Neuron A correlates to one colour experience and neuron B correlates to another colour experience, tested by directly stimulating neuron A and then neuron B and asking the subject if they see the same, different, or no colours, and them confirming that they see two different colours.

In (1) John's eye reacts to the 700nm light by stimulating neuron A via the optic nerve into the brain.

In (2) Jane's eye reacts to the 700nm light by stimulating neuron B via the optic nerve into the brain.

In (3) the visor reacts to the 700nm light by emitting 450nm light, and John's eye reacts to the 450nm light by stimulating neuron B via the optic nerve into the brain.

In (4) the visor reacts to the 700nm light by stimulating neuron B via a wire into John's brain.

So what is the relevant difference between:

1. People born without eyes and born wearing a visor that discharges electricity into their optic nerve
2. People born with eyes and born wearing a visor that discharges electromagnetism into their eyes which discharges electricity into their optic nerve

My issue is that you appear to argue that (1) is direct perception because they don't have to assess the veracity of the visor's output but that (2) is indirect perception because they do have to assess the veracity of the visor's output, but there appears neither a causal nor a normative justification for this inconsistency. Either they are both direct perception or they are both indirect perception.

Hallucinations are not delusions; they're not belief-like but experiential and with phenomenal character. When I eat shrooms I very much experience and am very much aware of the kaleidoscope of colours that I am seeing (and very much know that the colours I am seeing are an hallucination caused by the fungus).

If you're going to define "experience of" and "aware of" in such a way that nothing is experienced and we're not aware of anything when we dream and hallucinate then it's no surprise that your understanding of indirect realism is a misrepresentation. Feeling pain isn't like feeling a table but it's still the experience and awareness of something. The grammar of the first doesn't entail touching something with one's hands even if the latter does.

Suppose in touching the apple I knock off one atom. The apple has changed. Is it the same apple even though it has changed or should I give it a new name because it has changed. — RussellA

It is still the same apple even if with some of its atoms are missing or altered. It is called identity through time. With time change in the universe, everything changes. But the identity of the object remains same, as long as it can be remembered by the perceiver.

When you were born x number of years ago, you were a newborn baby, Now you are a grown up adult, I guess? You now look totally different in height, weight and looks from when you were a newborn baby, but you are still you. You changed through time, but you remember you are you. You are still you.

What is more, you don't need to change your name, or give you a new name. No, you don't keep giving new names to objects, unless there are necessary reasons for it.

Hallucinations are not delusions. When I eat shrooms I very much experience and am very much aware of the kaleidoscope of colours that I am seeing (and very much know that the colours I am seeing are an hallucination caused by the fungus). — Michael

I'd just describe your experience as a visual distortion, not a true hallucination. Someone going through withdrawal where they try to pick off non-existent bugs crawling on their skin I'd think of as a hallucination.

I don't actually think the room spinning if I drink too much, but I wouldn't say I hallucinated it either.

Austin's point, as far as I can tell, wouldn't deny the true hallucinations, but would deny that they were very common. That is, the bulk of your claimed confusion is non-existent, easily understood and described through common language.

He'd also deny Z, where it represents X (the verdical) minus Y (the delusive)., to suggest there is a portion of any experience A that contains some truth and some added mental baggage. To allow that, slips into Locke, distinguishing between the primary and secondary qualities.

Why he denies this, as I was saying to @Banno appears dogmatic. That is, he just denies it necessary to understand the world as we commonly (and a tremendous emphasis is placed on the common man, unconfused by silly philosophical problem creation) perceive it. The minute you break the world down into what there really is (veridical) and what you only think there is (delusive), you fall into the trap of making such silly (per his view) things like "the ship I see isn't the ship there is. "

Austin does, if you buy in, preserve meaning in our ordinary discourse, but I'd argue it does so at the expense of presenting an unexamined view under the guise of a mocking anti-philosophicism (my created term), where he sort of says this has been over thought to nonsense where we can't even say we saw a ship that everyone sees plain as day.

