But the notion of finding out how things really are outside any perspective is unintelligible I think. — ChatteringMonkey

I understand the reasons for thinking that, but it does undermine evolution, cosmology, geology as explanations for how the world as it appears to us now came to be that way.

We can still do the science, but it becomes an appearance as well. It appears to us that we evolved, but the reality could be something else entirely. It would be like if God created the universe six thousands years ago to appear as though it was billions of years old, evolution occurred and what not. Or the simulation was programmed to make it appear that way. In that case, dinosaurs never existed. Their fossils are an appearance to us.

Scientific explanations become part of the appearance, but they don't say anything about the underlying reality. So we have no confidence that we actually evolved or that there was a Big Bang. It only looks like that empirically.

I understand the reasons for thinking that, but it does undermine evolution, cosmology, geology as explanations for how the world as it appears to us now came to be that way.

We can still do the science, but it becomes an appearance as well. It appears to us that we evolved, but the reality could be something else entirely. It would be like if God created the universe six thousands years ago to appear as though it was old, evolution occurred and what not. Or the simulation was programmed to make it appear that way. In that case, dinosaurs never existed. Their fossils are an appearance to us.

Scientific explanations become part of the appearance, but they don't say anything about the underlying reality. So we have no confidence that we actually evolved. It only looks like that empirically. — Marchesk

I think, and this is most probably a move you won't like, ultimately that I don't really care about the underlying reality. Truth serves a function, or at least it should in my view, to better inform us about how to live our lives.

The example I tend to give, is that generally we are not even remotely interested in knowing how much individual straws there are in a heap of straws. It's just not something that could help us in attaining any of our goals.... Likewise, what purpose other than truth for truth sake, does the positing of this underlying reality serve? If that reality would have an effect on our actions, then we would find out, and adjust our views accordingly, because it matters in that case. But an underlying reality that we can't sense, that has no effect whatsoever our action or goals, that we have no way of knowing more about and that is not even a coherent notion to begin with... what's the point?

But an underlying reality that we can't sense, that has no effect whatsoever our action or goals, that we have no way of knowing more about and that is not even a coherent notion to begin with... what's the point? — ChatteringMonkey

Just to give an example where it could matter, creationists could use that to dismiss evolution as merely an appearance. The underlying reality was created by God 6K years ago. Why God made it look like evolution occurred? Mysterious ways and testing the faithful. Or Satan did it. I don't know. They will think of something.

Just to give an example where it could matter, creationists could use that to dismiss evolution as merely an appearance. The underlying reality was created by God 6K years ago. Why God made it look like evolution occurred? Mysterious ways and testing the faithful. Or Satan did it. I don't know. They will think of something. — Marchesk

Yes sure, and that is usually the point of positing an underlying reality beyond the senses. Not that they really care about the truth... but that they want a justification for holding onto their preconceived beliefs and moral views.

Yeah that is at least the conclusion that Nietzsche for example drew from it... that if the true world, or how things really are, is an incoherent notion, what you are left with is perspectives. Everything is a allways viewed from a perspective. — ChatteringMonkey

What about the perspective itself? From where is it viewed to say that there is a "how things are" for a perspective? It creates an infinite regress of needing perspectives as the structure for the subsequent perspectives.
— Harry Hindu

I don't quite understand how get to the that infinite regress. But yes, you can be correct or wrong from a giving perspective, i'd say... which is to say, it doesn't have to lead to something like epistemological nihilism or relativism, or something like that. — ChatteringMonkey

I asked "what about perspectives?" - meaning, is there a how things are for perspectives? If there is, then how things are isn't an incoherent notion. How things are for your perspective relative to my perspective is a real difference, unless you are actually part of me when I read your posts (solipsism). If all that exists are perspectives, then we need to redefine "perspectives", as we commonly understand today that perspectives are of other things. If you are saying that they aren't, rather that perspectives are the only real feature of the universe - the only thing that there is a "how things are", then it really isn't a perspective that we are talking about are we?

Where is your perspective relative to mine? In answering this question would you not be describing "how things are" between our two perspectives?

Is there a your perspective relative to mine? If there are no other perspectives other than my own, then my "perspective" is really the universe itself, and there are no perspectives.

So, are you and Marchesk and Jamalrob parts of me when I read your(my) posts? Are we now understanding why the "you" needs to be defined in order to proceed forward on this topic?

