My take is that there isn't really evidence for indirect realism as much as indirect realism is an interpretation of what we know -- so I'm providing an alternate interpretation to weaken the justification for indirect realism. Or at least that's the strategy. — Moliere

Yeah, fair enough. I do agree you can plausibly see it different ways depending on how you frame things.

It seems so to me, yes. — Moliere

I think our metaphysics clearly are just quite different and don't agree.

I don't understand what a representation of my toe would be when I'm stubbing it or not. — Moliere

Minimally I have a hard time thinking of the perception of my body as a representation: I can go as far as to say it's a bundle, and there is no "I", but I don't think my body is a bundle of representations. — Moliere

Very interesting; can you elaborate? Especially the first bit.

all Russian peasants held their land in a form of communal ownership known as obshchina or mir, which was similar, but not identical, to the commons-based communities in pre-industrial England — Monthly Review

Very interesting. Makes me think that communism as created by Marx maybe was envisioned specifically in these kinds of communal contexts and so communism would be a kind of radical political modification to a familiar (or at least not so far off) social situation.

Look how different society is now though - how individualized but at the same time geographically extended / globalized it is; how much economies have shifted from manufacturing and producing material goods to services and entertainment; how we have gone way beyond basic necessities to choice and consumerism. I wonder if communism actually even makes sense in modern society without some radical re-invention of it. Maybe someone has done that. That said, even experiments in socialist communities back in the 1800s basically all failed as far as I'm aware.

Was Russia ever actually truly communist though?

These are explanations for phenomena used to support indirect realism which don't resort to the position of indirect realism — Moliere

But most indirect realists do think that these explanations are directly evidencing indirect realisms.

I think "information" counts as kind of idealism, if you're positing it as a kind of fundamental substance that everything is composed of. — Moliere

No, I'm not implying it in a fundamental metaphysical sense. But some have pointed out that my actual view on mind-body metaphysics is not so dissimilar from a kind of neutral monism (maybe a very minimalist one) so maybe you would still think it the case of my view anyway. Though I don't think I see my view that way.

Isn't that pretty much what the topic of indirect or naive realism is about? Fundamental metaphysics? — Moliere

I'm not sure to be honest. I think it depends on the angle you take. As you say below, it can be quite vague all this talk I think. I don't think indirect realists necessarily have to bring strong metaphysics into it beyond the talk of realism about representations, similar to the way you can talk about whether scientific theories (are real)*. The science I think provides quite a good description of how perceptions would be indirect so not much work is needed to be done there. Naive direct realism I'm not so sure.

I'm uncertain of the best way to put it, but at the very least what it means is that though direct realists directly perceive objects in the world that does not then entail that what they see is a fixed property, or that there are not other properties which a given perception is not perceiving.

It's mostly the notion of permanent objects and their essences that I'd try to avoid -- things are in constant flux. — Moliere

My intuition is that this would certainly require a more elaborate metaphysics about the world.

- a term of art meant to contrast with "properties", is what I was thinking. — Moliere

Ah well, fair enough.

Perhaps this is a way of differentiating the naive from the direct realist: I think the naive realist is seeing something real, that literal objects are a part of their experience, but that does not then mean that every judgment about that real thing which a naive realist makes is going to be true or comprehensive. — Moliere

But the experiences still extend into the outside world beyond the head?

While I've come to discount the notion of an information ontology, you're far from alone in thinking like that. — Moliere

Well I only use it in a weak sense as opposed to a fundamental, tangible ontology.

in a sense I'd say that every judgment has a dual-awareness -- the judgment ,and what the judgment is about) — Moliere

Yes, I think I understand.

But how do we really differentiate which is the better way to talk? — Moliere

Well I'm not sure since it seems you were perhaps using affordance in different sense, ha. But possibly yes, I definitely think I have preferred starting points in my reasonings that are probably not the same as yours.

Edit: ( )*.

No theory has an explanation of why experience compliments activity. Idealism still cannot answer the hard problem. It just shifts from having experiences of 'the world', to having experiences of one's mind. But the problem of experience remains. — AmadeusD

I don't know exactly what you mean for experience to compliment activity.

If everything is experience, there is no hard problem because the problem just becomes "why are there experiences?" but if everything is experience, then this is no different from "why does anything exist?" which is equally applicable to a physicalist. There is no physical things in idealism just experiential phenomena that follow the laws of physics.

This is a hard problem but not the one of consciousness and is arguably even more intractable to the point that most people don't consider it that interesting except perhaps people who believe in God or something.

Aside:

And maybe people similarly-minded to Dennett actually want to turn the hard problem of consciousness into this kind of more trivial hard problem - i.e. the reasoning going something like - Why does anything exist? Can we even answer that? Do we have to make up an additional metaphysical substance of consciousness that needs its own separate answer? This is probably close to my view on that matter. I don't think there are sufficiently clear notions of fundamental metaphysics that warrant an intrinsic dualism of experience vs. physical so there is no reason to postulate that a different kind of creation story should exist for something called experience. I think that the nature and limits of our information processing is plausibly a sufficient way of explaining why the hard problem arises for people (in terms of being unable to explaim certain things about reality)**.

Back to idealism:

To my mind, problems analogous to the hard problem of consciousness (which I think are probably actually closer in spirit to the combination problems of panpsychism e.g. see stanford encyclopedia panpsychism page) only come about in idealism when you postulate something like observers that have a way they seem to themselves, via their own experiences, which is different to how they seem from another observer's perspective.

