How would you know the image contains no red if red were nothing more than a percept? — Janus

Because red was defined in the example as certain wavelengths.

You tell me. I'm not arguing about the physiology. — Banno

I assume babies can't see color because "Things in the word, and the people around us, also have a say in what colours we see." Since babies don't know words and words determine what we see, babies can't see, color or otherwise.

Things in the word, and the people around us, also have a say in what colours we see. The brain is not the sole determiner colour. — Banno

Does a baby see color?

To understand the difference between the two is to understand why sight and hearing are not reducible to the brain. If they were reducible to the brain then everyone with a brain would be able to see and hear. — Leontiskos

No one is arguing brains can hear without input of any sort. The argument is that no can hear without a brain.

This is equivocation on "seeing." For example, a blind person does not see when they dream, as your verbiage would have it. — Leontiskos

The question isn't whether seeing via an electrode, through glasses, through your screen window, or through your naked eye are different. They all obviously are. The question is whether there is an ontological difference that impacts the truth value of the judgment that requires differing descriptive words.

What distinguishes the dream with the electrode example is the claim "there is a chair" does not correspond with reality in the dream, but it does with the electrode.

If you wish to preserve the term "see" only for those instances where it is visualized through the naked eye, then why stop there, but instead create 1000s of gradients of the word "see" to preserve each type of corrective lens or optic surgery someone might have?

That is, to say "I 'see' the chair" with my thick eyeglasses and you to say you "see" the same through your cataracts, then that too would equivocate the term "see" as you're arguing it.

Stimulating a brain with some of the methods indicated is just an artificial way to illicit some of the biological effects of an actual, natural stimulus, but is in fact not the same act. — NOS4A2

If I have a cochlear implant and perceive you say "hello" through my "artificial" means, and I say "Nos said 'hello,'" my statement is true under both correspondence and coherence theories of truth. That is, my saying you said hello corresponds to what actually happened and my use of language is consistent with your own.

We would have a different result if I hallucinated you saying "hello. "

None of this demands a direct realism. To demand a direct realism forces a definition of "artificial" to simply mean "other than typically human, " which in no way can be assumed to be more accurate than other methods. To call one method artificial assumes there is an otherwise natural and correct way, but that assumption is the entirety of this debate. That is, what is contested is whether the world as it appears is as it is or whether it has been artificially manipulated by the internal processes.

My position is that all perception is "artificial" if that term means it is an unaltered representation of reality.

That's also false. The blind can't see anything no matter what their brains are doing. — jkop

The blind can see if their brains are directly stimulated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene

Similarly, the profoundly deaf can hear using direct stimulation methods.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant

This is due to the uncontroversial scientific fact that perception is created by the brain regardless of whether the stimulus enters the brain through the normal means of sensory organs or whether it is hot wired directly through a probe.

@Michael@Banno

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=8066898573347962

Given that the "empirical proving" is itself an experience, according to Hanover we cannot conclude anything from this experience. His conclusion is self-defeating. — Leontiskos

If solipsism is the only logical conclusion of recognizing some amount of difference between the object and the perception and naive realism is the only practical solution to avoid that slippery slope, then I choose solipsism because at least it is logical.

Naive realism suffers from the same logical failure you assign to indirect realism in that it demands that objects are as they appear, but empirical studies (i.e. the study of things as they appear) prove soundly that objects are not in fact as they appear. In fact, what naive realism teaches us is often we have perceptions that do not correlate with reality, as in hallucinations, direct stimulation of brain cells, and and damage to various nerves and anatomical structures. That is, the system you use to prove that things are as they appear proves that things aren't as they appear. This seems a nice matching bookend to your criticism that indirect realism can't prove things aren't as the are if indirect realism demands the evidence received is inherently flawed.

What we learn is that there is no fully satisfactory answer, which is obvious, as if there were, this would be a physics class and not a philosophy class where there are no answers.

If you scroll up somewhere above, I long ago acknowledged that the difficulty with transcendetal idealism is that it creates an irrelevant sort of realism, where we can only assert an external reality, but we can't ascribe much to that reality. The alternative, which is to just say WYSIWYG suffers from another host of problems.

