Direct realism is a necessary condition for the proper functionality of sensory apparatus as such, nonetheless, and should be taken as granted from either point of view. — Mww

A direct link of causal efficacy is necessary, but that is a different proposition than direct naive realism.

frank

Yikes!! Can’t have that. Point it out for me? — Mww

Direct realism doesn't makes sense, but it's necessary. How do you deal with that?

I think the distinction between self and other is pretty fundamental — prothero

A direct link of causal efficacy is necessary, but that is a different proposition than direct naive realism. — prothero

How can you speak of causal efficacy, a mysterious connective substance for sure, when you cannot see or touch a tree?

When the dog sees the rabbit, and gives chase, there is not a great deal of consideration of self, nor of causality going on. One does not say the dog's brain sees an image of a rabbit or that the dogs legs run after it — particularly, the dog or its legs cannot be running after a perception in its brain. No, the dog is running after the rabbit, that it has seen, not in its mind or its brain, but in the field, because that's where the rabbit is.

Maybe we should get it out of the way that philosophers can make up any kind of crazy talk they like. They can give 'see' a context-specific and even cult- or movement-specific meaning. From this perspective, it's hard to call a view wrong -- or, just for that reason, interesting.

To me some of the confusion here is related to an unclarified concept of the self which is supposed to see. One approach to this self is as a locus of responsibly for its claims and the relationships between them. The unity of the self is the expected and even demanded coherence of its claims. (We can make some kind of sense of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde as sharing the same body by keeping track of who is responsible for what (including who should remember what.) I suggest that we don't think of the self as either a brain or a body or a screen. It's its own kind of entity in the lifeworld which is the true cradle or foundation of all talk about it (being-in-the-world-with-others-in-norms-and-language.)

If I can go meta for a second, we are presumably debating the proper way to describe our seeing of the world. I hope and trust we are actually talking about the world and not our individual 'images' of the world. The grammar of 'image' (or 'appearance') is (roughly) that about which I 'cannot' be wrong.
We could talk forever about this, so I'll close by suggesting 'perspective' as a less confusing metaphor than 'image' or 'screen' or 'representation' of the world. We don't see a representation of the world. We see the world from the perspective of this or that software-loaded body within that same world.

Direct realism doesn't makes sense, but it's necessary. How do you deal with that? — frank

Easy. Accept the intrinsic duality of human intelligence, regardless of the various suppositions for its methods.

Direct realism…..merely from analysis of the conceptions….is just unmediated objectivity, despite the mess post-Enlightenment philosophy has made of it. So, yes, it’s necessary for one part of the duality, the purely empirical, but has no business being involved in the other part, the purely rational.

The only way out is to prove the very nature of human intelligence is not intrinsically dualistic, which is fine, as long as whatever replaces the logic that proves it is, is sufficient to entirely falsify it.

How I deal with it…..the senses are directly affected by real things. I need nothing else from the notion of direct realism.

How can you speak of causal efficacy, a mysterious connective substance for sure, when you cannot see or touch a tree?

When the dog sees the rabbit, and gives chase, there is not a great deal of consideration of self, nor of causality going on. One does not say the dog's brain sees an image of a rabbit or that the dogs legs run after it — particularly, the dog or its legs cannot be running after a perception in its brain. No, the dog is running after the rabbit, that it has seen, not in its mind or its brain, but in the field, because that's where the rabbit is. — unenlightened

Of course we can both "see" and "touch" a tree using our sense and perception. It is the type of connection between the tree and our perceptual process that is up for discussion.
Dogs, I grant, are not given to discussions or considerations of direct versus indirect realism and perhaps we are likewise wasting our time engaging in them. The blind dog does not "see" the rabbit and even the "seeing dog" sees only certain aspects of the rabbit.

A direct link of causal efficacy is necessary, but that is a different proposition than direct naive realism. — prothero

So is anything necessary regarding direct naive realism? If we’re already given that which is necessary, with respect to an answer to a question concerning some particular dilemma, what else do we need?

True, but the idea of such a naked world is itself a object within our system of references. — green flag

There is no "naked world" if it's within our system of references. We can't get outside it.

So is anything necessary regarding direct naive realism? If we’re already given that which is necessary, with respect to an answer to a question concerning some particular dilemma, what else do we need? — Mww

As long as one understands the process of perception and its inherent limitations, I do not care if you call it direct or indirect, and the distinction seems more semantic than fundamental given that understanding.

There is no "naked world" if it's within our system of references. We can't get outside it. — L'éléphant

Perhaps we agree ? I'd add that no outside means no inside. I suggest we think of all of this in social terms. We can meaningfully talk about personal bias, but it's not clear that we can talk wisely about (as if we could be outside of ) human bias. I'm not saying that psychology can't generalize about personal bias or even group bias. But philosophers tend to talk as if their humanity was a fancy lens they might take off of the camera they are looking through.

I’m cool with that.

I rather think the whole shebang is a false dichotomy anyway, so….

We can meaningfully talk about personal bias, but it's not clear that we can talk wisely about (as if we could be outside of ) human bias. — green flag

We can talk wisely about the world, if you'd like. Indirect realism does not deny the reliability of our perception -- how else could we have come up with hypotheses that we relied on for thousand of years? We don't go walk off a cliff just to prove we're mistaken. We don't walk off a cliff because we know about gravity. And gravity does not disappoint.

I'm trying to not pick "direct" or "indirect" from the menu. Too much baggage. Both focus on something important. But we tend to get trapped in our metaphors. One of my big points is that there's just one concept system, one inferentially articulated 'system' of entities, one lifeworld. Promises are as real as electrons. There are not two worlds, a humanized and value-laden world and some other world made of math. It's just the one world, because all of the concepts in our talk/grasp of it are radically interdependent. It's common to see attempts to break a unity that I think can't sensibly be broken.

