1. First of all, it is essential to realize that here the notion of perceiving indirectly wears the trousers—'directly' takes whatever sense it has from the contrast with its opposite while 'indirectly' itself(a) has a use only in special cases, and also (b) has different uses in different cases—though that doesn't mean, of course, that there is not a good reason why we should use the same word. We might, for example, contrast the man who saw the procession directly with the man who saw it through a periscope; or we might contrast the place from which you can watch the door directly with the place from which you can see it only in the mirror. Perhaps we might contrast seeing you directly with seeing, say, your shadow on the blind; and perhaps we might contrast hearing the music directly with hearing it relayed outside the concert hall. However, these last two cases suggest two further points.
2. The 'first of these points is that the notion of not perceiving 'directly' seems most at home where, as with the periscope and the mirror, it retains its link with the notion of kink in direction. It seems that we must not be looking straight at the object in question. For this reason seeing your shadow on the blind is a doubtful case; and seeing you, for instance, through binoculars or spectacles is certainly not a case of seeing you indirectly at all. For such cases as these last we have quite distinct contrasts and different expressions-'with the naked eye' as opposed to 'with a telescope', 'with unaided vision' as opposed to 'with glasses on'. (These expressions, in fact, are much more firmly established in ordinary use than 'directly' is.)
3. And the other point is that, partly no doubt for the above reason, the notion of indirect perception is not naturally at home with senses other than sight. With the other senses there is nothing quite analogous with the 'line of vision'. The most natural sense of 'hearing indirectly', of course, is that of being told something by an intermediary—a quite different matter. But do I hear a shout indirectly, when I hear the echo? If I touch you with a barge-pole, do I touch you indirectly? Or if you offer me a pig in a poke, might I feel the pig indirectly—through the poke? And what smelling indirectly might be I have simply no idea. For this reason alone there seems to be something badly wrong with the question, 'Do we perceive things directly or not?', where perceiving is evidently intended to cover the employment of any of the senses.
4. But it is, of course, for other reasons too extremely doubtful how far the notion of perceiving indirectly could or should be extended. Does it, or should it, cover the telephone, for instance? Or television? Or radar? Have we moved too far in these cases from the original metaphor They at any rate satisfy what seems to be a necessary condition—namely, concurrent existence and concomitant variation as between what is perceived in the straightforward way (the sounds in the receiver, the picture and the blips on the screen) and the candidate for what we might be prepared to describe as being perceived indirectly. And this condition fairly clearly rules out as cases of indirect perception seeing photographs (which statically record scenes from the past) and seeing films (which, though not static, are not seen contemporaneously with the events thus recorded). Certainly, there is a line to be drawn somewhere. It is certain, for instance, that we should not be prepared to speak of indirect perception in every case in which we see something from which the existence (or occurrence) of something else can be inferred; we should not say we see the guns indirectly, if we see in the distance only the flashes of guns.
5· Rather differently, if we are to be seriously inclined to speak of something as being perceived indirectly, it seems that it has to be the kind of thing which we (sometimes at least) just perceive, or could perceive, or which—like the backs of our own heads—others could perceive. For otherwise we don't want to say that we perceive the thing at all, even indirectly. No doubt there are complications here (raised, perhaps, by the electron microscope, for example, about which I know little or nothing). But it seems clear that, in general, we should want to distinguish between seeing indirectly, e.g. in a mirror, what we might have just seen, and seeing signs (or effects), e.g. in a Wilson cloud-chamber, of something not itself perceptible at all. It would at least not come naturally to speak of the latter as a case of perceiving something indirectly.
6. And one final point. For reasons not very obscure, we always prefer in practice what might be called the cash-value expression to the 'indirect' metaphor. If I were to report that I see enemy ships indirectly, I should merely provoke the question what exactly I mean.'I mean that I can see these blips on the radar screen'-'Well, why didn't you say so then?' (Compare 'I can see an unreal duck.'-'What on earth do you mean?' 'It's a decoy duck'-'Ah, I see. Why didn't you say so at once?') That is, there is seldom if ever any particular point in actually saying 'indirectly' (or 'unreal'); the expression can cover too many rather different cases to be just what is wanted in any particular case.
Thus, it is quite plain that the philosophers' use of 'directly perceive', whatever it may be, is not the ordinary, or any familiar, use; for in that use it is not only false but simply absurd to say that such objects as pens or cigarettes are never perceived directly. But we are given no explanation or definition of this new use—on the contrary, it is glibly trotted out as if we were all quite familiar with it already. It is clear, too, that the philosophers' use, whatever it may be, offends against several of the canons just mentioned above-no restrictions whatever seem to be envisaged to any special circumstances or to any of the senses in particular, and moreover it seems that what we are to be said to perceive indirectly is never—is not the kind of thing which ever could be—perceived directly.
And the other point is that, partly no doubt for the above reason, the notion of indirect perception is not naturally at home with senses other than sight.
This is why I said in either this or the other topic that too many people are getting lost in irrelevant arguments over grammar and vocabulary. It's like arguing over whether we read words or read about history. This isn't a dichotomy. We do both.
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Do we smell the pie or do we smell the chemicals that are floating in the air? Do I hear the radio or do I hear the music that it plays? And even with vision: do I see myself in the mirror or do I see my reflection? These are all equally correct.