What does seem clear to me is that the pen is whatever it is, but its redness is not part of the pen, but is part of the person. That is the conclusion demanded of direct realism.

But this is only half of the conversation, the larger part circling around Wittgenstein, words, and beetles, none of which sheds a whole lot of light on the topic, and much of which was so unconvincing I have to believe that it's been poorly presented here because it's so facially invalid I can't see how it can be taken seriously.

How do you know, if a person may ask? — tim wood

I'm circumcised, so I just assume someone had good reason.

As to who gets to call themselves a Christian, as the whole topic is based in nonsense, who cares?! — tim wood

But this was the subject of the OP. It asks what a Christian would do if he were to learn that Jesus was but an ordinary man. If we are convinced that a Christian must accept the divinity of Jesus, then the answer is that person would necessarily cease being a Christian.

I think there's room for the counter-argument, which is that the person could remain very much a Christian because Christianity isn't defined in the brittle way that many demand it be. A common attack on theism by atheists is to point to the most unworkable parts of specific theistic theological systems and then to declare there is no God.

I'm not Christian, but should I one day consider it, it won't be based upon a literal belief that a woman bore God so he could be sacrificed in order to forgive the world of sinfulness, but it would be instead because I might find the primacy that that belief system places upon forgiveness worthwhile of believing in.

But I am pretty sure that insistence on His actual, real material existence, and especially with regard to the consequences of that claim, would be a heresy that might have got up a barbecue, these days an excommunication. — tim wood

" [LDS] Church members believe that "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Mormonism#:~:text=LDS%20Church,-Latter%2Dday%20Saints&text=Church%20members%20believe%20that%20%22The,is%20a%20personage%20of%20Spirit.%22

On the other extreme:

Maimonides’ conception of God (the Jewish view of extreme monotheism):

"That also means that, in Aristotelian terms, one cannot actually say “God is . . .” and proceed to enumerate God’s attributes. To describe the Eternal One in such a sentence is to admit of a division between subject and predicate, in other words, a plurality. (Maimonides writes in Chapter 50 of the Guide, “Those who believe that God is One and that He has many attributes declare the Unity with their lips and assume the plurality in their thoughts.”) Therefore, he concludes, one cannot discuss God in terms of positive attributes.

On the other hand, one can describe what God is not. God is not corporeal, does not occupy space, experiences neither generation nor corruption (in the Aristotelian sense of birth, decay, and death). For obvious reasons, Mai­monides’ conception of the Supreme Being is usually characterized as “negative theology,” that is, defining by the accumulation of negatives. Maimonides writes, “All we understand is the fact that [God] exists, that [God] is a being to whom none of Adonai’s creatures is similar, who has nothing in common with them, who does not include plurality, who is never too feeble to produce other beings and whose relation to the universe is that of a steersman to a boat; and even this is not a real relation, a real simile, but serves only to convey to us the idea that God rules the universe, that it is [God] that gives it duration and preserves its necessary arrangement.”

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/maimonides-conception-of-god/#:~:text=God%20is%20not%20corporeal%2C%20does,by%20the%20accumulation%20of%20negatives.

And then there is the Catholic notion of the God head, which, candidly, I don't understand:

"In Catholic theology, we understand the persons of the Blessed Trinity subsisting within the inner life of God to be truly distinct relationally, but not as a matter of essence, or nature. Each of the three persons in the godhead possesses the same eternal and infinite divine nature; thus, they are the one, true God in essence or nature, not “three Gods.” Yet, they are truly distinct in their relations to each other.

In order to understand the concept of person in God, we have to understand its foundation in the processions and relations within the inner life of God. And the Council of Florence, AD 1338-1445, can help us in this regard.

The Council’s definitions concerning the Trinity are really as easy as one, two, three… four. It taught there is one nature in God, and that there are two processions, three persons, and four relations that constitute the Blessed Trinity. The Son “proceeds” from the Father, and the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” These are the two processions in God. And these are foundational to the four relations that constitute the three persons in God."

