If I come along and find somebody who does not hallucinate, does this mean they don't have "sense data"? — Richard B

Searle, hallucination and the veridical

Searle discusses the ambiguity of the word "see".
"What shall we say about the bad argument in both of its versions? I think in spite of its enormous influence it rests on a simple fallacy of ambiguity over ‘see’ and other perceptual verbs" and "In the ordinary sense of ‘see’ in which I now see the tree, in the hallucinatory case I do not see anything".

Searle repeats a scientific version of the "argument from illusion":
“You told us earlier that visual experience takes place when photons strike the photoreceptor cells and set up a series of causal events that eventually results in a visual experience in the cortex. But it is of that visual experience that we are visually aware. The science of vision has proven that the only thing you can actually see, literally, scientifically is the visual experience going on in your head. We might as well have a name for these visual experiences. Call them ‘sense data’. All you ever perceive are sense data, and by way of vision all you can ever perceive are visual sense data.”

Searle says someone could see a tree even if there wasn't one
"but when I see the tree I cannot separate the visual experience from an awareness of the presence of the tree. This is true even if it is a hallucination and even if I know that it is a hallucination. In such a case, I have the experience of the perceptual presentation of an object even though there is no object there."

Generally, one knows something one perceives is not there because its being there would be improbable or anomalous, for example, an airplane divebombing the house, or a spectre of death standing on the edge of the forest. But for a common object as a tree, something that is not out of place, and there is nothing improbable or anomalous about it, and is something that one definitely expects to perceive, how can one know that there is no tree there.

Searle is saying that in the hallucinatory case the observer perceives a tree within sense data but doesn't see the tree, and in the ordinary case the observer doesn't perceive a tree in the sense data but does see the tree. If the observer perceives a tree, and there is nothing anomalous about the tree, there can be no way for the observer to know whether the tree exists or is an hallucination. If the tree exists, then the observer sees the tree. If the tree doesn't exist, then the observer perceives the sense data.

If there is no way for the observer to know whether everyday objects such as trees exist or are hallucinations, how does the observer know whether they are seeing the tree or perceiving the sense data ?

Searle doesn't explain how an observer can know they are hallucinating about an object that is neither improbable or anomalous.

Searle sets out with great clarity the difference. When one sees a tree, there is a tree to be seen. When one hallucinates a tree, there is no tree to be seen...........He does take this distinction as granted. — Banno

Searle writes about the mistakes of philosophers of great genius
"I realize that the great geniuses of our tradition were vastly better philosophers than any of us alive and that they created the framework within which we work. But it seems to me they made horrendous mistakes."

As regarding the debate between Indirect and Direct Realism, he writes
"The second mistake almost as bad is the view that we do not directly perceive objects and states of affairs in the world."

I agree that he writes with great clarity about what he perceives as the mistakes of the past, but he is a bit short on giving any reasons or justifications why they were mistaken. As you say, he takes a lot for granted.

You've mixed your intentionality with your causation. Knowing involves intentionality, rather than cause. That is, claiming to know something is adopting a certain intentional attitude towards that state of affairs: that this is true — Banno

There is a direction of information flow in a causal process

Searle writes about perception and direction of fit and causation
"Perception has the mind-to-world direction of fit and the world-to-mind direction of causation. That is just the fancy way of saying that the perception is satisfied or unsatisfied depending on how the world is in fact independently of the perception (mind-to-world direction of fit), but the world being that way has to cause the perception to be that way (world-to-mind direction of causation)."

Searle writes about the intentionality and causation of a visual experience
"A fourth feature of the situation is that the visual experience has intrinsic intentionality. The experience sets conditions of satisfaction, and these conditions are those under which the experience is veridical as opposed to those conditions under which it is not veridical. Confining ourselves to seeing the tree in front of me we can say that the conditions of satisfaction of the visual experience are that there has to be a tree there and the fact that the tree is there is causing in a certain way the current visual experience. So on this account the visual experience in its conditions of satisfaction is causally self-reflexive in that the causal condition refers to the perceptual experience itself. If the perceptual experience could talk it would say, “If I am to be satisfied (veridical) I must be caused by the very object of which I seem to be the seeing."

In order to know that I am seeing a tree, my visual experience must have an intrinsic intentionality about the tree, such that my mind is directed at the tree. But in order to see the tree, there must have been a temporally prior world-to-mind causation, from the tree being the way it is in the world to the tree in my mind.

