Starting by misunderstanding what is at issue, and then inventing for yourself the opposing case, makes the issue very easy to decide. Well done.

From perceiving something in my senses, I infer that there is something in the mind-external world that has caused my perception. — RussellA

Why do you have to "infer" the perceived object, when you are seeing it?

I didn't say that it's about neural states. I'm saying that phenomenal experience is neural states (or emerges from them). — Michael

Thanks, that clarification helps, and I agree with more of what you say than perhaps my earlier wording suggested. I also do not claim that perceptual content is about neural states, nor that distal objects or their properties are literally present in neural activity. I also agree that there is no “real appearance” transmitted through space and into the brain. Where I think we still disagree is about whether causal covariance exhausts the intentional structure of perceptual states.

On your view, phenomenal character is self-standing, and the relation to distal objects is entirely causal. Given that, I agree that the visor looks continuous with ordinary perception: in both cases there is a neural state with a certain phenomenal character, caused in some way by the world. But that continuity is purchased by treating accuracy as non-fundamental—as a pragmatic gloss rather than a constitutive feature of perceptual content. If one is happy with that consequence, then that is a coherent internalist position; it is simply not one I accept.

I don’t think accuracy talk is optional in that sense. In the visor case, it matters whether the image on the screen corresponds to how things are in the environment, not because a “real appearance” is being compared to a copy, but because the perceptual state purports to present the environment itself—that is, it has correctness conditions that are not exhausted by its phenomenal character or causal history. The difference between an accurate visor and a misleading one is therefore not exhausted by differences in phenomenal character; it is a difference in how the state is answerable to the world.

This is why I don’t think the visor is just another causal conduit like light or reflection. Ordinary causal media do not introduce a layer whose outputs can succeed or fail as presentations of the environment. A visor does. Its outputs stand in normative relations to what is going on beyond the subject, even if the subject is unaware of the visor’s existence. That normative dimension is exactly what causal covariance alone cannot supply.

So the disagreement isn’t about whether appearances are transmitted, or whether phenomenal character is neural. It’s about whether perceptual states are merely causally covariant with the world, or whether they are constitutively world-answerable. If one denies the latter, then I agree the visor case collapses into ordinary perception—but only because one has already accepted a thoroughgoing internalism on which accuracy is not fundamental. That is the position I’m resisting.

“Direct realism” is not a position that emerged from philosophers asking how perception is best understood, so much as a reaction to dialectical pressure created by a certain picture of perception, roughly: the idea that what we are immediately aware of are internal intermediaries, be they sense-data, representations, appearances, mental images, from which the external world is inferred.

Once that picture is in place, a binary seems forced: either we perceive the world indirectly, via inner objects; or we perceive it directly, without intermediaries. “Direct realism” is then coined as the negation of the first horn. It is not so much a positive theory as a reactive label: not that. This already suggests the diagnosis: the term exists because something has gone wrong earlier in the framing.

What those who reject indirect realism are actually rejecting may not be indirectness as such, but the reification of something “given” — an object of awareness that is prior to, or independent of, our conceptual, practical, and normative engagement with the world. Once you posit sense-data, qualia as objects, appearances as inner items, you generate the “veil of perception” problem automatically. “Direct realism” then looks like the heroic attempt to tear down the veil. But if you never put the veil there in the first place, there is nothing to tear down.

You see the cat. Perhaps you see it in the mirror, or turn to see it directly. And here the word "directly" has a use. You see the ship indirectly through the screen of your camera, but directly when you look over the top; and here the word "directly" has a use. The philosophical use of ‘indirect’ is parasitic on ordinary contrasts that do not support the theory. “Directly” is contrastive and context-bound, it does not name a metaphysical relation of mind to object, it does not imply the absence of causal mediation.

What you do not see is a sense datum, a representation, an appearance, or a mental image. You might well see by constructing such a representation, and all the physics and physiology that involves. But to claim that what you see is that construct and not the cat is a mistake.