So, my question is if we admit a distinction between the noumenal core reality and the phenomenonal perception with its generated distortions, and the noumenal is defined as beyond knowable, isn't the attempt to identify and describe the mental baggage (Z, as I've described it) futile? If we can't know what is veridical, we can't know what is delusive.

Does this not warrant the sort of move Austin makes just to create boundaries so we can speak normally. I like Wittgenstein's approach better where meaning falls to use, making the swirl in your head irrelevant.

Does hermeneutics consider progress and appreciate truth, I wonder? — Alexander Hine

It would never suggest understanding lies outside historical context, but it would also not suggest pure relativism where beliefs were accepted as arbitrary and immune from criticism.

I like Wittgenstein's approach better where meaning falls to use, making the swirl in your head irrelevant. — Hanover

This is a somewhat ambiguous claim. It's certainly practically irrelevant if the phenomenal character I experience when my eyes are stimulated by 700nm light is the same or different to the phenomenal character you experience when your eyes are stimulated by 700nm light, but it doesn't then follow that colour terms don't (also) refer to this phenomenal character. I believe I showed that it can and does in the section below the image here and in the post here.

it doesn't then follow that colour terms don't (also) refer to this phenomenal character — Michael

I spoke more precisely than that though. I said

meaning falls to use, making the swirl in your head irrelevant. — Hanover

Wittgenstein doesn't deny the phenomenonal. He denies it's relevance for communication and meaning. Wittgenstein doesn't say you have no beetle, nor that it might have all sorts of causative effects. He doesn't approach that inquiry.at all.

The approach (like Austin's) is therapeutic, designed to dissolve unclarity, not to get at ultimate truth.

He denies it's relevance for communication and meaning — Hanover

Irrelevant for communication but not irrelevant for meaning. That's why the people wearing visors ask "why is the sky now green and why is the grass now red?" after their private screens are reprogrammed and why Jim says "1nm light now appears blue" after his brain is rewired.

Despite the public use of the word "beetle" it really does refer to the private thing in the box. If through magic or advanced technology you were to replace the contents of my box with something very different then I wouldn’t recognize it as being a beetle.

The Indirect Realist (IR) and Direct Realist (DR) agree
1 - There is a temporal causal chain that follows the laws of physics from a mind-external something to perceiving the Sun in the mind. — RussellA

I don't accept this phrasing "perceiving the Sun in the mind" if it implies that perception is of some sort of mental item.

Beliefs of the IR and DR
1 - The Direct Realist believes that there is a one to one correspondence between the Sun we perceive in the mind to a Sun that both exists and persists in the world. — RussellA

Likewise, I didn't accept this. It suggests that what is perceived is a mental item (a Sun-in-the-mind) and that perception involves matching that mental item to a worldly object.

Something in the mind-external world that is constantly changing cannot persist. — RussellA

This doesn't follow. Physical systems persist precisely by changing in structured ways.

2 - In the arrow of causation, given a present event, we can determine a future event using the laws of physics, but it is logically impossible to determine a past event. — RussellA

DR doesn't require this. It requires only that perception be grounded in lawful causal dependence on the world.

As knowing a past event using a temporal causal chain is logically impossible, only by inference from the present can a past event be hypothesised. This is the position of the IR. — RussellA

I think you are missing the point of the regress argument. At some point, something must count as non-inferentially present to the mind, or explanation never begins.

I believe I showed that it can and does in the section below the image here and in the post here. — Michael

So I went back and read your referenced argument. What that proves is that certain neuronal firings result in certain utterances, but how does it prove anything about the private experience?

Jim and John could still see the exact color before and after rewiring but they say different words now. That is the PLA problem. Reference to an unidentifiable beetle provides no additional explanatory power, even if there is a beetle.

I don't accept this phrasing "perceiving the Sun in the mind" if it implies that perception is of some sort of mental item.............................Likewise, I didn't accept this. It suggests that what is perceived is a mental item (a Sun-in-the-mind) and that perception involves matching that mental item to a worldly object. — Esse Quam Videri

The DR accepts there is a temporal causal chain from something in the mind-external world to their perception.

