Another word for a collection of human organs and processes is a human being. This is the perceiver and can be confirmed to perceive. Any thing less, for instance a subset of organs, cannot be said to perceive. Human perceivers also digest, metabolize, breathe, and grow hair.

For these reasons it cannot be said that brains perceive. And since our eyes point outwards, it cannot be said we view are perceiving brain phenomena, whether we call them processes, configurations, qualia.

Another word for a collection of human organs and processes is a human being. This is the perceiver and can be confirmed to perceive. Any thing less, for instance a subset of organs, cannot be said to perceive. Human perceivers also digest, metabolize, breathe, and grow hair. — NOS4A2

Yep, and that was what I was getting at.. one of the colloquial terms, aye. Don't play word games. For once Witty may be right when it comes to this kind of argument. None of this refutes what I said if you read it with charity. You went right for "brain processes" and then said, "Ah, can't be that as there is more to the human than that!". Well, duh, hence my emphasis on "collection of processes" and "colloquial terms" (aka human being). That doesn't negate the fact that indeed those processes are all part of the package of the human being (even if they don't exhaust it. Nor have I ever claimed that.

For these reasons it cannot be said that brains perceive. And since our eyes point outwards, it cannot be said we view are perceiving brain phenomena, whether we call them processes, configurations, qualia. — NOS4A2

Eyes point outward is also word games. The information is still thus processed and interpreted thus. A dead person's eyeballs are also pointed outward, so?

Great. So we agree on the “who”. Let’s see if we can discover the “what”.

If you’re not using eyes, how are you witness to the end result of this processed and interpreted information?

If you’re not using eyes, how are you witness to the end result of this processed and interpreted information? — NOS4A2

So you bring up the Cartesian Theater problem, something I've discussed often. This is simply Hard Problem stuff. Have we moved to this topic?

Before we do, going back here- the question of indirect/direct realism is whether the we are perceiving exactly as reality is externally. That is to say, that there is a 1-to-1 correspondence between what is external and what is perceived. Indirect would say that the brain, due to its processing and evolutionary biology, can only ever interpret and reconfigure what is external.

Although I think Dennett is wrong about his overall theory of consciousness, he does have some neat little examples of how the mind reinterprets and edits the world (though again, these are the easy problems which he thus reifies in a way as the hard problem and thus negates it as a problem which is a move too far in my estimate).

Also, again, moving to idealism (even further from indirect realism), we can even question "what" it means for a quality or property (primary or otherwise) to be instantiated in something without a perceiver.

We directly perceive sense data. — RussellA

One of the strengths that folk ascribe to this idea that we "directly perceive sense data" is the certainty that they can not be in error. This is the great appeal. However, I don't believe that the veracity of this idea can be proven, and the idea itself incoherent.

1. We all would agree that the truth that we "directly perceive sense data" cannot be verified by anyone because the idea presupposes that sense data is private, inaccessible for anyone to verify.

2. As for the coherency of this idea that you can not be in error, for example, if the sense data is "green" I cannot be in error that it is "green" because I directly perceive that it is "green". Let's take look at this example: the subject of a test is given an object and is asked what is the color of the object. The subject responds "my sense data I perceive is red". All the scientists in the room look at each other with concern. They ask the subject to repeat, and the subject says the same thing "my sense data I perceive is red". The scientists in the room look puzzled because they showed the subject a green object. To verify, they test the object for color and their instrument detects the color "green". What this shows is that what we will appeal to in order to determine if we are in error or not is not our sense data, which was supposedly unquestionable, but humans, in general, on what they agree in calling something "green" and judging that in fact it is a "green" object.

It inevitably heads in the direction of a homunculus argument, which fails. It tries to account for phenomena in terms of the very phenomenon that it is supposed to explain.

The only way out of this, I think, is to say that “interpreting” and “configuring” reality are acts of perceiving, and abandon the idea that these interpretations and configurations of reality are the objects of perception. But then again, that would imply direct realism, making indirect realism redundant.

If direct realism is saying we are perceiving reality as it is, then indirect realism is perceiving reality exactly as it isn’t. But these qualifiers are essentially nonsensical and unnecessary. Though the problem of the external world is related to the problem of perception, I am speaking strictly of the problem of perception.