One can admit that neural representations exist and denying that such things are the objects of perception. These neural representations are our seeing, not what we see.

I don’t want to deny the coherence of these scenarios altogether, but I do want to deny that they carry the philosophical weight Michael wants them to carry. Once truth and error are located at the level of world-directed judgment, private inversion possibilities become explanatorily idle, even if they remain metaphysically conceivable. — Esse Quam Videri

Frank turns up at our laboratory, and we are unable to categorise him into one population or the other. Michael wants to maintain that there are nevertheless two populations, while I maintain that that the issue has no truth value. You, EQV, just refuse to commit. :wink:

Error arises when a judgment about the world fails to be satisfied by how things are, not when an inner experience mismatches an outer property. — Esse Quam Videri

Ok, fiar that's clearer. My objection then goes back to, how could we know unless we assume DR?

So the point isn’t that inversion is impossible or incoherent, but that it’s explanatorily idle with respect to the epistemic issues under discussion — even if it remains metaphysically possible. — Esse Quam Videri

Ok, fair enough - let's then just talk about colourblindness, which is extant rather than hypothetical. If the colourblind person judges what you see to be green as a red, what's the basis for calling that an error, in lieu of assuming DR?

Once truth and error are located at the level of world-directed judgment — Esse Quam Videri

This is what I'm having trouble with. There seems a huge leap being made to establish this - Part of hte IR commitment is that there isn't truly any 'error' in perception other than true hallucination. Even then, given it's not initiated by anything beyond the mind, 'error' is probably wrong. Its more the system drawing outside the lines. But that's a digression, so sorry if it distracts.

The colourblind person’s experience is not incorrect — it’s simply different. What can be incorrect is the world-directed judgment when assessed within those shared practices. — Esse Quam Videri

Very clear, good and answerable. Thank you. My view here is that if the former is the true (i think so) then the latter is arbitrary for our discussion. If its "within shared practices" when we're just discussing convention and not going anywhere - no?

I've been trying to make this argument for a long time. Banno does a good job of using this to his advantage. As it turns out, while I was drafting this, he came in clutch with a very clear description of this position.

It just seems utterly, inarguably clear to me it is prevarication. Specifically this:

You see the cat. Perhaps you see it in the mirror, or turn to see it directly. And here the word "directly" has a use. You see the ship indirectly through the screen of your camera, but directly when you look over the top; and here the word "directly" has a use. The philosophical use of ‘indirect’ is parasitic on ordinary contrasts that do not support the theory. “Directly” is contrastive and context-bound,
it does not name a metaphysical relation of mind to object, it does not imply the absence of causal mediation. — Banno

This muddles up two meanings and pretends that the explanation of the one commits the thinkers to using it in the other. "direct" here is contrastive, you're absolutely right.

In perception, it is not. If this is missed, there is no coherent discussion to be had by denying hte intermediary nature of perception (which Banno does not, awkwardly imo). He calls this parasitic - and it certainly is, if you are so tied to a concept of direct perception, in the face of all the above reasons to reject that label, that any information that decries it is an enemy to be rooted out.

One can admit that neural representations exist and denying that such things are the objects of perception. These neural representations are our seeing, not what we see. — Banno

You're an indirect realist. You allow that humans experience neural representations, whether we call that seeing, hearing, tasting/smelling, touching (pressure and texture sensing).

I've been trying to make this argument for a long time. — AmadeusD

:up:

My objection then goes back to, how could we know unless we assume DR? — AmadeusD

Direct realism is also subject to the decomposing effects of skepticism. We all get by with pragmatism.

You're an indirect realist. You allow that humans experience neural representations, whether we call that seeing, hearing, tasting/smelling, touching (pressure and texture sensing). — frank

No. Humans do not experience neural representations; experience is having neural representations.

You are not separate from your neural processes.

No. Humans do not experience neural representations; experience is having neural representations.

You are not separate from your neural processes. — Banno

Ok. The content of your experience is neural representations. Happy?

