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.

I don’t think I’ve misinterpreted anything. As I’ve argued we’re just multiplying nouns at this point, and in a question-begging fashion. Now it’s a percept where before it was sense-data, or a sensation.

But again, your position lacks a referent. If there is no thing upon which to place the label, we’ve engaged in the fallacy of reification. I forgive this as a product of natural language, but the play seems to be to insert this thing somewhere on the causal chain as an intermediary.

The everlasting question is: upon what do I put this label? If you put it behind the eyes, or somewhere in the brain, your placing it within or behind the perceiver, not before. If you put it in the light or soundwaves, you’re placing it within or before the perceived, not after. As it stands, no intermediary exists between perceiver and perceived. Perception is direct because there is no intermediary.

But again, your position lacks a referent. — NOS4A2

It's what the sighted have and the blind (including those with blindsight) don't have. It's what occurs when we dream and hallucinate.

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.

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 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.

Yes, I believe people are perceivers. I can witness them doing so and they can report to me that they are. The same cannot be said of “rational awareness”.

Other metaphysical differences abound. For instance, I’ve never seen something called the color red; I’ve only seen red things. I suppose these and other metaphysical beliefs inform our differing conclusions. At any rate, it makes for an interesting debate.

I’ve only seen red things. — NOS4A2

I see red things when I dream and hallucinate. Those with synesthesia might see red things when they listen to music with their eyes closed in a dark room. These are visual percepts. They occur in ordinary waking experience too. The colour red as present in these visual percepts is not a property of distal objects.

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

They can point to the visual cortex and temporal lobe. Visual percepts and rational awareness are either reducible to the activity in the brain or supervene on them. But the hard problem of consciousness hasn't been resolved yet so it's still an open matter.

If you want an account that does not assume anything like mental properties or a first person perspective then the claim is that perception is the neurological processing of certain streams of information. By physical necessity any information processed by the brain is located in the brain. The unconscious involvement of the eyes may be a prerequisite (if you deny that we see things when we dream and hallucinate) but it itself is not a constituent of conscious perception - and the distal object itself is certainly not a constituent of it either.

Hence the epistemological problem of perception. The brain has no direct access to the information that constitutes distal objects. We have to assume and hope that the information it directly processes is capable of accurately informing us about the existence and nature of those distal objects.

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

But then, you are kind of left with no word at all to describe your relation to the baseball game. There are plenty for what you are talking about: "phenomenal experience", "sense data", "qualia", your own "raw experience". These all mean more or less the same thing, afaict.

I don't want to say "you don't experience the baseball game", when you see it live, and even on TV. In both cases, you are causally connected to it in a nontrivial way, you think and feel about it, you have internal representations that map to objective features of it.

Your way of speaking seems to suggest a self locked in their own personal world. 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. I just differ from semantic realism in emphasizing the deeply mediate nature of this connection, the fact that there is truly nothing "direct" whatsoever about it.

you have internal representations that map to objective features of it. — hypericin

That’s an open question too. 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.”

The connection between distal objects and sensory precepts is nothing more than causal, determined in part by each individual’s biology.

The “objective” world is a mess of quantum fields, far removed from how things appears to us.

I don’t think colours and sounds and smells and tastes “map” to objective features at all — Michael

You don't think seeing red is correlated to any facts about the things you see red on? Because that's all "map" means here. It means the colours your experience correlate to real properties or features etc.

If those images are your perceptions, then your sentence means "I perceive perceptions". If those images are your perceptions — Luke

Hmm, point taken.
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.

What you perceive is the world, not the images. — Luke

IN some sense, I agree, but it is indirect, in any sense, unless it refers to those images outlijne above.

I think you're asking too much of a perception if you expect it to present objects, instead of to represent objects. — Luke

I'm rejecting that it's a reasonable expectation, too. This is what the Direct Realist demands of it and given this rejection, I can't commit to direct realism, largely because of this chasm between the object and the experience. Which is why I suggested that if 'direct' only relates to the images ("the perceptions") then sure, it's direct. But we don't 'directly perceive' any objects, even on this conception because of the indirect nature of sight, even precluding final 'images' from the process. The objects have only an indirect causal relation to the bodily process of perception.

