Here is an illustration of direct realism from the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs-jJMTjHoo . The thing to note is that there are two depictions of the furniture. One is the external object being seen, and the other is inside the dude's head, which is the perception. This is supposed to be direct awareness.

However, the two depictions cannot be the same thing. External objects like chairs, tables and lamps don't get into the brain, on pain of death. Rather, a perception is formed as the result of seeing. So the direct realist needs to explain how that perception formed in the mind is a direct awareness of the external world, even though the perception is not and cannot be the the external object(s) being seen.

Some direct realist might be tempted to deny the perception depicted in the head and say there's just the dude seeing the furniture. But that's an impossibility given how perception works. The senses are stimulated by various things in the environment which the brain makes sense of, resulting in the experience we have of interacting with the world.

You see as a result of a process leading to neural activity in your brain. Call it what you like, but that result is not the object. How could it be? — Marchesk

I'd really like people to see how untrue this is.

I am not in my brain, looking at neural activity.
I do not see as a result of a process leading to neural activity.

The result of neural activity can only be more neural activity or output as muscle stimulation. The result of neural activity is, say, not tripping over the curb.

There is a category error of mixing person talk and mechanism talk. How a person sees can be explained in terms of optics and electrochemical processes, but these processes do not result in seeing they are what seeing is.

What you are doing is breaking down the process of seeing into its constituent processes, and then adding back seeing as an extra process at the end. This creates the illusion of distance and indirectness, but it is an invalid move. Seeing is the whole process, not the result of the process. You do the same thing at the other end, adding back the 'look' as a property of the thing that bears no relation to the 'sight' at the other end. I think I'll leave it at that; there is no end to the objections that can be raised, but they all function the same way, and I don't think I can put it much more clearly than this.

I do not see as a result of a process leading to neural activity. — unenlightened

The reason to think you do is because of all the other experiences which aren't perceptions, but sometimes can be mistaken for perception. A dream of seeing a tree isn't the process of seeing a tree, but it is the experience. Same with a hallucination, visualization, memory or neural stimulation.

You could have your eyes removed and still dream of seeing a tree. But if your visual cortex were cut out, you would lose the ability to have any mental images. So that pinpoints where the experience takes place. Most likely, the other experiences similar to perception are using the same neural circuitry to generate the imagery, or sound, etc.

One interesting article I read about schizophrenia suggested that it's a result of the brain losing the ability to flag the correct sources of experience. So a person starts mistaking their random thoughts for a perception of external voices.

You might want to look into blindsight.

Seeing is the whole process, not the result of the process. — unenlightened

Even granting this over singling out the neural activity, the end result of the entire process is still an experience. The experience is not the thing being experienced. So the direct realist needs to explain that the experience is a direct awareness. I just don't know exactly what that means.

The other elephant lurking in the room is consciousness and the hard problem. External objects are described in objective terms, but our perceptual experience includes subjective qualities. I might see a blue shade of color and feel calmed, but whatever surface has that shade does not have any calming property, nor does the reflected light. That's entirely an animal response. However, it didn't stop people in the past (or even some today) from thinking objects had those kinds of properties.

Even granting this over singling out the neural activity, the end result of the entire process is still an experience. — Marchesk

No. Category error. Experiences are things happening to people. They are not 'the result of neural activity'. No one is experiencing neural activity or the results of neural activity. There is no one in anyone's brain. People have experiences and do things, brains are neurally active. But you cannot add one to the other, and have neural activity that results in an experience because they are different categories of thought. You end up, if neural activity results in experience, having to posit an experiencer of the experience - a homunculus in the brain, reading the neurones. Don't do it.

Some direct realist might be tempted to deny the perception depicted in the head and say there's just the dude seeing the furniture. But that's an impossibility given how perception works. The senses are stimulated by various things in the environment which the brain makes sense of, resulting in the experience we have of interacting with the world. — Marchesk

Think about this some more, because it's the key to what I think is your misunderstanding.