It depends obviously, sometimes a difference will be due to having a different view on it, and you can be both 'correct' from a given perspective... but you can also, like I said, definitely be wrong about something.

This is what is often misunderstood about perspectivism. It's not the same as relativism or subjectivism, in the sense that every point of view is subjective and therefor equally valid or as correct as the next. It's just the acknowledgement that things are viewed from a certain perspective and that different perspectives are possible. And eventhough knowledge is allways partial in that sense, it nevertheless is 'objective' or 'about the nature of the thing', for lack of better words. — ChatteringMonkey

I don't understand how someone could be wrong or right about anything if all there are are perspectives.

This is that long post. The aim of it is to try and move towards the source of disagreement between forum direct realists (represented by @jamalrob, @unenlightened and I) and forum indirect realists (represented by @Michael, @Marchesk {maybe, now} and @Isaac).

So it seems to me that the disagreement between direct and indirect realists is regarding the type of relation between perception and the environmental object it regards, and the properties of this relation. I think it is crucial to keep in mind that there can be more than one type of relation between a body and the objects in its environment.

The overall framework I'm going to adopt for this is one of active perception; roughly stated: active perception is an account of perception in which perception is goal oriented and part of every perceptual feature is a proposed collection of environmental interventions which are in accord with those goals. To put super special emphasis on this; the goals and environmental interventions are part of perception, and our perceptual features are laced with (summaries of) them. For those coming from a phenomenological perspective, the goals and environmental interventions might fruitfully be thought of as Gibson's affordances or Heidegger's for-the-sake-of-which. For those coming from a more analytic perspective, such goals and environmental interventions may fruitfully be thought of as a kind of theory-ladened-ness of perceptual features concerning theories of practical activity and environmental development given our interventions within it.

A key term there which I've not talked about is perceptual feature. Roughly what that is is a salient element of an instance of perception; an object under a viewpoint relative to a task in an environment, the shifting weight of a hammer prompting counterbalancing muscle contractions along the arm to ensure the nail is hit, the duck or the rabbit in the duckrabbit. Generally, they might fruitfully be thought of as a goal-oriented model or representation of something in the environment. In visual terms, they are like pictures insofar as they represent environmental features, but they are unlike pictures insofar as they promote and are part of activities; they are not just corpuscles of propositional content, they are saturated with normatively informed expectations of environmental development relative to our tasks.

In these terms then, the distinction between direct and indirect realism that I wrote for Michael and he approved of:

(Direct realism (content) ) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards.
(Indirect Realism (content) ) The properties of perceptual content of a perceptual event are not-identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards.

Can be recast to:

(Direct realism (feature) ) The properties of a perceptual feature of a perceptual event are identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards.
(Indirect Realism (feature) ) The properties of a perceptual feature of a perceptual event are not-identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards.

But notice that perceptual content is construed as merely descriptive; is the red of the perceptual feature I have of the apple the same as the colour properties of the apple? We would not be able to answer questions of identity and non-identity of properties regarding all facets of the perceptual feature simply because there is no (to use Lockean terms) primary quality of the apple that could be identical to my desire to eat it.

There is, however, still the question of whether the descriptive content of a perceptual feature is identical with some primary quality of the apple. This doesn't make too much sense for the reasons @jamalrob and @Marchesk discussed:

I think jamalrob is arguing that how an object looks, tastes, feels only applies to perception. There's no such thing as what an object looks like without someone seeing it. The indirect realist goes wrong by assuming there is, and then proposing the additional mental intermediary. But there's no need for the intermediary if the act of seeing is what something looks like.

If that sort of argument works, then the debate is rendered moot. There's still a realist question of what objects are independent of perception, but they aren't like perception — Marchesk

But there are still relevant questions like; what qualities of the apple promote the generation of the (descriptive component) of my perceptual features of it? And in that space of questions, it seems fine to talk about red and rods and cones and of a relationship of representation/summary/codification between the perceptual features I have of the apple and of the apple's properties.

We can also talk about the argument from hallucination in those terms; specifically what is being short circuited or bracketed in asking the question is that the descriptive content of my perceptual features can be present (through some bodily process) without the environmental and sensorimotor conditions that generate the perceptual feature in normal circumstances. The argument seeks to change the conditions of environmental exposure (by removing them) without changing the descriptive component of what perceptual feature is being generated.

