logically follows. If to 'know' something is to have sufficient warrant for believing it', and if 'sufficient warrant' is 'having something respond as expected when treating it as if it were what you believe it to be' - then is simply follows, by substitution, that you 'know' you see a tree all the while you treat it as if it were a tree and it responds accordingly.

If you disagree you need to supply an alternative definition for 'I know', because with the one you previously agreed to you, you must 'know' you're seeing a tree. all I've done is directly substitute 'know' for your definition of 'know'.

In Searle’s list, object becomes tree at #3, and in the picture it can be a tree only after Searle’s #3, but without that condition, which is not even implied by the picture, it is the case that it should have been object on the left, at instance of perception, and never a tree. Nevertheless, the picture correctly represents the initial conditions for visual experience, demonstrating the presentation of an object directly to the system, according to physical law. — Mww

Absolutely. Part of the process of 'seeing' we can be fairly sure about now is that it involves what's termed 'construction'. We take all those patterns of light we sampled, put them into a prediction engine together with a ton of previous assumptions about what we expect to sample, and come up with a set of instructions for what to do about that sample. The vast majority of those instructions are geared toward getting a better sample, reducing our uncertainty about the data. Some instructions are even ways to manipulate the data so it more closely matches what we expect (prune the tree so it's branches match what we expect them to be).

Nowhere in that whole process is there a tree. Nowhere is there even a model of a tree. There's just a load of chemicals and electrical signals.

The 'tree' is an aspect of our language and commonly it refers to the external world. the thing that's 'out there'. It seems something of an odd pastime of philosophers to start fiddling with that.

are you and your colleagues appalled at the extent to which humans can’t find agreement among themselves on the most fundamental human considerations? — Mww

Ha! My research would have come to a very ignominious end had humans turned out to have agreed with each other about the most fundamental human considerations. Mostly, we're grateful.

On the contrary, I'm quite certian I'm not "seeing the tree as it really is" — hypericin

Exactly my point. You have trouble with the tree, yet when considering, say public health policy (over which you've become quite hysterically opposed to alternative views) you are absolutely pathologically certain of what you believe to be the case about the world.

Why is it in complex cases of public health policy you're absolutely certain that the way the world seems to you is the way it is, but with a simple tree you're unsure?

“I see the tree as it really is” is either normally true but sometimes not*, or else it’s incoherent, along with its contrary statement. These are two ways of using the words.

With the second sense, it’s incoherent because it’s like saying “I see the tree as it appears without my intervening process of perception”. But obviously, a tree that is not perceived does not appear.

Despite appearances, this is an argument against indirect, not direct, realism.

* “Sometimes not”: I was at the top of a mountain once, looking down upon a pine forest. Within this forest, surrounded by pines, was a group of golden birch trees, which was strange considering it was the South of France in spring. A short while later the correct perception snapped into place: they were not birch trees at all but just a patch of pine trees lit up by evening sunlight through a gap in the clouds.

I'll see if I can state succinctly what I believe to be the important point. The difference between Hegel and Marx is the difference between idealism and materialism. The two are actually very similar, but there is an inversion between them in the way that first principles are produced, which results in somewhat opposing ways of looking at the very same thing.

So Hegel described the State as being a manifestation of the Idea. The Idea might be something like "the good", "the right", "the just", and being ideal, it's derived from God. From here, the history of the State is described as a history of the Idea, and how human beings strive to serve the Idea. The Idea comes from God, and there is always a need for the human subjects to be servants to the Idea.

Marx liked Hegel's historical approach, but figured he got the first principle wrong. In order to produce a true historicity he had to replace the Idea with matter, as the first principle. This was to place the living human being, and its material body as the first principle, rather than some pie in the sky "good", "right", or "God". So from Marx's perspective there is real substance grounding these ideas like "good", "right", "just", and this is the material needs of the material human being. From this perspective we can have a real history of the State, judging by its practises of providing for the material needs of material human bodies.

You can see the inversion. From the Hegelian perspective, the people must be judged in their capacity to serve the ideals of the State. From the Marxian perspective, the State must be judged in its capacity to serve the material needs of human beings. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you succeeded. Nicely put.

If I had to quibble or add something, I’d want to emphasize that “material needs” for Marx included social, creative, spiritual and intellectual needs.

