My take is that there isn't really evidence for indirect realism as much as indirect realism is an interpretation of what we know -- so I'm providing an alternate interpretation to weaken the justification for indirect realism. Or at least that's the strategy. — Moliere
It seems so to me, yes. — Moliere
I don't understand what a representation of my toe would be when I'm stubbing it or not. — Moliere
Minimally I have a hard time thinking of the perception of my body as a representation: I can go as far as to say it's a bundle, and there is no "I", but I don't think my body is a bundle of representations. — Moliere
That literally is the hard problem. Perhaps you have an erroneous idea of what it is? The hard problem consists in this exact question. — AmadeusD
AS above, clearly this is not right. — AmadeusD
Its just ignoring one problem for another. — AmadeusD
It's very hard to see how this could matter. If one is having an experience, that's all that's needed. The framework in whcih is sits isn't relevant the Hard Problem. It is the experience per se that needs explaining. — AmadeusD
An idealist rejects that there are external objects. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're getting at here. — AmadeusD
Because you're misattributing what 'realism' stands for within each framework. — AmadeusD
…..a bare minimum criterion….
— creativesoul
I agree that for a creature to have a meaningful experience, such creature must be able to at the very least describe the conditions of that experience, even if only to himself, in order for the meaning of it to be given. — Mww
Very interesting; can you elaborate? Especially the first bit. — Apustimelogist
I agree that for a creature to have a meaningful experience, such creature must be able to at the very least describe the conditions of that experience, even if only to himself, in order for the meaning of it to be given. — Mww
All experience is meaningful to the creature having the experience. Perception is necessary but insufficient for attributing meaning to different things; meaningful experience. — creativesoul
I'm saying that direct perception of distal objects is necessary for all cases of human perception, and that there are many other creatures capable of it as well.
— creativesoul
I agree with that as well, with the caveat that mere direct perception is very far from meaningful experience... — Mww
I think one important thing to keep in mind is that meaningful human experience happens long before we begin to take account of it.
— creativesoul
Oh, absolutely. — Mww
If the only thing that exists is experiences, then how are the questions different? "Why is there experience?" would be precisely the same as "Why is there anything at all?" — Apustimelogist
Well from this perspective, it isn't a true metaphysical problem which is why illusionists may be more interested in the meta-problem of consciousness instead, aiming to explain what it is about human cognition and computation that leads to these limits of explanation — Apustimelogist
This is not my understanding of the hard problem. The issue is the reducibility of consciousness to physical explanations. If you remove the physical from the equation then there is no hard problem. The issue I was talking about in the quote you replied to effectively also amounts to a problem of irreducibility but between different experiences. — Apustimelogist
The kind of idealism I have in mind is just that everything in the universe is mental — Apustimelogist
Can you elaborate the differences in realism for science vs. perceptual representations? — Apustimelogist
Why does the Universe exist? There are
here two questions: (1) Why does the Universe exist at all?
That is, why is there anything rather than nothing? (2)
Why is the Universe as it is? — Derek Parfit
All experience is meaningful to the creature having the experience. Perception is necessary but insufficient for attributing meaning to different things; meaningful experience.
— creativesoul
It depends on how you are using "perception". For me, seeing something is always seeing something as something. So I think anything perceived, in the sense I use the word, is always already something interpreted, and I think that interpretation is not dependent on language, and that in fact language could never get started without it already being in place, and I think it is the case with the other animals just as it is with us. — Janus
Sometimes. Not all the time.
Perceiving the tree in the yard does not require perceiving it "as a tree". Surely, we perceive the distal objects being named, right? See it "as a tree" presupposes naming and descriptive practices. Cats interact with trees all the time. They do not perceive the tree, "as a tree". That invokes a middleman where none is necessary, indeed where none can be. It could be that the tree in the yard is being directly perceived in direct relation to the rest of the hunters' mind, the tree is what the mouse is hiding behind. That's all it is at the time. It is and remains the tree, nonetheless.
