Misfire are curious. One can touch but not feel - numb fingers in the cold. Or listen but not hear - the sound had too high a pitch, perhaps. Or look but not see.

Sniff but not smell? Eat but not taste?

See, hear, feel, smell and taste. Look, listen, touch... sniff and eat?

Either you're experiencing reality as-it-really-is, OR your experience is something subjective and crafted for you by your brain. — flannel jesus

I notice that this is not (p v ~p). It is not a tautology.

That would be

Either you're experiencing reality as-it-really-is or you do not experiencing reality as-it-really-is

or

Either your experience is something subjective and crafted for you by your brain or it is not something subjective and crafted for you by your brain

The simple point here is that sometimes the brain models the way things are.

If you like, the model does not have to be perfect - "as-it-really-is" - only adequate.

If you like, the model does not have to be perfect - "as-it-really-is" - only adequate. — Banno

Sure, and I think the model is definitely adequate. No disagreement from me there.

Hmm. Do you feel the sandpaper or the model of the sandpaper?

I would say that feeling the sandpaper involves modelling its texture, and that what you feel is the sandpaper.

Sniff but not smell? Eat but not taste?

See, hear, feel, smell and taste. Look, listen, touch... sniff and eat? — Banno

Those are possible analogies surely. I was thinking in the terms of touching being the physical act that generates the experience of feeling, while there are no words in English (or most languages) for the physical act of... molecules interacting with our taste buds and smell receptors, or light going through our retina. As a curiosity, some languages have a word that is kinda like brighten, as in, shine light on something for me to see it, to use Spanish as an example which should be a familiar language to most here, they might say "Alúmbrame X" to shine light on the side of X that is facing me, but even that is not quite there.

As a curiosity, some languages have a word that is kinda like brighten — Lionino

Illuminate?

I don't think it's right to say you 'feel' the sandpaper itself, anyway. You feel it's impression on your nervous system, shunted through your nerves, into your brain where it is constructed into an experience. — AmadeusD

Again, instead of violating natural language, I think it is better to respect it, and analysis it on its own terms. To do otherwise plays into Banno's incessant objection, "but we don't feel our nerves".

In order to feel sandpaper:
The sandpaper must contact our skin.
The contact must register with sensory nerves.
The nervous signal must conduct to our brain.
Our brain must translate the nervous signal to sensation.

If this process fails in any step; in the cases of missing the object, nerve damage, brain damage or unconsciousness; the feel process fails. In which case, there is no sensation.

Sensation is separated from the sandpaper by each of the above steps. So, it only makes sense to say we feel the sandpaper, but feeling/sensation is indirect.

- But you are importing a homunculus theory. Most obviously you are doing this by conflating mediation with indirectness, and this goes back to the same idea that reality could not be accurately mediated by sense organs. Less obviously you are making Cartesian assumptions about the ontological and temporal relations between the homunculus and the various apparatus he is using to interact with the world. Although this latter assumption won't bother materialists, it is not derivable from your argument or from experience.

We don't feel our nerves, but neither do we interact with brain signals. The fact that a functioning nervous system is necessary for sensation does not prove what you seem to think it proves.

But you are importing a homunculus theory. Most obviously you are doing this by conflating mediation with indirectness, and this goes back to the same idea that reality could not be accurately mediated by sense organs. — Leontiskos

I think it is you that is conflating accuracy and directness.

Consider a photovoltaic sensor. The number on the sensor can be quite accurate. It is mediated by the functioning device, and very much an indirect measure of the light falling on the sensor.

- I don't believe that indirectness implies inaccuracy.

So, it only makes sense to say we feel the sandpaper, but feeling/sensation is indirect. — hypericin

I would say that I feel the sandpaper with my fingers. My knowledge of the sandpaper is mediated by my fingers.

It seems to me that your word here, "indirect," is being asked to do far too much work. My guess is that you think the subject is removed from the sandpaper by the four steps you gave such that a kind of temporal data transfer occurs at each step, like a game of telephone. If so, then all of the contents of indirect realism come into view. Is that your theory, or is it something else?

In order to feel sandpaper:
The sandpaper must contact our skin.
The contact must register with sensory nerves.
The nervous signal must conduct to our brain.
Our brain must translate the nervous signal to sensation. — hypericin

Yep. And at the end of all that, you will have felt the sand paper.

Not your skin, not your nerves, not the signal conducted to your brain.

- I don't believe that indirectness implies inaccuracy. — Leontiskos

My simple example above demonstrates that indirectness does not imply inaccuracy. They are separate concepts.

