RussellA perceives direct realists only indirectly: the direct realist in his head does not resemble the direct realist as it is in the external world. — Jamal

Nice.

What does it mean for you to be convinced that you saw a gold dress ? — plaque flag

There's not really any convincing involved. The character of my experience is just that of a white and gold dress, just as the character of someone else's experience is that of a black and blue dress.

I just see colours. That's it. It has nothing to do with being convinced and nothing to do with language.

I want to float an idea -- What if both experiences of the dress are Directly real? The direct realist is willing to sacrifice the old pedagogical explanation of the law of non-contradiction "Nothing can be black and white all over". Here we have a reason to believe that the dress is black, blue, white, and gold.

The direct realist claims that talk about the tree is actually about that tree — plaque flag

Direct realism is a position regarding the nature of perception, not conversation. I really don't understand why you keep talking about language. It just has nothing to do with it at all.

Try starting with the problem of perception and epistemological problems of perception.

I want to float an idea -- What if both experiences of the dress are Directly real? — Moliere

Then I'd question what "direct" even means here.

Only that our perceptions tell us about the real. They are directly connected to the real, in some relation. Because they are directly connected to the real we can utilize them to come to understand the real better.

It's a metaphysical assertion rather than an explanation for error.

Only that our perceptions tell us about the real. They are directly connected to the real, in some relation. Because they are directly connected to the real we can utilize them to come to understand the real better. — Moliere

Which means what? What does it mean for a perception to be "directly connected" to the real? All experience, whether veridical or hallucinatory or illusory or imaginary is a causal consequence of some real thing, so it can't just mean this.

Which means what? What does it mean for a perception to be "directly connected" to the real? All experience, whether veridical or hallucinatory or illusory or imaginary is a causal consequence of some real thing. — Michael

Exactly! That's what it means!

Exactly! That's what it means! — Moliere

Almost nobody says that experience happens ex nihilo. Indirect realists accept that experience is a causal consequence of real things – and often things that are external to the body.

There's simply more to the meaning of experience being direct than this.

Ahh I thought there was a connection there then. I'll think more on the question.

Which means what? What does it mean for a perception to be "directly connected" to the real? — Michael

"directly connected" I'd say means there is no more than one relationship between a perceiver and a percipient. The relation itself may exist, in the sense that consciousness is sometimes considered real, but there are no more relationships between the perceiver and the percipient than one. A relationship exists, but it's not a chain of relationships. The chains come later, and depend upon us being able to access reality to be able to check them. Then, upon putting ourselves into the scientific engine, we pick it apart -- but we must retain a direct relationship to reality to be able to assert that our experiences are indirect.

"directly connected" I'd say means there is no more than one relationship between a perceiver and a percipient. — Moliere

Again, which means what? What is a "relationship"? In the context of visual perception, we know that there is an apple, that the apple reflects light, that the light stimulates the rods and cones in our eyes, that the rods and cones in our eyes send electrical signals along the optic nerve to the thalamus, and that the thalamus sends electrical signals to the occipital cortex, generating a conscious visual experience.

How many "relationships" is that?

The chains come later and depend upon us being able to access reality to be able to say

we know that there is an apple, that the apple reflects light, that the light stimulates the rods and cones in our eyes, that the rods and cones in our eyes send electrical signals along the optic nerve to the thalamus, and that the thalamus sends electrical signals to the occipital cortex, generating a conscious visual experience. — Michael

The chains come later and depend upon us being able to access reality to be able to say — Moliere

I'm sorry but I don't really see how that's an answer. Does it make a difference if I amend my explanation above to end with "the thalamus sends electrical signals to the occipital cortex, generating sense data"?

Nope.

PerceiverRPercipient was my thought. A relationship holds between sets. So there's the set of perceivers and the set of percipients, and the relationship between them is no more than 1.