Direct realism is logically impossible. To perceive something means to translate it's sense data into a form that is apprehendable by an agent. This involves two transformations:

1. The transformation from sensory media (light, sound waves, chemicals) into nerve signals.

2: The transformation or interpretation of nerve signals into the abstract, fictive qualities of experience (colors, sounds, smells).

This double transformation is the precondition of perception and rules out direct realism.

To answer your question, you perceive the tree. But to perceive entails the above two transformations.

Anything that is the “mechanics of human vision” is itself the perceiving…… — NOS4A2

The mechanics of any human sensory device makes the perceiving possible, being necessary but not sufficient for it, in accordance with their design alone.

…..and not the perceived. — NOS4A2

Obviously, hence trivially correct.

If indirect realism accepts this it is redundant. — NOS4A2

Redundancy is moot, insofar as the proper indirect realist accepts as given, that the mechanics is neither the perceiving nor the perceived. The former belongs strictly to agency, the latter belongs strictly to that which affects agency.

If sensation is removed, as output of sensory devices, and all else being undisturbed, is it rational to say perceiving remains intact?

Very good. Might I also add the element of judgement, i.e. the naming of it, what it is.

1. The transformation from sensory media (light, sound waves, chemicals) into nerve signals.

2: The transformation or interpretation of nerve signals into the abstract, fictive qualities of experience (colors, sounds, smells). — hypericin

There is no version of direct realism that I’m aware of that would deny these. A major type of direct realism is distinguished by its claim that we perceive trees, not representations of trees—not that perception isn’t a transformative process.

That said, while I couldn’t resist making that point, I’ve come to think that this whole debate tends to go wrong from the start, that the direct-indirect dichotomy is unhelpful.

A major type of direct realism is distinguished by its claim that we perceive trees, not representations of trees—not that perception isn’t a transformative process. — Jamal

We perceive directly.
Perception is a transformative process.

How can these be consistent?

It is reasonable to treat the mental act of categorization as part of the perception. It is also reasonable to distinguish it from the perception.

Look it up.

A clue: when you fly directly from London to Istanbul, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to get on a plane and move through the sky to get there. It means you don’t stop anywhere on the way.

EDIT: if that seemed unnecessarily rude or curt, it’s because you failed to observe the principle of charity, and I found this rather annoying. It should be obvious that direct realists cannot possibly mean what you take them to mean.

It is reasonable to treat the mental act of categorization as part of the perception. It is also reasonable to distinguish it from the perception. — hypericin

I think it falls under the heading of 'apperception': how the mind organises incoming data into categories and reacts to it.

"Act of the mind by which it becomes conscious of its ideas as its own (1876) is from German Apperzeption, coined by Leibniz (1646-1716) as noun corresponding to French apercevoir "perceive, notice, become aware of" on analogy of Perzeption/percevoir."

Thanks and I think this may be a good summary of Wittgenstein's approach. My only question is should we take this methodology seriously? It sometimes reads like it's merely shuffling words around.

"'So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?' It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life." — Richard B

Move over post-modernism. For those who wish to understand perception and the nature of the real, I suspect this approach is unlikely to satisfy.

Most of our problems in philosophy seem to stem from 'as they really are'.

Interesting brief John Searle chapter on direct realism and what he considers to be recurring mistakes in philosophy.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328147585_The_Philosophy_of_Perception_and_the_Bad_Argument_Sprachtheoretische_und_interdisziplinare_Aspekte_einer_brisanten_Alternative

Yep, for some, finding an answer to the the question is more satisfying, than accepting the question is nonsense or confused and so there is no answer.

It inevitably heads in the direction of a homunculus argument, which fails. It tries to account for phenomena in terms of the very phenomenon that it is supposed to explain. — NOS4A2

I literally wrote about this several times before regarding the hard problem.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/102760

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/417503

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/194285

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/305002

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/416211

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/106635

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/470051

So you are a little late to the game, NOS!

