Why? — frank

To me it makes sense that we'd evolve to seek status to win mates, secure our offspring's future, etc. Darwin is my boy. Note that I use my social capital in the real world, not just here. This is a joyful scratching post.

To me a deeper question (which may be a pseudoquestion) is why there was a stage set in the first place on which evolution could happen. I do not begin to count 'god' as an answer, for then I'd have a more complicated beginning to explain.

The Jews have the oldest known living culture. Opinions vary about what their secret might be. — frank

I love the old testament. I'd guess it's the great memes. Nietzsche praised some of those war stories as superior to those of the Greeks. I remember finding stuff in Kings as a teen boy and getting completely absorbed. Reading the bible wasn't supposed to be so fun.

Why? — frank

Less reductively, I see writing as part of reading, as making one strong enough to read properly. To not write is to live without a mirror and trust that one is handsome.

I'll just smile if you are cute enough to ask me why it's nice to be handsome in this metaphor.

:up:

Is it really so strange ? Philosophy can even be framed as a series of creative misreadings or violent appropriations of influences. — plaque flag

True, I used the writings of Searle, a Direct Realist, against Direct Realism.

So Hegel fixed Kant and offered a sophisticated kind of direct realism — plaque flag

Hegel's Absolute Idealism is not at odds with Indirect Realism.

Abandon all hope ye who enter here take private mental images seriously — plaque flag

Both the Indirect and Direct Realist believe in the private mental image, in that in the mind we have private experiences, such as pain, that are impossible to explain to others. The Indirect Realist is not someone who needs to believe in Wittgenstein's private language or solipsism, but does believe that they are part of a social world within which they are able to communicate using a public language.

What distinguishes the Indirect and Direct Realist is the location of this "world". Both the Indirect and Direct Realist agree that at the least this "world" exists in the mind. The disagreement is whether an identical "world" exists outside the mind.

There is no need to decide that color is unreal because it is correlated with wavelengths, etc. — plaque flag

The colour red is real in our mind and the wavelength is real outside our mind.

We agree that the colour red this side of our senses is correlated with a wavelength the other side of our senses.

The Indirect Realist believes that the colour red and the wavelength are different. How does the Direct Realist justify that two things which are commonly accepted as being different are in fact the same.

As an Indirect Realist, I agree with everything you wrote in your post. It is interesting that you used Kant, in today's terms an Indirect Realist, to support your case.

Kant discussed "Existence", in that there are things-in-themselves, "Humility", in that we know nothing of things-in-themselves and "Affectation", in that things -in-themselves causally affect us. Kant's concept of a thing-in-itself is not that of a Direct Realist. — RussellA

There is debate among modern interpreters over whether Kant is an indirect realist, but it is not concerned with the distinction of objects and things in themselves. The latter is a limit concept concerning artifacts of reason (noumena) that purport to refer to objects about which, in actual fact, nothing can be said. For Kant, the noumenal realm is not reality, since it is merely a product of reason. Rather, reality is that which we know about through experience and science. The clue to this is that reality for Kant is one of the categories of the understanding, thus it can only apply to phenomena.

So the question about Kant's direct or indirect realism is about how he regards spatiotemporal objects as being perceived and how he thinks we can gain knowledge about them, and in this realm--the only one in which direct and indirect realism have any meaning--I'd say he is a direct realist. He explicitly states that we perceive the external world "immediately," and what he calls representations constitute the perception and determination of objects, rather than standing in for them as images or constructions. We have awareness of objects not through anything like an inference from or construction of an internal image, but through an act of synthesis that puts the objects directly before us.

Now, what I'm saying might be seen as tendentiously pedantic (as if I'm desperate to get Kant on my side). And yes, the fact is that Kant does still split the world in two, or at least divide the world into two aspects (phenomena and noumena, appearance and thing-in-itself). And yes, he does use "realism" to refer to claims that we can know things in themselves (transcendental realism, as opposed to empirical realism). But the reason I think it's significant and the reason I tend to jump in and pounce on people about it is that, as in many other areas, I think he had correct intuitions (no pun intended) about perception. Also just because Kant is so much deeper and richer than the thing-in-itself stuff suggests (although I still think he's fundamentally wrong).

