Arguing that schizophrenics don't hear voices, only hallucinate voices, is such a pointless argument that fails to address the actual philosophical substance of both direct and indirect realism. — Michael

But I think that's the ultimate point of analytic philosophy, which is to make every statement ultimately analytic and not synthetic. It intentionally leaves all metaphysical discussion off limits because the grammar must relate to word usage itself and not to what is out there in the world. It's not to say there aren't things in the world, but it's that dividing the world into what actually is and what is discussed is a category error.

All of your commentary about how words have varying meaning (like "directly" and "indirectly") are true, but those modifiers gain their distinction by usage variation and not metaphysical referent.

I'm not saying I agree with it. I just think it's an internally coherent system that is meant not to offer an explanation of reality, but it's to cure us of the circles we argue looking for what's out there (i.e. therapuetic).

Thanks for showing the folly of reading these issues as purely phenomenal; of trying to understand what is a process embedded in our interactions with the world and with each other as if it were purely an interaction between a disembodied mind and a mooted object.

Is the perception I have the actual ship that is? — Hanover

That million dollar question is a fraud, one that pretends to a difference between the ship and the actual ship.

We can track some of the errors here. The most obvious is the move from "There is a phenomenal state" (a constipated way of saying "I see something") to "There is something that is seen". The argument is that naively, when we see a ship, there is a ship, so when we hallucinate a ship, there must be a thing that is hallucinated; and so philosophers invent the "mental image" as a reification of the hallucination. But of course what we have in an hallucination is not seeing any thing - the things hallucinated are of course not there. Talking as if there were a thing that is seen in an hallucination is a mistake.

It's worth noting that what marks an hallucination most clearly is that others do not see what the hallucinator sees. Hallucination is social. This is particularly important because in an hallucination there is nothing to fix truth; and that's were the "blur" example you give falls. You suggest

If I see a blur of what is a is far out at sea, I don't "see" a ship to the extent that blur is not a ship (but is instead a distortion). — Hanover

But if there is a ship, then you see the ship as a blur. Those on board will hopefully have a clearer view, as perhaps will the person next to you who did not forget their glasses. Again, the problem with phenomenology is the presumption of solitude. And indeed, that solitude is a variation on the homunculus, siting inside your head looking out, requiring an inner “viewer” who reintroduces the very subject–object split under dispute.

Those last two paragraphs don't make much sense to me. I think you are attributing a view that I do not hold.

So again, what is rejected here is the picture of an epistemic test layered on top of a private state that phenomenology takes as granted. What is suggested instead is an interaction between world and word, language games embedded in a community.

Now Hanover, I think you know this stuff. I suspect you agree with me, but find it more fun to disagree. As do I.

Arguing that schizophrenics don't hear voices, only hallucinate voices, is such a pointless argument — Michael

Of course. They hear hallucinated voices. If we ask those around them if they hear the voices, how do they answer? It is the mark of the misfire implicit in an hallucination, that there are others who do not participate. The appeal here is not to "one true" meaning, it's to the difference that makes an hallucination worthy of note. It is remarkable that the voice is heard only by the hallucinator.

You might want to use the phrase "I see X" only if there's the right kind of physical interaction between your body and some distal X... — Michael

Not quite. Rather we can make the observation that this is the typical situation, against which we note the exceptions. The exception can occur only against this background.

Again, the salient difference is that a direct realist sees ships, while an indirect realist never can. That in itself should be enough to show that the indirect realist has gone astray.

But I think that's the ultimate point of analytic philosophy — Hanover

No. It's rather to take our words seriously, and try to use them consistently. To do metaphysic properly.
Anyway, is as analytic as they come. His method and mine correlate nicely.

In a traffic light what is important is as much the relationship between the lights, top, middle, bottom, as the colours of the lights, red, amber, green. The rule to stop if the top light is on is as useful to the driver as the rule to stop when the red light is on. Perhaps more useful, as even if some people may not be able to distinguish red from green they are unlikely not to be able to distinguish top from bottom. — RussellA

We are only discussing driving license and traffic lights because you seem to think sometimes red colour exists in your mind. Hence I gave inductive reason how the license is issued to only to people who have normal mind set and normal perception. If the DVLC doubts that the person has not normal perception capability and normal mind, then they will not issue the license.

