The Adverbialist rejects sense data. Sense data should go the way of the aether, of historic interest only. — RussellA
The thesis of Direct Realism (at least, according to the SEP article) is that "we can directly perceive ordinary objects". Some of us believe this thesis but disagree with naive realism. We are also direct realists. I genuinely disagree that we always perceive an intermediary and that we cannot directly perceive ordinary objects. Call that a semantic disagreement if you will, but we can't both be correct. — Luke
According to the SEP article adverbialists accept qualia. If sense data and qualia are the same thing then according to the SEP article adverbialists accept sense data. — Michael
Part of the point of adverbialism, as defended by Ducasse (1942) and Chisholm (1957) is to do justice to the phenomenology of experience whilst avoiding the dubious metaphysical commitments of the sense-datum theory. The only entities which the adverbialist needs to acknowledge are subjects of experience, experiences themselves, and ways these experiences are modified.
1. Against the Sense Datum View
The adverbialist rejects the Phenomenal Principle, that if there sensibly appears to a subject to be something which possesses a particular sensible quality then there is something of which the subject is aware which does possess that quality.
According to the adverbialist, statements that appear to commit us to the existence of sense data can be reinterpreted so as to avoid those commitments. In doing so, the adverbialism rejects the act/object model of perceptual experience—the model on which sensory experience involves a particular act of sensing directed at an existent object (e.g., a sense datum).
Only if sense data exist. The Adverbialist doesn't need them. Why do you think sense data exist if they are not needed? — RussellA
For example, the relational view of color does a good job explaining how the properties of the object perceived, the ambient enviornment, and the perceiver all go into the generation of an experience. Could an adverbial description do the same thing? Maybe, but not easily. And it's hard to see what the benefit would be. — Count Timothy von Icarus
So if I'm wrong and there is a difference between sense data and qualia then what is that difference? — Michael
Phenylthiocarbamide tastes bitter to 70% of people and doesn't taste bitter to 30% of people.
What does the word "bitter" mean/refer to? What does the phrase "tastes bitter" mean/refer to?
it's literally impossible to describe one's experiences to another person coherently in adverbial language — Count Timothy von Icarus
Could an adverbial description do the same thing? — Count Timothy von Icarus
In general though, the adverbial view tends to apply adverbs only to the perceiver, e.g., to people "seeing greenly," but not to plants "reflecting light greenly." — Count Timothy von Icarus
1. Shannon's model, developed for radios and telephones — for precisely this sort of transformation of energy types — is now applied to all physical interactions. So if the model entails indirectness, then everything is indirect. — Count Timothy von Icarus
2. These different types of energy turn out not to always be sui generis types. There has been a lot of work unifying these. We still have multiple "fundemental forces," but the goal/intuition, is that these can be unified as well, like electricity and magnetism, or then electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This would seem to leave too many relations as indirect. And if perception is an indirect experience of the world merely in the way that light has an indirect relationship with photosynthesis or sex has an indirect relationship with pregnancy, then the epistemological claims related to this sort of indirectness seem much less acute (maybe this is a feature, not a bug). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Another wrinkle: wouldn't pain be the transformation of kinetic energy into electrochemical energy, and experience of our own pain thus also be indirect? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Science and metaphysics are different from one another, but they bleed over into one another all the time. The first time I heard of "emergent properties" was in a molecular biology class, not a philosophy lecture. Metaphysics and ontology tend to touch science on the theory side.
So, any book on quantum foundations is going to discuss metaphysical ideas. Any discussion of "what is a species and how do we define it," gets into the same sort of territory. "What is complexity?" and "what is information?" or "is there biological information?" are not uncommon questions for journal articles to focus on. Debates over methods, frequentism in particular, are another area of overlap. This isn't the bread and butter of 101 classes — although in Bio 101 we were asked to write an essay on "what life is?" and consider if viruses or prions were alive, a philosophical question — but it's also not absent from scientific considerations either.
The two seem related in that both inform one another. Physicists have informed opinions re the question of substance versus process based metaphysics for example, or mereological nihilism — i.e., "is the world a collection of things with properties or one thing/process?" — Count Timothy von Icarus
we don't want a strange world of nothing but particles arranged x-wise or one undifferentiated process either. We'd like to say cats exist on mats (and just one at one time and place), that lemons are yellow, that rocks have mass and shape, etc. I am just unconvinced that these can be properly be dealt with fully on the nature side of the Nature/Geist distinction. — Count Timothy von Icarus
In what sense is an olfactory sensation caused by odour molecules in the air stimulating the sense receptors in my nose the "direct" perception of a cake in the oven? — Michael
The perception is the final product; the smell. All you smell is the cake. You don’t smell the causes of the perception.
I don’t know how you could smell the cake more directly. Would it be without the causes? — Luke
If we're only directly in touch with our perceptions, we're not directly in touch with objects. — AmadeusD
The word "direct" and "indirect" don't really seem to apply to experience itself to me - experience is experience, it's fundamental, it's nothing else other than itself. Direct and indirect can be words we use to categorize casual chains that lead to experience, but not experience itself. — flannel jesus
if Bob told me what Jodie said this morning, I may indeed be aware of what Jodie said this morning, but only indirectly. What I am directly aware of, my actual experience, are the words Bob told me. — hypericin
When you are watching something, say a baseball game, you are experiencing it, but only indirectly, via the direct experience of the TV itself. The baseball game is casually connected to the TV, the features on the TV map to features of the game. Yet, what you experience is not the game itself, but in fact a representation of it. — hypericin
Seriously, though, it is a question of whether our perceptions of objects are direct or not — Luke
Suffice to say, no, and i direct you to my previous post. The question contain therein is crucial to my understanding how you could possible think that was the question. — AmadeusD
To put it bluntly:
The perception is: the smell (of cake).
The causes of the perception are: the odour molecules in the air stimulating the sense receptors.
What you perceive/smell is the cake.
What you don’t perceive/smell are the causes of the perception.
The perception is the final product; the smell. All you smell is the cake. You don’t smell the causes of the perception. — Luke
I don’t know how you could smell the cake more directly. — Luke
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