Obviously, this construction has an inherent indirect aspect to it in the sense that there are experiences out in the world and then your own experiences which seem to be about those experiences but are not the same - they are separated. For instance, I have my own experience of what is going on inside my mind. Presumably other people perceive what is going on in my mind as brains in their own experience, through various levels of mediation. And it is only then imo that there is this kind of hard problem/combination-type problem of consciousness for idealism - because it seems inexplicable that my experiences right now look like a brain to someone else, which is an objects that seems structurally completely different. But again, this presupposes an indirectness about how we observe things. At the same time it is not identical to the hard problem because physical things still don't exist - its more the problem of how certain experiences can produce other disparate experiences (i.e. my experiences create the impression of a brain).

I think if you take away that indirectness and just have mental observers all observing a common experiential world then this hard-type problem doesn't arise. It might not actually be a plausible way to view the world based on scientific knowledge we have, but that is because imo scientific knowledge paints a picture of indirect mediation (i.e. object perception mediated by chains of events from the surface of an object to a brain which implies boundaries that gatekeep information and separate internal events / representations / experiences from different external stuff out there). Indirect mediation is precisely why I have both the notion of a ball and the atoms that make it up... at least, that is the best explanation. At the same time, without indirect mediation I feel like there would be no need to identify brain processes and experiences or distinguish internal experiences from external stuff. That's not to say older Cartesian notions of mind-body problem wouldn't arise but not sure its same as more modern versions I would be interested in.

So I think in that sense hard-type problems in idealism do presuppose indirect realism (including external objects to be realist about which are qualitatively different from internal perception). If everything were direct, the hard problem of consciousness would just reduce to the problem of why experiences exist? why are the laws of nature they are? - which isn't particularly different from analogous questions for a physicist.. Why do we have certain physical laws? etc.

therefore there is no hard problem. Experience is a brute fact of reality.

The bolded, appears to me, an absolute fact as long as one is not an Idealist. There is the world. There is inside the head. — AmadeusD

So it appears you already anticipated the answer I gave about why idealism doesn't necessarily have a hard problem of consciousness.

Obviously, you may think it an absolute fact, but then what I am saying is if it wasn't, the idealist would have no hard problem.

I'm not entirely sure what's being suggested here. AI doesn't have conscious experience, that we know of. — AmadeusD

It's not clear to me that indirect realism needs to be a concept restricted to conscious experiencers. For instance, if realism is a concept that can be attributed to mathematical scientific theories, why can't it be attributed to the representations and models built in machine learning? And often, these machine learning models quite aptly embody the idea of in-direct realism, since they are what neuroscientists use to model how the brain and mind works. For instance, Bayesian statistics involving the idea of learning internal representations or models about hidden variables based on noisy sensory data. This is similar to how debates about indirect vs direct perception in psychology have been framed (e.g. gregory vs gibson https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Gregory). A mathematical scientific theory cannot talk about anything about as much as A.I., yet people often attribute realism to them.

So I think really these debates about direct and indirect realism, though obviously may involve the concept of experience, may not be directly related to the hard problem of consciousness itself.

Edit: ()**

but hallucinations like one experiences on hallucinogens or when they don't have enough sugar to make the brain function as it normally does. — Moliere

I am not sure I see a profound difference tbh. Disruption of normal functioning is what the indirect realist sees as disruption of normal representations.

if we do not analyze them using Cartesian assumptions, are evidence that our mind is a part of the world because the world influences it, rather than the other way about — Moliere

Again, maybe this is all just a semantics issue rather than representing deep conflicts with what the indirect realist conventionally believes.

I think I will just note that my "direct awareness of information" doesn't seem conceptually that far away from semantic direct realism... minus the realism.. so I guess it isn't so close, ha. But the concept is reminiscient imo in terms of the kind of change it makes to differ itself from direct realism.

So I'd claim that I am aware of my toe — Moliere

Right. For me this almost implies some form of idealism where the object of my toe is just the experience of my toe, without anything more. I think I would also be open though toward some kind of notion of direct awareness of information or something like that which I
think is similar to this comment here you made:

If it's all just experience then wouldn't that be a kind of direct realism? There wouldn't even be a self as much as a local bundle of experiences which gets in the habit of calling itself "I", erroneously. — Moliere

But to clarify I wasn't trying to necessarily imply anything about the universe being just experiences. I don't believe sufficiently clear notions of fundamental metaphysics are accessible so I don't bother with that.

I was just saying that I am having what I call experiences and they flow and any time I recognize errors, that is just encompassed in types of experiential flow. And yes, what I would call the self is enacted in the flow too just like you said.

It might not be apt to call it direct realism though because I wouldn't say it conflicted with the idea of mediational processes and a chain of causes originating outside of what is experienced. It is more appropriately, and perhaps trivially, a direct awareness of what is going on in my head which I think is then not the same as the kind of direct realism described on wikipedia or something. It would be quite weakened and I would even push back against the notion of there being a fact of the matter about the sense that these experiences are about objective objects out in the world in the same kind of way I push back against scientific realism. As an analogy, I would say what we perceive is closer to a notion of an instrumentalist science where we construct theories that predict data, as opposed to theories being objectively real.

I think objects have affordances more than distinct properties. — Moliere

But what does it mean for a color itself to be an affordance? What is it inherently that colors afford? On the contrary, color seems more closely related to wavelength properties in light, which maybe then can be used to construct affordances in some sense afterward (and cannot be identical per se).

