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. — Michael

How can we know, therefore, that we "really" have eyes and brain? How can we know that we cannot know? How can we know that the telephone "really" works the way you claim it works? How does an indirect realist escape from global epistemological scepticism? A direct realist is naive to think that shit smells, but somehow, an indirect realist knows everything about everything.

How can we know, therefore, that we "really" have eyes and brain? How can we know that we cannot know? How can we know that the telephone "really" works the way you claim it works? How does an indirect realist escape from global epistemological scepticism? — unenlightened

If we assume that we do have eyes and brains, and that the mechanics of perception is as we currently understand it to be, then the explanation above shows indirect realism to be the case. If we assume that we don’t have eyes and brains, and that the mechanics of perception isn’t as we currently understand it to be, then we’ve assumed indirect realism to be the case.

Either way, it just isn’t possible to maintain direct realism.

A direct realist is naive to think that shit smells — unenlightened

It’s not naive to think that shit smells. It’s naive to think that shit having a smell (especially a bad smell) is a mind-independent fact that we “directly” perceive.

Things have a smell only for organisms that have an olfactory sense, and only if their olfactory sense responds in a certain way to the chemicals exuded by those things. And the quality of that smell depends on the organism itself; things that smell bad to us can smell good to something else, e.g a dung beetle.

If we assume that we do have eyes and brains, — Michael

Then why not assume we have trees?

You have no way to assess how the construction of your own CNS compares to the source of the stimulus. — frank

There is a way. Observation for empirical constructs, the assessment from which is experience; logic for rational constructs, the assessment from which is contradiction.

There’s only one way that painting makes sense, right? Actually, there’s two, but one is a whole lot easier to accomplish.

Then why not assume we have trees? — unenlightened

We can, and do. But that doesn’t refute indirect realism. It is still the case that the look and smell and taste and feel of a tree is a mental “representation” and not a mind-independent property that is “directly” perceived.

It’s not naive to think that shit smells. It’s naive to think that shit having a smell (especially a bad smell) is a mind-independent fact that we “directly” perceive. — Michael

Again with the internal/external division, and "the senses" mediating. Once you are a mind separate from a body, you will never know that you are not a brain in a vat, or a spirit deceived by a demon.

What is the source of your sophisticated indirect realism? Is it not the naive assumption that there are brains and eyes and noses and internal and external worlds?

What is the source of your sophisticated indirect realism? — unenlightened

The fact that a colour blind person and I can both look at the same thing and yet see different colours. It therefore follows that at least one of us isn’t seeing the colours that the object “really” has.

And compared to something like a mantis shrimp, every human is colour blind.

And more than that, the very notion of objects having a mind-independent colour is refuted by modern science. Objects have a surface of electrons that interact with electromagnetic radiation in such a way that it reflects and/or emits photons at a particular wavelength, which then happens to stimulate in most humans the experience of the colour red. But to then argue that therefore “redness” is a property of that object is as nonsensical as arguing that because most humans get hurt when they’re punched in the face then “pain” must be a property of other people’s fists.

Is it not the naive assumption that there are brains and eyes and noses and internal and external worlds? — unenlightened

I addressed this here. Either we assume that there are brains and eyes, and then the science of perception shows indirect realism to be the case, or we assume that there aren’t brains and eyes, and so that indirect realism is the case.

It is impossible to maintain both direct realism and our scientific understanding of the mechanics of perception and the world. It’s either direct realism or scientific realism, but not both. I side with scientific realism, and so therefore indirect realism.

I'd say, that's much better. — Metaphysician Undercover

Look again. Still much better?

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

I think I am criticising what Searle is suggesting.

I don't agree with Searle in his support of naive realism (direct realism), as it seems to me that only Indirect Realism can satisfactorily explain how we interact with the world.