Ok. The content of your experience is neural representations. Happy? — frank

No. The content of my experience is the cat, the ship, the smell of coffee. Not my neural processes, and not my neural representations.

That, if we must make use of "content of experience".

Wrong. Patently, inarguably wrong. There is no cat in your eyes or your mind. This move is unopen to you.
Try again.

No. The content of my experience is the cat, the ship, the smell of coffee. Not my neural processes, and not my neural representations. — Banno

Sure. You experience the cat indirectly. You experience the ship indirectly. You experience the smell of the coffee indirectly. Welcome to indirect realism.

It will help if you reply to what I say, rather than what you want me to have said.

Sure. You experience the cat indirectly. You experience the ship indirectly. You experience the smell of the coffee indirectly. Welcome to indirect realism. — frank

SO your response not by presenting an argument but by reasserting your error.

Ok.

Having a "content of experience" presupposes a container–contained picture of mind: an inner arena where experiences “have” objects or qualities. That’s precisely the sort of framing being rejected. Once you reject the Given, the idea of content starts to feel artificial, a placeholder for a problem that doesn’t exist.

Instead of talking in terms of content, we can frame perception as engagement with the world, and neural processes as how that engagement happens. We drop any separate “object of experience” in the mind.

We drop any separate “object of experience” in the mind. — Banno

I don't think experience has any particular location. It's something creatures with nervous systems do. A flood of electrical data comes into the brain, and the brain creates an integrated experience. Are you denying that?

I don't think experience has any particular location. — frank

Well, that's a start.

It's something creatures with nervous systems do. A flood of electrical data comes into the brain, and the brain creates an integrated experience. Are you denying that? — frank

No. I'm denying that what we experience is that flood of electrical data. Rather, having an experience is having that flood of electrical data. What you experience, if we must talk in that way, is the cat.

You see the cat, not your neural activity. Your neural activity is seeing the cat. At least in part.

Rather, having an experience is having that flood of electrical data. What you experience, if we must talk in that way, is the cat. — Banno

My contribution to your word smithing would be that we do need to speak in terms of experience. Sight is not an isolated activity. It's integrated into a whole. And there is some functional entity we generally refer to as "you" which directs attention. As Isaac may have mentioned to you, a popular image among scientists is a main distribution board of some kind, from which "you" can turn focus away from sensation to a day dream, or a math problem, and then turn again to senses to see what time it is, and then the sound of a chainsaw grabs attention. It doesn't really make sense to say that you are your function of sight.

You see the cat, not your neural activity. Your neural activity is seeing the cat. — Banno

When you hear your wife's voice on the phone, that's not really her voice. It's a computer generated representation. If the logic of that throws you for a loop, I guess we could work through it. I wouldn't advise rejecting it because sounds illogical, though.

I responded exactly to what you said, Banno. These sorts of drive-by quips aren't helping :sweat: Let me clarify:

No. The content of my experience is the cat, the ship, the smell of coffee. Not my neural processes, and not my neural representations.

That, if we must make use of "content of experience". — Banno

Bold: I said, no it isn't..Direct reply.
Italics: I said there is no cat in your eyes or mind. Your experience is in your mind (i could have added this). Therefore, no cat in your eyes or mind. It is not the content of your experience. It remains on the mat, while your brain represents that fact to you (i.e neural representation). So also, direct reply there.

Formally, that is all that is available to conscious experience. You seem to have accepted this formal reality at times**, bt continue to claim that your mental images are the items they are of. Very odd. However,

Rather, **having an experience is having that flood of electrical data. What you experience, if we must talk in that way, is the cat. — Banno

This is self-contradictory. I shouldn't need to point that out anymore. Its self-evident. It isn't the cat. In your own terms.

You, EQV, just refuse to commit. :wink: — Banno

Poor Frank leaves the lab more confused than when he came in, but that's OK — he wasn't doing any philosophical work for us, and probably won’t be invited back. :wink:

...word smithing... — frank

I prefer "conceptual clarification"... I clarify concepts, you smith words, he makes shit up... :wink:

My contribution to your word smithing would be that we do need to speak in terms of experience. Sight is not an isolated activity. It's integrated into a whole. And there is some functional entity we generally refer to as "you" which directs attention. — frank

Yes. I quite agree.