Perceiving a tree "as a tree" only makes sense to me when we're referring to those who know how to use the phrase. — creativesoul
Perceiving a tree "as a tree" only makes sense to me when we're referring to those who know how to use the phrase. — creativesoul
I have not said that cats perceive trees as trees, but they perceive trees as some kind of affordance or other (although I am not saying they could conceive of it linguistically as an affordance or as anything else) — Janus
For me, seeing something is always seeing something as something. So I think anything perceived, in the sense I use the word, is always already something interpreted, and I think that interpretation is not dependent on language, and that in fact language could never get started without it already being in place, and I think it is the case with the other animals just as it is with us. — Janus
So, only previously meaningful things are perceived? — creativesoul
I have not said that cats perceive trees as trees, but they perceive trees as some kind of affordance or other (although I am not saying they could conceive of it linguistically as an affordance or as anything else)
— Janus
That's what I was thinking with the term, too -- objects with affordances make sense of a cat's or a bat's experience being different, but still about the same objects all while their experiences are probably different... — Moliere
Does the bear perceive the cave as a place to sleep? Bears go there to sleep, but unless they think about the cave as a subject matter in its own right, they do not perceive it as anything. They perceive the cave. The cave is part of the bear's experience. The cave is meaningful to the bear. Going back to the cave is a meaningful experience to the bear. How does it become meaningful for the bear? — creativesoul
So, only previously meaningful things are perceived?
— creativesoul
I think that's right. — Janus
How does anything become meaningful before it is ever perceived? — creativesoul
So, on that account perceptible things become meaningful, and are thus perceived. On this account there must be some pre-perceptual interactions already going on of course, and of course they involve the objects and the senses but are yet to reach the status of perception. I think Kant refers to this as "intuition", but Mww may correct me on this. — Janus
Can we say that a percipient has perceived something if it does not stand out in some way? — Janus
Things that grab the creature's attention 'stand out'. Anything external to the creature may 'stand out', given the creature is capable of perceiving it. Those things that 'stand out' may already be meaningful to the creature. They may not. That's often the first step in becoming meaningful. — creativesoul
If consciousness does not reduce to the physical — AmadeusD
I'm not quite sure I'm understand thsi reply. — AmadeusD
One question here is going to be (or more accurately "How do we produce conscious experiences of the external world?") but another, separate and probably more profound question is "How could we know that anything in the external world is actually as-it-seems? Even if we have 'direct' perception we still have the issue of Descartes Demon and all that fun stuff - whereas the question around scientific realism addresses the problem of whether our perception is of actual things. In world A' we may have direct perceptions of things which are not actually things, for instance. It is a false perception, but its a direct relation with the mental substance that it arises from. Even in world A, we might have indirect perception yet trust that our scientific instruments are relaying the actual behind our perceptions. — AmadeusD
So in the Scientific sense, are we even metaphysically able to ascertain the world as-it-is? And for Perception its do we, humans, naturally, perceive the world in direct causal relation (regardless of whether the world actually allows for accurate measurement. — AmadeusD
You can keep question one, and simply swap question two for the more specific version: Why is anything in the Universe conscious? To essentially outline the two distinct questions that idealism would still post. Consciousness not supervening on the physical simply doesn't explain it as the majority of cognition is not accompanied by any experience. — AmadeusD
Things that grab the creature's attention 'stand out'. Anything external to the creature may 'stand out', given the creature is capable of perceiving it. Those things that 'stand out' may already be meaningful to the creature. They may not. That's often the first step in becoming meaningful.
— creativesoul
Do you count anything which does not stand out as being perceived? Per the question I asked you above, everything perceptible in your external environment is currently broadcasting information in the form of light, sound, smell, and tactile sensation to your eyes, ears, nose and skin. Would you say all that counts as being perceived merely by virtue of that information affecting the body? — Janus
…..a bare minimum criterion for experience - shared between all individual cases thereof, is that the experience itself is meaningful to the creature having it. If all experience is meaningful to the creature having the experience, then the candidate under consideration(the creature having the experience) must be capable of attributing meaning to different things. — creativesoul
I agree that for a creature to have a meaningful experience, such creature must be able to at the very least describe the conditions of that experience, even if only to himself, in order for the meaning of it to be given.
— Mww
I don't agree with that. Weird way to use "I agree". — creativesoul
Your proposal has several layers of complexity; several layers of existential dependency. We're looking for a bare minimum form of meaningful experience. We start with us. We set that out. — creativesoul
I think one important thing to keep in mind is that meaningful human experience happens long before we begin to take account of it.
— creativesoul
Oh, absolutely.
— Mww
How do you square that with your minimum criterion presented earlier which demanded being able to describe the conditions of one's own experience in order to count as meaningful experience?
You see the problem? — creativesoul
They can recognize their own offspring and kin. If these don't qualify for you as meaningful experiences, I'd be interested to hear why not. — Janus
…..but Mww may correct me on this. — Janus
So, on that account perceptible things become meaningful, and are thus perceived. — Janus
On this account there must be some pre-perceptual interactions already going on of course — Janus
…..they involve the objects and the senses but are yet to reach the status of perception. I think Kant refers to this as "intuition" — Janus
with senses other than sight I'm not sure what is representative. — Moliere
Dunno….maybe too analytical on my part. — Mww
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