Therefore, as Searle writes, knowing requires both intentionality and causation, in that the cause of a perception is temporally prior to the perception itself. Between the cause of the perception and the perception itself there may have been several intermediary stages in a long causal chain.

There is only one direction of flow of information in a causal chain, in that, just by seeing a broken window on a walk into town, one cannot know, of the several possible causes, which was the actual cause. If backwards flow of information was possible through a long causal chain, a detective at the scene of a crime would straight away know the identity of the criminal.

The puzzle is, how can the mind, when perceiving an object, know the single cause of its perception, when the cause happened prior to the perception and at the far end of a long causal chain.

The Direct Realist's position is that the perceiver of an object knows a single cause of that perception, yet this would require a backwards flow of information through a causal chain, which is impossible.

If Direct Realism was how reality worked, every detective would be taught Direct Realism in order to give them a 100% success rate in crime solving.

I like to keep challenging this idea of "sense data" derived from the Argument of Illusion. I believe one needs to to assume first that our vertical experiences are the normal background in which we understand and recognize others have hallucinations. Or, we start down the path of radical skepticism in which we believe the whole world is one big hallucination. Additionally, the Argument of Illusion is based on our experience where we identified those who we say are hallucinating. This is not determined by some inward private determination. Given this, human beings who hallucinate are few, and most human beings have never hallucinated, and when hallucinations do occur, it occurs infrequently. So how did something that few humans being will ever experience, may never experience, and, if experienced, will happen infrequently, turn into positing "sense data" that every human being must have when perceiving the world around them. Maybe this shows that a metaphysical explanation that desires universal generality does not apply here. Or maybe it demonstrates a particular absurdity like concluding when I close my eyes and don't perceive anything, the world no longer exist.

The puzzle is, how can the mind, when perceiving an object, know the single cause of its perception, when the cause happened prior to the perception and at the far end of a long causal chain. — RussellA

You ask other minds, look at the evidence, and see what is persuasive. In this case, this is done in a public realm, not the private realm of "sense data".

I see ignorance as consisting, not in holding one view rather than another (except in the empirical context) but in being wedded to some (necessarily dualistic) view or other. For me sin, or "missing the mark", consists in not seeing the world non-dually. — Janus

Being wedded to the view that duality is sin and non-duality is virtue is extremely dualistic, and unrealistic, isn’t it? The best we can do is merely reduce anxiety by quieting our minds. To see non-dually is to not see at all.

As regards language, I would say that the machine is able to sense a wavelength but is not able to perceive it. — RussellA

Let's say I designed some glasses which duplicate an object, so when I put them on I see two objects, I take them off and I see one object. So metaphysically, why am I not committed to the glasses having "sense data" just like when I push one of my eye balls and report I see two of the objects. Can't we just say, "there is nothing to say here metaphysically, just our perception is distorted?"

It is apparently easy enough to be sure about world events that one can quite hysterically object to alternative interpretations of them, and yet strangely, they can never be sure they're really seeing the tree as it is. — Isaac

On the contrary, I'm quite certian I'm not "seeing the tree as it really is", as this is nonsensical, an oxymoron. To perceive is necessarily to translate the sensory information into experiential terms, which cannot somehow be coincident with "the tree itself".

I'll try one more time to show how this is a mischaracterisation of realism. — Banno

I'm afraid this bears little relation to anything I've written.

In particular, for you, "the tree has leaves" is not about the light reflected from the tree. — Banno

Great, I never said it was. My point, again, is that what is *directly* interacted with, by the body, (on one side of the table, in terms of the OP's metaphor), is something totally other than the tree: its imprint on light which has interacted with it. This is just one of the gaps I've described between perceiver and perceived which makes nonsense of the "direct" in direct realism.

I see ignorance as consisting, not in holding one view rather than another (except in the empirical context) but in being wedded to some (necessarily dualistic) view or other. For me sin, or "missing the mark", consists in not seeing the world non-dually. — Janus

Maybe I have you wrong but isn't this the kind of dogmatic position you were speaking against earlier? What do you mean by seeing the world non-dually? Do you mean holding a monist ontology like idealism?

The tree wraps its roots around the rock, and takes from the rock whatever it can get. Unbeknownst to the tree, the rock is also active, and may roll, killing the tree. This is the way of interaction between living things and inanimate things. The living being wants to take all that it can get from the inanimate. But the living being's inadequate knowledge of the activity of inanimate things makes this a very risky activity. So the being must develop a balanced approach between taking all that it can get, and producing the knowledge and capacity required to restrain itself, according to the dangers involved with the activities of inanimate things.