I don't believe animals parse experience in terms of subject/ object. — Janus

Animals do not deploy dualistic language; do you think they do not see at all? — Janus

What they lack is the ability to consider themselves as subjects, i.e. they're absent rational self-awareness. Yes some can pass the mirror test, but I bet none of them are thinking 'what am I doing here?' or 'what does being an elephant mean, really?' They don’t have the predicament of selfhood.

I bet none of them are thinking 'what am I doing here?' or 'what does being an elephant mean, really?' They don’t have the predicament of selfhood. — Wayfarer

I've always thought this position really odd. I mean you've literally zero evidence either way. There's no behavioural indicator of questioning selfhood and no reason to think a spoken language is required. So why would you "bet" either way?

You've made a pretty puzzle for yourself. — Banno

A puzzle I have my own solution to, but remains to be accepted by the Direct Realist.

I wrote "Direct Realism's solution to this seeming paradox is by equating the effect with the cause, in that, if the effect is sensing of the colour green, Direct Realism says that the cause is also the colour green. Given a single effect, Direct Realism gives a single cause that is identical with the effect. However, this is an illusion."

As Searle wrote, the experience of pain is identical with the pain
"The relation of perception to the experience is one of identity. It is like the pain and the experience of pain. The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain. Similarly, if the experience of perceiving is an object of perceiving, then it becomes identical with the perceiving. Just as the pain is identical with the experience of pain, so the visual experience is identical with the experience of seeing"

The Indirect Realist accepts that perceiving a single cause for a single effect is an illusion, but this is not something that the Direct Realist accepts.

Other factors that the the Direct Realist need to take into account are: i) the asymmetry of causal relations, which coincides with temporal asymmetry, whereby effects do not precede their causes, and ii) the over determination problem, where an effect such as perceiving the colour green can have two or more distinct sufficient causes.

Seems you can't tell that this post from me is a post from me - just by seeing this post, "one cannot know, of the several possible causes, which was the actual cause". — Banno

Very true. Who are you. You may be a sixteen year old working as a waiter and living in Lima, you might be Kamala Harris passing her evenings in Washington, you could be a forty year old tax inspector living in Beijing wanting to improve their English, or you may even be a ChatGPT. I don't know. I am responding to the post, not the author of the post who is unknown to me.

Roland Barthes wrote The Death of the Author in 1967, which emphasizes the primacy of each individual reader's interpretation of the work over any "definitive" meaning intended by the author.

….the thing that's 'out there'. It seems something of an odd pastime of philosophers to start fiddling with that. — Isaac

Logical thing to do, from their point of view, when fiddling with the ‘in here’ couldn’t be improved.

Mostly, we're grateful. — Isaac

I can….errr….‘see’ how that is likely true.

If I had to quibble or add something, I’d want to emphasize that “material needs” for Marx included social, creative, spiritual and intellectual needs. — Jamal

Right, and I think that is actually quite important. The reason I said Marx is so insightful, is the same reason why his materialism is so similar to Hegel's idealism. He successfully transforms Hegel's "Idea" into "matter". So instead of rejecting Hegel, as pie-in-the-sky idealism, he just takes Hegel's historicity pretty much as it is, goes one step beyond, and grounds it in something supposedly real, i.e. matter. Therefore all the features of the Idea are manifestations of matter.

This is similar to what Aristotle did with Plato's "the good". The good is cast as some sort of guiding principle for the human being, combining both body and mind to act coherently, in unison. But the good is left by Plato as fundamentally unknowable. Aristotle saw that if the good is supposed to be the guiding principle, it cannot be left as unknowable, so he moved toward positing a real tangible "end" to human actions and that was "happiness".

The issue which arises, is that if the thing posited as the real tangible end, happiness for Aristotle, or material existence for Marx, turns out to be elusive, incoherent, or unintelligible itself (merely a pie-in-the-sky ideal), then the proposal is eroded, the structure collapses back, and is revealed as being just another form of idealism. So what is pivotal is the truth to the grounding of the idea.

What is 'seeing' as a process for you? — Isaac

Along the lines of what is written in Searle's article:
“You said that you directly perceive the tree, but suppose it is a hallucination. And suppose the hallucination is type identical with the veridical experience. What do you see then? It is obvious that you do not see the tree but only the visual experience itself, what the traditional philosophers called an idea, an impression, or a sense datum.”