For traffic lights, people must be able to perceive red light as red, and green light as green. It must be direct perception. You don't have time to judge going through the relationship between the lights, and figure out which light must be top or bottom of which light.

Judgement to drive or stop the car can be made instantly from direct perception of the colour of the lights and reflex system in the brain with no thought process involved.

It is both the case that (a) the phenomenal character of experience is not truth-apt and the case that (b) we use the phenomenal character of experience to make inferences about the environment. (b) is exactly what John and Jane do in the example I gave; their assertions about the wavelength of light emitted by the screen are not made apropos of nothing — they derive their conclusion from the phenomenal character of their experience (coupled with their knowledge of the wavelengths of light that are usually responsible for such an experience). — Michael

Let me push this a little further. I would argue that not only is phenomenal experience not truth-apt, it is not even conceptually articulated. Raw phenomenal character — redness as-seen, loudness as-heard, sourness as-tasted — is not the kind of thing that can directly participate in inferential relations, whether to ground them or otherwise. Inference requires intelligible, conceptual content. Phenomenal qualities can only figure in inference once they have been conceptualized through an act of reflexive understanding, but the resulting conceptualization is not identical with the phenomenal qualities themselves.

Once phenomenal experience has been conceptualized, we can make judgments about it (e.g. “there is a red patch in my visual field right now”). These judgments can participate in inferential relations, but at no point do phenomenal qualities themselves participate in inference. So you are right that John’s and Jane’s assertions are not made apropos of nothing, but it is not correct to say that they derive their conclusions directly from the phenomenal character of their experience. Phenomenal experience can condition and constrain the formation of judgments in a causal and heuristic sense, and judgments about phenomenal experience can certainly play a justificatory or explanatory role within reasoning — but that is not the same thing as phenomenal experience itself functioning inferentially.

But at least with respect to colour (and other secondary qualities, à la Locke), the world just isn't this way. — Michael

I agree that color does not exist “out there” in the way the naïve realist insists, and in that sense I do not count myself among their number. I do consider myself a kind of direct realist, but only in the broader sense I’ve described in previous replies.

Any inference about the mind-independent nature of the world from these secondary qualities is open to scepticism. That's really all there is to indirect realism. — Michael

I don’t agree that this is all there is to indirect realism. Aside from the two required characteristics I pointed out in a previous post, I would also say your framing above seems to assume that our knowledge of the world is inferred from phenomenal character, as though phenomenal experience — or judgments about it — provides a justificatory foundation for all other knowledge. That is one of the assumptions I’m pushing back on. Phenomenal experience is not the kind of thing that can play a justificatory role, and even judgments about phenomenal experience are not epistemic bedrock.

Indirect realism, as you are presenting it, seems to depend on the idea that knowledge of the world is justified by first securing knowledge of phenomenal character and then inferring outward. Once that picture is abandoned — once experience is seen as conditioning inquiry rather than grounding justification — the skeptical pressure you associate with secondary qualities never arises.

Interestingly, it seems we agree in rejecting the phenomenal as in any way foundational.

What you here call judgement corresponds closely to what I might call intent. Putting the case far too briefly, I'd draw on Anselm's distinction between directions of fit, pointing out that we stipulate what things are in order to allow for our talking about them. This counts as a ship, while that counts as a tree.

I quite agree with your last paragraph.

I’m glad to see that we agree on something. It makes sense to me that you would also reject any appeal to the phenomenal as epistemically foundational given how you've argued in other threads.

I also take your point about “judgment” lining up closely with what you call intent. In both cases, what matters is that we’re talking about norm-governed, world-directed acts rather than inner episodes. The Anselmian point about direction of fit seems especially apt here: judgment isn’t a matter of mirroring appearances but of committing oneself to how things are.

As you might have guessed, while I agree that our classificatory practices (“this counts as a ship”) are indispensable for discourse I’d also want to say that such judgments are not merely stipulative. But on the main point — that skepticism doesn’t arise from rejecting phenomenal foundations — it sounds like we’re very much on the same page.

I'm very pleased that we've found some agreement.

Of course, "counts as" is not merely stipulative, either, in that not just any stipulation will do. So perhaps we agree there, too.

