But “a perceptual experience is a representation” does mean that “a perceptual experience” equals “a representation”. Therefore, if a representation is of real objects then (via substitution) a perceptual experience is of real objects. — Luke

"A representation is of real objects" is a nonsensical claim. A representation may be of anything. Rather, "the representation is of real objects". "The" means we are talking about the representation in "Phenomenal experience is a representation". You cannot then substitute in "phenomenal experience" for "representation" in "the representation is of real objects", because that sentence is modifying the representation in "phenomenal experience is a representation"..

The two sentences are equivalent to "phenomenal experience is a representation of real objects". That sentence s definitely not equivalent to "phenomenal experience is of real objects".

Your perceptual experience of the smoky smell is just the smell itself, which you may or may not be experiencing or consciously aware of? — Luke

Yes. The perceptual experience may necessarily entail the awareness, as we discussed earlier. But all that is required for my argument is that we are aware of it.

Cool!

I love all your LLM posts, you are our resident expert.

I'm curious if it can handle the whole thing (at least, opus?).




Ok, ok, I only really got into the topic after page 10 :P

The logical move that lets me snip out “a representation” is substitution. A perceptual experience is a representation and a representation is of real objects. Therefore, a perceptual experience is of real objects. — Luke

That is not a valid substitution. "A representation is of real objects" does not mean that "a representation" equals "of real objects". It specifies a property of "a representation", the property that it is "of real objects". You could also phrase it, "a representation represents real objects"

What distinction do you make between your awareness of smelling smoke and your perceptual experience of smelling smoke? How are these different? — Luke

The "perceptual experience of smelling smoke" refers to the qualitative, ineffable smoky smell. The "awareness of smelling smoke" or "awareness of the perceptual experience of smelling smoke" refers to the binary fact (or 0-1 spectrum) that you are consciously cognizant of that qualitative, ineffable smoky smell.

It seems to follow that it is. If the “direct perceptual experience” is a representation and if the representation is of real objects, then the “direct perceptual experience” is of real objects. — Luke

If the “direct perceptual experience” is a representation and if the representation is of real objects, then:

The “direct perceptual experience” is a representation of real objects

Which I agree with. No logical move lets you just snip out "a representation" in this proposition.

The indirect realist says that our perceptual experience is of some perceptual intermediary. They do not say that our awareness is of some perceptual intermediary. — Luke

Oh? Says who? It feels like you are insisting that I conform to your strawman view of indirect realism, so that you can shout "homunculus!"

My position is very clear:

P1: We are aware of perceptual experiences.
P2: Perceptual experiences are representations of mind-independent reality.
P3: We are aware of representations of mind independent reality. (From P1, P2)
P4: If one is aware of a representation, one has indirect awareness what it represents.
C: We are indirectly aware of mind-independent reality. (From P3, P4). — hypericin

Previously, you challenged this:

I challenge P4.
...
However, if perceptual experience entails awareness of the perceptual experience, then you have the same awareness of both the perceptual experience and the perceived object. Your awareness of the object is limited to your awareness of the perceptual experience, so it's the same awareness in both cases. — Luke

I then made it clear, with the example of smelling smoke, that it is not the same awareness in both cases.

So now what?

I should have said this earlier: I don’t see what makes you an indirect realist, because I don’t understand what is your perceptual intermediary. Awareness? Perceptual experience? You seem to allow for direct perceptual experience of real objects, but that is direct realism. — Luke

Perceptual experience is the intermediary.

I don't allow for direct perceptual experience of real objects. Perceptual experience is representational, we are aware of it, and the representation is of real objects. But this doesn't mean we have direct perceptual experience of real objects.

By close analogy, the words you type presumably are representations of your thoughts. I am directly aware of the words you type. But I am only indirectly aware, by any definition of 'indirect', of your thoughts. The words are the intermediary.

I find it hard to accept that we can never know that there is smoke in your room. If the smell isn't enough, you could move closer to the source of the smoke to satisfy yourself. You might also see the smoke and/or start coughing from the smoke. It's absurd to say you could never know that there is smoke in your room. How did you learn how to use the word "smoke" in the first place if nobody ever knew that it was smoke? — Luke

Sorry, I should have said, you can know there is smoke in the room, but never with absolute certainty. Knowing empirical facts always entails doubt, because we always know them indirectly. Merely by smelling smoke, there is still some significant doubt. As you verify the smell with your other senses, the doubt narrows, until the degree of certainty is good enough. But the doubt never vanishes completely, as you note there is always the possibility that you are hallucinating.

If it's D and a maniac is pumping smoke into your house, then the smoke being pumped into your house would explain the smoky smell. You can again know that it is smoke you are smelling. — Luke

B, C, D are all indirect awarenesses gained by smelling smoke, and each can be independently doubted. D stands for object awareness. With smell, we gain awareness that there is an object nearby producing the smell. But this awareness is indirect, and therefore uncertain.

It may be a hallucination or an illusion, but it cannot always be a hallucination or an illusion. — Luke

It doesn't always have to be an illusion, just some of the time. It is like a glitch in The Matrix. It would have done Neo no good to have said, "Well, most of the time things behave like we expect them to". Just as a few glitches are enough to establish the the falsity of the world as it seems in the movie, a few hallucinations, or even their possibility, is enough to establish our indirect awareness of the mind-independent world.