The only way out of this, I think, is to say that “interpreting” and “configuring” reality are acts of perceiving, and abandon the idea that these interpretations and configurations of reality are the objects of perception. But then again, that would imply direct realism, making indirect realism redundant.

If direct realism is saying we are perceiving reality as it is, then indirect realism is perceiving reality exactly as it isn’t. But these qualifiers are essentially nonsensical and unnecessary. Though the problem of the external world is related to the problem of perception, I am speaking strictly of the problem of perception. — NOS4A2

This part, I don't get why that conclusion must result. I am missing your explanation here. Cartesian theater, thus indirect idealism false, seems odd to me.

I was hoping you'd drop by. — Tom Storm

I've been watching, but I wasn't much interested in joining in. The progress here was predictable, with those who reject realism insisting on expounding a version of it that is not held by those who more or less agree with it.

The strange constituency of this forum might have you think there is a great philosophical debate between direct realism and idealism. It ain't so. Overwhelmingly, philosophers, like the general population, will if asked say that they are realists (80% in the PhilPapers survey, with idealism garnering less than 6%. Yes, we don't do philosophy via polls and it's a survey of English-speaking philosophers and so on, but that's a level of agreement which is for philosophers pretty much unheard of.)

Is your take on the conversation about realism informed by Austin and Searle? — Tom Storm

I'm fond of Austin's take-down of sense-data accounts. Searle extends and renovates Austin's basic intuition that when we talk about, say, a tree or a kettle, it is the tree or the kettle we are discussing and not something like our perceptions or mental images or whatever. When one says the tree has leaves, that's about the tree, not anything else.

My memory is that you would have no truck with the idea of a tree 'as it is in itself', finding this qualifier redundant. — Tom Storm

Most assuredly.

Do you agree with Searle's account of 'the bad argument' as being a key fallacy driving these sorts of discussions that inevitable end up talking about visual illusions, etc? — Tom Storm

Sure. For those interested in doing some actual thinking about the issue, a sample can be found at The Philosophy of Perception and the Bad Argument. Variations of the bad argument have already been used in this thread, but perhaps Searle sets out the logic more clearly (@Isaac has previously set out much the same refutation in terms of Markov Blankets).

To be sure, there are issues in Searle's account of perception, but these take place within the framework of realism.

Is there a fallacy found in that we are not seeing the seeing, the visual experience? — Tom Storm

My diagnosis is that hereabouts - that is, on this forum - there are folk who begin by dividing things into a private world and a public world. They sometimes phrase this as internal vs external, or object vs subject, first person vs third person, and so on. They then proceed to conclude that there are two worlds, or to collapse the whole of the "external" world to some internal characteristic - the will, for example. they think they have presented an argument for one of the varieties of idealism when all they have done is to assume idealism.

What do you say to the person who asserts that when a human regards an object, that object is to a greater or lesser extent created in the experience of perception, which brings with it anticipatory notions and memories, along with a particular cognitive apparatus which sees colours and other attributes which are present in the experience of looking but not in the object being seen. — Tom Storm

Well, sure, when you look at a tree, there are various physiological and psychological processes that go along with seeing the tree. Nevertheless, there is a tree. It's the tree that either does or does not have leaves, regardless of our perceptions and representations.

It's the tree that either does or does not have leaves, regardless of our perceptions and representations. — Banno

No one is saying it doesn't on the indirect realism side.
Direct vs. indirect realism becomes about whatever the caller wants apparently. Direct realism thinks there is basically an immediate access to the tree without any interpretation.
Being that it is realism debating realism, it is about how veridical this "window" into the tree is.

1. The transformation from sensory media (light, sound waves, chemicals) into nerve signals.

2: The transformation or interpretation of nerve signals into the abstract, fictive qualities of experience (colors, sounds, smells).

This double transformation is the precondition of perception and rules out direct realism.

The transformations you listed are transformations of the perceiver, not the perceived. Until perceivers no longer have nerves and nerve signals, it cannot be said that these are transformations of anything else, let alone forms or sense datum.