Beyond the problem of interaction between living beings and non-perceiving things, there is a further problem of interaction between distinct living beings. This problem is far more difficult because when the basic problem is complex, and unresolved, the difficulties tend to mount exponentially. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was more interested in non-living with non-living things. However, even this account, though fun to read, is simply the human view of a tree doing what it does. What is the event without a perceiver (like a human). Perhaps the tree "perceives" in some way, but it is precisely this difference whereby cognition (like an animal's) has something above and beyond some sort of "direct access" to the object. That is to say, there is "cognizing" happening which mediates the animals interactions based on evolutionary contingencies.

Searle writes about the mistakes of philosophers of great genius — RussellA

The moment of "great disaster" is when Descartes decided to retreat to the private world of introspection to look for certainty at the expense of the public realm in which we learn to communicate with words to convey understanding to our fellow humans about a world that can get a bit messy.

Great, I never said it was. My point, again, is that what is *directly* interacted with, by the body, (on one side of the table, in terms of the OP's metaphor), is something totally other than the tree: its imprint on light which has interacted with it. This is just one of the gaps I've described between perceiver and perceived which makes nonsense of the "direct" in direct realism.

Again, “the perceived” is necessarily anything found within our periphery, including the tree, the tree’s “impact on light”. We can also perceive it through other senses as well, including touching it. So in no instance have you introduced any gap or indie text intermediary between perceiver and perceived.

Yes, I think the mundane is exalted when the creative joy of living has been sucked out by the internal dialogue, by seeing ourselves as somehow set against life or life set against us.

Being wedded to the view that duality is sin and non-duality is virtue is extremely dualistic, and unrealistic, isn’t it? The best we can do is merely reduce anxiety by quieting our minds. To see non-dually is to not see at all. — praxis

I haven't said anything about sin as vice or the opposite of virtue. I explicitly stated that I was talking about sin in terms of "missing the mark". Missing the mark in this context means being caught up in views and failing to see things in their numinous light. The best you can do may be reducing anxiety, and that is a necessary beginning, but you have no warrant for believing it is just the same for others.

Of course there is always a linguistic overlay to our seeing, but that can be put in abeyance with practice. Maybe try some psychedelics to get you started. Animals do not deploy dualistic language; do you think they do not see at all?

Maybe I have you wrong but isn't this the kind of dogmatic position you were speaking against earlier? What do you mean by seeing the world non-dually? Do you mean holding a monist ontology like idealism? — Tom Storm

See my response to praxis above. I'm not taking about holding any ontology, but rather about letting go of all ontologies and concerns about ontology in order to experience the numinous; to see that all experience is, primordially, prior to subject and object and all the linguistically generated dualities that flow on from that.

The problem is that some assumptions lead us toward understanding, while others lead us toward misunderstanding. Since understanding is what is desired over misunderstanding, it is appropriate to say that some assumptions are correct and others incorrect. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your assumptions lead you towards your understanding and mine mine. So you are already assuming that there is a correct understanding, meaning your reasoning is circular. Note, I am not saying there are not more or less correct understandings in relation to empirical matters or the effectiveness of practices, but I'm speaking here specifically about discursive metaphysical understandings. How do you know there is a correct metaphysical understanding and how would you identify it as being correct?

We can also perceive it through other senses as well, including touching it. — NOS4A2

With touch, your body is directly interacting with the perceived object. But touch is not special. Like other senses, touch, via sensory receptors, must induce nervous activity. And then this nervous activity must be somehow transformed to, or interpreted as, experiential content. You know what it is like to touch an object by way of this experiential content.

In what sense is this sequence "direct"? Certainly, a transformation or interpretation of nervous activity is not the same as the touched object.

Likewise, here all are professing with some certainty the way the brain processes sense data (a very complex and as yet undecided model), yet still unsure about the tree. I find, among my colleagues, the majority are quite uncertain about how perception actually works despite being at the coalface of discovering new facts about it; yet none seem to have trouble with the tree in the courtyard. Here we have the exact reverse of that. — Isaac

When they stop doing philosophy and pick up the pruning saw, things are presumably different. They have no trouble with only being to cut a branch indirectly.

In Searle’s list — Mww

Which list?

Being wedded to the view that duality is sin and non-duality is virtue is extremely dualistic, — praxis

Nice.

