What, exactly, is the difference between these two accounts? — Michael

One account makes the external stimuli open to skepticism. To the extent we care about skepticism, it matters. We don't have to care, but some people are worried about justifying knowledge.

What would it take for one to be true and the other to be false? — Michael

Pain is a bad example, since pain isn't an external property. So what would it take for color realism to be the case? The external environment has to be colored in the way we see it when it's not being perceived by humans.

I doubt that can be successfully defended. It sounds incredible. Other attempts at color realism sound dubious on semantic grounds. I'm not sure what sort of property is being defended.

Shape is bit different because a mathematical description for it can be given. This is different than color, where the experience of color bears no relationship with the wavelength of light, other than that's what we end up experiencing.

What, exactly, is the difference between these two accounts? What would it take for one to be true and the other to be false? — Michael

Here's a thought. If a neurological account of qualia could ever be provided, then perhaps a sophisticated form of direct realism would be defensible, because then a clear relationship between optics and brain processing could be shown. Perhaps.

We see (to speak in the overused modality of sight) exactly what appears, insofar as appearance just is the result of a perceptual process. It could not even in principle be otherwise: there is nothing to 'compare' it to, there is no appearence-that-is-not-an-appearance, no perception which is not a result of a perceptual process. — StreetlightX

Wait what? So the world around us is the result of a perceptual process, the process itself being part of world around us (our bodies, brains, etc - known about only through perception), and therefore is also itself the result of the perceptual process? Our nervous system causes a world to appear which contains the very nervous system causing the world and itself to come into appearance?

Or are there two nervous systems/bodies? One generating the appearance and the one perceived?

Perception is loop that runs from body to world and back again; when the loop is broken or interrupted, there is still alot that goes on, but it does so aberrantly, in fragments. Hence the weird phenomenology of dreams, the general tendency to 'float' (unconstrained by a fixed body!), the general fragmentary nature of dreams, etc. — StreetlightX

When you talk about "body to world" here, do you mean within the 'world of appearance'? The body we perceive ourselves to be and the external world we appear to inhabit? As if your body and the world are just generating themselves into existence as an appearance, because of a feedback loop between the two appearances? Appearances just cause their own existence somehow?

1. appearance just is the result of a perceptual process
2. this perceptual process is itself contained within the appearance
3. ??!

So the world around us is the result of a perceptual process, — antinatalautist

No. I said: appearance is the result of a perceptual process, not 'the world around us'. It's nothing but a petitio principii to assume that the one is the other. Like most others in this thread, you cross wires which ought to be held firmly apart.

Perhaps participants in this thread ought to better acquaint themselves with The Worst Argument in the World.

Hallucinations and dreams come into it as "objective" proof that we could be trapped inside a fantasy even though normal waking experience feels so undoubtedly real. They are the counterfactuals (the counterfactuals SX wrongly says aren't available) which fatally undermine simple realism. The question then becomes - in a rigorous philosophical sense - how do you apply the brakes before slithering all the way to the other extreme of idealism?

So some real work needs to be done here. It can't be glibly dismissed. — apokrisis

"Glibly", forsooth.

The fact that two things are dissimilar gives us good reason to think they're not the same.

If hallucinations and dreams are unlike "normal waking experience" in various respects, as I think has been and must be acknowledged, and we treat them as such, as I think also must be acknowledged, we have good reason to think they're not the same. If they're not the same, then hallucinations and dreams don't provide much in the way of evidence that "normal waking experience" may be a hallucination or a dream, or "fantasy."

It would seem to me, also, that they don't provide much cause to reasonably doubt "normal waking experience." In fact, of course, we don't doubt it.

t would seem to me, also, that they don't provide much cause to reasonably doubt "normal waking experience." In fact, of course, we don't doubt it. — Ciceronianus the White

We don't, but we do (sometimes) worry about what we're perceiving. To quote random scientist in Mr. Robot:

"And I'm fascinated by the greatest unsolved mystery. Do we see reality as it is? If I close my eyes, I can imagine that everything we experience, everything we see, think and do, is unfolding simultaneously in a parallel universe. And if so, how many copies of ourselves exist? And might our mental states be conjoined?"

