On “direct” vs “indirect” perception, JL Austin makes some great points regarding the language of the debate in his manuscripts Sense and Sensibilia. The use of these terms in my own and in other’s arguments admittedly sent us off in wild directions. I’m going to quote them here.

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.

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. This quote from Austin leads us into a few simple examples:

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.

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?

And in fact, this is where I disagree with Austin above. I would instead say that it is direct realism that is not naturally at home with senses other than sight, where direct realism is understood as claiming that the world is independently as it appears. Whereas there might be a case to argue that an apple independently has a shape and colour as it is seen to have, can we say the same about its taste and smell? Or is the way an apple tastes and smells determined as much by the perceiver?

I think that this very limitation of direct realism is why this short introduction says "naïve realism is a theory in the philosophy of perception: primarily, the philosophy of vision" and "as for whether there can be naïve realist theories of senses other than vision, this is an issue that awaits a more detailed exploration" and why the SEP article on auditory perception says "the unique phenomenology of olfaction and smells has been used to argue that vision is atypical in supporting the transparency of perceptual experience (Lycan 2000, 282; cf. Batty 2010) and that perceptual objectivity does not require spatiality (Smith 2002, ch 5). Lycan (2000) even suggests that the philosophy of perception would have taken a different course had it focused upon olfaction instead of vision (see also Batty 2011)."

Whereas I don't think that indirect theories like the sense-datum theory have any special difficulty with non-visual senses. Whether sights or sounds, smells or tastes, it's all just sense data brought about by sensory stimulation and brain activity.

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.
...
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

I think the final question in the quote above is subject to the same strong points you make at the beginning. Various uses of various words are approximately equally acceptable, and this can be read as the rules for using such concepts being insufficiently determinate in the first place for metaphysical 'theorems.' What in fact do we already tend to trust enough to act upon?

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.)

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

I'm not sure if there's any connection here. 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?

I don't think it makes a difference to our way of life which of transcendental idealism and naive realism (or other) is the case, and yet the disagreement between these positions isn't just a "language trap".

The "language trap" is arguing over which of "I hear the drill" and "I hear the sounds made by the drill" and "I hear auditory sensations" is correct, whereas we should be arguing over whether or not drills have the auditory features that we hear them to have. I think naive realism about hearing is false; drills don't have the auditory features that we hear them to have. And I don't think that vision works any differently (in any philosophically significant sense; obviously there's the physical difference that hearing involves stimulation by sound and vision involves stimulation by light).

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

If I agreed that your examples were situations with no practical ramifications, then I'd probably answer yes. But it occurs to me (thanks to your examples) that it's not trivial to decide in every case whether the issue touches practice.

For instance: on the QM issue, influenced by Popper's understanding of metaphysics as a kind of prescientific source of ideas that sometimes ripen into science, I can imagine different interpretations leading to the discovery of different (relatively) 'neutral' mathematical patterns in the measurements.

Whether sights or sounds, smells or tastes, it's all just sense data brought about by sensory stimulation and brain activity. — Michael

Or it's all learnt classification of the external stimuli. Types of illumination event, types of sound event, types of chemical diffusion event, types of eating event, types of bodily trauma event (in case you forgot pains).

we should be arguing over whether or not drills have the auditory features that we hear them to have. — Michael

To me it's not simply true or false that drills do or do not have such features. The answer is not out there, waiting to be revealed. We can look at how we tend to talk about things while also discussing how we ought to talk about things.

Descartes already claimed that the same kind of pressure on the nerves could generate or cause (reports of) seeing and hearing. Dwelling on this fact, we are tempted to say that drills-in-themselves are soundless. But there's no reason to stop there. The idea of a drill, its shape, the number that represents its mass, maybe time and space themselves, are thrown up by the nervous system that is somehow paradoxically in this time and space, itself a mere piece of a dream that no longer makes sense as a dream.

I always return to us and practical, social beings, and insist that meaning is 'between' us in the norms that mostly implicitly govern our word-trading. And this is why a computer, presumable a ghostless machine, can be pretty good and translation. A loss function is minimized by gradient descent. The automaton is slapped around till it gets things less wrong.

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

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, i.e the human perception does not "create reality", but reality exists and we perceive it in a limited manner.

The point of my argument is that there's an idea within phenomenology that concludes that our consciousness "creates reality", much like the heavily criticized Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation. This kind of concept is a heavily human-narcissistic interpretation of reality, closer to the human arrogance of putting the earth in the center of the universe. It's religious hogwash for people who can't cope with the meaninglessness of existence, so they need to put themselves and their consciousness at the center of the universe and be responsible for reality itself.

Phenomenology is only worth using if it is used as a point of limitation for human perception. Like when trying to grasp concepts outside of our perception and being able to differentiate between our perceived reality and actual reality.