For example, we can conceptualise that the causal chain was initiated by the Sun, followed by a wavelength of light, to an electrical signal in the optic nerve, then neural activity in the brain and finally perception in the mind.

However, as all our information about the mind-external world comes through our senses, and as it is logically impossible to know the true nature of any link prior to coming through our senses, it is also logically impossible to know the true nature of what initiated any causal chain.

The DR agrees that they perceive a Sun because of a causal chain, but as it is logically impossible to know what initiated any causal chain arriving at our senses, what the DR is perceiving cannot be something in the mind-external world.

If the DR is not perceiving a “worldly object”, then they can only be perceiving something in their mind.
====================

Physical systems persist precisely by changing in structured ways. — Esse Quam Videri

I agree that the concept of a Sun is something that persists through time.

But how can something persist in a mind-external world, if persists means exists at different times, and in Presentism only one moment in time exists.
======================================

DR doesn't require this. It requires only that perception be grounded in lawful causal dependence on the world. — Esse Quam Videri

I thought that DR requires that perception is grounded in a mind-external object. This mind-external object may in fact initiate a causal chain, but it is not the causal chain that the perception of the DR is grounded in.
========================

I think you are missing the point of the regress argument. At some point, something must count as non-inferentially present to the mind, or explanation never begins. — Esse Quam Videri

Do you mean that judgement is non-inferential?

In my sensations is a yellow circle. I judge that in the mind-external world is a Sun.

In what sense is judging that in the mind-external world there is a Sun different to inferring from my sensations that in the mind-external world is a Sun?

I agree that I am missing what other non-inferential thing must be present in the mind.

Despite the public use of the word "beetle" it really does refer to the private thing in the box. If through magic or advanced technology you were to replace the contents of my box with something very different then I wouldn’t recognize it as being a beetle. — Michael

I'm not denying the beetle may be doing work. The argument isn't eliminituve ontologically. It's eliminitive epistemically. Your discussion of changing your beetle suggests we can now discuss your beetle publicly, which is exactly the way the beetle has been defined not to be.

What would happen if we changed your beetle to a cat and now you said "cat" for beetles, I would know your usage changed. I'd still not know if you saw a dog, a hat, or a cat. The point though is that what you see in your head offers me nothing in terms of the meaning I derive from your utterances. I just work off usage, such that you use "cat" for beetles now.

Is it likely we, all fellow human beings, use our terms to describe the same internal beetle? Probably, but the point is it doesn't matter and we can't know, so let's unbewitch philosophy and use it for clarification instead of entertaining impossible concepts.

That's not to say answers of ultimate reality aren't addressable, but just not through philosophy.

In (1), the visor is not itself the object of intentionality. It is part of the causal infrastructure that realizes intentionality.

In (2), the visor is itself the object of intentionality. The subject’s perceptual state is about what the visor presents.

My point is that intentionality is not reducible to causal structure, though it is realized by it. That’s why adding or removing links in a causal chain is irrelevant unless it forces a change in what the perceptual state is about—that is, in the boundaries of the intentional system itself. And because intentionality is not reducible, there is no principled way of cashing that distinction out purely in causal terms.

What would happen if we changed your beetle to a cat and now you said "cat" for beetles — Hanover

I wouldn't. I'd say "there's a cat in my box, not a beetle".

but the point is it doesn't matter and we can't know — Hanover

It does matter even if we can't know. Something like the inverted spectrum hypothesis and indirect realism can't be handwaved away by arguing that we can't know if what you are referring to by the word "red" is the same thing that I am referring to by the word "red". Pretending that the word's meaning only has something to do with public behavior because it's the only thing of practical relevance in everyday life isn't "deflating" philosophy but refusing to do philosophy. You're welcome not to, but it doesn't work as a refutation of those who want to address issues of phenomenology and metaphysics.

Jim and John could still see the exact color before and after rewiring but they say different words now. — Hanover

Jim now uses the word "blue" when a 1nm light shines in his eyes because his experience has changed. After rewiring his brain 1nm light appears different to how it appeared before. It wasn't just some random, spontaneous, unexplained decision to use a different word to describe the same experience.

