good, and you understand that indirect realists aren't saying "brain processes aren't real", right?

Because that question that you asked makes me think you're completely confused about what indirect realists mean when they say we don't "experience reality as it is".

Because that question that you asked makes me think you're completely confused about what indirect realists mean when they say we don't "experience reality as it is". — flannel jesus

Do neuroscientists observe brain processes as they are according to you? If our experiences are real then why should we say we are not experiencing reality as it is? Are you simply saying that we don't experience those aspects of reality which we cannot experience? If so, that would be a tautology, no?

Or perhaps I should have just asked what you think indirect realists mean when they say we don't experience reality as it is.

Are you simply saying that we don't experiences those aspects of reality which we cannot experience? — Janus

Nope.

I think you should just read about indirect realism for a bit

A very poor response that assumes I don't understand what indirect realists propose, which of course I do. I want to know what you think in your own words. I'm not interested in trying to discuss with someone who hides behind labels. The ball's in your court. Do you have anything interesting or informative to say?

you're asking me questions that have nothing to do with anything I said. Your questions are confused. Do you have anything interesting to ask?

I don't even think I'm saying something controversial when I say we don't experience reality as it is.

Think about a piece of shit on the ground. It smells viscerally disgusting to you. And yet to a fly, it smells delicious and appetising.

Are you experiencing that shit as it is? Is the fly? What I am saying, and I believe Donald Hoffman semi agrees, is that the shit really exists, but both I and the fly are experiencing it in ways that make contextual sense for us to experience it. It smells viscerally disgusting to me because it's beneficial for me to be disgusted by it, because I could get sick eating it. It smells delicious to the fly because the fly gets nutritional value from it and doesn't get sick.

So we have our own unique experience of that shit, but really the shit is neither disgusting nor delicious "as it is", it's just a piece of shit.

Your questions are confused. — flannel jesus

How can questions be confused? Perhaps you meant confusing? Did you not understand them? The questions are designed to find out if your position is confused...I'm not claiming anything at this stage.

Are you experiencing that shit as it is? Is the fly? — flannel jesus

Is it not part of the piece of shit being what it is to be attractive to the fly and disgusting to you, or to provide a suitable environment for egg-laying for the fly and be such as to make you sick if you ate it? Are those not all real attributes of the piece of shit and its relations with you and the fly?

I wouldn't call that an attribute of the piece of shit, no

Why not?

It just doesn't match my intuitions about what attributes of things are.

So, something you can't explain then?

This is a good point that made me think and want to look up about how smell works more, but couldn't you also say we can distinguish our emotional reactions about something from our ability to identify it through the senses? Albeit, maybe they interfere.

I think color has good points too. Nervous system structure will affect how we detect color, albeit one might still say all the distinctions we make map to physical events in the world. Maybe this needs to be unique to be realist? Rather than a brain that may be structured in a way to do the job more efficiently, resulting in possibly more convoluted or context-dependent ways of mapping to the world. There is also the sense that if one identifies blue colors more similarly than yellow or red or whatever then this seems also some added kind of detection of similarity purely a byproduct of the cone system - but then again, greens will also be more similar than reds because they are mapping to physical structures that are more similar. I guess would need to explore what is going on more though maybe. I could make an argument that maybe the ways different cones affect perception just can be seen similarly to how we might bound the same events in the world in different ways. But then maybe to some this is quintessential antirealism.
Maybe one could say perceptual differences reflect the fact we see different parts of the same reality, obtaining different partial information about actual physical events, but animals with different cones or more resolution of vision are just detecting more stuff or different stuff than we are. I guess this again is a very weak realism still.

Ultimately there always does seem to be some kind of arbitrariness somewhere. For me its a question of whether that still preserves reliable information, which albeit is always depends on whether you happen to live in an environment where your senses are reliable. In other contexts they may not be (i.e. light [in the correct ambient environment reflecting off objects] is not the only thing that can stimulate a retina).

I have said in other threads I think indirect vs direct realism is actually arguably kind of ambiguous. And I feel comfortable with some kind of minimal realism I think because maybe I think a fundamental metaphysical characterization of intrinsic reality is unintelligible. The best imo we can do is some weak floppy notion of structure, perhaps informational structure. While intrinsicness isn't accessible at all, and perhaps fundamentally meaningless, I think structure is accessible by us, even if in a convoluted or perhaps idealized or compressed way. The issue is that no creatures have access to all the kind of structure in reality that one might be able to plausible detect.