A good example is the James Webb telescope compared to Hubble. Disregarding the magnitude difference, the James Webb telescope has an emphasis on infrared instead of the visual spectrum. Because we know infrared has the ability to perceive more light through gas and other matter, it can "see more" than Hubble, which focuses on the visual spectrum. Hubble is in this case our phenomenological perception of the universe and James Webb sees beyond that. And since we understand this difference, we can harness that capability, tailor it to our perception and augment ourselves to see further. Without the concept and knowledge of human perception vs actual reality, we wouldn't be able to gain power over these ways of observing reality past ourselves.

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

Why would it emulate a human scientist? AI algorithms do not emulate humans, this is a misconception of AI and algorithmic synthetic intelligence. And it doesn't matter if theories human-made if they're calculated with mathematical logic. 2 + 2 = 4 is not a human invention, 2 asteroids getting into orbit with 2 other asteroids means there are 4 asteroids and that can happen anywhere in the universe regardless of us humans creating a language system to calculate it. Therefore your idea of "human theories" in physics does not make sense because the only thing invented is the language system we use to calculate the math, the math itself is based on reality logic. Math can predict physics systems and the conclusions we humans arrive at when calculating are never invented, they are discovered.

The Higgs field and particle theories are based on complex math. They are predictions of particle behavior. The Atlas detector at CERN does not detect particles because we invented a theory and in turn that "invented" those particles. The theory predicts the existence of those particles and the experiments verify that prediction. Like Einstein predicted general relativity, it was verified by experiments and later we utilized the proof to make things like GPS. How in the world can you conclude that GPS works because we invent it without realizing that relativity needs to be true in order for clocks to sync correctly between the GPS on earth and the satellite? Regardless of any human concepts or inventions, the theory, the concept of general relativity has to be true in order for it to work.

I think you mix up what is a human concept/invention and what exists beyond us. Mathematical logic is not "invented by us", only the language to interpret it. Just like the camera isn't creating the reality in the picture, it's only an invention that detects light photons and captures them. The camera is an invention, but the chemistry and physics of reality that enables the camera to work are not invented by us.

It's crucial to understand the difference between the two, otherwise, phenomenology becomes a mess of religious proportions.

The "language trap" is arguing over which of "I hear the drill" and "I hear the sounds made by the drill" — Michael

Well that hardly needs a hazard warning. I hear, am witness to, the sound event involving the drill. The room, vibrating. Either of the two phrases is innocent glossed as such.

What the event tells us about the drill itself is an interesting question of physics, probably triggering hypotheses about the whole class of sound events involving the same drill.

Further investigation might involve an appropriately defined class of sound events involving loudspeakers, instead of the drill.

(Aesthetic interest may create a fascination with similarly defined classes of events: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/410733.)

The "language trap" is arguing over which of [the above] and "I hear auditory sensations" is correct, — Michael

No, the above are correct, but this version too easily suggests a little loudspeaker in the head, that I'm listening to. Sorry. I know you think that's a straw man, and my misapprehension not yours. Not sure how to get past it.

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.

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

Then you completely side step the epistemological problem of perception and ignore the actual, substantive disagreement between direct and indirect realists. Arguing over the grammatically correct way to talk about perception is meaningless. That's the language trap as @Pie mentioned.

Sorry. I know you think that's a straw man, and my misapprehension not yours. Not sure how to get past it. — bongo fury

Is there a Cartesian theatre when we say that we feel pain and that pain is a sensation? There's no philosophical difference between feeling a sensation and hearing a sensation or seeing a sensation. The nouns simplify signify a different modality of perception. It might not be the ordinary way of speaking but that's just an arbitrary fact about the English language that doesn't reveal, dictate, or entail deeper, ontological or epistemological facts about our interaction with the world.

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

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).

Then you completely side step the epistemological problem of perception — Michael

Good, if that problem assumes we see and hear internal imagery.

and ignore the actual, substantive disagreement between direct and indirect realists. — Michael

... not "talking past each other", suddenly?

Arguing over the grammatically correct way to talk about perception is meaningless. — Michael

If you mean disputing what elements of folk psychology stand the scrutiny of literal interpretation then I don't see why that should be meaningless. Seems like you're just losing your temper.

Is there a Cartesian theatre [implied] when we say that we feel pain... — Michael

No.

...and that pain is a sensation? — Michael

Yes, if that's in deliberate conjunction with the first. It's obviously setting up a dubious scenario in which a you inside you perceives a representation inside you, instead of just the whole of you perceiving the thing itself, in this case the bodily trauma.

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

Yes, they all set up the same dubious scenario, if we aren't careful. They all say, sensing a sensation, or feeling a feeling, seeing a seeing.