Kant is not really concerned about the question of appearance vs reality, because reality, as far as it could logically be open to us, is knowable through direct perception, experience, mathematics, and science.

How does the Direct Realist explain, given that all their knowledge of the world external to their senses comes through their senses, how the perceiver knows that one perception is not direct, eg, pain, but another perception is direct, eg, the colour red ? — RussellA

That one's easy -- pain is tied to the world. :D

Predicates are distinct from properties. Predicates are linguistic whilst properties are extralinguistic. Predicates are tied to particular languages, in that schwarz is tied to German as black is tied to English, but the property black is tied to neither. There is a real world out there and the things in it have properties whether or not there are any languages or language-users.

To my understanding, there are two types of Direct Realism, Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR) and Semantic Direct Realism (SDR). PDR is an direct perception and direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world. SDR is an indirect perception but direct cognition of the object "tree" as it really is in a mind-independent world. As PDR is extralinguistic and SDR is linguistic, properties exist in PDR whilst predicates exist in SDR.

I can perceive that an apple has the property of greenness even if I don't know the name of that particular shade of green, but I need the predicates within language in order to say that "the apple is green". — RussellA

So far I've said there are events, relations, time, the surface, entities -- and certainly relied upon the existence of language to say it. Going for a kind of minimalism I try to limit the number of entities and kinds introduced, and this is already a healthy selection of possibles. "Properties" seems to emphasize the visuality of causation and reality, which is a reification and so worth diminishing.

So where you say: "There is a real world out there and the things in it have properties" I would say "There is a real world" -- "out there" in particular is troublesome. Out where? What are we inside of, if not the real world? The imaginary world?

But that is exactly what the Direct Realists is saying. The Direct Realist is saying that they directly know the apple, not just how the apple seems, even though there is a causal chain through time from the apple to our perception of the apple.

The Direct Realist holds a contradictory position. First, that they cannot see through causal chains backwards through time and second that they can directly see the prior cause of a perception. — RussellA

That's interesting.

What if what we directly perceive is not causal chains? It's not like all of reality is composed of causal chains. It's also composed of entities, right? And there are other sorts of relations which exist.

Let's call it "weak Direct Realism" -- for the weak direct realist as long as there is some kind of total world which we have direct access to then Direct Realism holds. Without committing to a particular kind of weak Direct Realism, but just as a for instance: If we directly perceive entities, but we do not directly perceive causal chains, then this is still a form of direct realism. So we might say, in the case of the apple, we have direct access to language, time, entities, and relations -- but not causal chains. We infer causal chains, and because causal chains are real several cultures have inferred causal chains as well -- but upon comparison of the concepts of causal chains we can see that they don't all mean the same thing. So we deny the notion that causal chains are necessary to thinking: rather, while our perception does not have direct access to causal chains, our knowledge does -- and that knowledge is a social product, thereby explaining the differences. (knowledge as being-able)

In the absence of a Direct Realist arguing their case, I would have thought that your representation is the opposite of what a Direct Realist believes, in that it is surely the case that the Direct Realist believes that "we see reality as it is, that the substrate is real and we directly perceive it". — RussellA

That's where I was going with my notion of the surface: so there is a case rather than the positions in abstract.

Do you doubt that what appears real to us, what can appear real to us, is not (or at least not necessarily or not the whole of) what is real per se? — Janus

Yes!

Or, at least, this line of thinking is going in that direction.

I don't have it all worked out, of course. I don't have much problem with illusions or total hallucinations being direct perceptions -- they are very clearly direct perceptions, because the perceptive apparatus is perceiving within its bounds as a body within the world in both cases: Like the blind spot in the middle of our vision, just because I don't see the end of my nose doesn't mean I don't see the computer screen, and total hallucinations are almost always explicable, by total number of them, by dreams or drugs.

The really weird case is other minds: direct realism turns the problem of other minds from "How do we know other minds exist?" in the sense that we don't know to the sense that we do know, and that's a bit odd in comparison to our usual intuitions about other minds.