And sometimes people do see features which are not actually there from some other person's perspective, like hallucinations. Someone on an LSD trip might see motion in the carpet where another person sees none at all. (Though I guess you might say motion and non-motion are both there?)

Tbh I think the affordance/J.J.Gibson-kind of direct perception is closer to my "direct awareness of information" than it is to more literal direct realism. But I suspect maybe that interpretation may be particular to me. The idea of affordances definitely was a significant input, among others, to what led me to the idea that our experiences are fundamentally just about "what happens next?" and enacting that... which I see as pretty much just a more general view of affordances. So affordances is an important concept to me but I have gone away from the idea that the kind of qualities I directly experience are literally affordances. If sensory information arises from patterns on sensory boundaries like the retina, then the connection to affordances must come in afterwards.

For me, I don't think it makes sense to say the dress can be two colors without loosening realism and directness, arguably both. But again, I don't think that contradicts my "direct awareness of information" thing imo.

Edit: ( ).

though it's not all that satisfying to me to say that the hard problem presupposes anything. — AmadeusD

I think it does. If you are like an idealist and the world of experience is just the world, then I don't think there is a hard problem for them in the way you imply. For there to be a hard problem I think there must be a kind of dualism where what is going on outside the head differs from inside the head (presupposing indirectness that would not be there for the idealist where the nature of the world as it is is right before their very eyes).

If there's no conscious experience, there's nothing to compare with mind-independence. — AmadeusD

Why can't I just talk about some kind of representations an A.I. has?

Edit: ( ).

Is that not different to your mind? — Moliere

Yes, when you put them side-by-side but I am still not sure what the latter really means in terms of being aquainted with the world.

So how does the indirect realist account for error about perception, if not another intermediary? — Moliere

To me, there are basically just sequences of experiences and we can be erroneous about what experiences will happen next, or what experiences accompany each other. That is all. And recognizing errors itself involves some sequence of experiences.

To me it seems like it's much more elegant to simply say we can be fallible — Moliere

What if two people see the same object in two different ways due to an illusion, yet they are both directly aquainted with that object?

I'd believe that if we recreated the conditions for creating perception then we'd produce the same results, but I don't believe anyone really knows those conditions. — Moliere

Well I think we agree here.

there is no direct link between most things in the world and our experience of them. This is, in fact, the hard problem — AmadeusD

I am not sure I would say that the hard problem is the crux of the problem - if anything, the hard problem probably presupposes indirect realism. It's also an interesting question whether indirect realism is a construct that can be applied to things that don't have experience.

using arguments like this seems to me to entirely side-step the question, and assumes that the very concept of 'direct'ness is somehow intensional and not something which can be ascertained 'correctly' seems both unsatisfactory, and under-explanatory. — AmadeusD

Well yes, I think it's difficult to ignore steps of mediation in the chain of events leading to experience, especially under a notion of indirect realism defined by the idea that perception is governed by experiences or representations different from the objects-in-themselves. I guess under that definition I could equally ask whether anything could count as direct which seems quite difficult imo under modern understandings of science and partly why I wasn't sure what people were meaning by direct realism.

I don't think it's a matter of knowledge as much as an interpretation of what we know. — Moliere

Well alright, but then I think I would be interested in whether you would think it acceptable for an indirect realist to call you an indirect realist, since you are not necessarily contradicting their beliefs at all as far as I can tell.

I don't know why I'd prioritize ipseity over the object... the sacrifice of fidelity to our intuitions. — Moliere

Some interesting thoughts here.

Rather, I can't see how we'd be able to tell the story about retina, photons, or brains without knowing -- rather than inferring -- about the world. — Moliere

Not sure I agree. I don't see the contradiction in the idea that there are things that happen beyond our immediate perceptions which we create stories to try and explain even if we cannot definitively know anything in a perfect way.

Else, "retina, photons, brains" are themselves just inferences about an experiential projection in a causal relationship with a reality we know nothing about, but just make guesses about. — Moliere

Well all of our knowledge about the world is enacted within experiences which are not identical with things in the outside world beyond those experiences.

The only problem with this view being that we do know things, so it falls in error on the other side -- on the side of certain knowledge which rejects beliefs which could be wrong, when all proper judgment takes place exactly where we could be wrong. — Moliere

I am not sure I understand.

There's a difference between being able to accomplish something, and knowing something.

I'd liken our neuroscientists to medieval engineers -- they can make some observations and throw together some catapults, but they do not know the mechanical laws of Newton or its extensions.

It's more because we're ignorant of how this whole thing works -- even at the conceptual level, which is why it's interesting in philosophy -- so I wouldn't believe it without more. I'd think the person was making some sort of mistake along the way, in the same way that I thought about the Google employee who thought that later iterations of ChatGPT are conscious. — Moliere

I really don't think its as complicated as you make out. The only way information gets into our brain and cause sensory experiences is by stimulating sensory receptors. The light hitting my retina is causing patterns of excitation at any given time. If artificially exciting them in an identical way did not produce the same results it would seem inexplicable to me. Why wouldn't it? To me that is an unnecessary skepticism.

