Perception isn’t just visual. Do you agree or disagree? — NOS4A2

Yes, but I'm specifically talking about visual perception. But if you want me to be explicit, then according to your theory of perception, our perception of apples for the five main modalities are:

1. Sight: indirect
2. Hearing: indirect
3. Smell: indirect
4. Taste: direct
5. Touch: direct

So according to your theory, we only have direct perception of apples when it comes to taste and touch; but when it comes to sight, hearing, and smell, our perception of apples is only indirect.

Yes

So if you consider visual perception indirect because there is distance and other objects between apples and the eye, how do you describe perception where there is no distance nor other objects between the sense organ and the apple?

So if you consider visual perception indirect because there is distance and other objects between apples and the eye — NOS4A2

This isn't my claim. This is the consequence of your claim. I am simply pushing you to acknowledge this.

According to your theory of perception we do not have direct visual perception of apples.

So your so-called "direct realism" is very different to what is ordinarily understood by the term.

Again, perception isn’t limited to the visual, as you’ve conceded. Yet you keep limiting it to the visual. While I’ve long conceded that I cannot visually perceive apples (or anything) without light, you refuse to address whether I can still perceive apples without light. The answer to that question is “yes”.

Yet you keep limiting it to the visual. — NOS4A2

Yes, because it's important. This is the proposition under consideration:

1. We have direct visual perception of apples

According to most direct realists, (1) is true. According to you, (1) is false.

If (1) is false then one of these is true:

2. We do not have visual perception of apples
3. We only have indirect visual perception of apples

Therefore, according to you, either (2) or (3) is true.

I believe we have indirect visual perception of apples through the direct visual perception of light. This shouldn’t matter because the problem of perception is whether we can directly perceive the mind-independent world or directly perceive some mind-dependent intermediary. So why are we trying to keep discussion away from the problem?

I believe we have indirect visual perception of apples through the direct visual perception of light. This shouldn’t matter because the problem of perception is whether we can directly perceive the mind-independent world or directly perceive some mind-dependent intermediary. So why are we trying to keep discussion away from the problem? — NOS4A2

Of course it matters. If we don't have direct visual perception of apples then our ordinary understanding of perception is wrong, and there is an epistemological problem of perception. Having the direct object of visual perception be light rather than sense data is a problem for the sense datum theorist, but having it be light rather than apples is a problem for the traditional direct realist.

You're committing an association fallacy if you think that having the direct object of perception be just any mind-independent thing suffices as a solution to the problems of perception.

Then let’s try a different object of perception: the light that has bounced off an apple. How does one indirectly perceive the light bouncing off an apple?

How does one indirectly perceive the light bouncing off an apple? — NOS4A2

By light being causally responsible for but not a constituent of the first-person phenomenal experience that emerges from neural activity in the visual cortex.

I don’t know what a “constituent of the first-person phenomenal experience” is, and whether light it one or not. Can I have an example for the sake of comparison?

Can I have an example for the sake of comparison? — NOS4A2

An example of first-person phenomenal experience? It's what occurs when the visual cortex is active, whether dreaming, hallucinating, or having ordinary waking experiences, and what doesn't occur when the visual cortex isn't active, whether in deep sleep, having one's eyes closed, or suffering from cortical blindness.

An example of a constituent of that experience to be more precise. I’d like to avoid equivocating between “experience” as an occurrence or state of the human body, and “experience” as a space in which things occur.

A couple of quotes on the directness of visual perception.

I can believe just about anything I want, I can desire anything I want. My desires and my beliefs are not tied to my immediate environment in the way my visual experiences are. But when I open my eyes and look around in broad daylight, it is not up to me what I see; rather I am, by the very nature of the visual experience, forced to see the here and the now. This has an immensely important logical consequence: All experiences have the same formal intentional content. This is actually happening here and now or this object with these features exists here and now. ...

Notice that this point holds even when I know that the conditions of satisfaction are not satisfied here and now. I look at the star and know it ceased to exist millions of years ago, but all the same I am seeing it as if the shining of the star were happening right here and now. That phrase "seeing as if" marks intentional content because it fixes the conditions of satisfaction. Because of this presentational indexicality the visual experience always gives us an entire state of affairs, never just an object by itself, but always that this object exists here and now. — Seeing Things as They Are, Searle, 2015. P 65-66.