Maybe that's enough to reject naive realism, but naive realism isn't hard to reject. — Luke

This might be the case - but i would then accuse the indeterminant nature of 'Direct Realist's talking about their view as a reason to reject it also, with Naive realism. A 'Direct Realist' who doesn't hold that we are interacting directly with worldly objects, it appears to me, is arguing for indirect realism under a guise.

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

I agree with all of this. Maybe I should loosen up on "experience", and allow those words you said, like "raw experience" and "qualia" (some raw experiences aren't qualia exactly, I think) to be what I'm referring to. If I did, then yes, your experience of a baseball game would be - I guess - "indirect". Even now I'm hesitant. 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. Yes, it's internal and immediate stuff that is ultimately *caused* by external, non-immediate stuff, distal stuff - and the relation of your experience to that distal stuff is thus indirect - but if you ignore the "distal stuff" question and just focus on the experience, then... is it?

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.

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

:ok:

This is where people are getting lost in the grammar.

I see colours. Colours are a visual sensation. — Michael

It seems to me you are getting lost in, by complicating, the grammar. Seeing colours is a visual sensation, colours are not visual sensations.

Seeing colours is a visual sensation, colours are not visual sensations. — Janus

This is exactly what Michael pointed out you getting lost in. You literally further complicated the grammar he provided (incorrectly, too - colours are obviously visual sensations. 'seeing a colour' is that sensation) and it now makes little sense for hte discussion (that pesky term 'seeing' being the main problem). But that is not to say is precludes you from being right in your actual point. This is a clarifying comment.

So colours and seeing colours are the same thing according to you?

The odour molecules are a part of that unperceived causal chain.
— Luke

The odour molecules are perceived. I smell them. — Michael

I think we more commonly speak about perceiving the object that is the source of a smell or sound or (reflected) light, rather than perceiving the proximal stimulus, such as odour molecules. There may be evolutionary or biological reasons for this.

But, even if we did directly perceive odour molecules instead of a cake, there would still be no intermediary between your perception of the odour molecules and the odour molecules. That is, your perception would not be of a representation of the odour molecules; your perception would be of the odour molecules themselves. But, again, I think we more commonly refer to the perception being of the source of the odour molecules (or other proximal stimulus).

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 that the word “perception” typically refers to a process (or to the unconscious workings of the brain/body) that results in… a perception. The perception is the final product. There’s nothing incoherent about that.

I'm unsure what exactly you're trying to ask. Colours are a sensation (well, a class of sensations, anyway). Read into that what you will, using your own grammar, as I don't think yours is adequate or helpful.

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).

And here at 1.1 and 1.4 seems to outline that, even in a philosphically-bounded use of the word, we are referring to "perceptual experiences" in the conflict between IDR and DR. Both positions, apparently, accept that 'perception' is a process which results in something that we are arguing is either indirect or direct. But, it is not at all posited that 'a perception' is the end-result of a process of perception. Beucase that's... frankly, stupid.

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

If perception is the entire process “of getting from an object to an experience”, then in what sense is that entire process indirect?

I'm unsure what exactly you're trying to ask. — AmadeusD

It's very simple—are you saying colours and seeing colours are the same thing?

Taking vision as the paradigmatic example, the science of vision includes light being reflected from objects and entering the retina, electrochemical processes in the optic nerve and neuronal processes in the visual cortex, none of these processes are perceived in vivo. These are causal physical processes which give rise to perception, but which are themselves prior to perception.

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

I say that colors, sounds, smells, and tastes "map" to objective features in the same way that mathematical functions map from one domain to another. So the optical nervous system in a sense "maps" from 450nm light to subjective blue. Color represents kinds of light in the same way signs represents the signified, without being representative in the sense I think you mean.

The connection between distal objects and sensory precepts is nothing more than causal, determined in part by each individual’s biology. — Michael

If it were nothing more than causal, if that's the most we can say about it, it wouldn't be of any utility.

The “objective” world is a mess of quantum fields, far removed from how things appears to us. — Michael

That characterizes the world at one length scale, one that is not ours. The way we perceive the world is a perspective, one of infinitely many possible, tailored by evolution to represent as much as possible the slice of reality that is relevant to us. It is no more "wrong" or "illusory" than it is "objectively correct". If it were merely wrong or illusion, it would not be of any use.

