How can "perceptions of the world" be "direct", if the "of the world" must be inferred from the perceptions — hypericin
How can we perceive objects themselves if even the object's existence at all is not a part of the perception? — hypericin
perceptions are exactly what we are (directly) aware of. — hypericin
The feeling of heat on my skin, feelings of anger or contentment, the sounds and feeling of playing the drums, are all direct. — hypericin
We certainly don't "just see" trees and chairs. — hypericin
Perceptions of objects are representations of these objects, and so our perceptions of the object is indirect, because we perceive via representations. — hypericin
According to the SEP article, direct realism is the thesis that "we can directly perceive ordinary objects." It doesn't say only in the "direct" sense of naive realism. — Luke
It is this concept of an "unmediated awareness of objects" that I consider to be incoherent. Do indirect realists only hold the negative view that this concept is incoherent? Or do they also hold the positive belief in their position that we cannot directly perceive ordinary objects? — Luke
However, if all knowledge is necessarily "indirect," and "direct" knowledge is an impossibility because of what knowledge is, then it doesn't seem like the adjective does any lifting at all, regardless of if you think it should be "direct" or "indirect." — Count Timothy von Icarus
Do indirect realists only hold the negative view that this concept is incoherent? Or do they also hold the positive belief in their position that we cannot directly perceive ordinary objects? — Luke
How is it not that things are what we are directly aware of, because of the perception of them? It does not follow that because perception enables our awareness of things, that we are aware of the perceptions.
Perception is that by which objects are directly given; sensation is that by which of objects we are directly aware. These together and by themselves, are both sufficient and necessary to justify the doctrine of direct realism. Indirect realism, then, is merely a consequence of, or perhaps a supplement to, that doctrine. — Mww
The fact that this mostly or entirely occurs without conscious awareness does not belie the fact that there is an incredibly complex inferential process at work. — hypericin
On an empirical analysis, from what I’ve gathered the only direct perceptual relationship one can have with the world is with himself. Man perceives himself, ie. his pain or his tastes, not so much any outside factors which might cause them. — NOS4A2
The indirect realist position says that subject perceives subject, or subject is both the subject and the object of perception at the same time. — NOS4A2
Grammatically speaking, this throws the subject/object relationship out the window. — NOS4A2
The only way out of this quagmire, I think, is to posit that the object of perception is something supernatural. — NOS4A2
Yes, quite right. — Leontiskos
So if "direct" in the naive sense doesn't mean the same thing as "direct" in the non-naive sense then there are two different meanings of "direct", and so two different meanings of "we directly perceive ordinary objects". Which meaning of "we directly perceive ordinary objects" do you think the indirect realist is arguing against? — Michael
If the indirect realist is arguing against the naive sense of "we directly perceive ordinary objects", and if we do not directly perceive ordinary objects in the naive sense, then indirect realism is correct. — Michael
What I find strange about your position is that you seem to accept the existence of something like sensations/sense-data/qualia, seem to accept that we are (directly?) aware of sensations/sense-data/qualia, but also claim that we are directly aware of ordinary objects. I just don't understand what you mean by "direct" in this final claim. — Michael
Sorry, I don't mean to be oblique. It's that I think accusations of dualism really depend heavily on the exact formulation involved, so I don't want to be overly direct because I don't think it's always an issue. — Count Timothy von Icarus
It comes down to what makes experience indirect, what makes the relationship between people and lemons vis-á-vis seeing yellow different from the relationship between people's breathing and air vis-á-vis oxygenating blood. If that difference just is that one is phenomenal, and that a relations involving phenomenal experience is what makes it indirect, then that looks a lot like mind having its own sorts of sui generis causal relations, essentially being a different substance from other entities, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Without a way to specify the "indirectness" it seems to reduce to "being phenomenal is indirect because phenomenal awareness is a special type of relation," which is where a sort of dualism seems to come in, along with begging the question. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If unconscious inference makes something indirect, then all knowledge is necessarily indirect, because concious awareness itself is undergirded by an extremely complex manifold of inferential processes, computation, and communications. — Count Timothy von Icarus
What inference(s) are you making? — Luke
It seems like you've labelled experiences without an external cause as "direct" and experiences with an external cause as "indirect". That's kind of just stipulating that perception of real-world objects is indirect, which is begging the question. — Luke
We are aware of our perceptions. I take issue with your distinction between direct/indirect awareness. — Luke
You don't perceive your perceptual experience. — Luke
No. An experience of heat on my skin is direct, not because it doesn't have an external cause (there may be a match an inch from my skin), but because the experience has direct phenomenological content, and is not subject to doubt. — hypericin
The relation of perception to the experience is one of identity. It is like the pain and the experience of pain. The experience of pain does not have pain as an object because the experience of pain is identical with the pain. Similarly, if the experience of perceiving is an object of perceiving, then it becomes identical with the perceiving. Just as the pain is identical with the experience of pain, so the visual experience is identical with the experience of seeing.
As noted, adverbialism is committed to the view that experiencing something white, for example, involves your experience being modified in a certain way: experiencing whitely. A natural way to understand this is in terms of the idea that the experience is an event, and the modification of it is a property of that event. Since this property is both intrinsic (as opposed to relational or representational) and phenomenal then this way of understanding adverbialism is committed to the existence of qualia.
I don't get the distinction between sense-data and qualia — Michael
Historically, the term ‘qualia’ was first used in connection with the sense-datum theory by C.I. Lewis in 1929. As Lewis used the term, qualia were properties of sense-data themselves.
That's a very interesting piece of information, but I think it's still the case that most people talking about qualia here are talking about the experience, and not the data. — flannel jesus
The technical term “sense data” was made prominent in philosophy during the early decades of the twentieth century by G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, followed by intense elaboration and modification of the concept by C. D. Broad, H. H. Price, and A. J. Ayer, among others. Although the promoters of sense data disagreed in various ways, they mainly agreed on the following points:
1. In perceiving, we are directly and immediately aware of a sense datum.
2. This awareness occurs by a relation of direct mental acquaintance with a datum.
3. Sense data have the properties that they appear to have.
4. These properties are determinate; in vision, we experience determinate shapes, sizes, and colors.
5. Our awareness of such properties of sense data does not involve the affirmation or conception of any object beyond the datum.
6. These properties are known to us with certainty (and perhaps infallibly).
7. Sense data are private; a datum is apprehended by only one person.
8. Sense data are distinct from the act of sensing, or the act by which we are aware of them.
I don't get the distinction between sense-data and qualia — Michael
I don't think there is a distinction. But the quote you were quoting also wasn't making that distinction. — flannel jesus
If there was no such thing as phenomenality and all humans had was the functions of consciousness (without any accompanying awareness), there would still be indirectness to it, in the same way that a computer's data collection is indirect. If a computer listens to the sound of a bird, it converts the analog frequencies to a digital stream and subsequently manipulates that stream.
But indirect realists generally say we experience pain "directly," — Count Timothy von Icarus
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