It might not be the ordinary way of speaking — Michael

Right, so it's the careful way, that we're meant to take literally?

but that's just an arbitrary fact about the English language — Michael

I'm lost from here on. Again, seems like bluster.

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. Is the relationship between reality and appearance just casual or also representative/constitutional?

What is it isn’t the conventional English sentence for describing the act of perception has nothing to do with the ontology or epistemology of perception.

Seems like you're just losing your temper. — bongo fury

Losing my patience with irrelevance perhaps.

Dictionary: Phenomenalism, the doctrine that human knowledge is confined to or founded on the realities or appearances presented to the senses. — Art48

Quite possibly presented to, not by.

Just saying.

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 didn't exclude this (their) kind of interpretation of the atoms in space that we interpret as an apple. 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" that constitutes a part of reality that they interpret differently from us, but nonetheless exists outside of any idea that our human consciousness creates reality itself. It's this, within phenomenology, that I object against, not that phenomenology describes the process of different interpretations depending on if it's us, a machine or aliens that analyze the atoms in space, that is the part I value within phenomenology.

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

I'd agree, but I'm not sure this is sufficient to supports opposition to...

exists outside of any idea that our human consciousness creates reality itself. — Christoffer

It's not my understanding of phenomenalism that it posits no external world, only that 'reality' is constructed (like all Lego models are 'constructed', irrespective of the fact that they're all still made of Lego bricks).

But I may be wrong. I was just interested in what appeared to be a claim about natural kinds, but has turned out not to be.

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

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. 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.

Why would it emulate a human scientist? — Christoffer

Because it would be built and programmed by a human scientist to emulate a human scientist. Why would it NOT do what it is built to do, ie emulate a human scientist?

.

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

Lots of good points above. You stress practical relevance, and I'd extend that emphasis to semantics as well. What does it mean to take something as an apple ? Is the apple 'behind' all its appearences somehow? Or is 'apple' just the way we organize various conventional behaviors, including ways of talking?

to emulate a human scientist — Olivier5

That's you applying a function to the AI that it does not have. 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. I really don't know what you are talking about, but you apply attributes to the process that does not exist in order to argue some vague idea that our tools are biased toward being part of our human consciousness because we constructed them. That is a false conclusion.

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

If you're asking about what practically matters then I'd say nothing. 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.

But I'm not talking about what practically matters. I'm talking about what matters to the philosophical questions on epistemology and ontology. We want to know if the things we see exist independently of us, and if they are (independently) as they appear to be. We want to know if a thing's appearance justifies any claims we make about what that thing is (independently) like. If you're not interested in these questions then by all means ignore them, but if you are then you can't address them simply by arguing that "I see a tree" is the conventional way to speak in English, and this seems to be where so many in this discussion get lost.

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 see how the answer to this question isn't determined entirely by what we mean by 'exist independently of us' and what we mean by 'as they appear to be'.

The problem is that the meaning of both terms cannot be set outside of a context which already begs the question.

We cannot consider the idea of 'independent of us' to have a meaning which shares snh common ground between the phenomenalist and the direct realist. To say something is 'independent of us' already imports concepts which require us to have a policy already on phenomena vs world.

Likewise with 'as they appear to be'. The idea of there being some way objects appear to be which we could compare to the way they 'actually are' to search for a match, imports a ton of concepts about the status of the external world, the status of our reports (both introspective and scientific)...

You'd come to such an investigation with your cup already full to the brim (to paraphrase the Buddhist parable).

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

Except Philosophy has essentially and foundationally informed and steered humanity to the point we're at today in science, politics, morality, religion, and people's sense of existence itself.

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. The practical consequence of that is essential for many recent technological achievements made as well as future development.

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.

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. The world around us wouldn't react through the knowledge we have if there wasn't verifiable feedback from the universe based on our scientific theories.

Why does a GPS work in relation to general relativity? Did we invent general relativity or is our language around it merely a way for us to communicate with other humans about those facts of nature?

If you design an AI that has the function of recognizing the properties of a molecular structure, it doesn't matter one bit that it was designed by humans, because the only human factor is the language it uses to relay that information and data to us. The fact that it detects the properties of molecules is not an invention.

You seem to mix together something we designed with a function that acts upon universal laws. Just because we named things and have a language of communication around it, does not mean it gets invented by us. 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 regardless of the form, shape, or function we attribute to those inventions.

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

I am aware of this theory.

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

That there exist laws of nature is debated. But we know for sure that certain human beings historically did put together the concepts, the math and the interpretation of General Relativity. They did not receive those things from the gods.

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

Phenomenology as the basis for quantum physics...?

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

Hmm. "derived" might not be the right word here. Russell's project failed. We know that for any mathematical axiomatisation there will be truths that cannot be derived.