:up:

In Structural Realism, the Indirect Realist makes judgements as much from relata as from relatum. — RussellA

Seeing red from the traffic light, and stopping is a similar type of perception and judgment / action, as getting pinched on your cheek by your wife, and screaming "ouch" from the pain. It doesn't involve any thought process, reasoning or relationships.

We are only discussing driving license and traffic lights because you seem to think sometimes red colour exists in your mind. Hence I gave inductive reason how the license is issued to only to people who have normal mind set and normal perception. — Corvus

Where does the colour red exist
Within the language game of our community, the top light of a traffic light has been named “red”. Therefore, when I see the top light and perceive a colour, the name of the colour I perceive is “red”. Similarly, when you see the top light and perceive a colour, the name of the colour you perceive is also “red”.

But as you said:

But I don't know what you are actually seeing in your mind. I can only guess you are seeing same colour as when I see "red".

We agree that the colour we both perceive has the name “red”, even if the colour I perceive in my mind is not the same colour as you perceive in your mind.

That we both use the same name “red” when seeing the same thing makes us normal members of our linguistic community.

Indirect Realism and Epistemic Structural Realism
It should be remembered that the name “red” includes wavelengths from 625nm to 750nm, meaning that there are an infinite number of shades of the colour “red”. So when we perceive a colour in our mind that has been named “red”, we are perceiving only one particular instantiation of an infinite number of possible shades of “red”.

It should also be remembered that in order to be able to say “I see the colour red”, we must have previously learnt the concept “red” by taking part in our community's language game.

Henceforth, when we perceive a particular instantiation of a colour in our mind, and already know the concept under which that colour falls, we can then talk about “the colour red”.

Indirect Realism avoids scepticism about a mind-external world by “inference to the best explanation” within the broader topic of Epistemic Structural Realism (ESR). Judgements about any possible mind-external world are thereby based not only on the perception of a particular instantiation of colour in the mind, but also on knowing that this particular instantiation of colour falls under the concept that has the public name “red”.

Similarly, we can talk about “ships” within a public language because not only are we able to think about a particular instantiation of a ship but also know that this particular instantiation of ship falls under the concept that has the public name “ship”.

The Indirect Realist can make judgments about a mind-external world using “inference to the best explanation” within Epistemic Structural Realism. These judgments are based not only on perceptions in the mind of particular instantiations but also on knowing the public linguistic concept that these particular instantiations fall under.

Seeing red from the traffic light, and stopping is a similar type of perception and judgment / action, as getting pinched on your cheek by your wife, and screaming "ouch" from the pain. It doesn't involve any thought process, reasoning or relationships. — Corvus

I have had to learn that “red” on a traffic light means “stop”. Once I have learnt that “red” on a traffic light means “stop”, and have driven often, then, yes, stopping may require minimum thought or reasoning.

The meaning of a symbol has to be learnt.

Our linguistic community must have stipulated that “red” on a traffic light means “stop” before we know we have to stop at a "red" traffic light.

Similarly our linguistic community must have stipulated that a particular set of shapes and colours perceived in the mind represent a “ship” before we are able to talk about "ships".

IE, when we talk about “ships” we are referring to a particular set of shapes and colours perceived in the mind, not something mind-external.

We can then extend what we perceive in the mind to a mind-external world using “inference to the best explanation”.

That million dollar question is a fraud, one that pretends to a difference between the ship and the actual ship. — Banno

I don't agree with this approach because it delves into metaphysics. I'm fine with the idea that it makes no sense to speak of ships and actual ships as if they are different entities, but that has to do with grammar and the rules of language, not the ships out there versus the ships in my head. To commit to the idea that there aren't distinctions between what I see as the ship and what the ship is like out at sea is just as problematic as to say there are distinctions. You're speaking of what is "real," and that is just an off limits conversation if we wish to remain clear.