Rather, we directly interact with the world as a part of it -- the world interacting with itself, in the broad view. — Moliere

I would ask whether anything could ever count as indirect under this view. On the other hand, if you think of the fact that we, as parts, can be decomposed into parts then there are parts which mediate eachother's interactions with the rest of the world... visual cortical states, sensory states on the retina, photons travelling in the air. I can maybe in some sense interact with patterns in the outside world but not without those patterns appearing on the surface of my retina through photonic interactions and then the correlations appearing in cortical states. If that information is about something that has happened on the surface of a car 30 feet away then I do not see how there is not mediation there which leads from events at the car to what I see.

and all that seems to justify doubt that were some scientist of consciousness to claim they have a brain in a vat which is experiencing I'd simply doubt it without more justification. It's entirely implausible that we'd stumble upon how to do that given the depth of our ignorance. — Moliere

I am not sure I agree. Our experiences are a direct result of stimulation at sensory boundaries so I do not see an immediate biological or physical reason to suggest that artificial stimulations couldn't produce the same experiences in a brain in a vat scenario. Neuroscientists can already cause familiar experiences by artificially stimulating sensory receptors or brain cells.

Nevertheless, we don’t know what goes on under the hood, yet we rise to the occassion of making it comprehensible to ourselves, in some form, by some method. Representation is merely a component which fits into one of those methods. — Mww

so we throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks — Mww

Yup, definitely agree with your sentiments in this post! I think this applies to all our learning. All we have are "stories" that are constructed and enacted in experience and we argue about their merits.

Representationalism makes perfect sense metaphysically, which just indicates an logically necessary method describing how our intellect works. — Mww

It depends what you mean by representation I think. You can have very minimal notions which do not do very much work or richer notions which are just unrealistic imo. I think representation is an idealized concept arising from meta-cognitive capacities (another idealization). But what is most fundamental is that the brain is in the business of 'what happens next?', most of this business being hidden from us because of the trillions of parameters in neurons that are hidden from us.

Because of this complexity, intelligible notions of representation are difficult to sustain imo simply because the brain's ability to track or enact 'what happens next?' is far more complicated than our metacognitive ability to track it (which is embedded within that, obviously). Our own notions of representations will constantly come up against fuzziness and exceptions to rules. All this suggesting that what we think of as representations are redundant to whatever is going on underneath the hood. The representations we do make up and are intelligible to us are idealizations that cannot possibly precisely describe what the brain, or even our own experiences actually do. It is not some essential nature in experiences which lead to what happens next but the trillions of parameters in neurons, which are much more complicated and noisy than our metacognitive abilities.

Imo, our notions of representations are not things in themselves but inferential. No experience has an innate representative quality; instead, I infer that an experience has features that seem representation-like. Again, I don't think the notion of representation is impossible or something to be shut out, just it has to be quite weak.

Yes, I agree though I don't know if there is necessarily a dichotomy here. I think what you call modeling still relies on some underlying processes which is pretty much still very mechanistic or algorithmic... even maybe reflexive. Seems to me that what the brain does next always is a mechanistic consequence of whatever physical state it occupies immediately beforehand. "Expectations" in attention are mediated by the modulation of neuronal membrane activity - where is the representation explicitly in this other than a useful metaphor? At the same time, there are neuroscientists out there who will characterize our most basic hardwired reflexes in terms of modeling as you say. This kind of thinking is probably reflective of my view that I don't think representations are inherent.

I talk about neurons a lot but I think even on the level of experiences, I was convinced by the types of analyses from the likes of Wittgenstein's philosophical investigations that representation cannot be pinned down here either and experience is even somewhat mechanistic as a flow of one experience to the next which can sometimes seem completely involuntary, unanticipated, inexplicable.

I don't think so, no. Maybe? but also maybe the only way to do so is to envat the brain in a body that lives a life. — Moliere

See, for me I do not see why it would not be the case for the brain to have the same experiences if the sensory inputs were the same. I don't think a body would matter either as long as the sensory inputs mimicked those it would have had from a body.

Banno — Moliere

Aha, I have had one or two conversations with Banno involving his deflationary notion of truth.

I mention this because it's a contender for realism that I'm still wrapping my head around, but it's definitely different from the old in/direct debate. — Moliere

Fair enough.

"outside world" is the part I'd question. There is no "outside" world -- the old external world of philosophy -- just as there is no "internal" world, at least metaphysically. I think these are turns of expression meaning something other than the ontological implications -- that I exist, that I interact with my perceptions and only my perceptions, and these perceptions interact with objects outside of me that I make inferences about. — Moliere

I agree basically, that I am just using it as a phrase distinguishing my experiences from whatever is beyond that boundary. To a brain, that would be I guess what is beyond its sensory boundaries; but then you can make boundaries everywhere in the world, from cell membranes to populations of cells to ecosystems, etc.

I am my perceptions, and my perceptions are of objects, and therefore there's a direct realtionship between myself (perceptions) and objects — Moliere

My only issue is that perceptions clearly do not have a mapping to things out in the world that is straightforward. They are constructed in the sense that they involve learning via neurobiological processes which are often characterized in terms of statistical inference.

I think I'd say perception is an activity, and just like any activity -- like nailing boards or riding a bike -- we can make mistakes. These mistakes do not imply we are separate from the world, though, but rather that we are part of a world that interacts with us (disappoints us) — Moliere

It seems like maybe there are semantic issues at play; I think maybe your notion of "direct" is more loose than others would have who would use things like illusions as an argument for indirect realism.

In that thought experiment the BiV has to have the same experiences. That's the whole idea. — Moliere

Yes for that thought experiment, but what I am talking about is the question of whether if you artificially stimulate sensory receptors of a brain with identical DNA to you in a way which is identical to the history of organic sensory stimulations you have personally encountered in your life, it will have the same experiences as you have had.