Obviously it takes time to get to know someone, but we do get to know people too.

Of course the latter is not something we could ever discover, but is just a logical distinction between what appears to us and what is independently of us. I'd say it is of importance, because it reminds us that life is, fundamentally, a mystery. So I don't count it as a "little story" but as a realization that is central to human life.

Well now you had to go add more to it than a distinction between Direct and Indirect Realism. ;) -- in the context of the thread it felt like a small story of no consequence.

I'm not sure I agree that life is fundamentally a mystery. . . . mostly I'd prefer to say "absurd", but that's pretty close in functional terms, too.

But I think I could render life as mysterious whether I were a direct realist or an indirect realist, hence why I thought it was a little story.

That one's easy -- pain is tied to the world — Moliere

The same question. If both pain and the colour red are tied to the world, how does the Direct Realist know that the object of one perception, eg pain, doesn't exist outside the mind, but the object of another perception, eg red, does exist outside the mind.

I would say "There is a real world" -- "out there" in particular is troublesome. Out where? — Moliere

According to Realism, there is a real world out there that exists independently of the mind's perception of it. According to Idealism, there isn't a real world out there that exists independently of the mind's perception of it.

If we directly perceive entities, but we do not directly perceive causal chains, then this is still a form of direct realism. — Moliere

Neither the Indirect nor Direct Realist when perceiving a red post-box, just from the perception itself, are able to perceive the causal chain going backwards in time. The Indirect Realist accepts this, the Direct Realist doesn't.

That's where I was going with my notion of the surface: so there is a case rather than the positions in abstract. — Moliere

In a sense, we can only see the surface, we can only see the red post-box, We cannot directly see the substratum beneath the surface, the thing outside our mind, the other side of our senses, the thing that caused us to see a red post-box.

The same question. If both pain and the colour red are tied to the world, how does the Direct Realist know that the object of one perception, eg pain, doesn't exist outside the mind, but the object of another perception, eg red, does exist outside the mind. — RussellA

Pain clearly indicates something about the world -- a small part of the entirity, but the small part that I happen to care about most. It's the "outside of" and "the mind" locutions I'm questioning. I'm not my mind. I don't even know if minds exist. But I am a body, at least, and that includes all the senses -- not just sight. It includes pain. I'm within a world, and sometimes the world causes pain.

According to Realism, there is a real world out there that exists independently of the mind's perception of it. According to Idealism, there isn't a real world out there that exists independently of the mind's perception of it. — RussellA

Is it the mind's perception? Or a bodies perception?

In a sense, we can only see the surface, we can only see the red post-box, We cannot directly see the substratum beneath the surface, the thing outside our mind, the other side of our senses, the thing that caused us to see a red post-box. — RussellA

Right! And the reason, so I'm suggesting, that we cannot see the substratum is that it doesn't exist at all.

But post boxes do.

because reality, as far as it could logically be open to us, is knowable through direct perception, experience, mathematics, and science. — Jamal

Rationalists like Leibniz and Descartes would have agreed whole heartedly. The Empiricists would caution that a fair portion of our logic is grounded in absolutely nothing, so let's not depend heavily on that to let us know what the world is. Let's take the fragments of appearance which are available to us and make do without the divinities the Rationalists require in order to assure that we're not all lost in dreams.

I don't even know if minds exist. — Moliere

It would be difficult to have thoughts without a mind.

What if it's just the thoughts that exist, and the mind that gets made up?

In my scheme so far, thoughts could be entities within time with their own kind of causality. We know how thoughts work because our bodies have thoughts all the time, and we see the thoughts of others as well. They are expressed through language, frequently, but then the usual notions about animal-thoughts will have to be considered, and I very much doubt that all thoughts must be linguistic -- else Hegel's reference to picture-thinking wouldn't make sense (as well as the picture theory of meaning)

We know how thoughts work because our bodies have thoughts all the time, — Moliere

You can still have thoughts while your body is paralyzed, though.