As Searle said "I think the rejection of naive realism was the single greatest disaster that happened in philosophy after Descartes...................but the idea that you can't ever perceive the real world but only a picture in your mind that creates a disaster, because the question that arises is what is the relationship between the idea you do perceive or the sense datum of the impression that you do perceive and the real world, and there is no answer to that which is satisfactory once you make once you make the decisive move of rejecting Naive Realism"

I don't agree with Searle's solution to the epistemological problem of how we can gain knowledge of objects in the real world from private sense data, how we can know the public objective from the private subjective and how we avoid scepticism, subjectivism and solipsism.

Searle proposes the "intentionality of perception". Whereas I agree that we are shaped by evolution, and the object causes the visual experience, I don't agree that the intentional content of our minds (intentional state) is causally self-referential. IE, I may perceive a car, but it is the car that has caused me to have that very perception. Such self-referential causality is inadequate to ensure a condition of satisfaction between the intentional content and object in the world, whether a veridical perception or an hallucination.

Searle tries to avoid Kant's transcendental link between intentional content and actual world by attempting to naturalize intentionality, ie, treating intentionality as just another biological function using a self-referential intentional causation.

Searle attempts to show that a self-referential causation between intentional content and world will ensure that any link between intentional content and world will be logical rather than empirical, and therefore directly observable, avoiding Hume's problem of inference using regularity of observation.

Searle's approach fails because he ignores the asymmetry of cause and effect, and incorrectly assumes a symmetry in the direction of fit from world to mind and from mind to world.

Such asymmetry between cause and effect and effect and cause means that the link between intentional content and actual world cannot be self-referential, as is required by Searle in his support for naive realism.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

I do see that they're both flawed. Do you mean that this leads to idealism?

It is impossible to maintain both direct realism and our scientific understanding of the mechanics of perception and the world. It’s either direct realism or scientific realism, but not both — Michael

Correct.

The fact that a colour blind person and I can both look at the same thing and yet see different colours. It therefore follows that at least one of us isn’t seeing the colours that the object “really” has. — Michael

Oh, that's news to me. I thought colour blind people couldn't see colours. But how did you make the comparison? and how do you access these facts that are mind independent? I tend to use observation, myself, but you say that is unreliable.

Searle proposes the "intentionality of perception". — RussellA

This is the exact red herring that is almost always brought up in the debate between direct and indirect realism. There's a paper by Howard Robinson, Semantic Direct Realism, that addresses this:

The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR). PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism (SDR), the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories.

My previous example of talking on the phone is a good example of this. In terms of intentionality I'm talking to my parents, not to my phone, but it still counts as an example of indirect communication. The same is true of face-to-face communication. In terms of intentionality I'm talking to (and seeing) my parents, but given the physics and mechanics of external objects and light and sound and the central nervous system, the phenomenology of experience is indirect.

Oh, that's news to me. I thought colour blind people couldn't see colours. — unenlightened

This is an example that shows the difference between how most people see things and how someone with red-green colour blindness sees things.



And I suspect a mantis shrimp with their far more advanced eyes would see something very different to both. It can't be the case that we all see things as they directly are and that how we see things is different. But, again, more than that our current scientific understanding of the world and perception shows that it's naive to think of colours as being mind-independent properties at all, such that one of the mantis shrimp, the typical human, or the man with red-green colour blindness is seeing the apples' "real" colours "correctly".

I think the question reduces to one of identity. Those who Identify as mind will be indirect realists, whereas those who identify as body will be direct realists. — unenlightened

The one-eyed man perceives the oncoming knife with no depth-perception until a sensation of loss for he can no longer perceive the thing as a knife, only sense it as the last visual memory before the total blackness.

Modern science does not view body and mind as separate. Identity in perception is an illusion by a mind that tries to view itself from the inside. But remove the body and the mind dies, remove the mind and the body dies. Even the person who was born without senses will have a mind affected by the chemistry changes to that body, even though his perception of his own screams have no equivalent description by people able to perceive the world.