It's worth noting that what marks an hallucination most clearly is that others do not see what the hallucinator sees. Hallucination is social. This is particularly important because in an hallucination there is nothing to fix truth; and that's were the "blur" example you give falls. — Banno

What fixes truth is the consistency of usage of the term "ship" and "hallucinate." That you might see X (the beetle) in your brain that you associate as "ship" is entirely irrelevant for the analysis as long as the use remains consistent. That is, I push back on your comment above to the extent you see the distinction between the hallucination and the ship is one of difference in referent. It's not that I see an actual ship and you just see something weird going on in your head that distinguishes the hallucination from the ship. It's that no one else uses the word "ship" the same way the hallucinator uses the word when he does. I don't care why the problem is happening. That's a question for neurlogists and metaphysicians, not philosophers.

Those last two paragraphs don't make much sense to me. I think you are attributing a view that I do not hold. — Banno

My point is that there is no need to get into the weeds discussing how our brains work, how our retina receives light waves, how the optic nerve transmits information to our brains. To enter that debate forgets the category errror of combining philosophy with neurology. The reason the ship you see is the ship that there is is because our language designates it as such. That's how we use words. Once I enter the debate about how physics affects perception, I've left the field of philosophy.

No. It's rather to take our words seriously, and try to use them consistently. To do metaphysic properly. — Banno

Metaphysics is not properly done. Metaphysics asks about the beetle.

Now Hanover, I think you know this stuff. I suspect you agree with me, but find it more fun to disagree. As do I. — Banno

I'm just trying to argue straight Wittgenstein, more out of my attempt to just understand Wittgenstein. I do realize you're not locked into that limited of an exploration.

What I actually believe? I believe our consciousness and how we have perception is entirely unexplainable. Whether there is a ship at all consistent at sea with what we perceive is unknowable and meaningless. What a ship would look like without eyes that impose eye like properties on it makes zero sense. We interact in our world and have no reason to question whether there really is a world or whether there is an external stimulus providing us perceptions. Descartes concluded that an all perfect God wouldn't deceive us, which is just to say we take it as a most fundamental proposition that the ship at sea actually exists in some capacity and that it makes sense to say we see it clearer and less clear, consistent with how it actually is. To say the ship really is just what we see isn't how we think of things. We think of perceptions as possibly inaccurate and we do accept that we might be hallucinating things. We also think of the ship as being what we see as opposed to the breeze that passes us by that lets us know there was a ship, but that's just how we think about things. We have no reason to conclude that is correct outside of pragmatism or faith.

The other solution is quietism, which is to drop out the beetle as irrelavant for our immediate conversation. I think there's merit to that, although it's entirely unsatisfactory, which then takes me to the mystical, which is where all this metaphysical stuff belongs. And from there I go down a very theistic path that no one is interested in, except for me to say I find value in locating where the edges of our philosophical knowledge can take us, which is the beetle, the mystery.

The Indirect Realist can make judgments about a mind-external world using “inference to the best explanation” within Epistemic Structural Realism. — RussellA

It sounds like Indirect Realists are imagining that because they are IRists, things must exist inside their minds, when it is just memory, imagination and thinking about the objects in their head. The external objects such as chairs, tables, cars and postbox and colour of reds don't exist in your mind. You are just thinking, imagining and remembering about them.

I am not sure if Indirect Realism is a meaningful thing. We see the real objects in front of us, and interact with, access and use them. When we think, imagine and remember them, when the objects are not present in front of us, we are just imagining, remembering and thinking about them.

The meaning of a symbol has to be learnt. — RussellA

Yes, we have learnt our language from the early age, and can communicate our minds with others. That is all we have. We don't have access to any others' mind apart from our own. I know you are seeing red, because you said you are seeing red. What type of red, or how bright or dark red, I don't know. I could listen to your further explanation on what type of red you are seeing, and try to imagine what you are seeing. But it would be my own imagination of red I will be seeing in my mind, not yours ever.

The external objects such as chairs, tables, cars and postbox and colour of reds don't exist in your mind. You are just thinking, imagining and remembering about them. — Corvus

You see the colour red. You feel a burning pain.

You don’t think that the burning pain exists outside of a mind. Why do you think that the colour red exists outside of a mind?

What exists outside of a mind is the cause of a burning pain in your mind, which is not a burning pain.

Similarly, what exists outside of a mind is the cause of the colour red, which is not the colour red.
==========================================================================

I know you are seeing red, because we said you are seeing red. — Corvus

You know that I am seeing the colour red, because I say I am seeing the colour red. You know that I am feeling a burning pain, because I say I am feeling a burning pain

How do you know that I am telling the truth? How do you know what is in my mind?