But maybe reality "as it is" is nothing more than the structure of reality "as it is" which we can access to some extent because we can all navigate the world correctly - but maybe my ability to find my way home was in fact some kind of accidental heuristic - we just don't have access to all of the structure. My thoughts are that phenomenal experience is just informational structure (or isomorphic to it if you want to be more precise) which itself maps to the world structure at least partially. When we see the world "not as it is" we have different mappings that miss stuff out.

Maybe one could say perceptual differences reflect the fact we see different parts of the same reality, obtaining different partial information about actual physical events, but animals with different cones or more resolution of vision are just detecting more stuff or different stuff than we are. I guess this again is a very weak realism still. — Apustimelogist

I don't understand why you say this is a "weak realism". Are perceptual organs and the experiences they enable not as real as that which they sense and that which is experienced?

Because when people say realism they tend to mean a completely unique God's eye view of reality, which is a much stronger realism. Once you start to be able to view things in different perspectives then people start to use that as arguments against realism.

Are you referring to naive realism which, as it is commonly characterized, thinks that the things of the world are just exactly as we perceive them to be? Do you think anyone who had done even a little intelligent reflection and critical thinking would hold such a view? There is a reason it is called naive realism.

Do you think anyone who had done even a little intelligent reflection and critical thinking would hold such a view? There is a reason it is called naive realism. — Janus

Oh, so you are saying people tend to be weak realists instead? What a coincidence, chimes right in with my thoughts just there, thank you!

I'm not sure now whether you are referring to what I would characterize as relational realism as weak, or whether you mean naive realism is weak. I wouldn't call sophisticated realism 'weak". I think naive realism is weak realism, because it allows only how we perceive things to be real.

I mean, weak realism just means a realism weaker than strong realism, and a naive realism would be a strong realism.

sure

so then you've been agreeing with me the whole time, and just being really awkward about it? Classic

A good question for Hoffman would be: "could there be a perceptual/cognitive system (a mind) that was 'selected for' or 'engineered' based on 'truth instead of fitness?'" If so, "would this represent a privileged viewpoint on reality? Would the thoughts of such a mind be 'more real' (less illusory) than our own?"

I think the obvious answer from his perspective would be: "no, I am not saying that some one special 'really real' mind can evolve or be engineered." But then what is he talking about? A reality/illusion distinction only makes sense if there is something other than illusion, some mind that knows "reality in itself" as opposed to fitness. If it is just "fitness all the way down," then fitness is reality and his argument is based on a false distinction.

I suppose that's somewhat the point he makes in the last chapter when he calls his previous position self-refuting and argues for idealism, but arguably the problem is that his previous position (which is a popular sort of view in materialism) is incoherent. The final chapter's argument is something like: "A or B, but not A, so B" yet it's never made clear that A (representationalist materialism) or B (idealism) are the only options. The whole "user interface" analogy also seems to presuppose some sort of Cartesian theater. My conviction is that materialism/physicalism is really defined by a sort of insoluble—in its terms—dualism, that dresses itself up monism by attempting a "reduction" of this dualism. Hoffman seems trapped in this model and simply flips towards trying to "reduce" in the other direction.

"Everything is received in the manner of the receiver" is a very old idea. The more I learn, the more I think that Kant's "revolution" only makes sense in terms of a pretty narrow period in the history of philosophy, rather than being an effective criticism of "all prior metaphysics." It's more a making explicit of the dualism at the heart of modern materialism, and the consequences of a "metaphysics of appearances" where appearances are arbitrarily related to an 'objective reality' set over an against them.

A reality/illusion distinction only makes sense if there is something other than illusion, some mind that knows "reality in itself" as opposed to fitness. If it is just "fitness all the way down," then fitness is reality and his argument is based on a false distinction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I quite agree, that is what I suspect about Hoffman's book. He does discuss various objections to FBT theory around pages 44-45 in the ebook edition I have. He quotes Steven Pinker, saying

We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.

However as I've noted elsewhere this is a similar argument of Plantinga's, the evolutionary argument against naturalism - that if naturalism is true, then it undermines the trust we have in reason.