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/explaining-the-trinity

IIRC Mormons hold that JC is the literal son of god and not god himself placing him outside of the nicean-creed understanding of christianity. — BitconnectCarlos

I know the Mormon view of the trinity is distinct in that they believe it to be 3 separate beings, making it a polytheism. It can be argued that the triunity of other denominations ultimately fails and is actually a polytheism anyway.

As to the rejection of the Nicean Creed,

"Non-Trinitarian groups, such as the Church of the New Jerusalem, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses, explicitly reject some of the statements in the Nicene Creed."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed#:~:text=Non%2DTrinitarian%20groups%2C%20such%20as,statements%20in%20the%20Nicene%20Creed.

The schism between the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church relates to the addition of "and the son" to the Creed:

As the Creed states:

"I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets."

This makes Jesus co-equal to the Father, which is not universally accepted. In addition to Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism also questions the "and the Son" language.

This is the filoque controversy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque

Anyway, the point being that "Christianity" describes a wide range of views and even the the Church's early efforts to crystallize the faith into a concise summary isn't universally accepted.

Just read "How to Start a Worm Bin" by Henry Owen. I ordered 500 red wigglers and I feel I now know enough to start some composting and to build a good supply of fishing bait.

I'll be able to say I raised the worm that caught the fish that fed the family. That's how self-sufficient I'll be.

also feels vulgar to include Mormonism into Christianity. The latter has centuries of sophisticated and curated thought building its tradition, the former is dumb as soon as you bat an eye on it — Lionino

There are literally hundreds of Christian denominations, if not thousands. You'd be hard pressed to explain why Mormonism fails to fit the general definition yet continue to hold the others do.

Your reference also to "Christianity" as a single monolithic belief system that has marched forward for the past 2024 years references no actual religion or belief system.

Denominations split to this day

For a list of denominations:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations

Mormonism began in 1830, but it's not as if the other Christian traditions all trace back 2000 years and have held consistently throughout. Fundamentalism, for example, traces back to the early 1900s.

For a list of 62 denominations that began in the 19th century: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_denominations_established_in_the_19th_century

Christianity is not immutable and the relative antiquity of one denomination over another doesn't afford it greater legitimacy.

Protestantism generally relies upon a restorationist theology where they claim their views restore the true beliefs of the church lost by the Catholics (of which there are varying movements within that tradition as well). The point being that it is well accepted among Christians that the church does change, leaving the various denominations to argue what it truly ought to be.

But, sure, a Catholic can deny a Baptist is a Christian and insist upon his prescriptive definitions, but that would serve no purpose other than provocation, as it's not like the terminology usage will change among the traditions nor will the belief systems

It seems not. — Banno

Seemed that way too me too

Was that post intended to say something — Banno

Was this one?

The tomato is red" is true only when someone is looking at it? — Banno

Does the mildew smell nauseating when no one is smelling it?

[

there are no red tomatoes in a box, unobserved? One can never order a box of red tomatoes without threatening metaphysical collapse? — Banno

There is no nauseating mildew in a box unsmelled? One can never order a box of nauseating mildew without threatening metaphysical collapse?

You haven't thought this through. — Banno

Someone hasn't. That's for sure.

But making me feel nauseous isn't like making me see red!

Yes it is.

If there is no color in light, and the visible spectrum is light, then it only follows that there is no color in the visible spectrum. — creativesoul

Light exposure influences the biological machinery to do different things... mindlessly. This includes the eyes, when looking at the infamous image of the dress. — creativesoul

These comments are inconsistent. The first states the visible spectrum is light. The second states the visible spectrum is biologically created. The first is a direct realism claim. The second is an indirect realism claim.

An internal experience of light can be experienced without there being any external light source. These are called phosphenes and they can be created predictably with electrodes in the brain, so much so that they can assist those with damaged optic nerves to "see."

https://www.pennmedicine.org/departments-and-centers/ophthalmology/about-us/news/department-news/vision-scientist

The point of this is that it is empirically proven that an internal, subjective experience can be evoked by direct brain stimulation. This means that you cannot conclude anything about the constitution of the stimulus from the experience. The smell you smell is the product of stimuli upon the brain, so the perception is entirely the creation of the brain.