Of course, I deny the furniture in the head: there's just the dude seeing the furniture.

Crucially, this is not in any way incompatible with this description: "The senses are stimulated by various things in the environment which the brain makes sense of, resulting in the experience we have of interacting with the world."

Taking "brain makes sense of" as a metaphor or shorthand, that's a reasonable, if impoverished, description of what goes on when we see furniture. But we still see room furniture, not head furniture.

BTW, a lot of these criticisms are answered in the article or in the ensuing discussion that happened when it was first published years ago. I don't know if I'll join in here much this time around. It's not the article I would write today and although I'm still interested in perception, this direct/indirect stuff is pretty boring--and confusing for just about everyone involved.

But thanks for reading it @Marchesk :smile:

Interesting post Graeme.

Experiences are things happening to people. They are not 'the result of neural activity'. — unenlightened

So neuroscience should just give up. If someone has a serious brain lesion and it's affecting their experience of colour the neuroscientist should throw up their hands and say "can't help you there, I just deal with neural activity and your experiences are not the result of neural activitie I'm afraid. I shall just leave that occipital lesion exactly as it is"

Direct realism would tend to avoid those issues. But only if we actually do have direct perception. — Marchesk

So we would need a direct perception of perception?

Or is the question what is knowledge? How do you know what you know is about what you know?

So I do have a perception of the building making noises, but my experience of footsteps was inaccurate. Of course that's an auditory illusion, but it does illustrate a mixed state. I can't be directly aware of footsteps if there are none, but I am aware of perceiving a sound. — Marchesk

You're confusing awareness with interpretation. You have to be first aware of something in order to interpret it. You are aware of sounds but it isn't until you integrate the sounds with the awareness of your knowledge about those types of sounds and what causes them, that you categorize the sound.

Just as you can hear someone speaking another language you don't understand what they're saying. Because you lack experience in interpreting those sounds as anything other than someone speaking based on your knowledge of sounds coming from people's mouth means dungeon is speaking.

If the two were not separate processes it seems to me that there wouldn't be experiences of not knowing what a sound is caused by between hearing the sound and categorizing it.

So we would need a direct perception of perception? — Harry Hindu

No, the external object. I'm asking how a perceptual experience is direct awareness of the external world.

But we still see room furniture, not head furniture. — jamalrob

I find that this kind of talk misses the point. When I paint a person I'm painting a person, not painting paint, and when I write about a battle I'm writing about a battle, not writing about words. So when I see an apple I'm seeing an apple, not seeing an experience. But that doesn't address the epistemological problem of perception. What is the relationship between the paint and the person? What is the relationship between the words and the battle? What is the relationship between experience and the apple? What does it mean for the former in each case to be about the latter in each case, and to what extent is any information given in the former a product of that medium rather than a true, independent, property of its subject?

I brought up blindsight earlier. The body responds to external stimuli in a manner that lacks conscious awareness. What the direct/indirect realist wants to know is the extent to which visual percepts (that thing that's missing in cases of blindsight) "resembles" the external world object that is said to be the object of perception. Simply saying that the external world object is the object of perception or that experience just is the stimulus-response event (one or both of which you and unenlightened seem to be saying) doesn't address this question at all.

If the two were not separate processes it seems to me that there wouldn't be experiences of not knowing what a sound is caused by between hearing the sound and categorizing it. — Harry Hindu

Well sure. There are a bunch of processes we're not aware of in conscious experience unless something goes wrong or we can't identify what we're experiencing.

No, the external object. I'm asking how a perceptual experience is direct awareness of the external world. — Marchesk

What I was referring to is that your post seemed to be saying that we would need to know the nature of perception in order to understand the relationship between our awareness of objects in the objects themselves.

Well sure. There are a bunch of processes we're not aware of in conscious experience unless something goes wrong or we can't identify what we're experiencing. — Marchesk

Why would these processes be noticed only when they go wrong.

Ah yes, we do need to know that. The direct realists emphasize that perception is different from other experiences. I'm not as convinced.