But that does not mean that metaphysically perception exists in the head. — Moliere

What is your alternative? Through an extended mind framework where the mind encompasses the body and environment, etc?

if perception is an intermediary between myself and the object, and all experience is perception rather than the object, then I'm not sure why there couldn't be another intermediary between myself and my perception -- a perception of perception. — Moliere

It depends what you mean by object here. My instinct is to interpret object here as in some hypothetical object in the outside world. From my point of view, perception and myself are essentially not distinguishable. What you commonsensically would call your self are just sensory experiences pretty much imo.

it could just be a direct link between me and the world. — Moliere

I guess the main arguments against this is illusions and misperception.

models that are populated by sensory input? — frank

I am not exactly sure what you mean by this but the picture I was painting I wasn't necessarily implying anything about representation. I am a bit agnostic about representation in the sense that I don't think you need the concept of representation to explain how the brain works but I am not necessarily adverse to using this concept, especially as it is so intuitive. I just am not necessarily sold on the idea of some kind of inherent or intrinsic, essentialistic representations with intentionality in the brain. Neither do I think we should take it literally when neuroscientists attribute representation to the kinds of correlations that they detect in particular experiments.

I've taken up the "direct" side, but only lightly. Others' have been doing the heavy lifting. — Moliere

So you don't believe the brain in a vat could have the same experiences? To be honest I am not entirely sure what direct realism means. I assume people here just mean it in the sense that the objects of perception are experiences and they are direct. If that is the case then I am not sure I think that it is necessarily incompatible with the kind of indirect view of also representing something else out in the world. I would kind of agree with both but I don't have a strong opinion because I am disinclined against realism. I think the notion of indirect realism is kind of a functionally useful way of talking about the brain though. I feel like it is implied by models in neuroscience, even if minimally or if one doesn't want to attach too much metaphysical implication to it. It is implied that the brain is learning a model of the outside world and separated from it by a boundary. At the same time, the brain is clearly able to do what it does independently of whatever is going on beyond its boundaries; it does not need to make a comparison of what is going on in the brain with the outside world. The model the brain carries of the world does not therefore need to be explicit, and in some sense is a concept more useful to the neuroscientist trying to understand the brain, than the brain itself. The brain is just spontaneous self-organization; there is no inherent fact of the matter about what it represents. Neurons just blindly change their chemical membrane properties in response to inputs.

Sorry, I am not following what you've said at all. So you're an indirect realist or a direct realist?

If you divide it by 0.5 you get two of them, bizarrely — bert1

Its how many half-pizzas you get in one pizza.

The brain is certainly crucial in enabling this dynamic interaction, but it is the whole brain-body-environment system that constitutes the basis of perceptual experience. The various neural subsystems - from the cerebellum to the sensory and motor cortices - work in concert with the body's sensorimotor capacities to enable us to grasp and respond to the affordances of our environment. — Pierre-Normand

In the sense of physical chains of events, then maybe it is trivially the case that what the brain is doing and perceiving relies on what is happening in the body and outside environment. But at the same time, surely all that is required for percept(ual experience) is what is going on at sensory receptors. All this affordance stuff is still going on inside our heads. We could be brains in vats artificially having our sensory receptors stimulated and experience the same things as if outside of the vat.

What I said for sensation also is the case for action induced by motor-neurons. What matters is the pattern of behavior of those neurons. There is no access to how those neurons affect the world beyond it until we get feedback at sensory receptors. The learning of the causal connection between them is then done by the neurons in our head.

Edit: Added additional paragraph, ( ).

Rest in Peace!

Such behaviour would then be far less subjective than what such camps would like to admit. — jasonm

It may be an objective fact that everyone hates murder. But this is no more objective than a fact of one person liking murder. So I don't see how anything is being made less subjective in your comparison. All that it suggests is that there is something in common in human brain functioning that leads them to agree on something.

That's fair. I didn't actually think you were making an argument, I just didn't know where you were coming from. To me it looked like you had misunderstood the intention of my quote.

There is no fact of the matter as to whether perception is direct or indirect, they are just different ways of talking and neither of them particularly interesting or useful. I'm astounded that this thread has continued so long with what amounts to "yes it is" and "no it isn't". — Janus

Amen, ha

I'll just point out there are some nice, accessible lectures on youtube from the philosopher Banno cites, Gillian Russell. Highly recommend taking a look!

I'm having trouble following your posts. — fishfry

I just don't understand what the intention of your initial comment was. From my perspective it doesn't follow from the rest of the thread I was following.

I indicated in my post. — fishfry

That would suggest you are implying information is randomness; the original point of my post presupposes this is not necessarily the case.

Yes, but then it is another issue how that might relate to what people call information.

But the error I think the Verasatium presentation makes is then to equate non-compressibility with information - that a completely random string carries the greatest amount of information, because it can't be compressed. Whereas I think a random string embodies no information whatever. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I guess that is fair. I haven't watched the video so I can't comment too much. Maybe it again comes down to this whole use of the word 'information' being ambiguous again. In one sense, when talking about code, you could argue all the semantic information is with the whoever is coding and de-coding, and the information they both have or don't have shapes the kind of messages they are required to send to each other. The information isn't in the code itself.

"The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages. The system must be designed to operate for each possible selection, not just the one which will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of design."