It's common to see attempts to break a unity that I think can't sensibly be broken. — green flag

Okay.

How I deal with it…..the senses are directly affected by real things. I need nothing else from the notion of direct realism. — Mww

That's not direct realism tho.

I think the answer is that the question is language on holiday. We can't stand outside ourselves in order to answer it.

That's not direct realism tho. — frank

Most likely not. But, as I said, from analysis of the concepts themselves, the notion is reducible to mere unmediated objectivity.

We can't stand outside ourselves in order to answer it. — frank

Right, but the answers aren’t outside ourselves anyway, so all’s well. For better or worse, the answers are what reason says they are.

I was just chatting with BARD - Google's AI. It favors direct realism. Its reasons seemed clear.

Bard has, of course, heard of The Philosophy Forum and finds the discussions interesting. The statements of an AI (at this point) and 50¢ won't get you a cup of coffee.

Bard was impressive in some ways and quite boring in other ways.

Who said that there's such a thing as "direct realism"? — Alexander Hine

From Wikipedia Direct and indirect realism

"In contemporary philosophy, indirect realism has been defended by Edmund Husserl[17] and Bertrand Russell.[9] Direct realism has been defended by Hilary Putnam,[18] John McDowell,[19][20] Galen Strawson,[21] and John R. Searle.[22]"

From John R. Searle The Philosophy of Perception and the Bad Argument

"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."

"The second mistake almost as bad is the view that we do not directly perceive objects and states of affairs in the world."

Yeah, but what Searle is suggesting is not what you are criticising.

The question is: does indirect realism undermine itself? If you note in the image above, the indirect scenario has a guy seeing a faulty representation of the object. If this is his only access to the world, can he be an indirect realist without contradiction? In other words, if his view of the world is faulty (or at least possibly unreliable), why should he believe the impressions that led him to consider indirectness in the first place? — frank

Your picture promotes the very misleading premise that the indirect realist argues against. The thing between the two men shouldn't look like anything. The thing in the middle should, at best, be a mass of wave-particles, which both men then see as whatever they see it to be, e.g. a sphere with blue and green patterns.

Here's my incredible photoshopping skills at work.



The sphere with blue and green patterns is a mental "representation" of the external wave-particles that stimulate the receptors in left man's eyes. The sphere with orange and brown patterns is a mental "representation" of the external wave-particles that stimulate the receptors in the right man's eyes. That is indirect realism.

Once again, arguing over the semantics of whether we should say "I see the external thing(s) that stimulate the receptors in my eye" or "I see a mental 'representation' of the external thing(s) that stimulate the receptors in my eye" is a red herring.

Another oddity with indirect realism is that it implies that communication is always between me and someone I've constructed.

Another oddity with indirect realism is that it implies that communication is always between me and someone I've constructed. — frank

How so? Do you think of a phone call as direct communication with someone? Or as communication with a person constructed by the phone's speakers?

I would say that if I talk to someone on the phone then it is both indirect and the case that I am talking to them, not to the phone or whatever. And this shows the very flaw with the direct realist's "semantic" argument against indirect realism. Simply arguing that we "see a tree, not a mental representation of a tree" doesn't actually address indirect realism at all.

How so? Do you think of a phone call as direct communication with someone? Or as communication with a person constructed by the phone's speakers? — Michael

The sound you hear on a phone is the output of a digital-to-audio converter, so you're definitely hearing a representation. It's indirect.

In the case of indirect realism, the DA converter is your central nervous system. You have no way to assess how the construction of your own CNS compares to the source of the stimulus. That's a long standing problem with indirect realism. This painting by Magritte is about this very issue.

I like it!!!!

Shades of Plato’s Republic: at the point/moment of perception, we know THAT it is, but we don’t know WHAT it is.
———-

After the edit, I don’t like it. In fact, it’s ruined. Or I missed the point. (Sigh)

In the case of indirect realism, the DA converter is your central nervous system. You have no way to assess how the construction of your own CNS compares to the source of the stimulus. That's a long standing problem with indirect realism — frank

That's not a problem with indirect realism. That's the very point that indirect realism is making. The argument between direct and indirect realism is regarding the epistemological problem of perception; how can we know that the external world "really is" as we see and hear and feel it to be? The indirect realist argues that we can't know this, because the quality of our experiences is determined not just by the external stimulus but also by our eyes and brain.

Seeing an apple is, in principle, just like talking to you on the phone. It's indirect. There's a lot of stuff going on in between that manipulates what is seen and heard. I can't know that it's really you I'm talking to, or that what you sound like on the phone is what you would sound like were we to meet in real life, and I can't know that the thing outside my head really is an apple, or that the colour I see it to be (red) is the colour it has even when I'm not looking. And in fact on this latter point, I think the very idea of external things "having" colours even when not being looked at (i.e. colour realism) is nonsense, and so indirect realism is certainly correct on that account.

That's a fair assessment, yes.

Here's my incredible photoshopping skills at work. — Michael

I'd say, that's much better.



When you understand that indirect realism undermines itself, as proposed in the op, and the problems of direct realism persist, the door to idealism will open within you. I'll be waiting for you at that door, which opens inward rather than outward.

Indirect realism only undermines itself if one applies indirectness to all mental objects, which necessitates that one also maintain all mental objects are representations of external objects.

If instead, one says the indirectness only applies to perception, and one also says that thoughts, logic, etc. are not perceptions, then one is fine. If thoughts essentially based on nothing but other thoughts (even if inspired or superfluously supported by perception), brought one to question perception, there is no self-undermining. Instead, it is thoughts undermining the direct realism of perception.