The point is they don't need language. So this notion that Wittgenstein's "beetle in a box" argument or how English speakers use the word "red" or anything like this has any relevance to this discussion is mistaken.

The point is they don't need language. — Michael

Oh. Well my point is,

And that's how seeing colours is seeing an external material world. It's recognising classes of objects. (Or classes of illumination events.) — bongo fury

We can do that in cases of dreams, hallucinations, and illusions as well. Therefore it says nothing about the direct realist claim that mind-independent objects are directly present in experience and so independently are as they appear.

We can do that — Michael

Do what?

See and distinguish between red and blue things.

See red things. — Michael

No, dreams and hallucinations are us exercising our imagery circuits without succeeding in seeing anything. Illusions covers a multitude, obviously.

I don't need to have words for pleasure and pain to recognise that I am in pain or to recognise the difference between me feeling pleasure and me feeling pain. Qualitative experiences occur and differ from one another, and that they do has nothing to do with being able to make and make sense of my own and another person's vocalisations or ink impressions — Michael

There is no perception without conceptualization in humans ( and higher animals). Conceptualization doesn’t mean using formal. language. To perceive pain or emotion or colors is to construe them by paring expectations with appearance in a complex process of sense making. We dont instantly feel, we undergo a matching and fitting process to determine and identify what it is we are feeling. This is why pain changes it’s felt character in response to many internal and external contextual factors.

This constructive process happens quickly enough that it seems immediate to us. We dont need others to help us judge what we are feeling when we are along , but we need our own cognitive processes to make that judgment, that is , to validate our expectations.

No, dreams and hallucinations are exercising our imagery circuits without succeeding in seeing anything. — bongo fury

If you're going to define "seeing X" as such that it's only satisfied in the case of veridical direct perception then you're begging the question by asserting that we see X.

There is no perception without conceptualization in humans ( and higher animals). Conceptualization doesn’t mean using formal. language. To perceive pain or emotion or colors is to construe them by paring expectations with appearance in a complex process of sense making. We dont instantly feel, we undergo a matching and fitting process to determine and identify what it is we are feeling. This is why pain changes it’s felt character in response to many internal and external contextual factors.

This constructive process happens quickly enough that it seems immediate to us. We dont need others to help us judge what we are feeling when we are along , but we need our own cognitive processes to make that judgment, that is , to validate our expectations. — Joshs

I was arguing against Pie's claim that seeing red depends on the public use of the English word "red".

I was arguing against Pie's claim that seeing red has something to do with the public use of the English word "red". — Michael

To the extent that the public use of language brings with it expectations concerning what we are seeing , it will have an influence on our perceptions. This can be seen more clearly in actual contexts of word use (language games ). The context of use creates the actual sense of meaning of the word , and in turn shapes our perceptual expectations and thus what we actually see.
Experiments show how subjects’ auditory or visual perception is influenced by what they are told.

This is an interesting take:

Semantic Direct Realism

The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR). PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism (SDR), the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories.

The SEP article seems to say something similar:

Proponents of intentionalist and adverbialist theories have often thought of themselves as defending a kind of direct realism; Reid (1785), for example, clearly thinks his proto-adverbialist view is a direct realist view. And perceptual experience is surely less indirect on an intentionalist or adverbialist theory than on the typical sense-datum theory, at least in the sense of perceptual directness. Nevertheless, intentionalist and adverbialist theories render the perception of worldly objects indirect in at least two important ways: (a) it is mediated by an inner state, in that one is in perceptual contact with an outer object of perception only (though not entirely) in virtue of being in that inner state; and (b) that inner state is one that we could be in even in cases of radical perceptual error (e.g., dreams, demonic deception, etc.). These theories might thus be viewed as only “quasi-direct” realist theories; experiences still screen off the external world in the sense that whether the agent is in the good case or the bad case, the experience might still be the same. Quasi-direct theories thus reject the Indirectness Principle only under some readings of “directness”.

I think that this "quasi-direct" realism wants to maintain the grammar of saying "we see the table" and avoid the grammar of saying something like "we see sense data" but also wants to avoid the naivety of direct realism proper (e.g. that things independently are as they appear because how they are is directly present in appearance).

The indirect and the quasi-direct realist are then, in a sense, talking past each other. As I mentioned before, the indirect realist says something comparable to "we read words" and the quasi-direct realist says something comparable to "we read about history", both of which can be correct. Whereas the direct realist proper is saying something comparable to "we read history", as if reading about history is direct access to history, which is of course false.