See my response to praxis above. I'm not taking about holding any ontology, but rather about letting go of all ontologies and concerns about ontology in order to experience the numinous; to see that all experience is, primordially, prior to subject and object and all the linguistically generated dualities that flow on from that. — Janus

Ok. I don't think I have any idea of the numinous but I get your general point. I suppose I wonder how long does one sit in this 'letting go-ness' and where does it take you? Are you suggesting perhaps some kind of meditative experience with some eventual form of enlightenment?

This notion that - all experience is, primordially, prior to subject and object and all the linguistically generated dualities that flow on from that - seems to be arrived at through conscious judgment and rationality.

Nice. — Banno

:lol: You've sinned (missed the mark) yet again; you're headed straight for hell! Or maybe you're already there, since it must be hellish for you having to force yourself to participate in something of so little value or interest to you, such as these threads. Remarkably, despite your oft-declared lack of interest and disdain, you seem to have made more posts than anyone else. :chin:

Ok. I don't think I have any idea of the numinous but I get your general point. I suppose I wonder how long does one sit in this 'letting go-ness' and where does it take you? Are you suggesting perhaps some kind of meditative experience with some eventual form of enlightenment?

This notion that - all experience is, primordially, prior to subject and object and all the linguistically generated dualities that flow on from that - seems to be arrived at through conscious judgment and rationality. — Tom Storm

If you have no sense of the numinous then what to do? If you want to let go, then you must practice, but you would need incentive. It takes you to where you already are. But it's not important if you're not interested. What could it matter, if it doesn't matter to you?

The notion is arrived at via experience. But it also makes sense to ask what the experience of animals might be like given they would seem to have no linguistic overlay.

You've made a pretty puzzle for yourself. Seems you can't tell that this post from me is a post from me - just by seeing this post, "one cannot know, of the several possible causes, which was the actual cause".

Best I leave you to your deliberations.

With touch, your body is directly interacting with the perceived object. But touch is not special. Like other senses, touch, via sensory receptors, must induce nervous activity. And then this nervous activity must be somehow transformed to, or interpreted as, experiential content. You know what it is like to touch an object by way of this experiential content.

In what sense is this sequence "direct"? Certainly, a transformation or interpretation of nervous activity is not the same as the touched object.

It’s direct because there is nothing between perceiver and perceived. The transformation and interpretation of “nervous activity” is indistinguishable from the perceiver and the act of perceiving, so is therefor not in between perceiver and perceived. It’s the same if one places the intermediary outside of the perceiver. It is indistinguishable from the perceived. So indirect realism is redundant.

But it's not important if you're not interested. What could it matter, if it doesn't matter to you? — Janus

I don't think it is accurate to assume that if someone has no experience of the numinous they are not interested in what people think it is.

If you want to let go, then you must practice, but you would need incentive. — Janus

Just briefly, what do you mean by practice or incentive?

It’s direct because there is nothing between perceiver and perceived. The transformation and interpretation of “nervous activity” is indistinguishable from the perceiver and the act of perceiving, so is therefor not in between perceiver and perceived. It’s the same if one places the intermediary outside of the perceiver. It is indistinguishable from the perceived. So indirect realism is redundant. — NOS4A2

I just don't get how that is possible when you have a massive network, distributing sensory experience from different regions and rei-integrating them together. No one is going to have complete understanding of what is going on, but certainly, the medium matters, and the fact that there is a medium means that something is going on that isn't simply a mirror reflected of "reality". For example, an input in a computer becomes an electrical signal that then gets turned into a logic gate that affects the system and thus produces an output. I press a key on my keyboard and it almost instantaneously shows up on a computer screen. The physical stroke of my fingers is not the visual representation that shows up on my screen.

You are mixing the hard problem and the easy problem in wildly unproductive and invariant ways that confuse the whole issue. I am a pro-hard problem. That is to say, I think there is one. People like @Banno try to downplay it, it seems.

In this computer keyboard/monitor situation, for example, there is already an interpreter that interprets the letters as something meaningful. Therefore there is an extra layer in the equation beyond just input and output. Thus, as I've stated before, this is the Cartesian Theater problem whereby there is a constant regress whereby the mind "integrates" (aka the Homunculus Fallacy). However, direct realism doesn't solve the problem so much as raise questions as to how it is that sensory information is simply a mirror and that there is no processing involved as well. Again, certainly other animals process the world differently, as do babies when developing. There are differences in individual perception, etc. This to me indicates construction not wholesale mirroring.