Of course one can talk about apples and light and rods and signals and nerves and thalamus' and occiptial cortexes -- I'm not sure about the "sense data" bit, I'm usually suspicious of that. Also I'd push against conscious visual experience -- experience is bound together with all the senses, all the cognitive machinery, and so forth. Our focus can change, but experience is much wider than an organ by necessity -- they aren't possible to separate for us because we aren't cameras.

We know about the world we inhabit because we are able to access it. Mostly I was attempting a formal definition to see if that made things click. But I can see it doesn't.

Though I think I have to add -- and that relationship is not identity, to address @RussellA

Direct realists argued that we can trust that perception informs us about what the world is like because the world and its nature presents itself in experience. Indirect realists argued that we can't trust that perception informs us about what the world is like because experience is, at best, representative of the world and its nature. — Michael

So, the indirect realist asserts a reality (what the world is like in itself) beyond appearances. In any case doesn't perception inform us about about what the world is like for us? Is there really any other world that matters? I'd say there isn't; what the world is like in itself is thinkable as a possibility, but it is unknowable in principle, because anything we know will be what the world is like for us. So the idea that the world is different in itself is the dark side of the moon, the face of being which is forever turned away from us, and it's importance consists in the fact that it stands there as the mystical, the undecidable, and that very darkness allows a tremendous fecundity to the human imagination.

Try starting with the problem of perception and epistemological problems of perception. — Michael

We can drop it if you want, but to me this is like quoting the bible to disprove atheism. Consider this quote:

The phenomenal character of an experience is what it is like for a subject to undergo it (Nagel (1974)). Our ordinary conception of perceptual experience emerges from first-personal reflection on its character, rather than from scientific investigation; it is a conception of experience from a “purely phenomenological point of view” (Broad 1952: 3–4).

I'm challenging this framework itself.

I really don't understand why you keep talking about language. It just has nothing to do with it at all. — Michael

I'm trying to get us out of the realm of what's almost a paradoxical theology of should-be-ineffable-but-somehow-isn't 'Private Experience.'

Direct realism is a position regarding the nature of perception, not conversation. — Michael

The shift to semantic norms gives us leverage finally. What is perception ? I think Kant gets something right.

Intuition and concepts … constitute the elements of all our cognition, so that neither concepts without intuition corresponding to them in some way nor intuition without concepts can yield a cognition. Thoughts without [intensional] content (Inhalt) are empty (leer), intuitions without concepts are blind (blind). It is, therefore, just as necessary to make the mind’s concepts sensible—that is, to add an object to them in intuition—as to make our intuitions understandable—that is, to bring them under concepts. These two powers, or capacities, cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only from their unification can cognition arise.

To apply a concept in a human way and not as a parrot might is to enter the inferential nexus. To perceive a dog as such is already linguistic.

I just noticed you have a transformer symbol as your avatar. Electronic engineer?

I just noticed you have a transformer symbol as your avatar. Electronic engineer? — frank

Cool that you noticed ! It's actually a nod to artificial intelligence (transformers are the key piece at the moment.). For me it's a nice metaphor for us as transformers of our inheritance. We are thrown like bots into a stream of symbols and have to make sense of them and create ourselves from the stuff, hopefully a little bit new so we are noticed and loved, etc.

I want to float an idea -- What if both experiences of the dress are Directly real? The direct realist is willing to sacrifice the old pedagogical explanation of the law of non-contradiction "Nothing can be black and white all over". Here we have a reason to believe that the dress is black, blue, white, and gold. — Moliere

That's exactly it (though I've floated this exact idea with @Michael in a previous thread and it didn't have any impact then either).

On what grounds can we possibly say that the dress must either be Blue/Black or White/Gold as an external data point. Why cannot it be both? What fact do we know about the data points of the external world which we can use to say with certainty that they cannot be two colours at once?

I can see things without saying anything. — Michael

To perceive a dog as such is already linguistic. — plaque flag

I've noticed that people on TPF sometimes say things like "perception can't be linguistic because I can see things without saying anything," or "language cannot be social because if I were stranded on a desert island I'd still be able to talk and read." In these cases I wonder if they're making a solid point that I'm just not getting, or if they simply don't understand what we mean.