Both the Indirect and Direct Realist agree that at the least this "world" exists in the mind. The disagreement is whether an identical "world" exists outside the mind. — RussellA

???????????????????????????????????????
Perhaps you can find those that call themselves 'direct realists' that do this, but to me this is the wrong way to go and misses what's good in 'my' take on direct realism.

But you still have a body, yes? So no need for a mind to hold the thoughts?

Hegel's Absolute Idealism is not at odds with Indirect Realism. — RussellA

Here's Hegel.
***************************************
It is natural to suppose that...it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it. The apprehension seems legitimate...

This apprehensiveness is sure to pass even into the conviction that the whole enterprise which sets out to secure for consciousness by means of knowledge what exists per se, is in its very nature absurd; and that between knowledge and the Absolute there lies a boundary which completely cuts off the one from the other.

For if knowledge is the instrument by which to get possession of absolute Reality, the suggestion immediately occurs that the application of an instrument to anything does not leave it as it is for itself, but rather entails in the process, and has in view, a moulding and alteration of it.

Or, again, if knowledge is not an instrument which we actively employ, but a kind of passive medium through which the light of the truth reaches us, then here, too, we do not receive it as it is in itself, but as it is through and in this medium.
...
If the fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust into science, which without any scruples of that sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a distrust should not be placed in this very distrust, and why we should not take care lest the fear of error is not just the initial error.

As a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth, and supports its scruples and consequences on what should itself be examined beforehand to see whether it is truth. It starts with ideas of knowledge as an instrument, and as a medium; and presupposes a distinction of ourselves from this knowledge ...it takes for granted that the Absolute stands on one side, and that knowledge on the other side, by itself and cut off from the Absolute, is still something real; in other words, that knowledge, which, by being outside the Absolute, is certainly also outside truth, is nevertheless true — a position which, while calling itself fear of error, makes itself known rather as fear of the truth.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phintro.htm

And the reason, so I'm suggesting, that we cannot see the substratum is that it doesn't exist at all.

But post boxes do. — Moliere

:up:

As I see, the whole shebang about subtratums (the 'Real' beneath 'Appearance' and 'Mentality') is an awkward response to the fact that we be mistaken, say something about the world that we later withdraw. Add in a little scientism that takes the scientific image as an analogy of version of the The Substract (Occulted Real), and you get a stew of something like scientistic mysticism.

As I see, the whole shebang about subtratums (the 'Real' beneath 'Appearance' and 'Mentality') is an awkward response to the fact that we be mistaken, say something about the world that we later withdraw. — plaque flag

I think that's partially true, but also there's the whole Cartesian history up to Russell's neutral monism -- looking for the substance of everything is a question that's part of the tradition so it's sort of a question that keeps coming around due to it being part of the traditional readings.

keeps coming around due to it being part of the traditional readings. — Moliere

Yes. But that's part of my amusement / frustration. One inherits a methodical pretense of isolation behind a screen as the given. The self, its language, its logical norms...all of these are taken for granted. Those who seemingly pride themselves on epistemological humility are accidentally up to their shoulders in yesterday's debunked confusions. But I started in no better a place, and I don't pretend to be able to become unthrown, so (for me) it's a matter of more thoroughly appropriating the hermeneutical situation, getting clear on what I'm projecting unwittingly, on what metaphors might be controlling me without me seeing them. In general, it's a question of the contingent being mistaken for the necessary, like a painted wall we don't think to push against and check.

Yes. But that's part of my amusement / frustration. One inherits a methodical pretense of isolation behind a screen as the given. The self, its language, its logical norms...all of these are taken for granted. — plaque flag

:up:

But I started in no better a place, and I don't pretend to be able to become unthrown, so (for me) it's a matter of more thoroughly appropriating the hermeneutical situation, getting clear on what I'm projecting unwittingly, on what metaphors might be controlling me without me seeing them. — plaque flag

I think that's a worthy pursuit. One might even go so far as to say that it's in the vein of knowing yourself. :)

In general, it's a question of the contingent being mistaken for the necessary, like a painted wall we don't think to push against and check. — plaque flag

Spot on. It's easier to fool oneself into thinking something which is contingent is necessary than it should be!