Whereas the direct realist proper is saying something comparable to "we read history", as if reading a textbook is direct access to its subject, which is of course false. — Michael

If somebody insists to me that I can only talk about my memories of my childhood, as opposed to my actual childhood, am I in a position to agree with that person?

If somebody insists to me that I can only talk about my memories of my childhood, as opposed to my actual childhood, am I in a position to agree with that person? — sime

No.

think the wrinkle is in red is a property as we see it. It's as if 'red' is supposed to do double-duty for some ineffable private experience which is somehow known to be the same ineffable private experience for all (an impossible public-yet-private experience). Ryle attacks this kind of confusion in The Concept of Mind, just as Wittgenstein does with his beetles and boxes. — Pie

If this were true, then we'd have no trouble figuring out what sort of colors a tetrachromatic bird sees, or what sort of smells a dog experiences. It also doesn't make sense out of how some people can experience seeing a gold dress and some a blue one.

Take an experiment with that blue/gold dress before anyone knew about it. How would you know that someone was seeing a different color (blue or gold) than you were (gold or blue) until they told you? You couldn't know just by showing them if they're instructed to keep quiet about what the dress looks like.

All of this is rather obvious. We do dream after-all, and nobody can share our dream experience. Many of us have inner dialogs and day dreams. People lie and there's no foolproof way to always tell. Nor can we always know what someone is feeling or thinking.

I don't know how it's possible to escape the conclusion that we do have private experiences. How else would you make sense of the above?

Experiments show how subjects’ auditory or visual perception is influenced by what they are told. — Joshs

Does that work for colors? Do you think if someone said you would be seeing a gold dress that it would necessarily mean you saw it as gold and not blue? If so, then how did it become a big controversy on the internet with people disagreeing on what color it was? I'm not aware that color illusions work that way. Anyway, it wouldn't matter for insects or birds who can see visual patterns on flowers or other animals invisible to us.

Does that work for colors? Do you think if someone said you would be seeing a gold dress that it would necessarily mean you saw it as gold and not blue? I'm not aware that color illusions work that way. — Marchesk

Apparently it does to some extent. Isn’t the gold dress -blue dress problem an example of gestalt perception? Think of the duck-rabbit or vase-face set-up. If someone tells me the image is a rabbit that will prime me perceptually to look for ways to construct it as a rabbit.

Perceptual
rooming should work for other animals too. If a vervet monkey produces an alarm call , do you think nearby monkeys are more inclined to recognize objects as
predators? What about if we associate a red-colored light with food, and then link a word command with the red light? Would an intelligent animal then be primed to see the color red by hearing the word?

https://qz.com/1454466/your-language-influences-your-color-perception-says-a-new-study/amp/

I don't know how it's possible to escape the conclusion that we do have private experiences — Marchesk

Let me just start by saying I don't deny private experiences. For me it's more about trying to point out their semantic uselessness. 'Red' can't refer to something private. I grant that 'my red' or 'how I see red' or 'what I'm calling red' makes sense enough. It can still function in licensed inferences. I can infer that for you the color of the fire engine is also the color for you of the rose.

Take an experiment with that blue/gold dress before anyone knew about it. How would you know that someone was seeing a different color (blue or gold) than you were (gold or blue) until they told you? You couldn't know just by showing them if they're instructed to keep quiet about what the dress looks like. — Marchesk

But this seems to support me as much as you on this issue. One of my big points is that we only have reports of the other's sensation, never that sensation itself (which is more about grammar than some Cartesian ectoplasm.)

We do dream after-all, and nobody can share our dream experience. Many of us have inner dialogs and day dreams. People lie and there's no foolproof way to always tell. Nor can we always know what someone is feeling or thinking. — Marchesk

If someone could share our dream experience, we'd likely no longer call it a dream. So such statements are, in my view, at least as much about how people like us use the word 'dream' as they are about dreams themselves. If dreams are radically private, we can't say anything sensible about them (a tautology almost, upon consideration). But the use of the word dream is public, and there are correct and incorrect ways to use it. If, with Sellars, we think of meaning in terms of norms that govern inferences, we can climb out of this traditional K-hole. Without denying our strong intuition that there are raw feels and yet without trying to build public reality out of them. (Lying is another good issue, but I think that kind of thing is well-tackled by Ryle, and this post of mine is already too long.)