The Cambridge Dictionary describes "to see" as:
to be conscious of what is around you by using your eyes
to watch a film, television programme, etc.
to be the time or place when something happens
to understand, know, or realize
to meet or visit someone, or to visit a place
to consider or think about
to imagine someone doing a particular activity
to take someone somewhere by going there with them
to try to discover
to make certain that something happens

I see what you mean, but both the good and bad thing about language is that each word may have several different meanings, and knowing what is meant often depends on context, which is often ambiguous.

so are you seeing two things? One, the tree(indirectly) and two, the model (directly). — Isaac

I think that I am seeing only one thing, a model of a tree in my mind.

Searle wrote:
"The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain."

Using Searle's words, it is not that the visual experiences has a tree as an object because the visual experience is identical with the tree.

What would it mean to exist 'as a tree'? As opposed to what? — Isaac

"Trees" exist in my mind as concepts. What exists in the world are elementary particles, elementary forces and space-time.

I don't see how you would know what 'treating it like a tree' would entail if no-one has any veridical experience of trees. — Isaac

"Trees" as private concepts didn't exist before being named in a public performative act, which could have been either by social acceptance over a period of time or by an institutional body. Before being publicly named, no one would have had any veridical experience of "trees". For example, in France, trees were named "arbres" and in Germany were named "alberi". This public performative act is available to everyone who uses that language. Therefore an individual's private concept of "tree" has been determined by knowledge of the public performative act of naming a certain set of shapes and colours as a "tree".

For example, no one at this moment has any veridical experience of a squund. However, if I pointed out to you a certain shape that was square at the top and round at its base and said "I name this a "squund"", we would then both have the private knowledge that this particular shape had the name "squund". I could then ask you to pass me the squund, and you could do so, even though your private knowledge of a squund is inaccessible to me, and my private knowledge of a squund is inaccessible to you. The veridical knowledge of squunds is then henceforth stored in the public domain, either in dictionaries or in conversations

Similarly for trees, my concept of tree is different to yours, I can never know your private concept of tree, yet we can both sensibly discuss trees because what a tree is is stored in the public domain.

If to 'know' something is to have sufficient warrant for believing it', and if 'sufficient warrant' is 'having something respond as expected when treating it as if it were what you believe it to be' - then is simply follows, by substitution, that you 'know' you see a tree all the while you treat it as if it were a tree and it responds accordingly. — Isaac

A warrant is a justification. They say knowledge is justified true belief. I may believe that there is a tree in the field and can justify my belief, but a justified belief is not knowledge.

To be knowledge, the justified belief has to be true. There arrives the problem.

A Direct Realist argues that they have direct knowledge of the world, and therefore knows that there is a tree there. An Indirect Realist argues that they only have indirect knowledge of the world, and therefore can only believe that there is a tree there.

"hysterical"? "Pathologically certain"? Myself, I would ascribe these to the monomaniacal author of the 100s of posts long antivax crusade. But that's just me.

Anyways I don't know why you think I have "trouble with trees". I have none.

knowing what is meant often depends on context, which is often ambiguous. — RussellA

But the context in which 'see' means to get signals from an internal model absent of any involvement of the eyes seem entirely a fabrication of philosophers pushing the brand of indirect realism for which it was coined. It's not in common use in any other field. So why fabricate it thus?

I think that I am seeing only one thing, a model of a tree in my mind. — RussellA

So your eyes are not even involved in seeing? If you don't see the tree, then how do you know what it is your model is a model of?

What exists in the world are elementary particles, elementary forces and space-time. — RussellA

How do you know they exist? The only means we have of detecting them has been via the same flawed senses which you doubt can detect a tree. How on earth can they now detect an elementary particle?

a tree is is stored in the public domain — RussellA

So if what you see matches the definition in that public domain, in what sense have you still not seen a tree?

I may believe that there is a tree in the field and can justify my belief, but a justified belief is not knowledge.

To be knowledge, the justified belief has to be true. There arrives the problem.

A Direct Realist argues that they have direct knowledge of the world, and therefore knows that there is a tree there. — RussellA

No direct realist I've ever read claims this. Do you have a quote or reference to work from?

don't know why you think I have "trouble with trees". I have none. — hypericin

You said...

I'm quite certian I'm not "seeing the tree as it really is" — hypericin

Are you also quite certain that vaccine researchers are not seeing the results of their tests as they really are? That they may well be wrong?