As Isaac may have mentioned to you... — frank

A moment for the departed; he and I had long conversations about this, and I think he introduced me to Markov Blankets; together we forged an agreement that pretty much bypassed the direct/indirect dichotomy. The main distribution board was part of that discussion, another place to throw the blanket. Would that he were here now to give his opinion.

When you hear your wife's voice on the phone, that's not really her voice. It's a computer generated representation. If the logic of that throws you for a loop, I guess we could work through it. I wouldn't advise rejecting it because sounds illogical, though. — frank

See the weasel word? Did you hear your wife's voice? what dis she say? Were have you thrown the Markov Blanket? Were else might you throw it?

...he wasn't doing any philosophical work for us... — Esse Quam Videri

Well, he at the least served as a poor example, showing us that the theory that there are two populations does not have a truth value.

"Is" and "of" are not the same word.

HAving just charged someone with using weasel words this is ... astounding. As you were.

I think you’re right that we're hitting bedrock, but here are some additional thoughts for your consideration.

I’m not assuming direct realism in order to know that there is error. What I’m rejecting is the assumption — which I take to be doing a lot of work in the IR picture — that error must be identified by comparing experience with either a mind-independent phenomenal property or an inner experiential surrogate.

Returning to colourblindness: the basis for calling the judgment an error is not that the colourblind person’s experience fails to match mine, nor that it fails to match some phenomenal property instantiated by the object. The basis is that, within a shared practice of identifying and re-identifying objects across conditions, their judgments systematically fail to track features that figure in stable, publicly coordinated practices of correction and re-identification. That is an epistemic failure relative to those practices, not a phenomenal defect.

Importantly, this does not require assuming that colours are intrinsic properties of objects in a naïve realist sense. It only requires that our judgments are answerable to how things are in ways that admit of correction, stability, and disagreement. The colourblind person’s experience is not “wrong”; the experience is simply different. What can be wrong is the world-directed judgment, assessed within that normative context.

On the IR picture you gesture at, where there is no genuine error in perception outside of hallucination, I would say that this is not a neutral starting point but already a substantive philosophical commitment — one that insulates experience from normative assessment altogether, treating it as epistemically foundational rather than answerable to anything beyond itself. My move is to deny that insulation. It's not a leap so much as a refusal to grant that experience must be epistemically primary in the first place.

So the disagreement isn’t really about colourblindness as such. It’s about whether we think the notion of error belongs fundamentally to experience, or to the judgments we make about the world from within perceptual practices. I’m firmly in the latter camp.

Returning to colourblindness: the basis for calling the judgment an error is not that the colourblind person’s experience fails to match mine, nor that it fails to match some phenomenal property instantiated by the object. The basis is that, within a shared practice of identifying and re-identifying objects across conditions, their judgments systematically fail to track features that figure in stable, publicly coordinated practices of correction and re-identification. That is an epistemic failure relative to those practices, not a phenomenal defect. — Esse Quam Videri

Interestingly, this is pretty much the reply I owe you from that other discussion.


Good reply.

Well, he at the least served as a poor example, showing us that the theory that there are two populations does not have a truth value. — Banno

Fair enough—I’m resisting the nudge to deny truth-value, but I’m happy to concede that Frank was a poor example either way. While I stop short of moving from “no epistemic role” to “no truth value,” the practical upshot is basically the same.

Good reply. — Banno

Cheers.

See the weasel word? Did you hear your wife's voice? what dis she say? Were have you thrown the Markov Blanket? Were else might you throw it? — Banno

:chin:

maybe see https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1034678

The causal chain remains the same, but our attention (the blanket) can be placed in differing locations. So in one throw we can refer to your wife’s voice, in another to the electronically constructed reproduction, and so on.

Hence the similarity with the distribution board.