You can no more say the electrode is a dot of light than you can say the tree is green.

Notice that the shades of red are red? Do you suppose that the shades of pain are painful? No; the items in the first are red, the items in the second are not pain. — Banno

If I want you to understand red, I show you a red card. If I want you to understand sweet, i give you a piece of candy. If I want you to understand massage, I rub your shoulder.

If I want to cross categories and let you understand pleasure through vision, I create a visual scale with smiley faces. I suppose I could correlate tastes to sounds and smells to taps on the shoulder and make all sorts of scales.

None of this makes pain special.

This is so i basic I find it hard to believe it is where dispute lies, but I suspect the role of pain to Wittgenstein is being misunderstood. I'd love to think myself so clever that I pierced this complex philosophy, but I find that hard to believe.

The beetle analog was written about pain, not colour. While to some extent there is an overlap, one can produce samples of colour and chat about whether these are red, and what shade of red. One cannot do the came with pain; what one sees is the manifestation of pain, the groaning and grimacing. One cannot see into the box. — Banno

This strikes me as special pleading and a category error, holding a special rule to the sense of sight as opposed to touch and then asking why we can't publicly see the pain in the object. It's just such a confused statement. If we insist the red is in the pen (which is your thesis), the we must insist the pain is in the knife (which would avoid the special pleading). We then need to publicly experience that pain, which would be performed by each of us touching the blade of the knife and feeling the pain as a group. To demand that we must experience the pain distantly like we do color just makes a category error. Touch doesn't require photons for perception.

And note that the above doesn't suggest the color or the pain was in the mind. I'm keeping this consistent with the thesis that the object contains the attributes, not the mind. The fact that we have to reach out and touch the knife for the pain in the knife to be known to us doesn't anymore suggest the pain is an object of the mind than is color because you also must open your eyes to see the color. That is, with regard to any sense, you must make your perceptions available to the object to experience it, whether that be looking at it across the room or touching it with your finger.

I recognize this is a criticism and not a recitation of Wittgenstein which I've otherwise been delighting you with, but it just makes so little sense to me how you can concede to pain all the indirect realism concerns, but then just decree that the same things don't apply to color. For the sake of this academic experiment, I'm willing to consider the idea that we are compelled to limit our understanding of the world to that which can be spoken of, but I have to apply this game we're playing consistently. That is, if the pen has color we can point to and it remains something beyond just subjective experience, then I can't suddenly stop playing your game and then worry about pain being in its own special class that is just subjective experience.

That is, let's pick a model: Either we have these qualitative states of red and pain we can speak of and we have this world of phenomena and noumena or we just have our community of words. I'm saying pain is no different than red. Either they're both phenomenal states or neither is.

The point is, colour is not a beetle. Lionino cannot see your beetle, by definition, but you both see the red pen. You both see red. — Banno

This strikes me as incorrect. What we both see is the beetle, which would include its properties, including its redness. I speak of my beetle and you of yours, but it becomes irrelevant as to what it actually is. All that is relevant is we speak consistently enough to play our word game. That is, don't speak of what I see.

It's when you ask what actually we see you run into problems. You can point to the pen as evidence of what is being seen, but you can't then in turn say the beetle is X in an ontological way. All you can say is that red is defined as that pen we both see, but not suggest you have any idea what we both see.

Indeed. And if colour is only in your head, then how is it that Lionino is able to use the word in a way that is consistent with what is in your head? Could it be because there is a shared pen that is red? — Banno

If I say that color is entirely in my head, you can't disagree with this, else you fall into metaphysics. You've committed to a linguistic model, so you violate your principle to suggest to know what my beetle is. Your position is that the beetle is irrelevant for our conversation and so you'd ask I remain silent about it

So, assuming your linguistic model true, Lionino and I have no knowledge of redness or pens in an ontological way. We have words and only words. I see you do things and hear sounds associated with that and from that I figure out what game you must be playing, and from that, I join in and we word play.

