I'm an ontological anti-realist. Both direct and indirect realism are facets of our present psychology. I can't take either seriously because I don't have a vantage point from which to determine .

Plus I think you've overlooked the Geiger Counter.

The Fed isn't supposed to make rate changes during an election cycle, but they're probably going to have to in September. They're expected to lower the rate in keeping with jobs data. Wall Street will party and the economy will look good. That's bad for Trump, obviously.

We know how things affect the world and so can know about a thing from its effect.

Perhaps a different analogy is more helpful. A blind man can know that he is eating an apple because he knows what apples taste like, but the taste of an apple does not “resemble” the apple or any of its properties. An apple’s taste is a phenomenological consequence of the apple’s chemicals interacting with the tongue’s sense receptors. — Michael

I see what you're saying. But consider the spoon dipping into the two dimensional world. Everyone sees the same thing. There is therefore agreement about what's happening, and further, causality is noted. The passing of the spoon causes things to disappear from the world because it bumps them out of the film or plane. Can these guys say they understand the world?

Nobody in the world realizes what's happening, and indeed, they can't even imagine it. There's no telling what's really going on.

This is all to point out the biggie from Hume: our confidence in our knowledge of the world is not based on anything logical or empirical. I'm not arguing for direct realism because it doesn't need an argument. You can't live without it. Indirect realism inevitably opens up into global skepticism. It's an unsolved puzzle.

Anyway, the answer is that you trust your senses because you don't have any choice. You're an obligate direct realist, at least in the way you behave. Where there's a conflict between the way you behave and the philosophy you espouse, blah blah blah.

I believe in the existence of a Geiger counter despite the fact that experiences might not resemble their cause for the same reason that you believe in the existence of radiation despite the fact that Geiger counters do not resemble radiation. — Michael

Which was what?

I already have. Why won't you answer my question? Why do you trust a Geiger counter to tell you the local level of radiation? It doesn't resemble radiation at all. — Michael

I missed it. Where did you answer why you trust your senses?

My use of the geiger counter starts with trusting my senses with regard to the existence of the device. I trust my senses when I observe a readout. I trust the sensory input I received during the time I studied physics so that I have a vague idea how a geiger counter works. I always have a little doubt about the proper functioning of electronic equipment which is mostly a result of experience, so I trust what the counter says if it makes sense, in other words, if it fits in with everything else that's going on. Is that what you're looking for?

Why do you trust a Geiger counter to tell you the local level of radiation? — Michael

If I was like Hanover, I wouldn't trust that I have a Geiger counter in my hand. Is there some reason you can't just answer my question? Why do you trust your senses?

I don't even know what you mean by "senses telling the truth". Hanover and I are talking about experiences resembling their causes. — Michael

Why do you trust your senses if what they show you may or may not resemble what's in front of you?

Russell said the opposite: if direct realism is true then we must accept physics, but physics tells us that experiences do not resemble their causes, therefore if direct realism is true then indirect realism is true. — Michael

That is a conundrum, because it can't be both.

I addressed that with the very question I asked you, and which you conspicuously didn't answer. — Michael

1. Some of what you know about the Standard Model is information from your senses.
2. The rest is apriori knowledge.
3, You can't arrive at the Standard Model using apriori knowledge alone.

Conclusion: you have to believe your senses are telling you the truth in order to accept the Standard Model.

This is what Russell was talking about. It's a conundrum.

Do you trust the numbers on a Geiger counter to tell you the level of radiation in the environment, even though the numbers do not resemble radiation?

The presumption you have that one can trust one's experiences if and only if one's experience "resemble" their causes is a fallacy. — Michael

Why would you believe you actually have a geiger counter in your hand if your perceptions may or may not resemble the object?

Didn't you say that perceptions may or may not bear any resemblance to the object?

This is like asking why we accept the Standard Model if we cannot see electrons with the naked eye. — Michael

I don't think so. It's more like asking why you accept science of any kind if you can't rely on your senses to tell you the truth.