The eye experience reality directly, our brain experiences the eye directly. Are our eyes and their function not part of reality? If I hold a color filter up against my eyes and view the world in only blue, is that not a direct reality even through I put a limit on the perception of the world as I would normally see it? What then, are the filters that our sensory organs and brain have put on our perception, but simply just a filter against our reality?

Does indirect mean incomplete? What is then complete perception? Full visual spectrum? Spacetime compensated photon registration through gravitational waves?

Direct realism seems true as everything is direct down to the neurons computing sensory information against sensory memory, we only have filters to access reality in a way that is optimal for our species.

A bit like the planet not able to single out an individual snowflake, but only act as the whole ecosystem.

This is the exact red herring that is almost always brought up in the debate between direct and indirect realism. — Michael

I am sure that we both agree with Indirect Realism.

Searle definitely supports Direct Realism, and within Direct Realism, as also discussed by Pierre Le Morvan in his article Arguments against Direct Realism and how to counter them, there is causal indirectness (PDR) and cognitive indirectness (SDR).

I would assume Searle agrees with the cognitive indirectness version of Direct Realism, as he must well know the bent stick problem.

What do you mean by red herring ?

This is an example that shows the difference between how most people see things and how someone with red-green colour blindness sees things. — Michael

That's a pretty picture; it looks to my dependent mind like a picture of some apples, with some kind of filter applied to one half. We direct realists may be naive, but we can tell the difference between a picture and an apple, and likewise between a filter and a red-green colourblind person.

Again, how do you know so much about other people's inner worlds when you don't even have access to the common outer world?

Do you not notice the folly? Blind people cannot see, therefore I what see is in my head. Dead people have no experience, therefore experience is unreliable. As it happens, I am short-sighted; it doesn't make me think the world is blurry until it gets with 30 cm of my face, it makes me think I cannot see as well as I'd like.Nevertheless I can see, and what I see is the world, and the proof of that is that I read what you write and respond to your picture. And that is only possible because we both have limited access and connection to the same world, which is not therefore "internal".

What do you mean by red herring ? — RussellA

The epistemological problem of perception asks whether or not we can trust that our experiences show us the nature of the external world. It's a question regarding the relationship between phenomenology and mind-independent properties. Indirect realists argued that we can't trust our experiences to show us this because phenomenology is at best representative of mind-independent properties (although I would go further and say that it isn't even representative of them, it's only causally covariant with them). Direct realists argued that we can trust our experiences to show us this because there is no distinction between phenomenology and mind-independent properties (i.e. there is no "sense data").

The semantic realist argument related to intentionality doesn't address this issue at all. In response to the indirect realist arguing that when I talk to my parents on the phone, I don't hear their actual voices, I only hear the sounds made by the phone's speaker, the semantic realist argues that I'm talking to my parents, not to my phone. It's a red herring response.

The semantic realist argument related to intentionality doesn't address this issue at all. In response to the indirect realist arguing that when I talk to my parents on the phone, I don't hear their actual voices, I only hear the sounds made by the phone's speaker, the semantic realist argues that I'm talking to my parents, not to my phone. — Michael

I thought SDR was saying that one would acknowledge that "I was talking to my parents" is true. With a deflationary account of truth, this acknowledgement is just a social convention. It says nothing about whether you actually talked to your parents or not, which the SDR advocate thinks is a meaningless question?

That's a pretty picture; it looks to my dependent mind like a picture of some apples, with some kind of filter applied to one half. We direct realists may be naive, but we can tell the difference between a picture and an apple, and likewise between a filter and a red-green colourblind person.

Again, how do you know so much about other people's inner worlds when you don't even have access to the common outer world? — unenlightened

I don't understand what you are asking. Do you or do you not accept that some people are colour-blind; that the colours they see things to be are not the colours that you see things to be? If so then you must accept that direct realism fails as it cannot be the case that both you and the colour blind person directly see the apple's "real" colour and that you see different colours.