Ah yes, we do need to know that. The direct realists emphasize that perception is different from other experiences. I'm not as convinced. — Marchesk

Ok. So, we need to know the nature of perception. How do we do that - directly, indirectly? Does it matter? Is the indirect vs. direct distinction meaningful? I mean, if we can know about the Big Bang billions of years later, which is about as indirect as you can get, then what is the distinction between them when it comes to knowing about the object or event in question?

Let's say you had a neural implant which did two things:

1. It corrects refracted images so that the stick in water looked straight.

2. It occasionally receives video transmissions of objects otherwise out of sight.

Both of theses result in perceptions. Are they direct?

What if I hack the implant and refract straight light and send the wrong video? What is the nature of the resulting perceptions? — Marchesk

Right, so what we have here is a causal process, where an interaction of various things over time creates an effect later in something else, that then becomes part of the causal process to create more novel effects.

If the process were "hacked", it seems to me that I would eventually notice that - over time as some of my experiences would eventually lead me to interpret that something has gone wrong with my neural implant and I go see the surgeon who implanted it, just as we notice things gone wrong with our hearing or sight and we go see the appropriate doctor.

Simply saying that the external world object is the object of perception or that experience just is the stimulus-response event (one or both of which you and unenlightened seem to be saying) doesn't address this question at all. — Michael

I don't say it. Any of it. So my not addressing the question takes another form.

So neuroscience should just give up. — Isaac

You may think so, I disagree.


I said this:

Experiences are things happening to people. They are not 'the result of neural activity'. No one is experiencing neural activity or the results of neural activity. There is no one in anyone's brain. People have experiences and do things, brains are neurally active. But you cannot add one to the other, and have neural activity that results in an experience because they are different categories of thought. You end up, if neural activity results in experience, having to posit an experiencer of the experience - a homunculus in the brain, reading the neurones.

Respond to what I say, or not, but please don't invent my saying things. In particular I don't talk about 'perception'. It is too wooly.

We perceive the world as it is relative to us. Something that is cold or hot is cold or hot relative to our body's surface temperature. Think about when you had a fever and a loved one touches you on the head. Their hand feels cool, yet they claim that your head is warm. You aren't aware of your temperature, only the relationship between your temperature and the environment's.

The feeling is about that relationship. This is why it is so difficult to distinguish between the two when we talk about our sensations. It's not that the sensation is only about one or the other. It is about both. You can know about the state of both via the feeling - that the campfire has a higher temperature than your body. So, trying to say that some experience is only about the experiencer or the experienced is nonsensical. It is about both. The sensation is an objectification of that relationship.

In case anyone is having difficulty understanding what a category error is, here is a an example.

I am sitting on a chair. The chair is made of 4 legs, some cross-pieces, a seat, a back, and wood.

The chair is indeed made of wood.

The chair is indeed made of all those pieces.

Pieces of wood - fine; pieces and wood - no, because it leads to the notion that wood is another piece.

Experience is not another process that is the result of brain activity, and wood is not another piece of the chair..

I said this:

Experiences are things happening to people. They are not 'the result of neural activity'. No one is experiencing neural activity or the results of neural activity. — unenlightened

.

Right, so your claim seems to be that the entire process 'just is' the experience (otherwise experience might be the result of neural activity).

But that flies in the face of modern neuroscience (hence my questioning if you thought the whole venture misguided.

Not all neural activity results in what is reported as an 'experience'. So some neural activity must consist of something outside of experience. People do, however, report something they call an 'experience' consequent to some of this non-experience neural activity. Not only that, but the same non-experience neural activity seems to consistently result in the same neural activity reported as being an 'experience'.

So your idea that experience is not the result of neural activity is absent of a satisfactory explanation for this otherwise astonishing coincidence where some non-experience neural activity consistently seems to preceded what's called an 'experience'. And @Michael has taken pains to point out the evidence demonstrating this.