If you're conceding our perceptions might just be a pragmatic stimulus to navigate the world, which may or may not bear any resemblance to the object, then we're agreeing. — Hanover

If our perceptions may not bear any resemblance to what's out there, then why believe the science that led you to accept indirect realism?

I used to live in walking distance of a laundry mat, a grocery store, a public tennis court, a bar, and the university.

I should point out that when I stub my toe, I feel the pain in my toe, not my head — Harry Hindu

That's a cool trick the nervous system does. Pain is handled by a special neuron called a nociceptor. People who have chronic pain develop nervous superhighways so that any pain stimulus in the area jumps onto the same path. In other words, they lose the ability to correctly locate the pain. That problem can eventually progress until they have what's call "generalization" where they can't locate pain at all. It's just everywhere.

And this is the important point. It's not the case that we call this experience a red experience because it is the experience of 700nm light; it's the case that we call 700nm light red light because it is the normal cause of red experiences. — Michael

True.

Then why did you claim that there is a "gross disconnect" between a red experience and a picture that doesn't emit 700nm light? You seemed to be implying that it is "correct" for 700nm light to cause a red experience and "incorrect" for a different wavelength of light to cause a red experience. — Michael

I was just explaining multiple realizability in case you were interested. 700nm light causes red experiences so often that we call it red light. That's not a misuse of "red." It's just a different usage. As it happens, there are other brain states associated with the experience of red besides the one produced by red light.

I want to know if you accept the existence of colours-as-mental-phenomena. — Michael

Sure. My point was that we have limited understanding of how experience works. It's not as simple as: 700nm frequency causes the experience of red.

I'm asking you if "experienced as red" means "experienced as emitting 700nm light" given that you defined "red" as "emitting 700nm light". — Michael

I'm guessing you understood me just fine, you're trying to make a point by pretending you didn't?

"check out the strawberries that are experienced as red when they're not really emitting 700nm light" — Michael

Right. I don't know what you're talking about with what followed that.

Do you mean a pixel that emits 700nm light? — Michael

It's a range, but yea.

What's a red pixel? — Michael

A pixel that produces the frequency of red.

wasn't talking about a correspondence between stimulus and experience. I was talking about a correspondence between brain states and experience. — Michael

That isn't there either. All kinds of brain states can produce the same experience.

Gross disconnect between what? What do you even mean by "really" black and white? — Michael

There are no red pixels in that picture. It's an optical illusion. You were talking about correspondence of experience to neural processes. The point was to explain what multiple realizability is. There is no simple correspondence between stimulus and experience.

I don't know why but this thread seems to be about why they were blind sighted by such an ambitious goal, and historically failed at it. — Shawn

They consciously abandoned morality. They believed morality was conditioning from an era that was passing. They wanted to make their world into hell because that's what they thought was necessary to facilitate a natural evolution into a new phase of human life. Their plan was: destroy everything and something better will take shape. They were utterly and completely deluded

To the extent that one might want to argue for something like idealism or substance dualism or panpsychism, sure. So if that's how you want to defend naive colour realism then commit to one of them. — Michael

I was criticizing your use of science to support your argument. It's your worldview that says consciousness is confined to brains. Science does not confirm that.

But as it stands the scientific view is that colour experiences correspond to neural processes — Michael

Experience is associated with neural processes. If that's what you meant by "corresponds" then fine. If you meant something more, you'd have to explain what you mean. Due to multiple realizability, there isn't any straight forward correspondence. Check out the strawberries that are experienced as red, when they're really black and white. That's an example a gross disconnect. Minor ones are happening all the time.

and so that distal objects and their properties cannot causally influence colour experience except by causally influencing neural processes. — Michael

There isn't presently any working scientific theory about how experience works. It could involve some entanglement of the thigh bone for all we know. Again, you're confusing worldview for science.