As it happens, I am short-sighted; it doesn't make me think the world is blurry until it gets with 30 cm of my face, it makes me think I cannot see as well as I'd like. — unenlightened

That's exactly the point. The structure of your experience is one thing, the mind-independent nature of the world is another thing, and it's the structure of your experience that informs you, not the mind-independent nature of the world. You see a blurry world, but the external world isn't blurry. The blurriness is all in your head. And so too is the colour, the smell, the taste, the feel, etc.

I thought SDR was saying that one would acknowledge that "I was talking to my parents" is true. — frank

Yes, which has nothing to do with perception.

Yes, which has nothing to do with perception. — Michael

Right. The point I was making earlier was that since indirect realism is the view of science, an advocate of direct realism needs to address in some way how direct realism is supposed to work.

It is impossible to maintain both direct realism and our scientific understanding of the mechanics of perception and the world. — Michael

Given that I can see a world, that's so much the worse for our scientific understandings ;)

But, even more, surely we can be realists who are not scientific realists? That is, we may not infer that our scientific understandings are reality.

But, even more, surely we can be realists who are not scientific realists? That is, we may not infer that our scientific understandings are reality. — Moliere

Perhaps. Maybe direct realists have to be scientific instrumentalists, and reject the idea that the external world is exhaustively explained by something like quantum mechanics. You'd have to argue for something like that to be a colour realist, for example.

Do you or do you not accept that some people are colour-blind; that the colours they see things to be are not the colours that you see things to be? If so then you accept that direct realism fails; it cannot be the case that both you and the colour blind person directly see the apple's "real" colour and that you see different colours. — Michael

Do you or do you not accept that some people are blind; they see nothing that you see? If so then you accept that direct realism your argument fails.

I don't think I see the apple's colour, or the apple's shape, or the apple's surface; I think I see the apple, and I think the colourblind person sees exactly the same apple, and if you give the apple to Tommy the deaf dumb and blind kid, he will be able to feel and smell and taste the very same apple.

I don't think I see the apple's colour, or the apple's shape, or the apple's surface; I think I see the apple, and I think the colourblind person sees exactly the same apple, and if you give the apple to Tommy the deaf dumb and blind kid, he will be able to feel and smell and taste the very same apple. — unenlightened

This is the intentionality argument for semantic direct realism, and has nothing to do with the phenomenological issue that is at the heart of the disagreement between direct and indirect realists. See here and here.

This is the intentionality argument for semantic direct realism, and has nothing to do with the phenomenological issue that is at the heart of the disagreement between direct and indirect realists. — Michael

I read that bit too. You have no response to any of the questions put to you. You claim the high ground of objectivity but cannot explain how you overcome the subjectivity you project onto everyone else. I think I'll leave it there 'til next time. It's been fun.

You have no response to any of the questions put to you. You claim the high ground of objectivity but cannot explain how you overcome the subjectivity you project onto everyone else. — unenlightened

I don't understand your questions.

My argument is simple; if scientific realism is true then indirect realism is true, and scientific realism is true.

You seem to think that if I'm an indirect realist then I can't also be a scientific realist? I don't understand why. Given that much of science involves things that cannot be directly seen, e.g. gravity, dark matter, electrons, etc. it then follows that any scientific realist doesn't have to directly see something to believe it to be there, and so therefore there is no contradiction in being both a scientific realist and an indirect realist.

There is, however, a contradiction in being both a scientific realist and a direct realist, given that scientific realism (and our current understanding of how perception works) entails indirect realism. Colours and smells are not mind-independent properties of objects but are products of brain activity that result from (usually) external stimulation. A direct realist has to reject modern science to maintain his position. And if I have to choose between accepting direct realism and accepting modern science, then I will accept modern science, and the indirect realism that follows.

Indirect realism is where I end, not where I start. I start from scientific realism, and I believe it for likely the same reasons as many other scientific realists. And those reasons have nothing to do with being able to directly perceive many of the things that science says are there. I believe in things despite not being able to directly perceive them. I'm sure many direct realists are the same.