It seems to me that your word here, "indirect," is being asked to do far too much work. — Leontiskos

Maybe so. "Indirect" describes the relationship between sensation and the world. Just like the number on the meter, sensation is correlated to features of the world, casually connected to features of the world, potentially accurate informationally. And yet, it is at a casual remove from what it measures, and completely unlike what it measures.

Is that your theory, or is it something else? — Leontiskos

More or less, yes.

It's intended as an example; one might differentiate seeing the hand in the mirror as indirect, in contrast to seeing it without the mirror - directly. — Banno

You might say that you directly see the reflection of your hand in the mirror, but this is not what an indirect realist would say. In principle, nothing can be directly seen for an indirect realist (except for an internal representation?). For an indirect realist, seeing a reflection of a hand in the mirror would be twice removed from directly seeing the hand; both seeing the reflection and seeing the internal representation of the reflection. So, I still think there is a difference between what you and an indirect realist mean by the term "indirect" (or, specifically, indirect seeing). However, I take it you may only have been using the distinction (in the conventional way) to help make your point. Furthermore, this is a minor quibble as it seems we are on the same side of this issue.

My simple example above demonstrates that indirectness does not imply inaccuracy. — hypericin

Well, perhaps I should have said that I don't believe that indirectness entails inaccuracy, because there is a correlation. On average, the more players we add to the telephone game, the more distorted will be the final result, but it is nevertheless possible to achieve an accurate result even with a large number of players.

Maybe so. "Indirect" describes the relationship between sensation and the world. Just like the number on the meter, sensation is correlated to features of the world, casually connected to features of the world, potentially accurate informationally. And yet, it is at a casual remove from what it measures, and completely unlike what it measures. — hypericin

(I assume you mean 'causally'/'causal')

First, to echo Banno's question, what would the correlate to indirect, "direct," mean in the context of your claims? Apparently knowledge of the sandpaper without fingers, nerves, and brain processing would be direct?

Second, if the direct realist agrees that fingers, nerves, and brain are involved in sensation, then what is it about your argument that makes us draw the conclusion of indirect realism instead of the conclusion of direct realism? Is it primarily that word, "potentially," along with that final sentence?

We experience representations, not objects, in terms of sight. That seems inarguable, and therefore there is no way to pretend what we see is the object. No one but philosophers posit this, anyway, and so we can be fairly sure there's hide-the-ball going on. — AmadeusD

This is an odd use of the word "representations". Do we experience representations? I guess you could if you mean we have experience making solar system models in which different colored size balls represent different planets. Or maybe, we have experience teaching chemistry with sphere and stick pieces that represent atoms and bonds. But I do not think you are suggesting these are example of "experiences of representations".

Obviously, I do not believe you are suggesting that a scientist is observing human brains "experiencing representations" when humans are looking at objects. And would we want to say that when a scientist images brain activity, say with a EEG, fMRI, PET, MEG, CT, or SPECT instruments, while a human looks at a object that these images are representations of an objects? No, I think we would be incline to say that a scientist views these images as representations of the activity of some portion of the brain when the human is exposed to a particular object.

Probably, only philosophers and scientists who get "metaphysical" are inclined to talk about experiencing "representations" and not "objects". They are inclined to want to say we don't experience objects like humans, brains, trees, balls, planets, nerves, colors, screens, EEG, fMRI, PET, MEG, CT, and SPECT, but representations of humans, brains, trees, balls, planets, nerves, colors, screens, EEG, fMRI, PET, MEG, CT, and SPECT.

A brain seems less of a posit, than a representation of a brain.

Nobody is saying that representation is the thing seen. Following language usage, objects are the things seen. But seeing is indirect. The only thing we experience directly is the representation. — hypericin

What is the difference between directly seeing a representation and directly experiencing a representation? What do you directly experience when you indirectly see an object? What would it take to directly see an object?

but you don’t. Empirically. I’ll leave you to it ;)

Again, instead of violating natural language — hypericin

*brings eye brows back from nape”

I don’t know what you could possibly be aiming at. The use of language here is imprecise and unhelpful. So I’ve changed it. That’s how language works.

pparently knowledge of the sandpaper without fingers, nerves, and brain processing would be direct? — Leontiskos

Yes. And it’s not possible, so case closed.


Heheheheheh

:ok:

To everyone- I’m replying on my phone after a lecture and am not being massively seriously. But I welcome serious responses as I do believe my comments are apt as reductios in most cases

I wouldn't know, I haven't made a single comment about textures this whole thread.

I wouldn't suppose that representational or UI views of perceptual experience require modelling the 3d structure of a texture to feel it, although I do think we general model 3d structures but at a much higher scale than the grit of sandpaper

I think with smell it's clearly the second one. I think the experience you have when you're smelling things is clearly not just experiencing reality as-it-is.

