I think this whole debate is better thought of in terms of "mediated" vs. "unmediated" perception. We run the risk of saying funny things like I indirectly see a tree outside my window.

It could be that I am indirectly seeing a tree, because there is a mirror outside my window blocking a direct perception of the tree, but I can see the object in the reflection of the mirror.

Or alternatively one can say that I directly see a person's love for me, given the way I am treated by said person. But what we strictly speaking see, are patterns of behavior which we interpret as love.

But if we have mediation in mind, we get to the gist of the issue: either we experience things, as images "in a theatre", as Hume says, or we filter said images based in part on "innate ideas", to borrow Leibniz' phrase, or alternatively, one can use a Kantian formulation.

I don't see a coherent alternative.

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 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.

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 can't bypass your blurry vision to see the mind-independent nature of the world around you.

It’s easy to maintain direct realism with your scenario because the relationship between person and the apple is direct. X perceives Y. Working with this scenario, we can assume the difference in the experience lies either in X or Y or both. We know that the color-blind person sees it differently because his biology is different. We needn’t assume that something about the apple is different. Simple. Direct realism is maintained.

Unfortunately, the indirect realist likes to insert other variables. X no longer perceives Y. He perceives something else, in this case colors or experiences. It’s not just that X is different, but that these other variables are different as well. So they are inserted into the relationship as if they had their own existence apart from X and Y. It’s all too confusing and the indirect realist is guilty of confusing things. He alters the relationship where it ought not to be altered and it leads him to strange conclusions, like sense-data and representationalism. Indirect realism has failed, and adding qualifiers such as “mind-independent” does little to disguise this failure.

I think this whole debate is better thought of in terms of "mediated" vs. "unmediated" perception. We run the risk of saying funny things like I indirectly see a tree outside my window. — Manuel

I don't think we need to saddle the average person with having to phrase everything the way a cognitive scientist or physicist would. I don't need for you to tell me that a reflex arc actually kicked the chair. It's ok if you tell me you did it.

Once we start doing a little more analysis on how stuff actually happens, we should be past the point of causing confusion to anyone about who did what. Right?

So there's quite a bit more to cognitive function than just a piece of glass. We don't know all the details, but we have this thing as the processor, and it doesn't touch the world around it, ever. It's safe inside a blood/brain barrier.

I think this whole debate is better thought of in terms of "mediated" vs. "unmediated" perception. — Manuel

I like mediated/unmediated over direct/indirect, but should they relate to perception?

You’d know better than I, but it seems to me like the same false dichotomy dressed in finer robes.

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. — Michael

Yes, intentionality is closely associated with phenomenology.

Taken from the article What Is Intentionality, and Why Is It Important? by Robert Sokolowski:

"The term most closely associated with phenomenology is “intentionality.” The core doctrine in phenomenology is the teaching that every act of consciousness we perform, every experience that we have, is intentional: it is essentially “consciousness of” or an “experience of” something or other. All our awareness is directed toward objects. If I see, I see some visual object, such as a tree or a lake; if I imagine, my imagining presents an imaginary object, such as a car that I visualize coming down a road; if I am involved in remembering, I remember a past object; if I am engaged in judging, I intend a state of affairs or a fact. Every act of consciousness, every experience, is correlated with an object. Every intending has its intended object."

Intentionality is common to both Indirect and Direct Realists.

As an Indirect Realist, when I see a tree, there are two aspects. First, intellectually, I know that my mind is directed onto a representation of a tree. Second, viscerally, I know that my mind is directed onto a tree, not a representation of a tree.

After all, even as an Indirect Realist, if I was standing in the middle of the road and saw a truck approaching me, I wouldn't think "just a representation of a truck" and remain where I was.

We know that the color-blind person sees it differently because his biology is different. We needn’t assume that something about the apple is different. Simple. Direct realism is maintained. — NOS4A2

If they see it differently then the character of their experience is different. If the character of their experience is different then the character of their experience isn’t the mind-independent nature of the external world. If the character of their experience isn’t the mind-independent nature of the external world then it isn’t direct realism. You’re just describing indirect realism but calling it direct realism.

I refer you to this. You’re arguing for semantic direct realism which is consistent with phenomenological indirect realism.

True, but we aren't dealing with the "average person" here, who usually does not care too much about the science stuff, much less philosophy.

It's not mere "philosophy of language" or nitpicking - it's trying to get a better understanding of what people have in mind when they speak about "direct" or "indirect", particularly in this context.

Sure, it's good to see a brain on display, can help remind us that it's intimately related to all these things we encounter in the world. The issue now is, what does that organ do? Is it only meat and empty, or does it play a role in our conceptions and perceptions of things?

It it's empty - only meat - then the blood and bone holding it in, is a minor inconvenience: by being attached to sense organs it gets "unmediated" (pure) sense data.

But if there something more than meat, and sense organs, then there's a lot more to say, in my opinion.



Hah. Don't play coy Mww - if the topic is brought under your territory, I am a mere spectator, despite recent efforts to improve. :cool:

I think it depends on how one takes the initial question. Simple-mindedly speaking, if someone interested in this topic asks "Do I directly see this tree?", they have in mind this object they see and (usually) point to.

