Why do you think that the proximate cause for touch and taste is the distal object but not for sight? How about hearing? — fdrake
The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, known as the distal stimulus or distal object. By means of light, sound, or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called transduction. This raw pattern of neural activity is called the proximal stimulus. These neural signals are then transmitted to the brain and processed. The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the percept.
To explain the process of perception, an example could be an ordinary shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates the retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus. The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example could be a ringing telephone. The ringing of the phone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus. The brain's interpretation of this as the "ringing of a telephone" is the percept.
The different kinds of sensation (such as warmth, sound, and taste) are called sensory modalities or stimulus modalities.
I don't understand the distinction. Interpretation is a mental phenomenon. Either way, like above, I don't see how it's relevant to the dispute between direct and indirect realism. — Michael
I am asking, is this proximal object that they see something that is already interpreted or still ambiguous (as, say, a bundle of colors and shapes)? — Pierre-Normand
It's interpreted. When there's something ambiguous like the duck-rabbit I can "switch" between seeing the duck and seeing the rabbit without any change in the shapes or colours. — Michael
Why is it, then, that you can't focus your attention on the proximal mental image and reinterpret it? Isn't it because this "mental image" already is an act of interpreting what is out there rather than it being an act of "seeing" what's in the brain? — Pierre-Normand
So idealists believe our perceptions are the objects? What brand of idealists does that? — Mww
Perceptions are that which affords the immediate consciousness of the real, in a sensation. — Mww
The indirect realist claims that we do not have direct knowledge of distal objects because distal objects are not constituents of experience. The constituents of experience – smells, tastes, colours – are (interpreted) mental phenomena, and I smell smells, taste tastes, and see colours. So the indirect realist, perhaps cumbersomely, says that we smell and taste and see mental phenomena. — Michael
The direct (naive) realist claims that we do have direct knowledge of distal objects because distal objects are constituents of experience. The constituents of experience – smells, tastes, colours – are mind-independent properties of distal objects, and I smell smells, taste tastes, and see colours. So the direct realist says that we smell and taste and see mind-independent properties of distal objects. — Michael
You (and others) seem to be getting unnecessarily lost in the grammar of "I see X", but this is a red herring. The relevant concern is the reasoning that precedes such a claim, i.e. are distal objects and their properties constituents of experience and so do we have direct knowledge of distal objects and their properties. If you accept that they're not and that we don't then you're an indirect realist, even if you don't like indirect realist grammar and would rather continue to say "I see distal objects". — Michael
Perceptions are that which affords the immediate consciousness of the real, in a sensation.
— Mww
Which doesn't protect you against the uncertainty of whether those perceptions are really of the outside world or generated by your own mind. — Lionino
If it be granted the senses inform but do not judge, the notion here of protection from mental uncertainty regarding mere perception, is moot. — Mww
The physiological certainty on the other hand, manifest as an affect on the sensory apparatuses by real things external to those apparatuses, which just is that affordance, and from which sensations necessarily follow, is given and is thereby incontestable, insofar as the negation or denial of a given, is self-contradictory. — Mww
To even suppose the mind generates the very perceptions which occassion the pursuit of knowledge as a cognitive terminus, is to anesthetize the human intellectual system from its empirical predicates, which is tantamount to denying to Nature its proper authority as arbiter of human experience. — Mww
Veridical perception, hallucination, and illusions. You claim they share the same constituents, and the difference is in their causes.
Can you set out the different causes? — creativesoul
They are what's being perceived in every veridical and illusory case — creativesoul
Since all three kinds are existentially dependent upon distal objects, but hallucinations do not include distal objects, there are differences in their constitution — creativesoul
Can you rephrase? — Lionino
….doesn't seem to account for hallucinations…. — Lionino
Thanks for mentioning the SPR article on the problem of perception. Tim Crane, who authored it, was the perfect person for the job. What feature of intentionalism is it that you wish to retain that you think might be compatible with disjunctivism? — Pierre-Normand
Amusing, but it's a qualitative difference like there's a qualitative difference between cubism and method acting. While you might get to watch either, the context is quite different, as is the way one thinks about each.There's a qualitative difference only in the sense that there's a qualitative difference between photorealism and cubism; it's still just paint on canvas. It's not as if in the veridical case distal objects and their properties are constituents of the experience. — Michael
Isn't that the very point at issue?It's not as if in the veridical case distal objects and their properties are constituents of the experience. — Michael
Well, I've been using Austin's arguments here, despite being well aware of Anscombe's excellent critique. For the purposes of this thread the story is about why indirect realism is wrong; that's a different topic to which story is right. There's a whole lot more going on here than ever gets addressed in these threads.
But to be a bit more specific, we've all by now seen the man in the gorilla suit in the basketball game. Our perception is directed, intentional. While you are reading this you are ignoring the stuff going on around you, the itch of those haemorrhoids, the noise from the other room, the smell of the coffee. Other views of perception fail to give this aspect its proper place, they are excessively passive. This is the advantage of intentionalism: that perception is intentional, an action we perform.
I'm not convinced that intentionalism is obligated to accept the common kind claim, as is suggested in the SEP article.