In (1), the visor is not itself the object of intentionality. It is part of the causal infrastructure that realizes intentionality.

In (2), the visor is itself the object of intentionality. The subject’s perceptual state is about what the visor presents. — Esse Quam Videri

Why? You're just begging the question again. I'll respond by saying that in (2) the strawberry is the object of intentionality and the visor is part of the causal infrastructure that realizes the intentionality. Where do we go from there?

It needs explanation how brain generates mind, how brain is linked to mind or how mind works from brain. — Corvus


Very true. — RussellA

Maybe you need to bring in Scientific explanation on this point along with Metaphysical analysis and elaboration.

Hanover

Jim now uses the word "blue" when a 1nm light shines in his eyes because his experience has changed. — Michael

I know that's what you want to conclude, but your thought experiment doesn't show that. What it shows is you've figured out how to change what people say. If your experiment is scientific, you can only report your measurable results. If I stimulate a monkey's brain to make him smile, my report will be that he smiled, not that I made him happy.

Pretending that the word's meaning only has something to do with public behavior because it's the only thing of practical relevance in everyday life isn't "deflating" philosophy but refusing to do philosophy — Michael

It just delineates the boundaries of philosophy and it doesn't result in walking away from the metaphysical questions. It just leaves them to the topic of mysticism, religion, or something else.

It is just as limiting for you to deny a description of the noumenal as for me to deny the description of phenomenonal. I have no idea what's in your mind and you have no idea what's outside the mind, so we limit it to what we can talk about.

I know that's what you want to conclude, but your thought experiment doesn't show that. What it shows is you've figured out how to change what people say. If your experiment is scientific, you can only report your measurable results. If I stimulate a monkey's brain to make him smile, my report will be that he smiled, not that I made him happy. — Hanover

I can perform the experiment on myself. I first stimulate neuron A and then neuron B and note that I have two different colour experiences. I then rewire my brain such that the light that previously triggered neuron A now triggers neuron B and the light that previously triggered neuron B now triggers neuron A. I shine the two lights into my eyes and note that the colour I experience continues to correlate with the previous neural activity but not with the previous wavelength of light, i.e. that 700nm light now causes me to see blue because it triggers neuron B and that 450nm light now causes me to see red because it triggers neuron A.

I then assume that I'm not special and that other humans have first-person experiences like mine and aren't just p-zombies, and that when I perform this experiment on them their choice of words is determined by the phenomenal character of their experience and not because they're automatons whose language-programming has been altered. Of course maybe this assumption is false, and that the reason my argument makes sense to me but not to you is because I'm not a p-zombie and you are, in which case we have a useful means to test whether or not someone is a p-zombie; those who agree with me aren't and those who don't agree with me are.

I have no idea what's in your mind and you have no idea what's outside the mind, so we limit it to what we can talk about. — Hanover

You don't need to know what's in my mind. You just need to understand that if the beetle in your box was replaced with a cat then you wouldn't say "this cat is a beetle"; you'd say "there is no longer a beetle in my box but a cat instead". You then perform the quite easy task of recognizing that other people are probably much like you, and would say much the same thing if their beetle was replaced with a cat. You don't need to literally read someone's mind to "put yourself in their shoes".

Why? You're just begging the question again. I'll just respond by saying that in (2) the strawberry is the object of intentionality and the visor is part of the causal infrastructure that realizes the intentionality. Where do we go from there? — Michael

If you respond that way then the dispute has been elevated from a question of where the visor fits into the causal chain to a dispute over what counts as the intentional object of perception. At that point, the only coherent way to adjudicate the claim is by taking an "intentional stance" toward the system - treating it as a normative, agential entity rather than as merely a causal chain. It is only at that level of resolution that the question "what is the object of the system's perception?" makes any sense, since questions of aboutness, reference, and error only arise at that level of analysis. They are not facts that drop out of wiring diagrams.

Now, you could refuse this move, but then the burden would be on you to explain intentionality without appeal to normative or agential notions—or else to accept some kind of eliminativism.