I think that's a worthy pursuit. One might even go so far as to say that it's in the vein of knowing yourself. — Moliere

:up:
Exactly!

Spot on. It's easier to fool oneself into thinking something which is contingent is necessary than it should be! — Moliere

I'd even say that our enculturation is largely a being stuffed with contingencies as necessities. So it's as if most of the damage is unconscious. We were never fooled but rather are such foolishness. I think this is what Derrida took from Heidegger. That which deconstructs is precisely that which is deconstructed, our Neurathian raft of the very concepts we use to question that use.

As I see it, this is why Heidegger had to transform Husserl's phenomenology and make it interpretive. Language is the organ of perception. We can never just start from nothing and gaze at the original thing. Instead we can try to dig around the inherited interpretations that we mistake for the naked thing itself. It's as if layers of sediment obscure a more original phenomenon --- but presumably even here we have a lifeworld articulated metaphorically, so we never get under language but only under a few layers of it, going back in time to a place where a decision can be made differently, back to the fork on a path which is a new freedom for our future now.

But you still have a body, yes? So no need for a mind to hold the thoughts? — Moliere

I don't think a thought is like a blob that dwells somewhere. Thoughts come and go, like little moments of reflection. Parcels of awareness or recognition. I think this is the conventional view.

Whatever they are, they exist even though the body of the thinker is paralyzed. We know this because we regularly give neuromuscular blockade drugs that stop everything except autonomic activities. If we don't also give sedatives to put the mind asleep, the patient will hear everything that's said, and worse, feel everything that might be happening, like surgery.

So the notion that thinking is something the body does is just wrong. Brain, maybe. Body, no.

Language is the organ of perception. — plaque flag

That's a great phrase which highlights why I didn't feel comfortable with the original distinction between Semantic/Phenomenological direct realism.

I don't think a thought is like a blob that dwells somewhere. Thoughts come and go, like little moments of reflection. Parcels of awareness or recognition. I think this is the conventional view. — frank

Sounds about right to me. So no need for a mind at all to hold them, right?

Whatever they are, they exist even though the body of the thinker is paralyzed. We know this because we regularly give neuromuscular blockade drugs that stop everything except autonomic activities. If we don't also give sedatives to put the mind asleep, the patient will hear everything that's said, and worse, feel everything that might be happening, like surgery.

So the notion that thinking is something the body does is just wrong. — frank

I think that "giving sedatives" would count as the body still. It's a molecule, right? Not a mental-thing?

The blood moves, the oxygen burns, the sugar gets converted -- there's a body there with molecules. DIfferent drugs have incredibly different effects on the body. Is that any wonder that what we like to call the mind would respond to the molecules of the world? It's part of it after all.

Sounds about right to me. So no need for a mind at all to hold them, right? — Moliere

Yea. I don't think they're the type of thing that can be held.

Is that any wonder that what we like to call the mind would respond to the molecules of the world? — Moliere

I think we've known this for millennia, wine, and all that. My only point was that those who are claiming that thoughts reduce to bodily activities that can be read by others is wrong. Thoughts and feelings are there even while there are no voluntary muscle movements.

Yea. I don't think they're the type of thing that can be held. — frank

Sounds good to me.

I think we've known this for millennia, wine, and all that. My only point was that those who are claiming that thoughts reduce to bodily activities that can be read by others is wrong. Thoughts and feelings are there even while there are no voluntary muscle movements. — frank

I actually was wondering so I'm glad to have clarified.

I'm not so sure -- but it'd be nitpicky and off the beaten path, since I've already pointed out that this is basically the weirdest part of what I've said. I'm not sure how direct perception of other minds works -- it's a bit odd. There are prima facie reasons to believe it, but it's definitely against usual way of thinking of things and a hard case.

I'm not sure how direct perception of other minds works -- it's a bit odd. There are prima facie reasons to believe it, but it's definitely against usual way of thinking of things and a hard case. — Moliere

I don't think we can have direct perception of other minds. We need representations. The people from SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence) spend time wondering about it.