The point is your sophistic uncertainty about the external world is performatively contradicted by your every action toward it. You are certain that the chemicals in the vaccine will have a real effect on real cells in your body to help fight off real virus particles. You don't even doubt it as much as you should, let alone as much as you claim to doubt the reality of trees.

you claim to doubt the reality of trees. — Isaac

Except I make no such claim. The tree is real, and the tree as represented experientially is not the "way the tree really is". It is likely a faithful mapping of real properties of the tree, but it is a mapping, not a "true representation". A "true representation" is a fiction, a contradiction.

Our experiences of a tree stand in the same relation to a physical tree as the phrase "a tree" does. "A tree" maps faithfully to a tree, if there is one, but it is not a tree, and there is no "true phrase" among all the possible translations.

Given this, human beings who hallucinate are few, and most human beings have never hallucinated, and when hallucinations do occur, it occurs infrequently. So how did something that few humans being will ever experience, may never experience, and, if experienced, will happen infrequently, turn into positing "sense data" that every human being must have when perceiving the world around them. — Richard B

I am sure it is true hallucinations is a rare event, but perhaps a lot of philosophy is based on trying to solve inconsistencies in a theory, such as Frege's puzzles and Russell's paradox.

Searle wrote about Direct Realism and the problem with hallucinations
"I think the great philosophers of the past rejected Direct Realism because of an argument which was, until recently, quite commonly accepted among members of the profession. Some of them thought Direct Realism was so obviously false as not to be worth arguing against. There are different versions of it but the most common is called ‘the argument from illusion’ and here is how it goes. “You said that you directly perceive the tree, but suppose it is a hallucination. And suppose the hallucination is type identical with the veridical experience. What do you see then? It is obvious that you do not see the tree but only the visual experience itself, what the traditional philosophers called an idea, an impression, or a sense datum."

Perhaps illusion would be a better word than hallucination, in that illusions are far more common than hallucinations. For example, I perceive someone 5m away as being taller than the same person 10m away. Perhaps this would also be a route into the discussion as to whether we see the person directly or indirectly.

However, even within Direct Realism there are two versions, naive realism and scientific realism. For naive realism, objects continue to have all the properties that we usually perceive them to have, properties such as yellowness, warmth, and mass, whilst for scientific realism, some of the properties an object is perceived as having are dependent on the perceiver.

You ask other minds, look at the evidence, and see what is persuasive. In this case, this is done in a public realm, not the private realm of "sense data". — Richard B

True, most of my knowledge comes from the public realm, the Moon Landing, Disney Land, The Large Hadron Collider, Australia etc, ie, Russell's Knowledge by Description.

But this knowledge is indirect, more along the lines of Indirect Realism than Direct Realism.

The indirect realist likes to claim that perceiving the material object is indirect because scientific theory shows this, but do we really think that using a hallucinogen that results in a hallucination is not also plague by a series of intermediary steps in the brain as well. — Richard B

So metaphysically, why am I not committed to the glasses having "sense data" just like when I push one of my eye balls and report I see two of the objects — Richard B

As Searle writes, we might as well have a name for our visual experiences, which we may as well call "sense data"
“You told us earlier that visual experience takes place when photons strike the photoreceptor cells and set up a series of causal events that eventually results in a visual experience in the cortex. But it is of that visual experience that we are visually aware. The science of vision has proven that the only thing you can actually see, literally, scientifically is the visual experience going on in your head. We might as well have a name for these visual experiences. Call them ‘sense data’. All you ever perceive are sense data, and by way of vision all you can ever perceive are visual sense data."

I think the term "sense data" should be taken metaphorically rather than literally, as with many other scientific terms, such as The Laws of Nature, Natural Selection, gravity, etc. From the object in the world to our perception of it, there may be be a long chain of intermediary events, meaning that it would be impossible to pinpoint exactly where these sense data are, even if they exist at all

Sense data has the metaphorical meaning in that we don't perceive the object in the world directly, but only indirectly through a chain of intermediary events. It means that we are not perceiving the object as it is in the world, only as to how we perceive it to be in the world.

The moment of "great disaster" is when Descartes decided to retreat to the private world of introspection to look for certainty at the expense of the public realm in which we learn to communicate with words to convey understanding to our fellow humans about a world that can get a bit messy. — Richard B

I think you are being too harsh on Descartes. He had an intense interest in the sciences, was not a sceptic but used scepticism as a means of philosophical enquiry.

The tree is real, and the tree as represented experientially is not the "way the tree really is" — hypericin

Right. So when the vaccine scientist sees the result of their test in the pertri dish, it's not the way the result 'really is'. We ought doubt it.