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

What makes all the internal, immediate stuff more than a hallucination or dream is that you are in fact experiencing a baseball game... via all the internal, immediate stuff.

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

I'd say that this all well and good, but it's only because we have direct access to reality -- like a direct realist might hold -- that we can distinguish perception from distal object and say true things about them.

On the more continental side: you are not aware of an object beyond the object, an in-itself that holds a secret, but the plane of reality is just as real as the real. "Sensations" is a locution that is only meaningful within a web of some kind -- semantic, historical, phenomenological. The "real" which indirect realists posit cannot be meaningfully posited: it borrows a metaphor from the direct/indirect contrast (a distinction embedded within a world).

A

That is, your perception would not be of a representation of the odour molecules; your perception would be of the odour molecules themselves. — Luke

Smell allows perception of a cake, or odor molecules. What the conscious self is directly aware of, is not the cake, not the odor molecules, but just the perception, the nice smell. The nice smell is a fiction, it does not exist anywhere outside of your head, even though our brains are arranged to make it seem as if perceptions are windows into the world.

Conscious self -> perceptions -> world.

The conscious self only directly experience perceptions, manifesting to it as phenomenal experience/qualia, which are the the illusions which allow the conscious self to interface with the world. I call them illusions because they present to the conscious self as if they themselves were the world. To accept this illusion is to be a naive realist.

@Michael

NOTES ON INDIRECT REALISM

Chain of events

Everyone seems to agree that there is a chain of events prior to perception. For example, light from the sun hits an object, part of the light is absorbed by the object and part reflected, a wavelength then travels though space to the eye of an observer, this causes an electrical signal to travel along the optic nerve from the eye to the brain where it is somehow processed, thereby enabling the mind to perceive the colour red.

There is a chain of events going back in time prior to my perceiving the colour red, which if disrupted, would have prevented the perception of the colour red

It is a fact that I directly perceive sensations, such as the colour red, an acrid smell, a bitter taste, a sharp pain or a screeching noise. These sensations are sometimes called qualia.

The expressions "I see the colour red", "I perceive the colour red", "I am aware of the colour red", "I am conscious of the colour red" and "I sense the colour red" seem synonymous.

It is accepted that each link in the chain can be of a different kind, in that an electrical signal up the optic nerve is of a different kind to a wavelength of 700nm that precedes it. It is also a fact that there is no information within a subsequent link in the chain that can determine the preceding link in the chain, in that the wavelength of 700nm could have been equally caused by light reflecting off a rose, a strawberry, a lizard, a frog, a painting, a television screen or a Christmas light. Each link in the chain is an intermediary between sunlight hitting the rose and the perceiver perceiving the colour red

There is the question of terminology regarding mapping, presenting and representing. We perceive the colour red because light was reflected off a rose. We can say that "the colour red represents a rose", "the colour red is mapped to the rose" or "the perceiver is presented with a rose and perceives the colour red", but as with most words in language, all these are figures of speech rather than literal descriptions.

The Perceiver and what the perceiver perceives

It is important to note that the "I" that is perceiving the colour red is not separate to the colour red that is being perceive, but rather the perceiver and perceived are one and the same thing. If otherwise, would lead into the infinite regress homunculus problem.

It cannot be the case that what the perceiver is perceiving is external to the perceiver, such as sense data or an intermediary, because sooner later, in order for there to be perception at all, what is being perceived must be internal to the perceiver. The perceiver and what is being perceived are two aspects of the same thing.

As John Searle explains in The Philosophy of Perception and the Bad Argument

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.

The cause of the perception

So the perceiver and the thing being perceived are two aspects of the same thing and neither external to the other. But something cannot come from nothing. The perception cannot have been spontaneously self-created out of nothing. There must have been a cause, even if the cause is unknown. As my perception of the colour red cannot have been caused by the colour red being perceived, because these are two aspects of the same thing, the perception must have caused by something external to not only the perceiver but also the thing being perceived. The cause can only have been a prior link in the chain of events going back in time.