Think of the duck-rabbit or vase-face set-up. If someone tells me the image is a rabbit that will prime me perceptually to look for ways to construct it as a rabbit. — Joshs

:up:

If a vervet monkey produces an alarm call , do you think nearby monkeys are more inclined to recognize objects as predators? — Joshs

:up:

As I mentioned before, the indirect realist says something comparable to "we read words" and the quasi-direct realist says something comparable to "we read about history", both of which can be correct. — Michael

:up:

Along these lines, it also makes sense to avoid taking certain issues too seriously. So often we are just talking about usage and differences that mostly make no difference.

Well then I'm left with no idea who these 'direct realists' even are, let alone what they claim. I asked Michael for some examples of the direct realist claim and he pointed me to the SEP article on colour primitivism which listed Hacker as a proponent.

So...

1. Is Hacker not a colour primitivist, ... — Isaac

I'd say not. I readily agree with Hacker in the text I quoted whereas the SEP Primitivism section misses the mark despite there being apparent points of agreement. The issue is that the philosophical direct/indirect realism distinction is completely different to the ordinary language direct/indirect distinction used by Hacker.

So Hacker says:

Rather, that we see is a consequence of the action of illuminated or luminous objects on our visual system, and what we see are those objects, colour and all. What we thus see, we see 'directly' (to see something 'indirectly' might be to see it through a periscope or in a mirror - not to look at the thing itself in full daylight with one's eyes). — Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, 2nd Ed. - Bennett and Hacker, p143

Whereas SEP says:

One of the most prominent views of color is that color is an objective, i.e., mind-independent, intrinsic property, one possessed by many material objects (of different kinds) and light sources. ... colors are simple intrinsic, non-relational, non-reducible, qualitative properties. — 2.1 Primitivism: The Simple Objectivist View of Colors

SEP describes Primitivism in Cartesian (e.g., objective, mind-independent, material) and Platonic (e.g., intrinsic, non-relational) language, whereas the ordinary language terms used by Hacker cut across the dualist framing. SEP frames the issue as a metaphysical either-or, whereas on an ordinary language view, whether one sees something directly or indirectly depends on the context.

To paraphrase @Pie from a nearby thread, Hacker is not trying to be Pepsi to the indirect realist's Coca-Cola. He's showing that there's no need for this bubbly acidic sugar water in the first place.

The irony is that everyone in this thread agrees on the basic science of perception. Hacker shows that it is perfectly possible to explain what we know about perception with a combination of ordinary and scientific language without assuming a dualist framing.

2. Who the hell is a direct realist? Seems everybody quoted turns out not to be one. — Isaac

A foil for the indirect realists.

To paraphrase Pie from a nearby thread, Hacker is not trying to be Pepsi to the indirect realist's Coca-Cola. He's showing that there's no need for this bubbly acidic sugar water in the first place. — Andrew M

:up:

I readily agree with Hacker in the text I quoted — Andrew M

Same here. I think the danger is a temptation to mistake reports about proprieties of language use for ontological profundities.

It's nothing to do with language. A hermit with no language could look at two objects and see them to be the same colour (or different colours). That's colour recognition. — Michael

How would you support your claim about this hermit ? Presumably some public action would be interpreted in terms of a private experience.

Also, how can we speak of color recognition in the singular while insisting it's essentially private and inaccessible ? We can radicalize the inverted spectrum idea. Maybe you see a different palette of colors entirely. Maybe I've never seen any of the colors you've seen. Along these lines, maybe there is no one quale for recognizing color. Instead there is something like a loose complex of public behaviors (including reports involving sensation concepts) that might call recognizing a color.

I think your view implies, for instance, that we can never really know if another person has ever been in love, even if we have a detailed biography...as if being in love is something behind what are therefore mere indicators rather than constituents.

This might be helpful.

The fact that cognitions acquired receptively through sensation are noninferential in the sense that they are not the result of exercising inferential capacities does not mean that they are nonconceptual in the sense that they are intelligible as determinately contentful apart from the situation of those contents in a “space of implications” of the sort exploited by inferential capacities. — Robert Brandom

In other words, I might be caused to report seeing red by radiation of a certain frequency hitting my retina, but this does not mean that redness is intelligible as a kind of semantic atom, anchored in some private experience. As Brandom interprets Sellars, to wield one concept with skill always involves skill wielding other concepts at the same time.

A foil for the indirect realists. — Andrew M

So I'm discovering.

We can radicalize the inverted spectrum idea. Maybe you see a different palette of colors entirely. Maybe I've never seen any of the colors you've seen. — Pie

Yes, exactly. Maybe this is the case. That's the point I'm making. I'm not sure what the rest of your comment is trying to say. That I am unable to name the colours I see? Firstly, I don't see why not, and secondly, I don't think it's relevant to the discussion. What matters is whether or not the colours I see are mind-independent properties of ordinary objects. The epistemological and ontological issues of perception have nothing to do with English vocabulary.