You don’t think that the burning pain exists outside of a mind. Why do you think that the colour red exists outside of a mind? — RussellA

The burning pain and colour red are totally different things. The pain is your feeling, but the colour red is in the space out there. The perception of the colour red in your mind is your judgement, nothing to do with the colour red out there in the space.

How do you know that I am telling the truth? How do you know what is in my mind? — RussellA

I don't know what is in your mind, but I can understand what you are saying. You are seeing the red. You are feeling a burning pain. It could be true or it could be a lie. But that is a different topic.

The burning pain and colour red are totally different things. The pain is your feeling, but the colour red is in the space out there. The perception of the colour red in your mind is your judgement, nothing to do with the colour red out there in the space. — Corvus

Pain is a feeling. As you say, when I feel pain, I don’t need to think about it for a while and judge that I feel pain.

Are you saying that when you see the colour red you have to think about it for a while and then make the judgement that you are seeing red rather than green, for example.

This is different to naming your feelings, which does require a judgement.

I would have thought they neither seeing a red colour nor feeling a burning pain require any judgement. Both seeing the colour red and feeling a burning pain must be immediate feelings and not judgements.

If that is the case, and both are feelings, why should one feeling, burning pain, not exist in the external world yet another feeling, the colour red, does exist in an external world?

Put another way, if you believe that the colour red exists in the external world outside the mind, then how do you know that a burning pain does not exist in the external world outside the mind?

Are you saying that when you see the colour red you have to think about it for a while and then make the judgement that you are seeing red rather than green, for example. — RussellA

Judgement can be made instantly when seeing the red. You don't require thinking to make the judgement. There are different types of judgements. If you are a judge for dancing competition, maybe you need time to think to judge who was the best competitor.

However, if you are seeing the red from the traffic light, then you don't need thought to judge it is red, hence you must stop. This type of judgement is made instantly, because it is a judgement on the simplest direct perception which you have been accustomed to for many years.

Put another way, if you believe that the colour red exists in the external world outside the mind, then how do you know that a burning pain does not exist in the external world outside the mind? — RussellA

You know this by your instinct. It is obvious. The red is in the traffic light out in the street. The burning pain is on your body, and you feel the pain in your brain.

They hear hallucinated voices. — Banno

Yes, and hallucinated voices are mental phenomena. Ergo, the thing being heard is a mental phenomenon.

The Common Kind Claim is that this sense of hearing voices also occurs in the non-hallucinatory case, i.e. in the non-hallucinatory case there is both hearing voices-as-mental-phenomena and hearing voices-as-distal-stimulus.

The indirect realist claims that it is only hearing voices-as-mental-phenomena that satisfies the philosophical sense of directness (as explained here) and that it is only in virtue of this that hearing voices-as-distal-stimulus is possible — hence the latter being indirect perception.

Indirect realism, as you are presenting it, seems to depend on the idea that knowledge of the world is justified by first securing knowledge of phenomenal character and then inferring outward. — Esse Quam Videri

Then perhaps I haven't explained myself clearly, because indirect realism argues that because perception of the world is not direct (i.e. its features do not manifest in phenomenal experience) phenomenal experience doesn't justify our knowledge of the mind-independent nature of the world, hence there being an epistemological problem of perception.

Thank you for these comments.

I think we can distinguish between an indirect realist who claims that it is impossible for a perceiver to perceive anything other than their own mental states and one who acknowledges that it is perfectly possible for a perceiver to perceive mind-external objects but that, in fact, this never happens in reality.

Of the first kind of indirect realist, they will have to deny my claim that we can perceive mind external objects directly. I think they can't, consistently, deny this - their view is untenable imo - for by their own lights they must acknowledge that perceivers can directly perceive their own mental states (and once this is acknowledged, I see no reason to deny that a perceiver cannot directly perceive states of mind-external things either). But, though I can see no grounds upon which they could do so rationally, they would have to deny that part of my view.