So, it'd be experiencing reality-as-it-is-not?

And then I think when that becomes an experience, that experience isn't just raw-reality-as-it-really-is, it's an experience concocted for you by your brain.

If the mind is a barrier to experiencing reality-as-it-is, would this imply that reality-as-it-is is what reality "is like" without a mind? Is the true smell of coffee in-itself what it smells like without a nose, the true shape of the coffee mug what it looks like without eyes and what it feels like without a body?

The problem I see is that any appearance/reality distinction can't have everything be appearance "all the way down." If that's the case, why not just call "appearance" reality?

But I think the motivation here normally comes out of the evidence that sense experience isn't a direct passthrough of information from the environment. Organism's sense organs can only take in a vanishingly small amount of the total information in the environment without succumbing to entropy. Most information must be excluded, and what gets excluded is shaped by the architecture of the organism, which is shaped by natural selection. That our skin isn't one big eye, or that our toes aren't noses could itself be called a "bias," in that it constricts incoming information.

Then, the limited amount of information that actually makes it in is subjected to all sorts of computational methods that have evolved to pick out information relative to fitness. This all would appear to occur to prior to recursive self-awareness, so that the information that shows up in experienced perception has been compressed, curated, and combined with extrapolations, etc. I recall reading that the vast amount of information that comes down the optic nerve, itself a tiny fraction of all the light hitting the human body at any time, almost immediately gets "dropped" after a "scan" for relevance.

And yet, the qualia experienced by an individual obviously has a causal link with the objects experienced. The signal/information that starts with a wave of light bouncing off an apple ends up in perception. There is a direct relationship between the object and experience, such that if we remove the light reflecting off the apple we cease seeing it.

What then can we make of this? I do really like Donald Hoffman's work on this, which argues that we have to go for idealism, because there is no accessible reality in our current reality/appearance distinction, but I don't buy it. It's clear that there is not a direct relationship between every aspect of experience and the objects experienced, but there is at causal link between what perception "is like" and the objects perceived. This would seem to allow for reality to make it to sense perception. The object and the experience of the object are isomorphic, or at least share some form of morphism.

I don't like the language of "seeing representations" because it tends to lapse into humoncular thinking and because it presents such "representations" as static objects. But really we're talking about a process, and a process that, properly described, is going to need to involve the objects perceived.

Whether there are even any direct physical interactions (as in, not mediated by some third thing) is an interesting question in the philosophy of physics. I like Roveli's "entanglement is a dance for three."

Consider a photovoltaic sensor. The number on the sensor can be quite accurate. It is mediated by the functioning device, and very much an indirect measure of the light falling on the sensor.

What would constitute a direct physical interaction? There seems to be plenty of mediation involved in two billiard balls bouncing off one another if you get fine grained enough in your analysis.

THe fiction is the particularly perniciious habit of ignoring the empirical facts when discussion perception. This has been ignored. — AmadeusD

The inconsistency in your view, which I have many times and am probably now again unsuccessfully pointing out to you, is that if we have no access to the world and see only arbitrarily constructed representations then there are no empirical facts.

What would constitute a direct physical interaction? — Count Timothy von Icarus

What counts as a direct physical interaction totally depends on context. If we are talking about billiard balls in the ordinary way, one ball knocking another is clearly a direct interaction, while a ball knocking another via a third is indirect. But if we are talking about the atomic scale, almost every interaction is indirect.

There is no right or wrong answer independent of context. That is why in this discussion it is crucial to keep in mind what we are talking about: the relationship of perception to reality.

First, to echo Banno's question, what would the correlate to indirect, "direct," mean in the context of your claims? — Leontiskos

What would it take to directly see an object? — Luke

I'm afraid I still only have one clear answer: for perception to be "direct", naïve realism should be true. The features of our perceptions must be present in reality, so that barns really look red, and violins sound as they do, independently of an observer. But we all agree this is not the case.

Failing that, it seems we are talking about different things. You must be talking about something other than the relationship between perceptions and reality. Such as, the relationship of two physical bodies when one interacts with the other. Yes, when I touch a chicken, my hand comes into direct contact with the chicken. But that is not the subject of discussion.

I'm afraid I still only have one clear answer: for perception to be "direct", naïve realism should be true. The features of our perceptions must be present in reality, so that barns really look red, and violins sound as they do, independently of an observer. But we all agree this is not the case.