I've noticed that people on TPF sometimes say things like "perception can't be linguistic because I can see things without saying anything," or "language cannot be social because if I were stranded on a desert island I'd still be able to talk and read." In these cases I wonder if they're making a solid point that I'm just not getting, or if they simply don't understand what we mean. — Jamal

Recognition would not seem to require language since animals can do it. So perceiving a dog as a dog is ambiguous. A dog recognizes other dogs as her own kind, although obviously without language she does not form the English sentence (or any other linguistic equivalent) "that is a dog".

I guess I should have clarified. It's about human perception. The idea is that in perceiving, a human cannot help but be linguistic. Both we and dogs perceive, but our perception is inextricably linked to our concepts and thereby to language.

How do you know that no one can suspend the linguistic/ conceptual function and just see whatever it is they are seeing without identifying what it is?

I don't, and I'm not sure what that would mean. Closest I can come is to imagine how perception works when we're wrapped up in a physical activity, like running to catch a ball or playing an instrument (or hammering of course). These don't seem very linguistic to me, though I could well be wrong. I'm not committed to perception-as-essentially-linguistic, I'm just saying that to make this claim is not to say that one cannot see a tree without forming the sentence "that is a tree" or whatever. It's a deeper point than that, to do with the fact that in situations of perceiving we are always already linguistic, because of what we are.

In these cases I wonder if they're making a solid point that I'm just not getting, or if they simply don't understand what we mean. — Jamal

:up:

"perception can't be linguistic because I can see things without saying anything," — Jamal's example objection 1

This objection I understand more, given the ambiguity of 'perception.'

But it seems to assume also the possibility of a folk psychology where only one scientist gets to look at the data (yikes!) , except there's a background assumption going back at least to Aristotle that saves the day.

Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all... — Ari

Cooperation-enabling signtrading is here explained 'by' elusive immaterial private Experiences. (In other words, by magic!) Aristotle doesn't even see the issue. Note also the naked phonocentrism. So much of spoken language appeals to the eye (think of spoken metaphors as liquified hieroglyphs poured in the ear).

"language cannot be social because if I were stranded on a desert island I'd still be able to talk and read." — Jamal's example objection 2

This objection does seem to miss the point. The sociality of meaning is already in with our castaway. Our castaway (mostly) 'is' this social meaning, like downloaded software on a computer contingently offline (the self is not the legs but the dance). As the DNA of the castaway stores or 'is' the 'experience' of ancestors, so the training of the castaway's embodied mind 'is' primarily tribal software, inherited habitus, though not without a uniqueness within the limits of sanity.

I've noticed that people on TPF sometimes say things like "perception can't be linguistic because I can see things without saying anything," or "language cannot be social because if I were stranded on a desert island I'd still be able to talk and read." In these cases I wonder if they're making a solid point that I'm just not getting, or if they simply don't understand what we mean. — Jamal

I guess I should have clarified. It's about human perception. The idea is that in perceiving, a human cannot help but be linguistic. Both we and dogs perceive, but our perception is inextricably linked to our concepts and thereby to language. — Jamal

Let's take colour as an example. Take someone who doesn't have a colour vocabulary. Show them two balls; one that we would say is red and one that we would say is blue. Do you believe that this person can see these balls? Do you believe that these balls appear coloured to this person? Do you believe that these balls appear differently coloured to this person? I would answer "yes" to each question. This person isn't blind; they can see the balls. The balls won't appear transparent (or white or black). These balls won't have an identical appearance.

Even if they don't have words to describe the colours, they nonetheless see them, just as I can distinguish between a variety of different smells despite not having words for each individual kind of smell.

Yes, I think that's getting into the substantive debate, beyond the misunderstandings that I noted. I'll let @plaque flag respond if he wants to, because I'm not sure what to think about it.