Shannon's information theory was I think intended to be about formal constraints on representing variables that produce distinct events probabilistically. (Edit: but the information being represented is with those using the code, not strictly in the code).

At 3:17 where he says that a completely compressed file is completely random - not sure about that, either. — Wayfarer

I don't see how a compressed file can be both random and decryptable — Benj96

Well compressing a file is eliminating all the redundancies or regularities in the data. So if you keep compressing data you are removing all the patterns in it. Like you said, random data cannot be compressed. Why? Has no regularities or redundancies in it. If it did, then it follows you can make further compressions.

The thing is that we have no access to physical things beyond our physiological boundaries. Physical things are themselves only latent in images of experiences. We cannot directly access the physical things beyond our minds, and our physical theories or even metaphysics are occasionally even thrown out for new ones.

So I think its relevant to question whether the invertibility of qualia relative to physical theories is actually a property of the physical things themselves or just a consequence of the way we process information about the world.

I am basically skeptical that our ability to imagine inverted qualia is anything more than my general ability to imagine different objects as having different colors, which would have an information processing origin rather than being inherently about metaphysics. I don't think there is much to reason to consider the difference between physical and non-physical (concepts beyond the) ways we process information. Hence why a p-zombie would have qualia concepts.

Edited: brackets

But surely if they had different labels, they would learn after a while that they were not talking about the same things and they would end up changing their language use?

Edit: or maybe that was your point!?

It depends what you mean by information. The word I think is used so loosely that you may be able to solve this issue purely by working out your semantics.

I think Shannon entropy can be described in terms of either an observer's uncertainty about the outcome they will get out of some system/random variable, or in terms of the kind message-generating capacity of that system (more messages it can produce, the greater the entropy).

I guess the last description could reasonably be a way of describing how we think of information but information as we semantically use it is also about the notion of reducing uncertainty. The more information you have gained from an observation, the more uncertainty you have reduced. So in that sense it could also be conceptualized as almost the inverse of entropy.

Either way, I guess a key point is that when hearing people talk about information with regard to entropy, one should interpret them as talking just about the mathematical meaning of entropy first and foremost in order to understand what they are saying, rather than paying attention to the word 'information' which is often not being used in any specific way other than to refer to the mathematical usage. Care needs to be taken moving from the mathematical notion to the casual semantics of information which may be very different.

(Edited: just clarified some bits in the last section, no pun intended)

No, but their use may be biologically required to fulfil the organism's aim. — AmadeusD

Well I said both.

Can you outline why this isn't hitting? — AmadeusD

I just don't understand the context of what you have said, you'll have to explain the entire context.

Particularly this type of claim. I fail to see how the basis for human decision making toward determined goals (if they be all biologically determined, in an extreme example) isn't politically relevant. Could you explain? — AmadeusD

The point is that biology is redundant as a prescription of what people should do. Saying "humans are like this so people should do this" I don't think makes any sense. Biological facts can obviously be useful if you have a goal in mind where there is biological relevance, but prescribing directly from biology is redundant. We should prescribe based on people's desires.

but how that happens seems determined by the biology of the organism. I can't really understand how this isn't the case - plenty of behaviours just aren't open to humans, or dogs, or horses respectively, if they are to survive and propagate.

The point is there is no objective goal, no intention, no notion that things are meant to be one way or another. Its not fate, its just physical chains of events.

Ok. But the 'how or why' is actually what we're discussing, surely. — AmadeusD

No, what I have been discussing is whether an 'is' means an 'ought' or whether a 'how' entails a 'meant'

This is seems very much unserious to me, and akin to saying "I don't drink water because of biology, i drink water because I want to stay alive". I just can't really take that claim seriously. — AmadeusD

Obviously people drink water because of biology. The point is that we don't prescribe rules because biology says we need water. We prescribe rules because we have desires we want to fulfill.

Because it is there — AmadeusD

Well I don't think it is.

Fire exists without humans — AmadeusD

Well on one hand, what is "natural" is incidental on what happens to happen in the world and the context. Fire could be natural under some purview in that it may occur without human intervention in places. It may seem unnatural in many contexts where it will never occur without human intervention. And obviously these contexts are incidental to how the world happened to pan out. You can then also zoom out and then say surely all human interventions are natural... why not... because its rare? There are also many rare events we would call natural. We can make as many arbitrary distinctions as we like about what is natural or not. Thats why I think its pointless. "naturalness" is a construct we have created which relates us to the rest of the world. It isn't an objective scientific category.

It is empirically a different situation to the one you implied, though? We, in fact, do still have those institutions you relied on no longer being around. — AmadeusD

My point was we have different ways of living in different times. Implying that those differences exist now just in different places is still making the same point i was trying to make.

If its only a difference of detail, and not of kind — AmadeusD

You can zoom in or out as much as you want regarding differences and similarities. My point of bringing up this whole discussion was about how biological findings can be used to prescribe politics. if the meaningful similarities are far too general to have any actual significance on a political level then how is it going to be useful. the differences are the important things because it is the details on how one country differs from another which informs useful policy, not general broad brushstrokes. the general claim that people live in hierarchies isnt very interesting. the claim that people live in specific kinds of structures is.

Explanation by implication being that its a different requirement to feed a million than ten thousand. That type of volume-driven difference. — AmadeusD

I mean to say that the aim of the (different) behaviours does not seem appreciably different to me, in these various scenarios, unless purposefully ignored/changed to the societies detriment (noted elsewhere in the comment you quote). And, where that is the case, I don't really understand Humans to be askance from the determining factor simply because it was ignored (on this account.. Im not tied to it). — AmadeusD

Sorry, I'm finding it hard to follow what you mean on either of these but nevermind.