The pen is just the thing we hang a word on. Saying it "is" red must be kept clear. "Is" is being used to state a definition, not an empirical fact here. As is in "the bachelor is unmarried" versus "bob is unmarried."

Where I find this unsatisfactory is that if you ask what this pen is in an empirical sense, not a definitional sense, you get no response. Literally, silence. And I'd like to know what a pen is other than that indescribable thing we've labeled "pen."

That exploration is worth having even if you've figured out how to communicate without it.

It leads to silly, solipsistic statements such as
The definition of "red pen" is that thing that is out there that appears in my head as red.
— Hanover — Banno

It's not solipsistic at all. My comment referenced an external object. Solipsism says I only know my own mind.

How does Lionino know how the pen appears in your head? Your definition doesn't even get to stand up, let alone take a step forward. — Banno

He can't know my beetle, so we don't talk about that. What he can know is what I say and so long as we use the words in a consistent way, we get to play our language game together.

Maybe we have the same beetle, maybe we don't. We must realize it's irrelevant so we remain silent about it.

What is important is that we have a commonality of usage, so when I say my pen looks red you compare it to the other times you've heard the word and you assume a consistency. All that is important is that our language interaction work.

If you ask what's behind the curtain, as in, what is the meaning in the mind and what are the phenomenal states, you go hopelessly down the road of asking what precedes language and what exists independently of it.

Such is linguistic philosophy.

I am aware of the strained argument that an external object must exist to remind us of our prior usage. That seems ad hoc and wrong, designed perhaps to avoid my conclusion that the external is irrelevant for the playing of the word game. I say there's a red pen and you agree and so we speak together, regardless of whether we have a metaphysical underpinning.

This is about words. If the red reaaly is out there or really is just imposed by the brain doesn't matter. All that matters is that when i explain my view, you understand it and I speak it consistently.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word is God. And that's that. Sentences can mean very different things in very different contexts.

Anywat, I don't buy into the above, but I can recite if having to sit for an exam.

My own view is a dualistic theism where there are hearts and minds and an entire inner and external world of mystery and purpose, where every blade of grass sits exactly where it does for a specific reason, including there being a higher purpose for our having this conversation.

I say that just to avoid any confusion that i buy nto what I recited above.

You say you use words in some way other than saying them?
— Hanover

This seems telling. Yes, we all use words in ways other than to simply make statements. You know that. We use them to do all manner of things, from making promises to declaring war. — Banno

You changed what I said to salvage what you said.

I didn't make any claim about types of statements, performative or otherwise. I said it odd to suggest that words could be used in ways other than saying them. Whether I report of your marriage or pronounce you married, in either case I say it.

In any event, you said "Use is determined by... well, what we do. Not by what we say we do."

What we do with words is say them (or write them). Their usage after spoken is another thing. And so we can go back to what we were talking about, and that is definitions because that's all we're limited to.

The definition of "red pen" is that thing that is out there that appears in my head as red. You disagree, but that disagreement is not philosophical. It's that you think I don't speak English like I ought to. You think I use my words inconsistent with the way my community of speakers does. I disagree, so now we are in some sort of sociological investigation, where we go out into our respective communities and figure out how it is we arrive at the words we do and then we can debate who's correctly identified the way we're to talk.

And that is the whole thing of it. You've argued consistently that this whole metaphysical debate is off limits and that the proper way to go about knowing about the world is to figure out how we use words. So let's put that to the test now that you've got full buy in from me. "The pen is red" means we have a pen object and a red subjective state because my community relies upon neuroscientists to tell me what my brain does and that's how I use my words.

We're now just in a contest as to who can write the best dictionary for the task at hand.

My updated suggestion is that you're talking out of your hindquarters. — Jamal

I said I liked the suggestion, not that I thought it correct. The idea that a whole movement has been created from misunderstanding sarcasm is an entertaining thought.

Do you mean that he revealed this about analytic philosophy with his criticisms, or do you mean to characterize his own philosophy as exemplifying this "objective"? The former is an interesting take, but the latter seems obviously wrong. — Jamal

I think he revealed it through his working it through to its conclusion. I didn't take him as a critic of analytic philosophy though, just more taking it where it went.