It is likely a faithful mapping of real properties of the tree, but it is a mapping — hypericin

So we map trees, but we don't see trees? Any reason why the normal use of the word 'see' here is replaced with 'map'? what was wrong with 'see' to describe (as it has done for thousands of years) the process of what you're now calling 'mapping' the tree?

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 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.

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?

Yes. I am not denying seeing trees, I'm describing what seeing trees is.

No, seeing is a kind of mapping. — hypericin

So do we see trees then?

Finally.

A Direct Realist argues that they have direct knowledge of the world, and therefore knows that there is a tree there — RussellA

No direct realist I've ever read claims this. Do you have a quote or reference to work from? — Isaac

IEP article on Objects of Perception
The objects of perception are the entities we attend to when we perceive the world. Perception lies at the root of all our empirical knowledge. We may have acquired much of what we know about the world through testimony, but originally such knowledge relies on the world having been perceived by others or ourselves using our five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.
Perceptual realism is the common sense view that tables, chairs and cups of coffee exist independently of perceivers. Direct realists also claim that it is with such objects that we directly engage. The objects of perception include such familiar items as paper clips, suns and olive oil tins. It is these things themselves that we see, smell, touch, taste and listen to.

If Perceptual Realism claims that we directly engage with objects such as paper clips, and such objects exist independently of the perceiver, and the perception of these objects lies at the root of all our empirical knowledge, then doesn't this suggest that the Direct Realist's perception gives direct knowledge of the world.

Wikipedia article on Direct and indirect realism
Naïve realism is known as direct realism, which was developed to counter indirect or representative realism.
The representational realist would deny that "first-hand knowledge" is a coherent concept, since knowledge is always via some means, and argue instead that our ideas of the world are interpretations of sensory input derived from an external world that is real.

If Direct Realism is a counter to Representative Realism, and the Representational Realist denies that "first-hand knowledge" is a coherent concept, then doesn't that presuppose that the Direct Realist believes that "first-hand knowledge" is a coherent concept.

If the Direct Realist doesn't claim that have they have direct knowledge of the world, what do they claim ?

If the Direct Realist doesn't claim that have they have direct knowledge of the world, what do they claim ? — RussellA

Direct doesn't exclude the possibility of error, so it in no way assumes perfect knowledge. You said yourself...

For the Indirect Realist:
1) We directly perceive sense data. — RussellA

Does that directness mean it is impossible to be wrong? That no error can possibly occur between sense data and conscious awareness?

So your eyes are not even involved in seeing? If you don't see the tree, then how do you know what it is your model is a model of? — Isaac

Searle wrote:
"The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain. Similarly, if the experience of perceiving is an object of perceiving, then it becomes identical with the perceiving. Just as the pain is identical with the experience of pain, so the visual experience is identical with the experience of seeing."

Using Searle's concept of identity between the experience of pain and pain, the model and what the model is of are one and the same, therefore knowing one means knowing both.

the model and what the model is of are one and the same, — RussellA

That's not remotely what Searle is saying there. He's saying that one does not 'experience' pain because pain is an experience. Likewise one does not 'experience' a perceptual representation because representing something is an experience, not an object.

The quote has nothing to do with modeling external objects. He's certainly not saying models and that which they model are identical. That would be absurd.

He's certainly not saying models and that which they model are identical — Isaac

I never said he did. I said that using the concept of identity, such as that between the experience of pain and pain, the model and what the model is of are one and the same.

t’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. — NOS4A2

There is absolutely something in between: all the neural machinery that, however it does, produces perception. This is readily distinguishable from the perceiver by it being imperceptible. You are not aware of the vast effort your brain undergoes to give you a nice clean visual representation.

So your table is broken, split in two. On one half is the tree, on the other half is the perception of the tree, as experienced by the perceiver. Both halves are completely different in their properties. In between them lies a chasm of unconscious neural activity, which is neither the perceiver, as it is imperceptible, nor is it the perceived (obviously).

I never said he did. — RussellA

Then you've failed to provide any evidence to back up your claim that...

A Direct Realist argues that they have direct knowledge of the world, and therefore knows that there is a tree there. — RussellA

How are we unable to perceive neural activity, but we’re able to perceive visible representations? Couldn’t the same thing that views representations view neural activity as well?

is any of what a neurology textbook describes about vision visually perceptable?

We have a fairly accurate account of the biology. We can simply look into the eyes and determine numerous visual impairments, for example.