There is such a thing as visual percepts. It's what the blind (even with functioning eyes) lack. It's what occurs when we dream and hallucinate. They come into existence when the relevant areas of the visual cortex are active. The features of these percepts are not the distal objects (or their properties) that are ordinarily the cause of them. The features of these percepts is the only non-inferential information given to rational thought. The relationship between these percepts and distal objects is in a very literal physical sense indirect; there are a number of physical entities and processes that sit between the distal object and the visual percept in the causal chain.
This is what indirect realism is arguing. It's not arguing anything like "the human body indirectly responds to sensory stimulation by its environment" or "the rods and cones in the eye react to something inside the head" which seems to be your (mis)interpretation of the position.
But again, your position lacks a referent. — NOS4A2
As it stands, no intermediary exists between perceiver and perceived. — NOS4A2
If you define "perceiver" in such a way that it includes the entire body and "perceived" in such a way that it includes the body's immediate environment then what you say here is a truism.
But this isn't what indirect realists mean which is why you've misinterpreted (or misrepresented) them.
You might not believe in something like "rational awareness" and "sensory percepts" but the indirect realist does, and their claim is that sensory percepts are the intermediary that exist between rational awareness and distal objects. The colour red is one such sensory percept. A sweet taste is another.
I’ve only seen red things. — NOS4A2
I have no problem understanding the argument, only the entities we’re dealing with. And that the indirect realist cannot point to any of these entities, describe where they begin and end, describe how and what they perceive, nor ascribe to them a single property, is enough for me to conclude that they are not quite sure what they are talking about, and that this causal chain and the entities he puts upon them are rather arbitrary. — NOS4A2
Futher to my previous post, if I want to use the word 'experience' to only refer to those raw things we have immediate access to, the qualia, then I would say we don't "experience" a baseball game at all.
We experience the visual qualia, and we experience the series of thoughts which include the thought "I'm watching a baseball game" and "this game is fun / this game sucks" and etc. — flannel jesus
you have internal representations that map to objective features of it. — hypericin
I don’t think colours and sounds and smells and tastes “map” to objective features at all — Michael
If those images are your perceptions, then your sentence means "I perceive perceptions". If those images are your perceptions — Luke
What you perceive is the world, not the images. — Luke
I think you're asking too much of a perception if you expect it to present objects, instead of to represent objects. — Luke
Maybe that's enough to reject naive realism, but naive realism isn't hard to reject. — Luke
I have sympathy with the semantic/non-naïve direct realist intuition that we are in fact connected to the external world, and I agree with Michael that epistemologically it and indirect realism are equivalent. — hypericin
Then again, the experience itself feels like you ARE experiencing distal stuff. You don't feel like you're watching a baseball game in your head, you feel like you're watching a baseball game out there. And both senses are true in their own contexts, I guess. — flannel jesus
Seeing colours is a visual sensation, colours are not visual sensations. — Janus
The odour molecules are a part of that unperceived causal chain.
— Luke
The odour molecules are perceived. I smell them. — Michael
Using "a perception" is a bit misleading though as 'perception' is symbolizing the process, which we do not grasp fully, of getting from object to experience. The resulting images are one aspect, and likely the final result, of perception as a process. If that final product then labeled 'a perception', i think its a bit incoherent. Maybe that's an issue here. — AmadeusD
I disagree — Luke
Fair enough. I'm unsure that's supportable, or helpful.
Here, here and here make it plain (to me, at any rate) that 'perception' is the word used, in normal language situations, to refer to the process and faculty of getting from an object to an experience (those particular terms, mine). — AmadeusD
I'm unsure what exactly you're trying to ask. — AmadeusD
I don’t think colours and sounds and smells and tastes “map” to objective features at all, and certainly not in a sense that can be considered “representative.” — Michael
The connection between distal objects and sensory precepts is nothing more than causal, determined in part by each individual’s biology. — Michael
The “objective” world is a mess of quantum fields, far removed from how things appears to us. — Michael
Not because I'm not wanting to call the whole baseball experience an experience, but because when you list out all the direct experiences that are part of that experience -- all the qualia and first-person thoughts - it's still just a bunch of internal, immediate stuff. — flannel jesus
I do not believe that I am directly aware of a distal object. I believe that I am directly aware only of my sensations. Therefore, my perception is not of a distal object and so therefore perception is not direct. — Michael
That is, your perception would not be of a representation of the odour molecules; your perception would be of the odour molecules themselves. — Luke
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.
Now, whatever shall we do with realism?
— Mww
That which is real has affects/effects. — creativesoul
If perception is the entire process “of getting from an object to an experience”, then in what sense is that entire process indirect? — Luke
It's very simple—are you saying colours and seeing colours are the same thing? — Janus
hese are causal physical processes which give rise to perception, but which are themselves prior to perception — Janus
I've addressed this. Restating the question in terms i've noted make no sense isn't helpful my guy. — AmadeusD
colours are obviously visual sensations. 'seeing a colour' is that sensation — AmadeusD
It's very simple—are you saying colours and seeing colours are the same thing? — Janus
So, on this you're just wrong. — AmadeusD
Some might say that perception refers to our sensory experience of the world. — Luke
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