"best" reads, to me, on this account, as "what is in line with biological factors(goes to the above response too). The food example was a good one to illustrate that. Hunger Strikes are fine, and have an aim that isn't biological, while over-riding, to the individual's ultimate detriment, the biologically-determined factor of needing sustenance. — AmadeusD

This seems redundant to me. I find it hard to believe what is best is anything other than what brings benefit to people and reduces harm, regardless of biological context. There's absolutely no reason to bring biology into it. The fact that someone wants to eat to survive in order to survive is something that has value or should be respected because of the desire of that person, not because of some set of biological facts. Honestly, do we really care about the biological facts beyond them being a possible means to an end which is ultimately in people's wants and desires? Are we compelled to behave in accordance to what some people believe might be a kind of biological imperative? I don't see any reason for this personally.

Hm, good. I think I disagree that its general, trivial or avoidable in discussion of social development. — AmadeusD

I don't think you understand the point. My point is that if you are not talking about the kinds of differences that I am delineating then you are talking about a phenomena so universal, even in other animals, that it doesn't really have any implication for anything. It might even be that social hierarchies of some kind are unavoidable purely on a basis of things like optimization or game theory or selectionism... in other words, if you have groups of organisms which compete and are capable of certain kinds of basic biologically based capabilities, then maybe hierarchical kinds of behavior are inevitably emergent in how they interact. But if you are talking about something so general as that then it has no political implication. Political or social implication is arguments about things like the nuclear family or whether children need fathers and stuff like that, or whether aociety needs to be authoritarian or egalitarian etc etc. Things that are more specific.

I agree, as enforcement goes - but I would have to bite the bullet that 'hierarchy' (if this view holds any water) is not a purely social phenomenon. I think it would be very hard to argue that co-operation in obtaining food isn't driven by biological need and state-of-affairs (chemical bonding), even though different systems are clearly social in their contrasts. — AmadeusD

I just want to emphasize that its not that I don'tthink that there is a biological, genetic basis in behavior. There obviously is, though generally quite complicated I would say. My issue with the idea is that biology should be seen as implying what people should do. My point about variety in societies shouldn't be taken as a point about social behavior not being biologically influenced but about about the flexibility and context-dependence of behavior. It is possible for peopleto thrive in many different ways and in ways that we have not even foreseen. If people can exist happily in a way that seems to contradict something we have learned about our biological past or present then it makes the idea that biology should inform how we behave utterly pointless. Again, as I said earlier, biology can inform the means to our ends. Like in the sense that may be I am hungry and want food because I biologically require food. But I don't take the food because of I think I should abide by biology, I take the food because I want it. If someone wanted to not eat, maybe like Bobby Sands on hunger strike, then that is up to them and their desires. Maybe we wouldn't want them to do that because it would harm them. But is my concern because of some biological imperative that I think they should abide by or is it because I am concerned about someone's subjective suffering? I think the latter. I think we don't want others to die because we think they would want to live or we want them in our lives. Seems pointless to add some kind of biological prescription or "aim" onto that. Redundant. Who cares.

On the contrary, there's absolutely no reason for me to care about biology if it isn't in line with what I or other people want.

"socially enforced" isnt to imply that there's a conscious intention but that a norm is enforced by the natural (on this view, biologically determined), required behaviour of humans based on their biology in concert with one another toward the organisms aim. Whether that holds weight, who knows. But I'm just wanting to be careful that 'socially enforced' doesn't mean the mechanisms origins are social, but manifest in social relations. — AmadeusD

I don't think its easy to make this distinction when it comes to behavior. I am not sure I would say it exists in the same way that genes and environmental influences are inextricably entwined.

Not the type of novelty I was expressing there. Conscious choice v natural development due to biological factors. — AmadeusD

No, I think am including both; afterall, tools are not biological.

The fundamental driving force is the same, in that their is am aim to our organism (though, this is up in the air, i take survival/propagation to be safe assumptions), but the required behaviour may be changing (epigenetics is a spanner in the works) and biology implores us to meet its requirements, regardless. That's the beauty of evolution! — AmadeusD

I disagree. We use notions of goals and teleology in biology all the time as a kind of convenience but I don't see how we can say that about nature. There are no pre-determined goals that biological orgamisms are evolving towards. Its pure selectionism, what happens to survive passes on its genes regardless of how or why it survived. Its just blind physical interactions.

So then, to me, it's biologically determined that a lack of clothes outside the tropics would, given enough time, extinct the species. Therefore, its biologically determined that we wear clothes outside the tropics to achieve (or,maintain) the overarching aim of the species (non-extinction, plainly put). — AmadeusD

Well it isn't biologically determined that we wear clothes outside the tropics, its just required that we keep warm or we will die. That isn't biological determinism. I don't think you could even conceptualize that as something we evolved to do. At the same time, the fact I may want to keep clothes on me and stay warm has everything to do with my desires and nothing about biology. There is no overarching aim of a species and there is nothing thay compels people to behave in accord to such a thing if they did not wish to. The desires of people are the immediate concern.

true artificiality and something required by biological function, such as clothes in the example — AmadeusD

I just don't see why you need the distinction or how any fact can uphold that distinction. Its arbitrary and incidental on what happened to happen based on luck.