Answering that question will involve analyzing the agent's behavior to determine what it is referring to when it makes claims about the world. — Esse Quam Videri

Once again, this shows that you are arguing for semantic direct realism, which is distinct from phenomenological direct realism and compatible with phenomenological indirect realism.

The traditional dispute between direct and indirect realism has nothing to do with whether or not our claims are about the world and everything to do with whether or not the world is "directly present" to the mind in phenomenal experience. It's an issue that covers even those unintelligent agents who don't have a language and so don't make claims of any kind, e.g. babies and animals.

You're saying that the painting is of Obama and that the book is about Trump and indirect realists are saying that the painting is just paint and that the book is just words and that neither Obama nor Trump are "directly present". And your responses are akin to arguing "but it's not a painting of paint and it's not a book about words".

So rather than the traditional dispute being "framed wrong" as you asserted before, it's just that you mean something entirely else by the phrase "direct perception". According to what traditional direct and indirect realists mean by the phrase, it's clear that the traditional direct realists are wrong and indirect realists are right, which is why "indirect perceptual realism is broadly equivalent to the scientific view of perception".

I can perform the experiment on myself — Michael

Why"d you go to that whole rigamarole and not just tell me that when you looked right you saw a tree and when you looked left you saw a bush and then we could say varying stimuli caused varying perceptions.

I then assume that I'm not special and that other humans have first-person experiences like mine — Michael

I categorically do not question the existence of internal states. I am saying it doesn't offer explanatory power. I'm also saying you cannot show me that it does because you can't show me that inner state.

Back to the main issue: you saw a ship. What did you perceive? Can you paint it for me? Is the painting the ship or just what you saw modified by indirect distortions and interpretation? When I see the picture, do I see what you saw, or do I see a perception of a picture now modified by me?

So, I can't know anything except to assume my sight of the noumena matches your sight because you're not special, but when you want to tell me about your phenomena, you just paint me and speak to me in noumena?

As in, your phenomenonal state is certain to you but noumenal to me, but then you make an Austin move and dispense with the problem of delusion by now suggesting I can assume I see what you see. Wasn't part of the implication of hallucination that there is variation across individual perception?

If that, why not for simplicity sake just consider the noumena the same as the phenomena since you can't tell me how the specific distinction between what is and what is perceived except to say there is general consensus as to what the ship is. That sounds like a form of direct realism.

And that returns us to this: if we're going to end up treating the ship as the perception of the ship why the meandering journey to that conclusion every time where we talk about indirectness that affects our outcome in no way?

I don't really understand your questions. You and I are having a successful(ish) conversation right now despite the fact that neither of us is directly perceiving the same thing; even the direct realist must accept this. I can talk about your post and you can talk about my post but what do each of us directly perceive? The direct realist will say that you directly see your computer screen and that I directly see my computer screen. We might assume that our screens resemble each other but maybe they don't. Perhaps I don't even have a screen and instead I have some device that speaks the words out to me in French because I'm blind and French. And we can even talk about one another despite having never met and despite neither of us having anything to do with the computer screens we're looking at or the audio being spoken (other than in the causal sense).

If all of this is possible then why is it so problematic to just move things back "into the head"? You accept the existence of internal states, and internal states are as real as anything else in the universe, even if we cannot in practice perceive one another's. But then in practice we do not perceive each other or one another's computer screens but that's no problem at all. So what difference does it make if our conversation is only possible through the direct perception of our own internal states rather than the direct perception of our own computer screens or audio devices?

Once again, this shows that you are arguing for semantic direct realism, which is distinct from phenomenological direct realism and compatible with phenomenological indirect realism. — Michael

And once again, I disagree for reasons we have already discussed.

First, I don’t categorize myself as an SDR; at least, not in the way that Robinson defines it.

Second, in the traditional debate both direct and indirect realists assume that some kind of object is directly present to the mind through phenomenal experience, whether worldly or intermediary. I reject that assumption.

That’s why the painting analogy fails. For me, experience does not represent or manifest the world at all. Experience supplies data within a normative structure of inquiry; it does not function as a representation or as an object of awareness in its own right.