And then I ask, what else are you seeing?

Now, if the question is asked, "How do I see this tree?", it may elicit a chuckle to say "with your eyes", but taken more seriously, we'd have to include an extremely complicated mental apparatus without which we couldn't even ask anything.

So the substance, as I see it, is either there is something going in my brain/mind that plays a massive role in my experience of the object, or there is minimal activity going on inside.

This way we avoid dealing with the semantics of "direct" or "indirect", which can cause a lot of confusion.

Oh. I see what you're saying.

Just to be precise, no, their biology is different. This conforms to the relationship and the facts of biology. The “character of their experience” is not different because no such property exists, biologically or otherwise.

The “character of their experience” is not different because no such property exists, biologically or otherwise. — NOS4A2

Yes it does. It’s what differs between the experience of the colour blind man and the typical man. It’s the seeing differently. We’re not just behavioural machines that respond to stimulus. There’s an inner quality to experience, a “what it is like to be” aspect that distinguishes us from p-zombies.

we both have limited access and connection to the same world, which is not therefore "internal". — unenlightened

:up:

we have this thing as the processor, and it doesn't touch the world around it, ever. It's safe inside a blood/brain barrier. — frank

But it does 'touch' the world. That's what retinas and eardrums are for. Photons from distance stars are even part of it.

Also, how and why did it ever occur to folks to link brains and (postulated) qualia ? In my view, the whole debate is tainted with something like a soul superstition already successfully destroyed, for those with ears to hear, by Ryle and Wittgenstein, to name just two of many.

Yes it does. It’s what differs between the experience of the colour blind man and the typical man. It’s the seeing differently. We’re not just behavioural machines that respond to stimulus. There’s an inner quality to experience, a “what it is it like to be” aspect that distinguishes us from p-zombies.

Again, we know what is different about the color-blind man and the man who is not. These causes are biological. The “inner quality” is the biology. What it is like to be color-blind is what it is like to have the biology conducive to color blindness. We don’t need to insert sense-data, experience, qualia, and other figments between perceiver and perceived to account for these differences.

What it is like to be color-blind is what it is like to have the biology conducive to color blindness. We don’t need to insert sense-data, experience, qualia, and other figments between perceiver and perceived to account for these differences. — NOS4A2

We need to insert sense-data/experience/qualia to account for the first-person experience that should be evident to all of us. We’re not p-zombies. Biology doesn’t account for the hard problem of consciousness.

Or at least, I’m not a p-zombie. I assume others aren’t. Although maybe I should take your responses as evidence that you are.

Colours and smells are not mind-independent properties of objects but are products of brain activity that result from (usually) external stimulation. — Michael

This seems problematic to say. Let take a simple scientific definition of color. “Color is that portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface. The amount of light that a surface reflects or absorbs determines its color.” Notice in this definition there is no appeal to mind or brain. Light is not being produces by the brain/mind, but is independently being produce outside the brain/mind.

What occurs inside the brain, when stimulated by a particular color of light can as well be studied. But scientists don’t study the brain by opening it up to find “colored objects” dancing around.

As for what occurs in the mind when stimulated by a particular color of light, not sure where to begin to make sense of this claim, like how does the physical interact with non-physical. I think we are probably in the realm of grammatical fictions where the word “color” mistakenly is thought to name a object within the mind.

This seems problematic to say. Let take a simple scientific definition of color. “Color is that portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface. The amount of light that a surface reflects or absorbs determines its color.” Notice in this definition there is no appeal to mind or brain. Light is not being produces by the brain/mind, but is independently being produce outside the brain/mind. — Richard B

It would be fallacious to equate colour in this sense with colour experience, and isn’t what is meant by colour realism.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/#PrimSimpObjeViewColo

Color Primitivist Realism is the view that there are in nature colors, as ordinarily understood, i.e., colors are simple intrinsic, non-relational, non-reducible, qualitative properties. They are qualitative features of the sort that stand in the characteristic relations of similarity and difference that mark the colors; they are not micro-structural properties or reflectances, or anything of the sort. There is no radical illusion, error or mistake in color perception (only commonplace illusions): we perceive objects to have the colors that they really have.

It does, I’m afraid, much to the chagrin subjectivists. Their “hard problems” and other efforts are little more than an attempt to muddy the waters, perhaps in an attempt to rescue the spirit from the ever-encroaching domain of the physical.

The idea that biological activity is accompanied by experience—by anything—is question begging. The only problem is that we haven’t come up with an ethical means to prove to the subjectivist that he is wrong, for any such procedure would invariably be dangerously invasive. So rather than breaking our oath not to harm another it’s better to just dismiss the hard problem as hot air.

“Color is that portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface. The amount of light that a surface reflects or absorbs determines its color.” — Richard B

Even addressing this specifically, if colour is “the portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface” then it is light that is coloured, not apples.

So the substance, as I see it, is either there is something going in my brain/mind that plays a massive role in my experience of the object, or there is minimal activity going on inside. — Manuel

HA!!! I’ll see your massive, and raise you a complete!!