This is why I think the issue of perception needs to be addressed in such a way as to address the epistemological problem; is the world independently as it appears, and if so can we trust that our experiences are accurate? — Michael
One possible test for whether we are stuck in a mere language trap is to look at the practical ramifications of this or that position (a pragmatist insight.) — Pie
Is the disagreement between mathematical realism and mathematical nominalism, or between scientific realism and scientific instrumentalism, or between the various interpretations of quantum mechanics just a "language trap" despite there being no practical ramifications by any side of the debate? — Michael
Whether sights or sounds, smells or tastes, it's all just sense data brought about by sensory stimulation and brain activity. — Michael
we should be arguing over whether or not drills have the auditory features that we hear them to have. — Michael
Right. So we tell the machine how to distinguish an apple, and it does so. How does that prove that aliens would also distinguish apples? The machine only did it because we told it to, and told it how. — Isaac
The AI would still be human-made to emulate a human scientist. It wouldn't be in effect very different from a human scientist. It would be able to fail, in particular. It would also rely on data fed to it, by a system which can fail. This system is also man-made and based on human theories and perceptions. — Olivier5
The "language trap" is arguing over which of "I hear the drill" and "I hear the sounds made by the drill" — Michael
The "language trap" is arguing over which of [the above] and "I hear auditory sensations" is correct, — Michael
whereas we should be arguing over whether or not drills have the auditory features that we hear them to have. — Michael
No we shouldn't, we should just clarify whether we are talking about whether they have certain physical features, causing certain kinds of acoustical (sound) event, or about the sound events themselves. — bongo fury
Sorry. I know you think that's a straw man, and my misapprehension not yours. Not sure how to get past it. — bongo fury
I never pinpointed the machine or aliens to detect the object as an apple as we humans perceive the object, but that they detect "an object", meaning, the object exists outside of human perception — Christoffer
Then you completely side step the epistemological problem of perception — Michael
and ignore the actual, substantive disagreement between direct and indirect realists. — Michael
Arguing over the grammatically correct way to talk about perception is meaningless. — Michael
Is there a Cartesian theatre [implied] when we say that we feel pain... — Michael
...and that pain is a sensation? — Michael
There's no philosophical difference between feeling a sensation and hearing a sensation or seeing a sensation. The nouns simply signify a different modality of perception. — Michael
It might not be the ordinary way of speaking — Michael
but that's just an arbitrary fact about the English language — Michael
Seems like you're just losing your temper. — bongo fury
Dictionary: Phenomenalism, the doctrine that human knowledge is confined to or founded on the realities or appearances presented to the senses. — Art48
Right. But what evidence do you have for that assertion? Why would a machine, or an alien consider the change of atoms at the boundary of the apple any more significant than the change of atoms between the flesh and the pips. An alien might well look at the apple and declare it two objects (flesh and pips), or three objects (all that is solid, all that is liquid and all that is gaseous). An alien with enormously long life might consider the apple to be such a fleeting thing that is merely a temporary state of the ecosystem (the only true 'object' it sees). — Isaac
My point is that there are a measurable amount of atoms at a certain temporal moment in the universe, i.e "there is something there at a certain amount of time" — Christoffer
exists outside of any idea that our human consciousness creates reality itself. — Christoffer
What matters is whether or not things independently have the shapes, colours, sounds, tastes, and smells that they are perceived to have and as they are perceived to be. — Michael
Why would it emulate a human scientist? — Christoffer
Why should one worry about such a thing. If I look at what appears to be an apple and grab it, smell it, cut it, and taste it, and by all indication it is an apple. What error am I concerned about making in this scenario. My biological apparatus did a good job of picking out an object to nourish myself. What matters is if another human being has difficulties picking out such an object and what scientific/medical discoveries have be made to help that human being correct their biological apparatus to make better judgements about the external world around them. Additionally, if my apparatus is functioning as expected but I am fooled somehow that what appears to be an apple turns out not to be, and it becomes a consistent problem, well it may be time to do some creative thinking and come up with new detection method to help screen out the false positives. — Richard B
to emulate a human scientist — Olivier5
This is strange statement that what matters is whether or not things independently have shapes….that they are perceived to have. Why should one worry about such a thing. — Richard B
We want to know if the things we see exist independently of us, and if they are (independently) as they appear to be. — Michael
I don't think philosophy has any practical ramifications at all. Whatever philosophical theory turns out to be correct, our lives will continue as they have always done. — Michael
Algorithmic AI does not have the function of emulating humans, it has a specific function and purpose based on statistical math and probability-based self-learning. What you are talking about is like saying we build a construction crane to emulate a human arm through human consciousness, it makes no sense.
If the AI is built to detect a very specific particle that is predicted by mathematical physics equations and detected by a non-bias detector, there's no human emulation whatsoever involved with that process. — Christoffer
Except your experiment is set up, designed by a human being, the theoretical framework underpinning the experiment (eg here QM) is human too, and the AI was built by humans. — Olivier5
I don't think you understand what mathematical logic is or that math as a language wasn't invented by us, but instead, is a language derived from that logic. — Christoffer
General relativity didn't get invented, it was discovered and communicated within science through the language of math. It's verified with technology that acts upon these laws of nature — Christoffer
Phenomenology has especially had a tremendous impact on 20th-century philosophy and helped distinguish what is from what we think is. In science, that's practically the foundation for quantum physics and how we theorize it as a foundational part of nature. — Christoffer
I don't think you understand what mathematical logic is or that math as a language wasn't invented by us, but instead, is a language derived from that logic. — Christoffer
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