A foil for the indirect realists. — Andrew M

So I'm discovering. — Isaac

If you're suggesting that philosophers don't make these kinds of claims, and that they are just a strawman fabricated by indirect realists, then maybe you should read Allen's A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour:

This book develops and defends the view that colours are mind-independent properties of things in the environment that are distinct from properties identified by the physical sciences. This view stands in contrast to the long-standing and wide spread view amongst philosophers and scientists that colours do not really exist—or at any rate, that if they do exist, then they are radically different from the way that they appear.

Or Martin's The Reality of Appearances:

According to naïve realism, the actual objects of perception, the external things such as trees, tables and rainbows, which one can perceive, and the properties which they can manifest to one when perceived, partly constitute one’s conscious experience, and hence determine the phenomenal character of one’s experience. This talk of constitution and determination should be taken literally; and a consequence of it is that one could not be having the very experience one has, were the objects perceived not to exist, or were they to lack the features they are perceived to have. Furthermore, it is of the essence of such states of mind that they are partly constituted by such objects, and their phenomenal characters are determined by those objects and their qualities. So one could not have such a type of state of mind were one not perceiving some object and correctly perceiving it to have the features it manifests itself as having.

...

Focusing on the tower, I can note its distinctive shape and colouring; turning my attention inward, and reflecting on the character of my looking at the tower, I can note that the tower does not disappear from the centre of my attention. The tower is not replaced by some surrogate, whose existence is merely internal to my mind, nor are its various apparent properties, its shape and colours, replaced by some merely subjective qualities. So my perceiving is not only a way of providing me with information about an external world, when my attention and interest is directed towards action and the world; in its very conscious and so subjective character, the experience seems literally to include the world.

These are the direct realist views that then gave rise to indirect realist views like the sense-datum theory, and then later the "quasi-direct" realist views like intentionalism and adverbialism. Although as we can see, there are still those who commit to direct realism proper.

For whatever it's worth, I'm not at all against claiming that some complex thoughts need words whereas some do not.
— creativesoul

So do you see then, that we can make the general claim "complex thought does not need words"? And in your examples, the words are "needed" not for the complex thought, as you seem to think, but for something else. We could for instance name a special type of complex thought, propositional thought, or something like that, and say that words are needed for this. — Metaphysician Undercover

If some thought needs words, and some does not, then claiming that thought does not need words is false. Claiming that thought needs words is also false. It's a matter of nuance:All, some, none.

That's what I see.

I might agree some complex thought does not presuppose words, but rather, ensue from them... — Mww

There is no denying that thinking about words is a kind of thought that needs words. Otherwise, there would be nothing to think about.



We're considering whether or not any thought needs words. Regardless of which linguistic framework we put to use, any and all meaningful coherent answers to that particular question are based completely upon what counts as thought that needs words, as well as what counts as thought that does not. This, in turn, relies upon what counts as thought, because both do.

It seems to me that the difference between thought that needs words and thought that does not is one of existential dependency. The former is existentially dependent upon words, and the latter is not. Thought that is existentially dependent upon words cannot possibly exist when and where words have never been. Thought that is not existentially dependent upon words can.

Here we face a 'problem' though.

If we claim that simple thought existed prior to the first words, and we aim to set out that kind of thought, then we are taking account of that which existed in its entirety prior to our taking it into account. Thus, we can get it wrong! While what counts as "thought" is determined by how we use the term, if we're using the term as a means to take account of that which exists in its entirety prior to our taking it into account, then whatever we say about such thought must not only be consistent with the ability to exist in its entirety prior to words, but our account must set out how it can/does.

The division of us and the world...
— creativesoul

But division is not independence. — Isaac

When dichotomies are used as a means to divide everything up into stuff that fits into one or the other, then the inevitable result is a failure to be able to properly account for that which is both, and thus... neither one nor the other. There are no such things in those accounts.<-----That's the fatal flaw. It's a consequence of consistent language use combined with an inherently inadequate terminological framework.

In the complete absence of light and leaves there cannot be any experience of seeing them. In the complete absence of the biological machinery, there cannot be any experience of seeing them... — creativesoul

So, to repeat myself, "these are just different ways of speaking, different ways of conceptually dividing and/ or sorting things". — Janus

I understood the first time. I agree, but that is a trivial point to make. We all know that much. Do you object to either claim in the quote at the top of this post?