Not to endorse parallel universe crossing consciousness, but just the popular idea that reality isn't necessarily as things appear to us. That our senses might be "deceiving" us.

Thus the question of whether perception is direct or not. Or more broadly put, the problem of perception. How do we know that what we perceive is real, and if we don't know, then how do we justify knowledge?

Sometimes we're mistaken in identifying something. Sometimes we suffer from a disorder of some kind, which impedes our vision. Sometimes we need glasses. Sometimes we're color blind.

Is it reasonable to infer from this that--NOTHING IS REAL!! Or, that--WE CAN NEVER KNOW ANYTHING!!

I would say not. I don't think absolute certainty is required. So, I find reassuring the fact that we can in almost all cases find reasonable explanations for such things which don't necessitate a belief that we're part of a fantasy, or in The Matrix, or being deceived by an evil demon, and which make such possibilities highly unlikely. I also find it reassuring that we regularly navigate the world with considerable success, and even modify it in ways which indicate, to a reasonable degree of probability, that we're interacting with something which is very close to what we think it is and perceive it to be, and that, e.g. the roads we see and build and cars we drive on them are very close to what we think them to be and won't suddenly prove to be something else.

We play charades with the universe.

As a shortcut we've created the concept "tree". Using tree, we don't have to play the entire game of charades to understand what it is we've encountered. We don't have to go "It is tall, it has a hard surface, it has limbs extending from it, it has tendrils going into the ground, it..." we collectively have labeled and defined such things as being "trees" so when we encounter something that meets the general qualities of a "tree" we can just jump right to the conclusion "this is a tree".

Being able to do this allows us to prioritize our attention, we don't have to sluggishly spend all our time dissecting everything to figure out our environment we can quickly use the labels to get our bearings which in a dangerous situation, for example, will allow us to navigate our way to safety expediently.

All things we see, hear, touch, smell, etc. are initially just raw information. They are stimuli that is sent to the brain and it is the brain that encodes all of the data into the concepts we perceive. When you think about sound, for example, it actually activates the ear as if you were hearing something externally. When you imagine something visually it activates the eyes (this is why the eyes move around when you are asleep dreaming). Our sensory organs are just data gathering tools, the brain is what puts it all together.

"Consciousness" is another way of saying "directly aware of stimuli", that is when you are conscious and perceiving you have some agency over the data you are taking in through your senses. "Subconscious" is data that you are accessing without being directly aware of it. You can pull data from the environment but also from stored memories.

Anyways, if you were taught all your life that "trees" were an ancient race of beings who judge the deeds of humans and that your ancestors must be buried before them and fed to them in order to ascend to some higher plane of existence, your whole concept of "tree" would be vastly different. Sure, the raw data you gathered through your senses might be the same but how you interpret them would alter how you store them into memory. They'd likely not fee the same, smell the same, or look the same to you (for example) because you'd be sensing them with a sort of reverence and awe.

We play charades with the universe, everything we "know" boils down to (sometimes educated) guesses. We know, at least through shared experience, there is raw data out there but our interpretations could be way off and we'd never know it because we are seeing existence through our particular vantage point.

The objections to the OP posted by Ciceronianus and Street are quite right; I would add a bit of Wittgenstein, from ❡48 if PI.

It's part of his rejection of atomism and hence of reductionism.

The tree is made of various parts; branches, sticks, leaves, roots. Why privilege the whole tree? Each of these are made of carbon, oxygen, phosphate - why privilege root and branch? And the elements are made from protons and neutrons - do we privilege those? Or their constituent quarks?

The tree is part of a garden, which is part of the town, and so on - which is "real"?

What counts as the "atom", the simple basic item from which all others are built?

Not nothing - but anything. We can take any level of reality as fundamental and work from there. We can name anything, take it as fundamental and build our language from there.

It's not educated guesses or charades; it doesn't matter were we start, we will come up with pretty much the same story.

That's because the world does not care what you believe. Certain things will be true regardless of what you believe, and how you represent them.

"Do we behold a mental construct while perceiving?"

No. You see the tree.

Saying otherwise involves a separation of oneself from one's seeing. A homunculus.