Direct vs. indirect realism becomes about whatever the caller wants apparently. — schopenhauer1

Sure, it's complex. And you? Do you think that there is indeed a tree with leaves? Is there something about your view that opposes it to direct realism, or perhaps even realism? What?

transformations you listed are transformations of the perceiver, not the perceived. — NOS4A2

Exactly right, the tree transforms the light that reflects off it, which transforms the chemical activity of the light receptors, which transforms electrical activity in the nervous system, which transforms subjective experience.

What exactly about this process is "direct"?

Overwhelmingly, philosophers, like the general population, will if asked say that they are realists (80% in the PhilPapers survey, with idealism garnering less than 6%.) — Banno

Exactly as I would have predicted. Allied to some version of naturalism and/or physicalism. It's the zeitgeist.

Sure, it's complex. And you? Do you think that there is indeed a tree with leaves? Is there something about your view that opposes it to direct realism, or perhaps even realism? What? — Banno

Before I get to my view, I'd like to defend indirect realism, at least as it opposes direct realism. I think Dennett does have good evidence when discussing this case (not his overall theory of consciousness, however, which denies and ignores the problem at hand- the hard problem).

Some examples he gives:
-Our mind "fills in gaps" with things like patterns (checkerboards, two-faced pictures, etc).
-Optical illusions, like the one that shows two lines of equal length, but one line appears longer than the other because of the arrangement of the arrows on the ends of the lines.
-The variability of sensory perception amongst different people or the same person at a different timeframe.
- Attention shapes how an object is recognized. If we have the intention of finding something, that object becomes more apparent to us than if not.

But, besides these examples, the fact that at the end of the day, the "result" is based on electrical impulses and chemical information transfer, means that there is a "filter" of the various processes themselves that inevitably affect the result, and makes it "not just a copy" of the input. The medium matters, the image is not being psychically passed but rather, computed via neural networking via chemical and electrical integration points.

Again, I'm totally taking the role of an indirect realist here.

I didn't reply to your post, and I should have. I see the difficulty in expressing these ideas without appearing to give solace to metaphysical notions of idealism. In the Searle article cited elsewhere, he says "In the sense in which I see the tree, I do not see a sense datum". This strikes me as the converse of what you say here:

For me, when modelling, there's no 'tree'. I don't even have a step in the process where there's a thing I could call a tree. It's just about signals and responses. One of those responses might be to form the word 'tree', or to act in such a way I'd personally recognise as responding to a tree, but in the model, there's no tree. It's just data>>response. — Isaac

We've two ways of talking, one involving trees, the other - and here my expression will be loose - some sort of nested Markov Blankets setting out the relations between physical systems. And neither of these is complete, neither contains the other, and they do not, cannot, stand contrary to each other. Hence anomalous monism, or some variation thereof.

Cheers.

Would 'anomalous monism' mean 'naturalism with ad hoc changes as required for the various bits that it can't actually accomodate'?

Exactly right, the tree transforms the light that reflects off it, which transforms the chemical activity of the light receptors, which transforms electrical activity in the nervous system, which transforms subjective experience.

What exactly about this process is "direct"?

There is no mitigating factor or intermediary between perceiver and perceived, therefor the perception is not indirect. The contact between perceiver and perceived is direct, therefor his perception of the perceived is direct.

Before I get to my view, I'd like to defend indirect realism, at least as it opposes direct realism. — schopenhauer1

I'm not surprised.

You prefer a dualism? Then its over to you to explain the link between the two. How a decision moves a hand, and a bottle of plonk changes a decision.

You can't stand outside the act of cognition. Put another way, you can't cognise the cogniser. The act of cognition involves subjective and objective poles, but both of those poles arise as aspects of the conscious act. But framing the question the way you have introduces a kind of realist premise which is not commensurable with the kind of question you're asking, you're trying to treat 'the perceiver' as an object, which it never is. — Wayfarer

Demonstrably, @Isaac and his friends do stand outside of the act of cognition, looking in. If you start by dividing a thing in twain, you ought not be surprised that you have two pieces.

But we have

I’d go along wth that... — Wayfarer

to my

I suspect we (Wayfarer, Tom, Isaac) see mind as embedded in the world, and reject the hard distinction between perceiver and perceived that underpins the question of the OP — Banno

So there must be more to be said.