But notice first that that argument removes two vital components of active perception;

Active accounts of perception have exploratory and goal-directed environmental interventions as part of the perception itself. In that regard, hallucinations, or the argument from dreaming, are effectively not forms of perception because two necessary components of perception have been denied of it. Only the relation or absence of relation of descriptive content remains.

I think that the realists here would find the above paragraph very cononsonant with their direct realist intuitions. But why? I think the intuitions that forum direct realists have regarding directness regard the character of relation between perceptual feature and what it regards. Recall that environmental interventions really do change things in the environment; the underlying intuition is that our perceptual features when including the exploratory/goal-oriented component are in direct causal contact with the environment. Causal contact persists even while making representational/inferential mistakes; in any instance of perception our sensorimotor systems are in direct causal contact with the environment, be that contact more or less adequate for our purposes The inferential summary that our perceptual features are leverage sensory and interventional exploration of our environment; eg moving one's head to change the field of view. Because of this, for the causal covariance of a typical instance perception to be ensured, our sensorimotor systems must be in direct causal contact with the environment..

Specifically for Isaac: the interventions we enact are not causally separated from environmental hidden states, even if the inferential summary of environmental properties are. When there is a successful modelling relationship between a perceptual feature and what it regards; or an intervention and our overall model of the causal structure of our environment; the overall perceptual state we're in, and its perceptual features, are indeed informative of our environmental objects. But informational dependence in that sense is not the same thing as saying the properties of the apple in total are existentially dependent upon our perceptions of it.

For indirect realists; the proof of indirectness is inferential representation.
For direct realists; the proof of directness is causal contact.

This is as expected; our perceptions are difference sensitive, and exploratory interventions make environmental and bodily differences to change the environment and the generated inferential summary we have of it through the collage of our perceptual features in an event of perception.

For indirect realists; the proof of indirectness is inferential representation.
For direct realists; the proof of directness is causal contact. — fdrake

Sounds like you can't really have one without the other. Every cause or effect is inferred.

I asked "what about perspectives?" - meaning, is there a how things are for perspectives? If there is, then how things are isn't an incoherent notion. How things are for your perspective relative to my perspective is a real difference, unless you are actually part of me when I read your posts (solipsism). If all that exists are perspectives, then we need to redefine "perspectives", as we commonly understand today that perspectives are of other things. If you are saying that they aren't, rather that perspectives are the only real feature of the universe - the only thing that there is a "how things are", then it really isn't a perspective that we are talking about are we?

Where is your perspective relative to mine? In answering this question would you not be describing "how things are" between our two perspectives?

So, are you and Marchesk and Jamalrob parts of me when I read your(my) posts? Are we now understanding why the "you" needs to be defined in order to proceed forward on this topic? — Harry Hindu

I alluded to this in an earlier post, but I don't think this is so much about 'what exist' as it is about 'how things are'... It's a question about knowledge rather then existence. Everything is viewed from a perspective, not everything "is" a perspective. So then there is no need for an infinite regress, right?

There is no 'how things (really) are' if everything is viewed from a perspective, because the word perspective implies that we don't have a view on 'the whole thing', whatever that would mean.

I don't understand how someone could be wrong or right about anything if all there are are perspectives. — Harry Hindu

Yes, again the misunderstanding is probably due to it not being about perspectives being all there is, but about viewing things from a certain perspective.

It's a question about knowledge rather then existence. — ChatteringMonkey

It's a question about the existence of knowledge and perspectives - their nature, especially as they relate to what they are about.

A perspectivist would probably say that 'natures' and 'essences' are also incoherent notions, like 'how thing really are' is.

So then, if it's a question about natures, then that is your answer.

So there isn't a "how things are" when it comes to knowledge and perspectives? Then what on Earth have we been talking about all this time when saying or writing those words?

So there isn't a how things are when it comes to knowledge and perspectives? Then what on Earth have we been talking about all this time when saying or writing those words? — Harry Hindu

Don't know why you ask me that question. I thought my point was clear from the first post I made addressing one of yours :

What do we mean with 'how things are'?

:-) — ChatteringMonkey

Don't know why you ask me that question. I though my point was clear from the first post I made addressing one of yours — ChatteringMonkey

Because we seem to have come to the answer to that question.