Neuroscience doesn't say anything one way or the other about extension of consciousness. Therefore, if we want to talk about it, we'll have to back down into philosophy.

Yes, that’s what neuroscience shows. Human consciousness does not extend beyond the brain. — Michael

It sounds like you're saying that neuroscience shows that human consciousness doesn't extend beyond the brain. It doesn't show that. We don't presently have a working theory for how experience works.

My experience with ending a long term relationship was that I died halfway through it. I'm somebody else now. It was pretty bloody, too, in a poetic way. Wanting to change is the sickness unto death.

The pen has the property of causing the experience of red under certain conditions.

It's the same old song: the US overthrows a democratically elected government for 'reasons' and then proceeds to create a mess several times larger, leaving the country in ruins. — Tzeentch

That's how we role.

That we can't know everything doesn't mean we can't know anything.

We still landed a man on the moon even if we've not figured out Xeno's paradox. — Hanover

True. We still can't go beyond our limitations. That's what I thought you were trying to do with talk of what came before Adam's planets.

Assuming it possible the planets moved differently prior to human perspective, it does not follow they moved differently prior to human language. — Hanover

There's a profound paradox about motion: Xeno's Paradox. A paradox is a sign that we've butted up against the boundaries of the mind. Stay away from the boundaries and everything is fine. In other words, stop trying to be God and be happy with your lot as a tiny human, with limited understanding.

I can accept that language offers us a tool to understand the world and that it shapes some of our understanding, but the idea that non-liguistic organisms have no understanding of the world or that all that I touch and all that I feel and all that I know is language mediated is a concocted theory to sustain a Wittgensteinian model that is likely based upon a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein. — Hanover

I understand what you're saying.

I say "likely" because Wittgenstein's communication skills were lacking. Ironically. — Hanover

He was echoing Plato, who has Socrates claim that every philosopher wants to die because it seems that that's the only way to get a vantage point on life: to sit outside it. As long as you're inside it, you have to be happy with the shadows on the wall.

How did the planets move before Adam looked up and saw it go from evening to the morning? — Hanover

The human viewpoint is that gravity did it. The view beyond human ideas is not available to me. That's a favored interpretation of the Tractatus: there are answers that lie beyond what we can know. When you realize that, you take a pause, sigh, and start asking again, knowing that you're reaching for something you can't have.

Prior to language, was there physics? — Hanover

No, you need language for physics, don't you?

We're talking past one another. You're focusing on physics. Philosophy aims deeper.

Think about the domain of the red percept. It's you, right? Red dwells in you. Lacan says that you are a product of language use. Language sets out the whole framework of physics.

If you want to know if my pain is like your pain, I can stick you with the same pin I stick myself. — Hanover

Can you wipe it with alcohol first?

Michael might well be able to see different shades of red without having names for them, and demonstrate this by matching colour swatches. — Banno

I mentioned that. Matching the swatch is using an external standard to pick out the shade. That he would require that, and I think he would, seems to undermine his claim that lone percepts are the source of knowledge about color.

Honestly, I think your attitude is more about posters on this forum than about language philosophy. The damnedest interpretations of Wittgenstein show up here.

The real thing is just about how language influences what you perceive. People who suggest that sensation has nothing to do with perception are, as you said, just being ridiculous.

And it is these percepts, not a surface layer of atoms reflecting various wavelengths of light, that constitute our ordinary, everyday understanding of colours. — Michael

Yea, I don't think that's the whole story.

How do you know how I experience?

I'm telling you there are plenty of experiences I have that language plays no role in. How do you know that to be false? — Hanover

I'm guessing you're like me. You use ideas, like tree to organize your sensations into something meaningful. Ideas usually go by names which you learn. You probably have an innate capacity for using ideas in this way, but it's developed and heavily influenced by your language and culture.

You very well may have nonverbal experience. I do. If I talk all day, I'll eventually become exhausted and nonverbal. It's not actually a whole lot of fun.