Also, the analogy obscures my point about normativity. Paintings can misrepresent because there's a convention connecting paint-patterns to subjects. But perceptual error is not a failure of representational convention, but a failure to satisfy correctness conditions—conditions that are constitutively world-involving, not products of representational convention.

Second, in the traditional debate both direct and indirect realists assume that some kind of object is directly present to the mind through phenomenal experience, whether worldly or intermediary. I reject that assumption. — Esse Quam Videri

Then we return back to something I said earlier:

1. Distal objects are directly present to the mind in phenomenal experience
2. Mental phenomena are directly present to the mind in phenomenal experience

Traditional direct realists believe that (1) is true and (2) is false, traditional indirect realists believe that (1) is false and (2) is true, and you believe that both (1) and (2) are false.

The first thing to note is that according to what traditional direct and indirect realists mean by the phrase "direct perception", perception of distal objects is direct if and only if (1) is true and perception of distal objects is indirect if and only if (1) is false. As such, according to what these groups mean by the phrase "indirect perception", perception of distal objects can be indirect even if (2) is false. Therefore, if you accept that (1) is false then your position is consistent with the "weaker" indirect realist claim that (1) is false even if inconsistent with the "stronger" indirect realist claim that (2) is true.

The second thing to note is that (2) does not require that mental phenomena be "objects" in the sense that I think you mean by the word. To be the object of perception isn't to be some thing with extension and mass or anything like that; to be the object of perception is to be the X in "I experience X", at least as I understand it. If I feel pain then pain is the object of perception, if I see colours then colours are the object of perception, if I hear a truck then a truck is the object of perception, and so on. The indirect realist's claim is that pain and colours are mental phenomena and are directly present to the mind in phenomenal experience, whereas a truck is a machine that exists at a distance from the body and is not directly present to the mind in phenomenal experience, and so therefore perception of mental phenomena is direct and perception of trucks is not direct (is indirect) — with perception of trucks only made possible by the perception of mental phenomena.

The indirect realist's claim is that pain and colours are mental phenomena and are directly present to the mind in phenomenal experience, whereas a truck is a machine that exists at a distance from the body and is not directly present to the mind in phenomenal experience, and so therefore perception of mental phenomena is direct and perception of trucks is not direct (is indirect) — with perception of trucks only made possible by the perception of mental phenomena. — Michael

I believe this is where we keep talking past each other. I reject the above.

Out of curiosity, for the indirect realist described above, what is the relationship between multi-modal sensory data (redness as-seen, loudness as-heard, etc.) and the judgement that expresses the claim “that’s a truck”?

Also, what does it mean to say that multi-modal sense data are “directly present” to the mind?

So what difference does it make if our conversation is only possible through the direct perception of our own internal states rather than the direct perception of our own computer screens or audio devices? — Michael

Aren't you asking what difference any of this makes? As in, if I think even to another extreme that we live in the matrix and we're all hooked up in pods and none of this is real, we're still going about this conversation just the same. That is, it'd be the same with direct realism, indirect realism, idealism, and evil genius land.

And that's the Austin approach. Why all the complicated explanations and not just say WYSIWYG?

If that, why not for simplicity sake just consider the noumena the same as the phenomena since you can't tell me how the specific distinction between what is and what is perceived except to say there is general consensus as to what the ship is. That sounds like a form of direct realism. — Hanover

We know data comes into your brain in discreet bits. What you experience is a seamless whole. The architecture of the nervous system testifies that what you're experiencing is a construction, in some ways like a movie.

When I say I saw Trump on the TV, what I mean is that I saw digital data that came from sampling the light bouncing off Trump, which was then digitally transmitted to my computer, which regenerated the pictures of Trump and sent them to my screen. What I say is that I saw Trump. That's indirect realism.

What I say is that I saw Trump. — frank

But you just told me something different. You told me light bounced off a Trump object and a series of fortunate events left you with a phenomenal image of what you called "Trump." So, what is Trump? The thing in your head or the thing the light bounced off?

If they're different, why do you call them both "Trump"? If the reason is because there's no reasonable basis to maintain the distinction between the Trump object and the Trump perception in everyday discourse, you're sounding like a brand of direct realism.