I think it primarily means there is a larger world humans are but a small part of. We are late on the evolutionary scene, we only occupy the land surfaces of this planet, for the most part, and there are tons of other stars and planets out there.

The real world is the far bigger and older world, where only a little tiny bit of it has human society. — Marchesk

For me your perspective takes too much for granted. It adopts the scientific image of reality as a metaphysical image of reality. This god's-eye-view of humanity as a speck is not false but partial. It includes and supports "irrational"-emotional investments. It doesn't even address most of our actual experience. To call most experience unreal seems "unrealistic" to me. Yes we want to predict and control the movement of "public" entities. Science has justly earned our reverence in this regard. Nevertheless, this massive success in one realm arguably tempts us with a scientism that is willfully blind to whatever is not subject to the scientific method. We ignore how we non-theoretically and for the most part experience space and time.

To be clear, I'm not clearing a path for some religious argument. Most religious theses strike me as every bit as scientistic as scientism proper. I'm trying to point behind the entire paradigm that functions like the invisible water we swim in without noticing. We have, in my view, a notion of language that isn't "accurate" with respect to a less-biased just-hearing-it. Deferred and not until the period revealed is the meaning of this sentence. Where then if not in some violent-if-useful abstraction is the physicist's now? Only within this smeared-deferred meaning-making does physics exist.

Admittedly this meaning-making itself is contained in the space-time of physics. So we have a mobius strip. The mind-matter distinction emerges from this meaning-making. There is a tension between modes of speaking. Convergence-coherence is something we strive for but perhaps never have. I'm inclined to speak of a reality that is never finished naming itself. For me scientism would be a way to dodge or oversimplify this ambiguity. It cuts the knot, stops thinking --afraid of being gullible or 'subjective' perhaps.

Deferred and not until the period revealed is the meaning of this sentence. — t0m

Is there even such a thing as the meaning of the sentence? I doubt it. There is only what we do with the sentence.

Is there even such a thing as the meaning of the sentence? I doubt it. There is only what we do with the sentence. — Banno

I do appreciate the "use" perspective on language, but I find it implausible as a final truth. I agree that "saying what meaning is" is no small matter. Intelligibility is somewhat ineffable. "The sign is that ill-named thing, the only one, that escapes the instituting question of philosophy: what is it?" We answer what-is-it questions with signs, with meaning. We can zoom out and see clever monkeys buzzing and making marks on paper. We can adopt a reductive, behaviorist perspective. But would we not be doing so as a retreat to a more productive method? To make things easier? Afraid of wasting our time? Those are reasonable motives, but not (for me) conclusive.

Meaning is. But what does 'is' mean? I see the "danger" or questionableness of this quest. I get why Heidegger and Derrida are iffy.

Yes; naming it tells us nothing about it, does nothing to it or about it.

But it is a start.

In relativistic physics the truths of one inertial frame of reference are deducible in any other, given the appropriate transformations.

Analogously, are there appropriate transformations, such that what is claimed to be the case for a realist is also the case for an idealist?

Anyways, if you were taught all your life that "trees" were an ancient race of beings who judge the deeds of humans and that your ancestors must be buried before them and fed to them in order to ascend to some higher plane of existence, your whole concept of "tree" would be vastly different. — JWK5

Not so much. You still think of trees as made of wood and needing fertiliser.

I understand the urge to demystify, but isn't this urge itself subject to demystification? I can only guess at your view, since you aren't contextualizing your objections. But I think you have an analytic background?

As I see it the Scylla and Charybdis are muddying the water further on the one hand and pretending that muddy water is clearer than it is on the other hand. To me that deferment of meaning is noteworthy. There is "something that it is like" for you to read this, a 'voice' in your head. This is invisible. It's not a public object any more than seeing redness is a public object.

I can understand not bothering with non-public immeasurable experiences. That all hinges on what one understands as intellectual virtue. I think phenomenology is an interesting direction for philosophy. I like the "productive logic" that makes aspects of the world as we already know it more conspicuous. It thematizes the methodological blind-spot of (physical, public) science, "consciousness" or "meaning" or "being." Phenomenology is a "science" in terms of being a method of knowing, though I'm not so in love with the word 'science' to care much whether it is so recognized. For me the emission of objective statements is not the essence of being human.