You know…the currently fashionable talk at the table. Linked herein some time ago by somebody. And, fortuitously enough, upon reconciliation of the ambiguity over the word “see” and other assorted and sundry “perceptual verbs”, the Bad Argument disappears. Still, as we all know only too well, only to be replaced with another one.

Animals do not deploy dualistic language; do you think they do not see at all? — Janus

They see in essentially the same way as we do. To see non-dually would mean to entirely lack the ability to distinguish anything. A tree, for instance, couldn’t be distinguished from the ground or the sky or any part of its surroundings. There could be no tree/not-tree duality, right?

Cheers. :grimace:

For the Indirect Realist:
1) We directly perceive sense data. — RussellA

This is a problem for two reason:

1. In principle, this claim cannot be verified since it is inaccessible.

2. The indirect realist likes to claim that perceiving the material object is indirect because scientific theory shows this, but do we really think that using a hallucinogen that results in a hallucination is not also plague by a series of intermediary steps in the brain as well. To be consistent, we should also say it is indirect. But this is unfortunate, it seems the word "direct" is dissolving into being senseless, not exemplified by anything, real or conceptual.

I don't think it is accurate to assume that if someone has no experience of the numinous they are not interested in what people think it is. — Tom Storm

I haven't assumed you are not interested; I did include the "if".

Just briefly, what do you mean by practice or incentive? — Tom Storm

Practice is to let go of thoughts and incentive is desire.

They see in essentially the same way as we do. To see non-dually would mean to entirely lack the ability to distinguish anything. A tree, for instance, couldn’t be distinguished from the ground or the sky or any part of its surroundings. There could be no tree/not-tree duality, right? — praxis

I don't believe animals parse experience in terms of subject/ object.

To see non-dually is to see without the discursive overlay. Distinguishing things is not disabled by that. I can see a tree without thinking in terms of a tree/ not-tree duality. I don't have to separate a tree from its surroundings in order to see it.

Without knowing exactly what you mean, I tend to agree. However, it’s probably essential in understanding Marx to see that he was attempting a philosophy of praxis, a realization of philosophy in history: — Jamal

I'll see if I can state succinctly what I believe to be the important point. The difference between Hegel and Marx is the difference between idealism and materialism. The two are actually very similar, but there is an inversion between them in the way that first principles are produced, which results in somewhat opposing ways of looking at the very same thing.

So Hegel described the State as being a manifestation of the Idea. The Idea might be something like "the good", "the right", "the just", and being ideal, it's derived from God. From here, the history of the State is described as a history of the Idea, and how human beings strive to serve the Idea. The Idea comes from God, and there is always a need for the human subjects to be servants to the Idea.

Marx liked Hegel's historical approach, but figured he got the first principle wrong. In order to produce a true historicity he had to replace the Idea with matter, as the first principle. This was to place the living human being, and its material body as the first principle, rather than some pie in the sky "good", "right", or "God". So from Marx's perspective there is real substance grounding these ideas like "good", "right", "just", and this is the material needs of the material human being. From this perspective we can have a real history of the State, judging by its practises of providing for the material needs of material human bodies.

You can see the inversion. From the Hegelian perspective, the people must be judged in their capacity to serve the ideals of the State. From the Marxian perspective, the State must be judged in its capacity to serve the material needs of human beings.

Your assumptions lead you towards your understanding and mine mine. So you are already assuming that there is a correct understanding, meaning your reasoning is circular. — Janus

No, there's no circle. I've already noticed that some of my presumed understandings turn out to be misunderstandings. And that is the basis for the conclusion that there is such a thing as correctness. It's not circular because the grounding for "misunderstanding" is in my personal failures.

How do you know there is a correct metaphysical understanding and how would you identify it as being correct? — Janus

I can know this from the same principle. I know that some supposed understandings lead to success, and some lead to failures, and, metaphysics is comprised of propositions for understanding. By deduction I can conclude that some metaphysical understandings lead to successes and others to failures.

How do you know there is a correct metaphysical understanding and how would you identify it as being correct? — Janus

I tend to judge metaphysical understandings by how pervasive they are through multiple cultures, and how well they stand up to the test of time. I think that those principles provide a good indication of success and therefore correctness. It's similar to natural selection in evolution.

Interesting - esp the Hegel/Marx material. Vey nicely expressed.

Thanks Tom. It's an oversimplification which I believe to be somewhat accurate.