Pretty silly of ol’ Mother to endow us with a most seriously complex intellectual machinery, then limit its function to putting one foot linearly in front of the other, or not stabbing ourselves in the face when eating with a fork.

Absolutely, with the only caveat that we incorporate sub and unconsciousness processes in addition to those that are accessible in experience, through introspection.

Having taken care of that, or at least taking it into consideration, we are left with the original phrases: direct and indirect.

We have direct, but mediated access to objects through representations. What then are we to do with "indirect"? It's not at all clear to me how this word could be used intelligibly, outside of ordinary usage.

Even if someone called themselves an indirect realist, I don't know what that means, and can only suppose they mean mediation. But if lack mediation, we have nothing.

To say that indirect realism implies something like, we only have access to our ideas, or we only have representations or arguments along that line aren't convincing.

When someone asks, while pointing at a tree, if they are seeing "directly", one takes it that they are asking about the phenomenon in question and not as a "thing in itself", that's a different question.

For that question to arise, a different question should be asked, for instance: "Do we see the inner nature of objects?" or "Is my experience of this object everything there could possibly be about the object?"

I'm thinking that a dog or a bee have a different perception of the object under consideration, surely.

But that's not an issue of directness or lack of directness. It's an issue of our cognitive configuration.

Brains...

1. brains in bodies are observed :up: (born so, too)
2. if brain in vat, then brain in vat is still imagined
3. if brain in skull, then brain in vat is imaginary
4. thus, brain in vat is imagined or imaginary
5. yet, 1

;)

It's that what we see causes us to realize that what we're seeing is a construction.

There's no escape hatch on that situation, try as we might to find one.

We have direct, but mediated access to objects through representations. What then are we to do with indirect? — Manuel

Hence my favored position, calling a false dichotomy, insofar as it concerns realism. Direct mediated access (to real things, as sensation), yet indirect knowledge (of real things, as experience).

Even if someone called themselves an indirect realist, I don't know what that means — Manuel

Nor I.

And I actually have you to thank for that, it was a discussion with you that made me got my thinking and vocabulary correct on the topic. :up:

Guess you get to blame me if I got it all wrong, then, huh?

That’s fine; I’d be blaming me too.

Seems to me the salient bit is this:

...a colour blind person and I can both look at the same thing... — Michael

Indeed.

But for indirect realism, what everyone sees is some private mental image, and hence what you see and what the other person sees are quite different.

If indirect realism were taken at face value, two people cannot both look at the same thing.

And here's the reason this topic is recalcitrant. Both sides describe the situation in almost the same terms, but mean slightly different things in each case, talking past each other using much the same language.

The indirect view is that what one sees is a construction of what is "out there" built by one's nervous system.

While the direct view is that the process of seeing is the construction of a model of what is out there.

The indirect realist says what one sees is the model of the tree. See for a clear example. The "self" doing the seeing is distinct from the model of the tree. The direct realist criticises this as the "homunculus" view.

The direct realist says that seeing is constructing a model of the tree. The process of construction is part of the "self" doing the seeing.

When we talk about trees and cups and such, we are not talking about our mental image of trees and cups and such. If we were, you and I could never talk about the same things.

We are not little homunculi driving robots and looking at screens. We are members of a community who live embedded in a shared world within and with which we collectively interact.

The Kantian thing-in-itself misdescribes what is going on, misleading us as to our place in the world.

The so-called directness of perception is useful only to contrast with the indirectness of perception, as it is put forward by indirect realists. It has no other use and is rather redundant otherwise. We usually don’t need to mention that, yes, we can perceive other things.

Indirect realism implies that we cannot see past our ourselves. It implies we hinder and hamstring ourselves from accessing the rest of the world, when it is the other way about. The rest of the world is wholly accessible to us. It’s true; we cannot apprehend all of something all at once, as if we ought to know about the backside of something by looking at it from the front, but with a little time and effort we can come to understand things a little better by perceiving them instead of doubting ourselves.

I take it that this quote from Hume could be labeled "indirect realism":

"Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass."

Despite this quote, Hume never denied we directly see tables, river and trees, even if "we never advance a step beyond ourselves." To have a perspective is to see things from a certain way, anchored to the relevant creature.

The only alternative I could imagine, would be to somehow step outside our bodies and look at objects from no particular perspective and then compare that, to what we see when we are inside our bodies.

As you say, when we see an object, we imagine it has a backside, we can go around and "verify" this.

An important problem remains: what do you say about animals whose sense perception is more acute than ours in certain cases? Such as Eagles in relation to vision, or dogs in relation to smell. Do they experience the world more directly than us?

it would be really helpful if people would state what definition of "direct realism" and "indirect realism" they are using when they are posting.


Also explain how you think the science of color perception is compatible with "direct naive realism" as traditionally defined.
The physiology of perception of of perceptual disorders from brain injury stroke of even drug induced alterations pretty much supports the traditional concept of "indirect realism" as the term is defined in philosophy although many users here seem to have their own definitions which impairs meaningful discussion.