If you want to take 'experience' out of the field of neuroscience altogether, then we're simply back at the idea that neuroscience cannot help at all because you've robbed it of its means of communicating its results.

I said this: "Experiences are things happening to people." — unenlightened

Simply saying that the external world object is the object of perception or that experience just is the stimulus-response event (one or both of which you and unenlightened seem to be saying) — Michael

Respond to what I say, or not, but please don't invent my saying things. — unenlightened

I seem to have gotten that right?

In particular I don't talk about 'perception'. It is too wooly. — unenlightened

I know you don't, which is why I'm saying that you're missing the point. That's why I brought up blindsight. There's the stimulus and the body responding to it, but there's something missing; the conscious awareness. It's this conscious awareness aspect of the experience that we're discussing here. What is the relationship between this aspect of experience and the object of perception? Is it just a side-effect (whether necessary or incidental) of the brain activity caused by external world stimulation, or do its qualities resemble in some sense the properties of the external world stimulus?

So is the visual quality of experience that's missing in patients with blindsight a property of the apple that they can't see or is it a product of experience that they don't have?

that thing that's missing in cases of blindsight — Michael

Just to be clear... a picture in the head?

Just to be clear... a picture in the head? — bongo fury

That's the question that's being asked. Is that thing that's missing for people with blindsight something that happens "in the head" of the rest of us or is it a property of the external world object?

That's the question that's being asked. Is that thing that's missing for people with blindsight something that happens "in the head" of the rest of us or is it a property of the external world object? — Michael

So, what's missing for them has to be a picture in the head if it's anything in the head?

There's the stimulus and the body responding to it, but there's something missing; the conscious awareness. It's this conscious awareness aspect of the experience that we're discussing here. What is the relationship between this aspect of experience and the object of perception? — Michael

This is such a mashup of confusion I don't know where to begin to try and disentangle it. What is a conscious awareness aspect of experience? What is an object of perception? We haven't even managed to discover how a blind man detects the curb with a stick, never mind all this complexity. The curb is the object of perception of the blind man's stick????, and it is the same curb that I see, and that we don't trip on. What are we both responding to? the curb. And yet our experiences are very different. Are we aware of our experiences?

Am I aware that I am seeing the curb or having a visual perception as of curb or however you want to put it? Maybe, maybe not. I'm pretty sure I often adapt to curbs without being aware of seeing them; we walking professionals can do stuff like that on auto-pilot. Doe this have implications for the nature of seeing? I doubt it.

Now will you maybe address the issue of category error?

What is a conscious awareness aspect of experience? — unenlightened

It's the thing that's missing for people with blindsight and for robots designed to respond appropriately to stimulation, the nature of which is the topic of this discussion. The indirect realist will say that it's a mental phenomenon, a product of brain activity, and a representation of the external world, whereas the direct realist will say that it's a property of the external world itself.

Now will you maybe address the issue of category error? — unenlightened

I don't think there's a category error, just different people using the word "experience" in different ways. You seem to be using the term "experience" to describe the entire chain of events of the apple reflecting light into our eyes, our eyes sending signals to the brain, and the brain responding in kind, giving rise to conscious awareness (that thing that's missing for people with blindsight and for robots designed to respond appropriately to simulation), whereas others are using the word "experience" just to refer to that conscious awareness. But arguing over what is or isn't the proper referent of the word "experience" doesn't address the epistemological problem of perception that the direct and indirect realist are trying to answer.

The problem is the extent to which our senses provide us with information about the perception-independent properties of the world. If I see that the apple is red and taste that it is sweet, does it then follow that redness and sweetness are properties inherent in the apple, or are they instead properties inherent in my body's response to the apple's stimulation? The direct realist will say the former - that the colour red is a property of the apple - whereas the indirect realist will say the latter - that the sweet taste is a property of conscious awareness, and merely representative of some property of the apple (e.g. that it contains sucrose).

Simply saying that "experiences are things happening to people" doesn't address this epistemological problem at all, not even as an attempt to explain the problem away.