But then, he says on p 66

what about our perceptions of math and logic? Doesn’t the theorem assume math and logic, and then prove there’s almost no chance that our perceptions of math and logic are true? If so, isn’t it a proof that there are no reliable proofs—a reductio ad absurdum of the whole approach?

Fortunately, the FBT Theorem proves no such thing. It applies only to our perceptions of states of the world. Other cognitive capacities, such as our abilities with math and logic, must be studied on their own to see how they may be shaped by natural selection. It is too simplistic, and false, to argue that natural selection makes all of our cognitive faculties unreliable. This illogic is sometimes floated to support religious views believed to be incompatible with Darwinian evolution. But it wields too broad a brush.

My bolds. Which again makes me think the title is a misnomer - it should be 'the case against cognitive realism' or something of the kind. After all ancient philosophy was always inclined to suspect that sense perception was or might be a grand illusion.

I suppose that's somewhat the point he makes in the last chapter when he calls his previous position self-refuting and argues for idealism — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could you be so kind as to specify where he says that?

Could you be so kind as to specify where he says that?

I wish I could be more helpful, but IRCC it's all in the last chapter, where he presented his "agential realism" as an alternative to the intractable problems he has hitherto been describing. Basically, "everything I've said had something wrong with it, so we need to start over."

I recall he name drops a number of figures as doing something similar to him, Spinoza, Hegel, (maybe Aristotle), but I don't recall thinking his "solution" was actually all that similar to these because he seems to still be wedded to reductionism and mathematization (as opposed to "the truth is the whole" of Big Heg). The higher levels of reality, the more intelligible, must still be "reduced" to the lower (a key conceit of materialism, which is the elevation of potency above actuality, or difference over identity).

I think the modern fetish for mathematization is probably what leads him in this direction.

As I said in the shoutbox:

Interesting comment I saw that isn't worthy of its own thread:

In the commentary on the Metaphysics St. Thomas says: " However, the objects of mathematics neither are moved nor cause motion nor have a will. Hence in their case the good is not considered under the name of good and end, although in them we do consider what is good, namely, their being and what they are."

Basically, mathematics is about bulk quantity (magnitude and multitude, as opposed to the "virtual quantity" of intensity in quality) as abstracted from things' definitions. Hence, it doesn't include ends. Hence, it cannot include any notion of final causality and telos. Thus, the mathematization of science, the demand that all of being be reduced to mathematical physics itself contains the demand that the world be "valueless and meaningless" and devoid of good and intentionality.

Hence, the birth of the much maligned but oft-recreated "Cartesian dualism" and "Cartesian anxiety."

---

And this goes right with the evolution of modern nominalist thought. Things are just math, and so things have whatever telos (and this ultimately whatever form) we give to them. Indeed, strictly speaking there aren't things at all, but our only our purposes for declaring some mathematical patterns to be "things"). This is how man's mind becomes the sui generis source of all meaning and value in some philosophies, or God's sheer will in others (with even man himself lacking any telos and nature, instead generating his own telos out of a sheer act of will). I think there is probably a relationship between the mathematization of being and the triumph of volanturism here. With all consideration of form and intrinsic telos excluded, the sheer will is all that is left to bestow purpose and meaning (first God's will, and later in history man's).

But, is this correct? Does a bee truly have no intrinsic telos? Man? Are there no such things as bees and ants but for the volanturist declarations of man, who slices up the world-as-mathematical-object based on utility? I tend to think not.

At any rate, radical nominalism certainly does seem to have a fetish for mathematization, and wants to reduce the emergence of "things" to "mathematical patterns," "regularities," "information," etc. But I think there will also be some bare remainder here, because mathematics cannot generate the purpose by which any "pattern" might be declared a thing or quality. Hence, the volanturist will is always lurking in the background of nominalism. There is a reason why, historically, nominalism and volanturism went together hand in glove. In post-modern thought, there is a turn against the individual as the seat of the volanturist will, but this isn't really a turn away from volanturism, so much as its globalization in a diffuse "ocean of will/intention."

Agential realism, as a reduction of being to mathematized sheer will, goes along with this.

No I tend more towards direct realism than indirect. That said I also think their differences are largely on account of linguistic framing.

Can I ask what characterizes the difference between your direct realism, indirect realism and naive realism?