Failing that, it seems we are talking about different things. You must be talking about something other than the relationship between perceptions and reality. — hypericin

I think it is a matter of accuracy or reliability. "Are we able to form true propositions which accurately and reliably get at what truly exists in the world?" The so-called direct realist says yes. The so-called indirect realist says, "No, we do not know whether our knowledge is about the world or merely about our representations of the world."

There are a lot of pieces to this debate, but I see Kant as a father of indirect realism, and I think a central task would be to address Hume's skeptical arguments which got the whole ball rolling. Yet since most indirect realists have not read Hume and are simply inheriting an English-speaking philosophical tradition, that approach is not ideal for these settings.

So more practically, I think direct realism is the prima facie (naive) view. Indirect realism responds, throwing it into question. The central argument for indirect realism seems to be analogous to the idea that <if we had only one eye we would not have depth perception>. More precisely, <if we had only one eye, we could not move, and nothing in our field of vision ever moved, then we would not know or understand depth of field> (depth of field would be "noumenal"). This is of course true, and if our epistemic situation is analogous to that scenario then indirect realism is true.

But I am a direct realist because I have two eyes. The most basic way to rebut this central argument for indirect realism is therefore triangulation. I have knowledge of depth of field because I have two eyes, because I can move around and examine things from different angles, and because the things in my field of vision move and in so doing provide information about depth of field. Again, this example is merely analogous. I have two eyes, but I also have five senses; and there are billions of humans collecting data for comparison. Animals and robots collect information as well, and this can be leveraged to one extent or another. These are all forms of triangulation, and reason itself is the ultimate tool of triangulation, coordinating the data from all of the various inputs. Only where there are irreconcilable conflicts between the eyes, or the senses, or large populations of people, does indirect realism become plausible.

So if direct realism is the starting point, and if the central argument of indirect realism is that error checking is impossible, then I think triangulation suffices to answer that argument against the prima facie position. It's not a knock-down argument, because someone might argue for the position that all human beings are equally biased, and all of the senses are equally biased, and animals and robots are also equally biased. This argument would undercut the triangulation by reducing all of our various sources of knowledge to a single, flat perspective. But I think this position which denies triangulation is implausible in the extreme.

Finally, modern philosophy got hung up on certitude, and indirect realism flows out of that. When the indirect realist says, "We do not know whether our knowledge is about the world or merely about our representations of the world," everything depends on the meaning of that word 'know'. Even someone like Aristotle or Aquinas would admit that we cannot know this with perfect, mathematical certainty. Similarly, the views of Parmenides and Heraclitus cannot be disproved with perfect certainty. If someone believes that all knowledge must attain to that level of certitude, then they will be an indirect realist. But this standard of certitude is of course strange and unrealistic. Generally when we form opinions we do so in an implicitly abductive manner, choosing the view which is most certain or most plausible. It seems to me that the more certain view here is direct realism. I am more certain that I have knowledge of reality than I am certain that I do not have knowledge of reality, although it is possible that I do not have knowledge of reality.

(There are of course other things at play even beyond Hume, such as the modern mechanistic view whereby man is viewed as a machine, which is something Aristotelians have directly addressed in the form of dialectic materialism. But triangulation seems to be the central consideration at a more surface level.)

The features of our perceptions must be present in reality, so that barns really look red, and violins sound as they do, independently of an observer. — hypericin

How can the world possibly be perceived “independently of an observer”?

How can the world possibly be perceived “independently of an observer”? — Luke

Naive realism requires that the qualitative features of perception mirror the features of reality sans perception. But they do not. They only exist during perception, and are features of the perceiver, not the perceived. But these qualitative features are exactly what we directly experience.

Naive realism requires that the qualitative features of perception mirror the features of reality sans perception. But they do not. They only exist during perception, and are features of the perceiver, not the perceived. — hypericin

Naive realism posits that we directly perceive the world, not that "the qualitative features of perception mirror the features of reality sans perception".

Qualitative features are a part of perception, not a part of the world.

Let's keep our perceptions, and all they involve (including our representations), separate from the world.

As long as our perceptions are of the world, then we directly perceive the world, regardless of the qualitative features of those perceptions.

Therefore, it is not required that the qualitative features of our perceptions exist in the world. They belong to our perceptions of the world, not to the world itself.

But these qualitative features are exactly what we directly experience. — hypericin

You did not answer my earlier question: What is the difference between directly seeing a representation and directly experiencing a representation?

How does directly experiencing a representation differ from directly seeing or directly perceiving a representation?

If representations are not a part of our perceptions, then where do they come from and how do we know about them? That is, if we do not perceive our representations of the world then how do they come about? If we experience our representations of the world without perceiving them, then what causes those experiences?