The relation between what is perceived and the unknown cause of such perception

Humans commonly name the unknown cause of a sensation after the known effect. For example, the cause of seeing a red colour is described as a red object, the cause of a bitter taste is named as a bitter food, the cause of an acrid smell is named acrid smoke, the cause of hearing a loud noise is named a loud noise and the cause of a painful sting is named a sting. Although the sensation is real, the named cause is fictive.

We can only know about an object from its properties. If an object had no properties we would not know about it. For example we may describe a rose as having the properties of being red in colour, being circular in shape and being sweet in smell, yet as Bertrand Russell pointed out in his Theory of Descriptions, it is more correct to say that there is something that has the properties of being red, being circular and being sweet. There is no Platonic thing that is a rose that exists independently of its properties. The rose is no more than its set of properties. Therefore, to say "I see a red rose" is a figure of speech for the more literal "I see something that has the colour red, has a circular shape and a sweet smell, and that this something with these properties has been named "a rose"".

In the expression "I see a red rose", red is an intrinsic part of what a rose is, not an extrinsic property. We may say that red is an adjective qualifying the noun rose, but must remember that this is a linguistic convenience, not a literal description of the relationship between the object rose and its property redness.

Adverbialism

Therefore, as regards the Adverbialist, rather than say "I perceive a red, circular and sweet rose", it is more correct to say "I see something that has the properties of red, circular and sweet and that this something has been named rose".

Therefore, for the Adverbialist, as the perceiver of the sensation and the sensation are two aspects of the same thing, the expression "I see a red, circular and sweet rose" may be replaced by "I perceive redness, circularness and sweetness" and "this something having the properties of redness, circularness and sweetness" has been named "a rose"". For the Adverbialist, redness, circularness and sweetness are adverbs qualifying the verb "to perceive".

Adverbialism is consistent with Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions.

Now, whatever shall we do with realism?
— Mww

That which is real has affects/effects. — creativesoul

Ok, but I guess I’d favor a more eliminative version.

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 is not A-B. It is A-B-C-D-E-F and maybe G is the experience. This isn't complicated...

It's very simple—are you saying colours and seeing colours are the same thing? — Janus

I've addressed this. Restating the question in terms i've noted make no sense isn't helpful my guy.

hese are causal physical processes which give rise to perception, but which are themselves prior to perception — Janus

They are the process, and i've provided four citations to show that this is how the term is used. It explains the entire problem you're having with an extremely obvious and basic way understanding "direct" and "indirect" with regard to perception - which is the bodily process of getting from light to experience. As i've source-quoted. So, on this you're just wrong.

It is not A-B. It is A-B-C-D-E-F and maybe G is the experience. This isn't complicated... — AmadeusD

Is the experience (G) different to the perception? Some might say that perception refers to our sensory experience of the world.

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

You say colours are obviously visual sensations, and you say that seeing colours is a (presumably visual) sensation, so you seem to be saying that colours and seeing colours are the same thing. That's why I asked the question which you don't seem to be prepared to answer.

So, on this you're just wrong. — AmadeusD

And yet you seem to be completely incapable of saying why I am wrong. Odd that.

Some might say that perception refers to our sensory experience of the world. — Luke

It seems that 'perception' is a polysemous term and is used to refer to the whole process as in 'science of perception'. However, the part of the process that is prior to awareness seems irrelevant to the question of whether we see things or merely representations of things. Of course, we can say either and there is no matter of fact there but just different interpretations. I think the point at issue is whether one way of speaking or the other is more coherent and consistent.

For me saying that we see representations is more problematic and less parsimonious than saying we simply see things. The fact that the process that leads to our seeing things is complex does not seem relevant. Life and existence itself is a complex web of causal processes, and it does not seem right to characterize any of these as "indirect" in any absolute sense, but only in comparison to alternative processes that are more direct.

There is no alternative, more direct process of perception that we know of or can imagine except the prescientific 'naive realist' one where the eyes were thought of as windows through which we look out on a world of objects that were thought to exist in themselves exactly as they appear to us.

Philosophy is mostly grammatical issues. — Banno

Being that a subfield of grammar is semantics, that statement turns out to be unsurprising.

:up: