back in the Good ol’ Days, that perception was one thing, experience was another, just as you’re describing the confusion of the road with the destination. But that road has to be built, which requires machinery of a certain type, and that’s what’s been neglected here for 37 pages. — Mww
So is the implication that there is a hidden feature in the subject's own phenomenological experience that the subject is unable to discern? — hypericin
Is it not similar with sensory perceptions and knowledge about the external world? Aren’t sensory perceptions the means by which we gain access to – and knowledge about – the external world? Surely we should not identify perception of external objects as a direct representation of the objects themselves; nor should we identify perceptions as indirect representations, for that matter. Either one would be akin to conflating process with result; confusing the road with the destination; and identifying addition, subtraction, multiplying and dividing with the solutions of algebraic problems. — Thales
Isn't Frege's distinction between the sense and reference of a singular referring expression (as contrasted with definite descriptions) a good way to express this difference that leads neither to the conflation you are warning about nor to the problems generated by representationalism? — Pierre-Normand
This raises a deeper question for the common-factor theorist: if perceptual experience is just a matter of inner sensations or representations caused by some stimulus, what makes it a perception "of" anything in the external world at all? What are the conditions of satisfaction that determine whether a perceptual experience is veridical or not — whether it matches mind-independent reality?
The common-factor view seems to lack the resources to answer this question. There's no way to directly compare an inner perceptual representation with an outer state of affairs to see if they match. Representational content and veridicality conditions can't be grounded in purely internal phenomenal character.
The disjunctivist, in contrast, can ground perceptual content and veridicality in the perceiver's embodied capacities for successful interaction with their environment. Consider the experience of seeing an apple as within reach. On the disjunctivist view, the phenomenal character of this experience isn't exhausted by an inner sensation or mental image. Rather, it consists in your very readiness to engage with the apple — your expectation that you can successfully reach out and grasp it.
This means that the content of the perceptual experience is inherently action-oriented and world-involving. It includes an implicit reference to your bodily abilities and their anticipated successful deployment in the environment. The experience is veridical just in case this perceptual-motor expectation is fulfilled — that is, just in case your body is actually attuned to the apple's affordances in the way your experience presents it as being. — Pierre-Normand
But how could anything (physical or mental) consist of one's readiness (a disposition) and expectation (an attitude)? This makes no sense. How could 'readiness' and 'expectation' instantiate as actual conditions of satisfaction that causally fixes the content and character of the perceptual experience? — jkop
Hm, is that you Pierre, or an AI? I'd better ask, because the common-factor view has little to do with an inner representation, and I think Pierre knows this. A direct realist has no reason to compare an inner representation with an outer state of affairs.
For a direct realist, the inner content of a perceptual experience presents the outer object and state of affairs as its conditions of satisfaction. A non-veridical experience has inner content but doesn't present its conditions of satisfaction.
Regarding disjunctivism, you write that the content of the perceptual experience is inherently action-oriented and world-involving. Well, seeing an object in action is obviously action-oriented, and seeing the world is world-involving. That's fine, but trivially true. Very AI.
Furthermore, your description of seeing an apple is a mystery. You write that the phenomenal character of what you see consists in your readiness to engage with the apple and expectation that you can successfully reach out and grasp it. But how could anything (physical or mental) consist of one's readiness (a disposition) and expectation (an attitude)? This makes no sense. How could 'readiness' and 'expectation' instantiate as actual conditions of satisfaction that causally fixes the content and character of the perceptual experience?
I'm not an expert on disjunctivism, but some disjunctivists (e.g. Alva Noe) seem to think that perceptual experience is not even spatially located in the brain but somehow floats around in a network of objects that one can become conscious of. Fascinating, and in some sense not even false, but doesn't explain much. — jkop
As I am also attempting to explain, it is the indirect realists who are facing a challenge in explaining how the inner mental states that we enjoy can have intentional (referential) relations to the objects that they purport to represent that are apt to specify the conditions for those experiences to be veridical. — Pierre-Normand
Are you sure? The IRist doesn't seem to be obligated to account for this at all. Merely take it that they are approximations. These can be as-good-as-veridical for practical purposes. The inner mental states (though, are you referring to 'an experience' or valences associated with experiences?) are causally linked to the objects, indirectly. This relationship holds even if there is no 1:1, truth-making correlation between the two. — AmadeusD
unreasonable effectiveness. — AmadeusD
For everything preceding this: Yeah, good. Thank you. There are parts there I would have trouble answering without a sufficiently formal attempt, which I wont make.Furthermore, I could point to the inroads that embodied/enactive/situated paradigms have made into psychological and neuroscientific research in recent decades and how they have made theses fields of inquiry, and some of their applications, more effective at accomplishing their aims. — Pierre-Normand
Some thoughts: I take it that Direct Realists must, to a least a large degree, accept Physicalism. — AmadeusD
If that is so, these are brain states, not dispositions. They are emergent, in experience, as an attitude or disposition, but are in fact, specific physical states of hte brain in relation to whatever objects are in question. So, a DI could plausibly argue that those states are conditions necessary for whatever experience they are calling veridical. The state + the object = the experience. That seems direct enough.
I reject all of this, though. — AmadeusD
As I am also attempting to explain, it is the indirect realists who are facing a challenge in explaining how the inner mental states that we enjoy can have intentional (referential) relations to the objects that they purport to represent that are apt to specify the conditions for those experiences to be veridical. — Pierre-Normand
On the disjunctivist view, the phenomenal character of this experience isn't exhausted by an inner sensation or mental image. Rather, it consists in your very readiness to engage with the apple — Pierre-Normand
The disjunctivist, in contrast, can ground perceptual content and veridicality in the perceiver's embodied capacities for successful interaction with their environment. — Pierre-Normand
Because perception is direct. — jkop
For example, my belief that it currently rains represents a possible fact, but my visual experience of the rain presents the actual fact. The belief is not causally related to the rain in the direct way that seeing the rain is. In fact, I can't separate my visual experience from the rain, because it is the visible character of the rain that forms the content of the experience. This is how the content of the rain is a direct presentation of the rain. — jkop
Couldn't an indirect realist just be deflationary about truth and say their grounding for justifications is practical purposes? — frank
it is the visible property of the rain that determines the phenomenal character of the visual experience — jkop
I suspect the answer to that is the answer that explains how paintings can have intentional relations to the objects that they purport to be of or how words can have intentional relations to the objects that they purport to describe. — Michael
Paintings and human texts indeed (often) purport to be about objects in the world. But this purport reflects the intentions of their authors, and the representational conventions are established by those authors. In the case of perception, the relation between the perceptual content and the represented object isn't likewise in need of interpretations in accordance with conventions. Rather, it is a matter of the experience's effectiveness in guiding the perceiver's actions in the world. You can look at a painting and at the scenery that the painting depicts side by side, but you can't do so with your perception of the visual world and the visual world itself. — Pierre-Normand
After struggling for a couple of days with ordinary manipulation tasks and walking around, the subject becomes progressively skillful, and at some point, their visual phenomenology flips around. — Pierre-Normand
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