I think you meant that though, just using "criticism" to mean logical analysis as opposed to one skeptical of it.

Yet that would be a very interesting suggestion, which is likely wrong, but to think his point wasn't we ought abandon metaphysical analysis based upon his analysis, but what he really set up was a reductio ad absurdum that his followers mistook and they embraced his absurd conclusions instead of rejecting analytic philosophy as he meant to show was absurd.

I like that suggestion actually.

Not when the dream is happening, though. — frank

I had an 8:00 am class in college that I'd go to and come back home and sleep. I was half awake and half sleeping and I knew I was asleep so I'd fly and do other cool shit I couldn't do when I was awake.

I think sometimes people who talk about how other people think actually think there's one way of thinking. I'd suspect Picasso saw things like he painted them more than that he just jumbled his real thoughts.

I had a professor once who talked about what dogs could think and I think he thought he knew, but I knew he never could have had a dog, or if he did, he never took it seriously.

The animal thing foreclosures me taking seriously that language is needed for serious thought.

Wittgensteinian is interesting to the extent he lets you know the logical conclusions of analytic philosophy where the only objective is to define your terms and forget about the world

Use is determined by... well, what we do. Not by what we say we do. — Banno

You say you use words in some way other than saying them?

Doubly odd.

You show signs of recognising differing uses. Progress. The physiology is not the whole story. — Banno

Your argument reduces to saying that my use of the term "red pen" is incorrect because no one uses it that way. My argument is that they do. The physiology dominates my definition.

Since use is determined by whatever the community says it is, then I say my definition is correct. I live in a different community than you apparently.

We're just arguing over who's the better dictionary writer.

Try going into a shop and asking for the red pens that are not red and see how far you get. — Banno

But we're not in the shop. We're here. Use is contextually based. Maybe a tomato is a fruit, but I'm asking the shop owner to direct me to the vegetables for the tomatoes. I'll speak French in France as well.

This reduces to what we just think are one another's idiosyncratic uses of language. I say the pen itself isn't red, which is consistent with how the neuroscientists define it. Reliance upon experts to define terms in an intellectual setting such as this is reasonable. What do you suggest, a democratic vote?

I will restate the question: if the pain happens exclusively in the mind, how does a burn on your finger hurt your finger and not your foot? — Lionino

If you cut off someone's foot, the person might still feel pain in what they believe to be their foot. This phantom pain is caused by the severed nerves that once traveled to the now missing body part and so the brain identifies the pain where it once was.

You can reliably stop the phantom pain by removing the person's brain. Without the brain, there is no pain because it is the brain that makes the pain.

Then there are other sorts of pains that you don't really identify as having a specific location, like the pain of a breakup. You don't say that your face is sad because your women done left you. Or maybe you do. I don't really know you all that well.

Sure - in this case. But it would be wrong to conclude that therefore the only way we use "red" is to refer to firing of certain cells in V4 - as worng as to conclude that "red" just is light at 700nm. — Banno

If Witt is correct, then the engagement in language games is inescapable. It's not like I get to be a Kantian metaphysician and you a Wittgensteinian linguist and we then go about proselytizing our respective positions.

So, to the extent @Michaelargues the pen is not red and you say it is, the dispute per Witt is over proper usage. Since our community of speakers does typically defer science to scientists, it is proper to argue the pen is not red based upon best scientific theory.

That is, your commitment to your unsophisticated definition of red that doesn't take the full neuroscience involved is just a stubborn nuance of yours. That I insist upon calling Pluto a planet because that's what I've always done, simply means I obtain usage through a relatively ignorant community of speakers.

If the best scientific description of an object places color as a brain construct, then we should deny the pen itself is red if we want to side with the educated community as opposed to those who've not truly considered the issue.

What are we to make of this? Will we be good scientists and acknowledge the theory falsified, because Subject 1001 reports that they see blue? Or are we going to say instead that Subject 1001 is mistaken? — Banno

Your experiment takes as a given that asking the subject is the gold standard for determining color. That is, you take their word as truth and you try to find what the cause of the truth is.