Although, fire, being a totally natural product, would do the work with the right organisation. — AmadeusD

Another arbitrary distinction. All human technology is "natural" in a similar way.

But, we absolutely still have serfdom the world over, and in fact more slaves than we've had since the dark ages. — AmadeusD

Just means the difference I was talking about is also spatial as well as temporal.

Many believe the working class is in fact a class of serfs. Not entirely dismissable, i think. — AmadeusD

Well it's about where you choose to ignore the differences isn't it.

They only seem to be different by virtue of volume, and not really behaviour. — AmadeusD

Volume?

but I can't see that there's any appreciable difference in aim (which would be the determined feature, i guess). — AmadeusD

What do you mean?

At best it gets us to the question, again, of which laws are 'counter' to biological factors, and which are 'in line' with them. — AmadeusD

What should matter is empirical facts about the actual scenario? There is no need to ask "what is in line with biological factors" because what you want is just what is empirically best for that situation. There is no fact of the matter about biological factors since they are context-depenxent. You are asking about the genetic factors that are related to strict hierarchies in feudal japan to egalitarian hunter gatherer societies to modern democracies. Biological factors behind the structure of a university rugby club compared to a knitting group. All you will get from studying the biology is generality which cannot possibly be compared to any individual situation. I mean, this kind of generality is so general it probably applies to many social animals in some way. I don't think there is some kind of foxed constrained way humans are meant to be, novel behaviors may emerge that adapt in novel situations and humans are probably especially good at this because of their intelligence. The finding that humans may commonly behave in a certain kind of way doesn't entail that that is like an essential inherent thing given that it depends on an environmental context. Saying that laws are some how in or out of line with this is then tantamount to saying there is a certain way humans should be which I disagree with. Nor does the idea of laws being in or out of line with that kind of thing can make any sense without a goal for the law. I'm not sure what that even means. Is murder being illegal out of line or in line? Given that murder is a common human behavior. Are our laws just going against people's impulse to murder? I think the false assumption is that there is such a thing as a policy that is "in line with biology".

I think its more incidental when societies aren't aligned. — AmadeusD

Its incidental both ways because the context could have been otherwise and it often is in different times in history. You may amhave heavily hierarchical restrictive feudal or even slave driven societies in the first millenia as opposed to more egalitarian kinds of small societies much earlier in history. You have completely different norms in different times and place.

Most societies develop in the same direction in lieu of over-riding principle-driven resistance. There aren't multiple strains of secular social development, from what I can tell. Just triffling differences in detail - probbaly based on geography, largely. — AmadeusD

You don't think there are big differences between western society now, medieval europe and maybe some prehistoric hunter-gatherer tribe? Sure they may all have some kind of hierarchy in some sense but thats so general its trivial and it isn't even restricted to humans so I don't see how that is useful for anything.

My argument, in a given case, would be that if the supporting conditions are that of social enforcement, it would hard to argue it was 'natural' versus something more general. — AmadeusD

But social enforcement is ubiquitious. Most social behaviors are enforced by ideas of norms and deviance in society, to differing extents of stringency.

where the overarching nature of the society is artificial as no where in nature has that ever occurred without the express intention for that novel situation to satisfy specific, individual sensibilities. — AmadeusD

But everything in biology is artificial in the sense that at some point it was once novel. How do you think evolution occurs? The precise nature of biological adaptation is degeneracy in that biological systems re-purpose and re-organize themselves in novel ways depending on the context. Wings evolved from limbs. Sex is diffeeent for humans compared to a butterfly. The idea of "natural" makes no sense because biology is in flux, biology is always context-dependent on the environment. Biology isn't even perfectly optimized. Just look at a human body. No human can survive outside of the tropics without clothes, a completely "artificial" yet now ubiquitious aspect of human society. Same with things like fire. Tools. We couldn't survive without these things that are not parts of us, especially in a place like Norway or Canada. All of these things were novel at some point. The idea of artificiality is very thin I think in a biological context.

Could you outline how you feel they have? — AmadeusD

Well we no longer have serfs or slaves who are controlled by lords and barons. We have much better laws and rights for workers now. Thats totally different. If you went and traveled back in time there do you really think you would just have the attitude that it was more or less the same? Especially if you were a serf?

Yes, I think our main difference is that you want to hang on to the idea of true sentences and I do not really care for that.

I disagree, and it seems pretty clear that almost every society shares some similar characteristics - even if you're going to take it by stages. Nomadism -> Tribal living-->larger societies->networks. We move in that direction until forced off the path. The conscious choices being subsequent to self-awareness isn't going to defeat a biological basis for whatever impulse is being over-ridden. I'm also not claiming these are the better attributes, but the biologically determined ones. — AmadeusD

But wouldn't you say that all these examples are very different and societies can live in many different ways? Sometimes its more egalitarian, sometimes more strictly hierarchical. So what is biological determinism helping here if there is still a broad range of ways people can live and people can change the way they choose to live and the hierarchies they live in? How does that apply to policy when policies are based on specific situations, cultures, socio-economic climates, not the generality of human biology which itself is diverse and results in a diverse range of societies. The fact that some kinds of societies are more common than others too is somewhat incidental. You can imagine some kind of novel or different society developed the way it did based on specific kinds of rare conditions, but is it not incidental that those conditions may be rare? Is there really an "overriding of impulse" if such conditions naturally led to that kind of society? Just as say the conditions that change with a progressed humankind have led our hierarchies to change since 1100 AD "naturally"?