The second kind of direct realist can accept everything I have said and would only be denying that we ever actually do perceive mind-external objects. But that view seems epistemically untenable. Their reasoning is, I think, just plain bad. They are reasoning from the existence of forgeries of banknotes to the conclusion that therefore all banknotes are forgeries. Their rejection of the idea that we often directly perceive the external world would be an article of faith, not a conclusion one could reasonably arrive at.

So yes, because I make use of mental imagery to explain the bad cases, I am making use of what the indirect realist thinks all cases involve. But there is, I think, no metaphysical or epistemic problem in positing mental imagery - the problems come from what one thinks such imagery can do or how big a role one thinks it plays. And it's there that the indirect realist seems to be holding extreme and irrational views.

Then perhaps I haven't explained myself clearly, because indirect realism is the position that because perception of the world is not direct (i.e. its features do not manifest in phenomenal experience) the phenomenal character of experience doesn't justify our knowledge of the world, hence there being an epistemological problem of perception. — Michael

My understanding is that, traditionally, indirect realism has held that phenomenal experience (1) does not justify our knowledge because (2) it functions as an inaccurate representation of the world and (3) the rest of our knowledge is inferred from it. From this, (4) the problem of skepticism arises.

I accept (1) but reject (2), (3) and (4), so I wouldn't classify my view as indirect realism.

By contrast, my view is that phenomenal experience does not justify our knowledge because it does not function as a representation of the world at all. As a result, our knowledge is not inferred from it, and the skeptical problem you've described does not arise.

Yes, and hallucinated voices are mental phenomena. — Michael

Yesterday I wrote at length arguing that this was an error.

The most obvious is the move from "There is a phenomenal state" (a constipated way of saying "I see something") to "There is something that is seen". The argument is that naively, when we see a ship, there is a ship, so when we hallucinate a ship, there must be a thing that is hallucinated; and so philosophers invent the "mental image" as a reification of the hallucination. But of course what we have in an hallucination is not seeing any thing - the things hallucinated are of course not there. Talking as if there were a thing that is seen in an hallucination is a mistake.

It's worth noting that what marks an hallucination most clearly is that others do not see what the hallucinator sees. Hallucination is social. This is particularly important because in an hallucination there is nothing to fix truth; and that's were the "blur" example you give falls. You suggest — Banno

...but that has to do with grammar and the rules of language, not the ships out there versus the ships in my head. — Hanover

That's good, because I hope there are no ships in your head. What little metaphysics I am indulging claims that there are things such as ships, and that we can talk and think about them. I'd hope for agreement on at least this.

That is, I push back on your comment above to the extent you see the distinction between the hallucination and the ship is one of difference in referent. — Hanover

The hallucination of a ship has no referent, if our domain is ships and such. This is not a difference between the objects seen, since the hallucinator, by the very fact that they are hallucinating, does not see some thing; they have the hallucination of seeing something. That's kinda what hallucinations are.

My point is that there is no need to get into the weeds discussing how our brains work — Hanover

Yep. It's a point about how we talk consistently on these topics - that is, a conceptual, philosophical issue. The indirect realist invents something to be the thing the hallucinator sees, and that is their error. The direct realist points out that the hallucinator only thinks they see something.

I'm just trying to argue straight Wittgenstein, more out of my attempt to just understand Wittgenstein. — Hanover

The idea of a Mental image must surely be anathema to someone who has an understanding of the private language argument. What marks an hallucination is how it differs from the usual circumstances. Austin is better here, going into sense and sensibilia in some detail. And not incompatible with Wittgenstein.

Whether there is a ship at all consistent at sea with what we perceive is unknowable and meaningless. — Hanover

This, and the stuff around it, seems also incompatible with Wittgenstein. There's a ship if the ship has a place in our language games. There's a ship if there is a ship in the domain of discourse. What remains unclear is the nature of that ship. Our perceptions here have a place in our language games, but do not underpin it in the way that (naive?) phenomenology supposes. And it's not here being argued that the ship is exactly as we see it - that would still be sticking to the phenomenalist picture. Of course we might be in error - and poignantly, that would be to be an error about the ship, not about some phantasmic mental-image-of-ship.

I think there's merit to that, although it's entirely unsatisfactory, — Hanover

...ok...

And from there I go down a very theistic path — Hanover

Ok. I had suspected this. Thanks for being candid.

There are different types of judgements. — Corvus

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