And that seems right because it'd be odd to tell someone they can relax because their test results showed they weren't in pain after all.

But, you raise another point and that is if stimulation of V4 resulted in the subject seeing red and numbing V4 eliminated red from their seeing it, we'd be forced to conclude red was quite literally in their head and not in the pen.

Would not such a finding about V4 disprove that red is in the pen? If not, what would? Is your position falsifiable?

My suspicion is that the only way for you to concede that the red is not in the pen is for people to stop saying it is. That is, when they call the pen blue, then you know it's not red.

If that's the case, why even entertain the scientific arguments? Your claim is not scientific. It's linguistic.

Your repetition of the name "Amadeus" in your reply reminded me of this song:

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? — frank

Science reliably predicts the behavior of my perceptions. Physics is the study of the way physical objects are observed to act.

In saying that no one believes the airplanes are blips, you are implying that we aren't expecting more than what the blips are telling us to accomplish some goal. We don't need to know the color of the plane to prevent it from crashing into another one while landing. — Harry Hindu

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. If the pen is not red, but just appears red, then you're not asserting a direct realism.

How about they all stand up together? — Harry Hindu

With disagreement. Surely you don't think there is one final interpretation of the Bible that irons out out all the inconsistencies. Jesus died to save mankind from the original sin that occurred in the Garden of Eden said no Jew ever.

I don't see how that suggests that color of the pen is part of the pen and not the person's perception. It just describes how perceptions occur.

We can also stimulate non-functioning auditory nerves in the profoundlly deaf by implanting a cochlear implant. Once implanted, the person will begin experiencing beeps that he learns to translate into words and sounds so that he can properly respond to them. That person's perception of the sound is entirely different from those with normal functioning auditory nerves. That would lend support to the fact that the sound is not in the bird's chirp, but it's in the listener's head, and there is no reason to believe that the deaf person's perception of the chirp is the same as mine.

We both would say, however, that the bird chirped, yet our internal states would be entirely different.

I can imagine the same could be done of vision, where an artificial visual stimulator could offer flashes that could be perceived such that the person would call an object a "chair," but his perception of that chair would bear no resemblance to my own. He'd see a particular array of flashes, yet I'd see a particular shape, yet we both have the shared experience of something, both of which we use the shared word of "chair."

That explains linguistic use. It doesn't explain metaphysics and it refutes direct realism.

The fact that we know that phenomenal states can exist without external stimuli and that phenomenal states can be manipulated to provide varying perceptions of the same external stimuli forecloses direct realism as a viable option. Yet it persists.

If I have a fear of dogs and I feel that fear every time I see a dog, is the fearsome dog an object like a red pen, with the fearsomeness and the redness within the object, or is the fearsomeness within me the perceiver only?

If I internally create the fearsomeness but not the redness, how do you decide which traits of the perception go into the internally created bucket and which go into the objectively existing bucket?

Your post is motivated by the clutter of cars interfering with your favorite past time of bike riding. But that is an aside.

I hate bicycles. They occupy my American roads that are neither quaint nor ancient. The vast spaces I travel over were never filled with little old women chatting about their day, nor are there other options, like rail or buses. Billions are spent annually for cars to dart about for the purposes of commerce above all else, but also for getting to and fro. I get that you want to exercise in your spandex and your backwards hat and I know I've been encouraged to "Share the Road" or whatever those signs might say, but the investment in the roadways was not made for providing exercise and leisure. We are paving the planet for me and my SUV to get where I need to go.

We have parks with miles and miles of paved trails to nowhere for you folks to enjoy, and if that's not enough, we have stationary bikes and treadmills for you to pretend to be in the wild. Use those set asides and stop showing up where motorists belong.

I agree with the Gary's sage advice: Get the fuck out the road!

This post makes you so mad. You're probably even madder than Gary ever was. Gary probably laughed at yelling at the little old ladies a few minutes later. I know Gary well. Gary is Hanover.