There is "something that it is like" for you to read this... — t0m

But that is just naming - "A something". it tells us nothing about it, does nothing to it or about it...

Indeed, it looks to me like reification. Is it the same "something" the second, third or forth time I read it?
Then is it a something at all?

You can't know what it is like to be a bat, if there is nothing it is like to being a bat.

Presumably he didn't really mention quarks, since they weren't invented until thirteen years after his death. :D

Saying otherwise involves a separation of oneself from one's seeing. — Banno

Exactly. As if one could talk about perception in the absence of... perception. And then think one has some kind of genuine mystery on hand. To conjure a problem out of linguistic befuddlement.

I was applying his notion in a loose way to trees. Discover, not invented.

His point was made more abstractly, using a grid of coloured squares; but is fundamental to his rejection of logical atomism. What counts as simple and what counts as complex changes with what you are doing.

like reification — Banno

Actually, reification is making something abstract more concrete; but what is happening here is making a nothing into a something. Imagining a thing that is shared with each instance of reading a post, but that cannot be talked about - despite it being talked about...

it's uncontroversial that we experience seeing trees in our dreams, — Marchesk

I don't see trees in my dreams. I'm usually in my darkened room with my eyes closed.

I might occasionally dream of trees. But that is not seeing trees.

So it's not as uncontroversial as you might think. It's words that lead you astray here. The concatenation "...experience seeing..." attempts to seperate the experience from the seeing.

Hallucinations have certain identifiable causes. They're abnormal — Ciceronianus the White

Yep. The thing that is important about the hallucination is that while one thinks one is seeing a tree, there is no tree to be seen. One does not see a mental tree.

Banno would be proud. — Marchesk

Not so much.

The objections to the OP posted by Ciceronianus and Street are quite right; — Banno

Good of you to finally join the conversation. Now all we need is TGW and Landru to make this topic great again.

But, you ignored the post where Street quoted a neuroscientist talking about how waking experiences are a form of dreaming, and then his follow up discussion on how the tree appears to us cannot be what it is, since it is an appearance.

So I don't think Street's approach is in agreement with yours at all, except that he is trying to dissolve the issue by saying it is an abuse of language, like yourself. But you think access is direct, and Street, from what I understand, thinks that kind of talk makes no sense, since all we perceive are appearances.

Or at least, that's what I've surmised from this thread.

But you think access is direct, and Street, from what I understand, think that kind of talk makes no sense, since all we perceive are appearances. — Marchesk

No, I think we neither see 'directly' nor 'indirectly'. We simply see the trees: which is not to say we see them 'directly' because it's not even in principle possible for 'seeing' to take place 'indirectly': the qualifier 'direct/indirect' is a defunct one that has no place in talking about perception, it's a distinction without an intelligible difference.

But that is just naming - "A something". it tells us nothing about it, does nothing to it or about it... — Banno

This "nothing" was brought to attention so that we could call it a nothing, though. Were you not just 'handling' this "it" as an intelligible if ambiguous entity as you questioned its existence?

Indeed, it looks to me like reification. Is it the same "something" the second, third or forth time I read it?
Then is it a something at all? — Banno

It is a reification. It (the experience) is grasped as a whole, as a thing carved out from its background. As for the problem of indexicals, that's in Hegel too. He was denying that thought had an outside. He's right that thought has no "conceptual" outside, but that's trivial. The idea of that which is not an idea is of course just an idea. The otherwise indeterminate "something" or "here" or "now" is determined by context. I eat "this" bread, not the "this."

Street quoted a neuroscientist talking about how waking experiences are a form of dreaming — Marchesk

I'm not going to read the whole thread - but thanks for pointing this out to me. I don't see anything objectionable in it.

I'm sure Street and I will find something to disagree on.

No, I think we neither see 'directly' nor 'indirectly'. We simply see the trees: which is not to say we see them 'directly' because it's not even in principle possible for 'seeing' to take place 'indirectly': the qualifier 'direct/indirect' is a defunct one that has no place in talking about perception, it's a distinction without an intelligible difference. — StreetlightX

...but not this. Looks fine to me.