I think the modern fetish for mathematization is probably what leads him (Donald Hoffman) in this direction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

He has to be able to express his theory in mathematical terms for it to be credible. Science relies heavily on quantitative analysis. As you say, that is at the heart of, not just modern nominalism, but modern science generally. The scientific revolution was owed in large part to the ability to identify precisely the quantitative attributes of objects of analysis, and to remove those fuzzy qualities of ends and purposes and intentionality that still underwrote Aristotelian physics. This is what gives rise to what René Geunon describes as the 'reign of quantity' in which we're all immersed.

Oh - and that last chapter (10) in Hoffman's Case Against Reality - I just don't get it, from the point where 'conscious agents' are introduced. I so thoroughly don't get it, that I put the book down, and do something else. I think for the last time.

To frame it simply naive realism thinks that the eyes are windows onto a world; we look out through them and see exactly what is out there. Indirect realism says we see mental models assembled form sense data and that we don't see objects as they are. Direct realism can admit that we don't see objects just as they are in all their ways of being (colours for example are not inherent in objects, even though the property of reflecting particular wavelengths is) but we do actually see objects not mental models. It has a lot to do with linguistic framing though. So I would say that mental models of objects just are seeing the objects, rather than saying that we see mental models.

Interesting; yes, I think this part:

Indirect realism says we see mental models assembled form sense data and that we don't see objects as they are. — Janus

Is where I get ambiguous or perhaps ambivalent over indirect or direct realism. I can see arguments in both directions. From my perspective which is less object-centered, I think the color thing you talk about would be less of an issue for direct realism if it still is mapping to actual physical behavior or structure in the world.

We know we don't experience reality "as it is" for same very basic reasons - our visual and auditory ranges are rather arbitrary. Why do you think your vision starts at red wavelengths and ends at violet? Other creatures colour wavelength sensitivity ends at different places, so they're experiencing something different from us - are they also experiencing reality "as it is"? How can we be experiencing drastically different experiences, and yet still be experiencing reality "as it is"?

And consider the colour wheel itself. We experience colours, not as a linear spectrum but as a loop. That's not "reality at it is", wavelengths don't loop. Your brain is fabricating that experience for you, it's not out there in the real world. — flannel jesus

How can any of this be said if we do not see reality as it is? In one breath you make all these claims about how reality is, and in the next breath claim we do not see reality as it is.

How do you know we are experiencing reality differently if you do not see reality as it is? How can you say that your brain is fabricating the experience if you don't see reality as it is?

Do you experience your mind as it really is? If so, does that not lend one to believe that the world is like one's mind being that the mind is part of the world? If so, does this not mean that you experience (at least part of) the world as it is? And finally, does it matter that we don't see the world "as it is", but know the world as it is? If we can know the world well enough to land rovers on Mars, then we know the world as it is.

While what you say is true. Language is expressed in physical ways, so we perceive it the way we perceive everything else. Everything is party of the danger works.

Still, language is different from anything else in ways. The physical means of its expression are irrelevant to, and separate from, the meaning of what is being expressed. We can see an apple. It never means anything, and is always the physical object. We can see written words. They always mean something other than the physical marks we see.

Waves crashing on the beach cause vibrations in the air that we hear. But the sound doesn't mean anything. It doesn't even mean waves crashing on the beach. It's just an effect of the physical interaction of waves and beach. Air passing through vocal cords that are manipulated in certain ways cause vibrations in the air that we hear as words. Those words mean something beyond just the effect of the physical interaction of the air and vocal chords.

So no, not separate from the shared world we live in. But different from most things in that shared world. — Patterner

The purpose of a desktop interface is not to show you the “truth” of the computer — Hoffman, Donald D. (2019). The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes (Function). Kindle Edition.

The Cartesian theater and Plato's cave are very dark places, but if the occupants still have their sanity and astuteness, they may notice light emanating from an entrance. So, when they boldly choose to exit, they will not find absolute certainty or those majestic eternal forms, but discover a chaotic, treacherous world that brave and ingenious people strive to cope and overcome by sharing their experiences, thoughts, and creations through the vehicle of language. — Richard B

and other people are part of the shadows one experiences. Other people's existence is questioned by questioning the idea that you see the world as it is. Once you start to question your experiences, you question everything's existence - including words and the people that use them. Solipsism logically follows from unfettered skepticism about the reality of an external world.