Perhaps a thread specifically on The Intentionality of Sensation: A Grammatical Feature would attract some interest. But it's not an easy paper. — Banno
They are what's being perceived in every veridical and illusory case
— creativesoul
Which means what? — Michael
I have been trying to explain that when naive realists claim that some distal object is (directly) perceived they mean that the object is a literal constituent of the experience and that when indirect realists claim that some distal object is not (directly) perceived they mean that the object is not a literal constituent of the experience. — Michael
Since all three kinds are existentially dependent upon distal objects, but hallucinations do not include distal objects, there are differences in their constitution
— creativesoul
That doesn’t follow. That X depends on Y is not that Y is a constituent of X. A painting depends on a painter but the painter is not a constituent of the painting. The constituents of the painting are just paint and a canvas.
You seem to be confusing constituent with cause. — Michael
It seems to me as if my visual experience literally extends beyond my body and that distal objects are literally present within my visual experience. This is the naive view that naive realists accepted as true, but which the science of perception has now shown to be false. Indirect realists rejected this naive view and claimed that the visual experience is a mental phenomenon that exists within the brain and is, at best, a representation of the world outside the body.
Then so-called "non-naive" direct realists accept this indirect realist view but for some reason call themselves direct realists, probably because that get confused by the grammar of "I see X".
They've just redefined the meaning of "direct perception". — Michael
A painting depends on a painter but the painter is not a constituent of the painting. The constituents of the painting are just paint and a canvas. — Michael
The proximal cause is the entity that stimulates the sense receptors. With sight it's light, with hearing it's sound, with smell it's odour molecules in the air, and with touch and taste it's the distal object itself. — Michael
There is however the distal object, which is the proximal cause of the table related aspects of all our proximal stimuli in veridical perception - and that is what we perceive. — fdrake
Our perception is directed, intentional. — Banno
The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR). PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism (SDR), the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories.
While this latter dispute could boil down to a disagreement over the meaning of the word "perceive", the dispute between naive and indirect realists could equally be viewed as a disagreement over the meaning of the phrase "visual experience". So, if the dispute between direct realists and indirect realists is merely grammatical, then so too is the dispute between naive realists and indirect realists. They are therefore equally substantive disputes. — Luke
Agreed, but false analogy with regard to what I'm arguing. That fits with what you're arguing about all perception, and what I'm arguing only regarding hallucinations/dreams. Replace the painter with distal objects. — creativesoul
Indeed. And your attention is directed towards That.By the way, I'm presently detecting an odor that I know I've smelled before, but I can't remember what it is or what it's called. I think it may be a flower, but I don't know. That shows that you don't have to know a name for something to recognize it and be keenly aware of it. Although I have Asperger's, so I may be wired differently. — frank
The dispute between naive realists and indirect realists concerns whether or not experience provides us with direct knowledge of the mind-independent nature of distal objects. That's not a grammatical dispute. Whatever each group means by "visual experience" it must be such that if, as naive realists claim, distal objects are constituents of visual experience then we have direct knowledge of the mind-independent nature of distal objects. — Michael
it's a worthy piece. There is a discussion of the change in the use of "intention", it's special philosophical uses and what Anscombe sees as the misspelling, "intension". The critique of Austin is so much the more cutting because Anscombe adopts both Austin's own style and method. She would have attended some of his sessions at Oxford.I haven't read Anscombe's paper. — Pierre-Normand
withThe epistemological problem of perception concerns whether or not distal objects and their properties are given to us in experience; it doesn't concern the direction of our attention. You appear to be looking at things in reverse. — Michael
Michael manages to only see the concept, and never the horse.Frege's conclusion "The concept horse is not a concept" was based on the same sort of trouble about different uses of expressions. What "cheval" stands for is a concept, and what "cheval" stands for is a horse; these premisses do not, however, yield the result that if Bucephalus is a horse he is a concept. Similarly, what John is said to have sent Mary is a book, and what John is said to have sent Mary is a direct object; these premisses do not yield the result that if John gave Mary a book, he gave her a direct object. — Anscombe
Even using a list of variations in a way familiar to readers of Austin.Now 'ordinary language' views and 'sense-datum' views make the same
mistake, that of failing to recognize the intentionality of sensation, though they take opposite positions in consequence. This failure comes out clearly on the part of an ordinary-language philosopher if he insists that what I say I see must really be there if I am not lying, mistaken, or using language in a "queer", extended (and therefore discountable) way.
But as I recall Austin is explicit, in Sense and Sensibilia, in avoiding commitment to direct realism per se, rather rejecting the framing of the dilemma altogether.John Austin, who opposed the view that there are two senses of "see" ac- cording as the seeing has to be veridical or not, remarked casually that there were perhaps two senses of "object of sight". I think it was in this connection that he contrasted "Today I saw a man born in Jerusalem" and "Today I saw a man shaved in Oxford" -both said in Oxford. At any rate, one says, you didn't see him born today; perhaps you did see someone being shaved. So the one description, while true of what you saw, in a sense does not give what you saw. A description which is true of a material object of the verb "to see", but which states something that absolutely or in the circumstances "you can't have seen", necessarily gives only a material object of seeing. — Anscombe
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