What we mean is "how do things (like perspectives and knowledge) exist"?

What we mean is "how do things (like perspectives and knowledge) exist"? — Harry Hindu

Could you clarify that question, because I don't get it as it is formulated... How do perspectives and knowledge exist seems like an odd question to ask, because they don't, if we take existence to mean what it generally means, material or physical existence.

Could you clarify that question, because I don't get it as it is formulated... How do perspectives and knowledge exist seems like an odd question to ask, because they don't, if we take existence to mean what it generally means, material or physical existence. — ChatteringMonkey

Well, then I guess we're opening a can of worms because I see the material/physical vs mental/experiential dichotomy as a false one.

Yeah, let's leave that one for another thread.

Now that I think about it, maybe this might help without diverging too much.

What exists is what has causal power, or is part of a causal relationship.

part of every perceptual feature is a proposed collection of environmental interventions which are in accord with those goals. To put super special emphasis on this; the goals and environmental interventions are part of perception, and our perceptual features are laced with (summaries of) them. — fdrake

Excellent. This really cannot be emphasised enough.

(Direct realism (feature) ) The properties of a perceptual feature of a perceptual event are identical with those of what the perceptual event is directed towards. — fdrake

OK, so where in this system do priors from past models come in. Some of our perceptual features are delivered by other areas of the brain, often quite unrelated to the object of the perceptual event, occasionally not even sensory data at all. For example the brown table with grey edges I used in one of my earlier posts. One perceptual feature being collected into the summary is the prior model of {tables of that sort} which presents them as being all brown. In our summary we have an all brown table. We've misrepresented the grey edges because our expectation that they would be brown was a stronger model than the weak data that we might have caught a glimpse of a grey edge on this one. But that part of the summary, that perceptual feature, is not identical to the object the perceptual event is directed towards, it's identical to a summary model of previous similar objects.

So what do we say of this input? Is it still 'directed' toward the object of the perception event (on that it is certainly a prediction of it, not a prediction of something else)? I could go with that, but it seems to be stretching the use of 'direct' when compared to your definition of 'indirect'.

Active accounts of perception have exploratory and goal-directed environmental interventions as part of the perception itself. In that regard, hallucinations, or the argument from dreaming, are effectively not forms of perception because two necessary components of perception have been denied of it. Only the relation or absence of relation of descriptive content remains. — fdrake

I think this is a good move as it removes what might otherwise be a distracting tangent.

In a typical instance of perception; not some weird Ramachandran stuff where he's managed to convince the body that the knee is a table by perturbing expectations of the causal structure of the environment — fdrake

You know what I'm going to say to this. Your use of 'typical' may be applicable to philosophical positions (and I accept that's the name of the forum so consider this off-topic) but Ramachandran's work (nor people like Anil Seth or Peggy Series following him) is not leading to the conclusion that the processes in these atypical cases are themselves atypical. The atypical case reveals a step in the typical process which, in the healthy subject, is merely passed over unnoticed.

the interventions we enact are not causally separated from environmental hidden states, even if the inferential summary of environmental properties are. — fdrake

I agree, but the environmental hidden states causing our interventions are not limited to properties of the object of the perception event.

When there is a successful modelling relationship between a perceptual feature and what it regards; or an intervention and our overall model of the causal structure of our environment; the overall perceptual state we're in, and its perceptual features, are indeed informative of our environmental objects. But informational dependence in that sense is not the same thing as saying the properties of the apple in total are existentially dependent upon our perceptions of it. — fdrake

Again, I'd agree with this, but highlight again the extent to which priors are affected by factors outside of the current perceptual event. I think you can make a very convincing argument that our environment in general must directly inform our models of it, that we see 'the world' as it really is (in the sense that properties of the world are the only source of data for our models) no matter how far outside of some particular model's markov blanket such properties are. But... This does not necessarily translate to any given perceptual event.

For indirect realists; the proof of indirectness is inferential representation.
For direct realists; the proof of directness is causal contact. — fdrake

If this is true then both are indeed the case. The disagreement seems to be misguided in those terms.

Perhaps what might be necessary is to posit some implications of either position which would be different if the alternative view were taken. I suspect your position is not as representative of the broad swathe of direct realist positions you include at the top of the post, but I may be wrong. Such an exercise might draw out some of those differences.

@Isaac

I rewrote some of the original post to be, I hope, clearer.