If perceptual experience entails awareness of the perceptual experience, then awareness of an object (via perceptual experience) must equally entail awareness of the perceptual experience and, by extension, awareness of the object. — Luke

We are aware of objects. But our awareness is indirect, because we are aware of them only via our awareness of perceptual experience. Perceptual experience is a representation, and the object's qualities are what is represented. We are aware of the representation, and so indirectly of the represented.

Therefore, it seems to me that you are still unable to coherently maintain a distinction between direct and indirect experience. — Luke

These are completely distinct, and I should have highlighted this earlier. Object experience is propositional, can be expressed in language, and can always be coherently doubted. Perceptual experience is qualitative, ineffable, and cannot be coherently doubted. Example below.

On your view, if I smell smoke then I am directly aware of the smell of smoke but indirectly aware of the smoke. So I can never know if I am smelling smoke or smelling something else? — Luke

Precisely, you can never know.

A (Direct): The phenomenological olfactory experience of smoke
B (Indirect): That the olfactory experience belongs in the category "smoky"
C (Indirect): That there is smoke in my room
D (Indirect): That there is a fire somewhere nearby

Note how each of the indirect awarenesses, they can all be wrong. B, there might be a chemical leak that happens to smell somewhat similar to smoke, my categorization is mistaken. C, I may be recovering from COVID, and my sense of smell is messed up, the smell is hallucinatory. D, a maniac might be pumping smoke into my house. While A, the perceptual experience itself, cannot be doubted. In the veridical case, we are successfully, indirectly, aware of B, a smell that is "smoky", C, smoke, and D, something burning.


This fallibility is a necessary consequence of indirection; indirect awareness is an extrapolation from what we are actually, directly aware of. To take the example of a different direct/indirect distinction, if we are directly aware of a photo of an apple, we think we are indirectly aware of an apple somewhere, and indeed we are in the veridical case. But this is just an extrapolation from what is directly in front of us, the photograph. Perhaps the photo is really a lifelike painting, AI generated, etc.

Indirect awareness is not thereby bad or inferior; it is the whole point of perception. Perceptual experience is just the means to it, on its own it accomplishes nothing.

If you use "awareness" as a replacement for "perceive", and if you have direct awareness of your perceptual experience (as you claim), then surely you must "perceive [your] perceptual experience". — Luke

No, I use "awareness" instead of "perceive", because to be aware of perceptual experience is not itself an act of perception.

These statements seem to contradict each other? — Luke

How so?

You do not perceive an internal object that represents an external object; you perceive an external object. Indirect realists misuse the word "perceive". — Luke

Hence my use of "aware". You are failing to distinguish the awareness of perceptual experience with the awareness of the world. Did the example of smoke clarify?

@Luke

P1: We are aware of perceptual experiences.
P2: Perceptual experiences are representations of mind-independent reality.
P3: We are aware of representations of mind independent reality. (From P1, P2)
P4: If one is aware of a representation, one has indirect awareness what it represents.
C: We are indirectly aware of mind-independent reality. (From P3, P4).


We agree on P2. So do you challenge P1, P4, or both?

I see no inconsistency in maintaining that although the content of our perceptual experiences consists of representations, those perceptual experiences are of real world objects. — Luke

"I see no inconsistency in maintaining that although the content of the photograph consists of representations, the photograph is of real world objects."

No one here is doubting that the photograph is of real world objects. But does that mean the photograph gives you direct experience of the real world objects?

Your position boils down to this:

Direct experience: Awareness of a perceptual experience.
Indirect experience: Perceptual experience of a real object. — Luke

I would phrase it:

Direct experience: Awareness of a perceptual experience.
Indirect experience: Awareness of an object (via perceptual experience)[/quote]

You appear to be vacillating over whether awareness is perceptual experience or not. — Luke

By "perceptual experience is awareness", I mean, "to have a perceptual experience is to be aware of perceptual experience (and so, you cannot talk about perception without talking about awareness)". I do not mean, "perceptual experience and awareness are two words that actually mean the same thing".

Otherwise, you should acknowledge that your position—that of the indirect realist—is that we have perceptual experiences of; representations of; perceptions of; representations. — Luke

No, I do not agree that to be aware of a perceptual experience is to have a perceptual experience of a perceptual experience. Perceptual experience entails awareness of the perceptual experience. For you to have a perceptual experience means you must be aware of that perceptual experience. Otherwise, it is not a perceptual experience at all. This is the sense that "perceptual experience is awareness".

You merely attempt to distance yourself from this regress by substituting "perceptual experiences of representations" with "awareness of perceptual experiences". — Luke

Yes, I am distancing myself from this invalid formulation. For us to perceive an object necessitates we construct a perceptual experience of it. That is how we are built, and it is hard to imagine how it could be otherwise. But there is no such requirement to be aware of the perceptual experience itself. Neither logically, nor in actuality. To be aware of perceptual experience is not a "perceptual experience of representations".

We once agreed that we are aware of perceptual experience. Did you backtrack?

The IEP article defines indirect realism as involving a "perceptual intermediary" and offers examples of intermediaries such as “sense datum, ” “sensum,” “idea,” “sensibilium,” “percept” and “appearance.” Your intermediary, however, is awareness. — Luke

Awareness is not my intermediary, "sense data", "qualia", etc. are. "Awareness" is my replacement for "see" or "perceive". We don't "see perceptual experience", we don't "perceive perceptual experience", we are "aware of perceptual experience", because to be aware of perceptual experience is not itself a perceptual act. Moreover, awareness is my measure of directness or indirectness: Am I aware of something directly, or only via a more direct awareness of something else?

We appear to agree that a perceptual experience is a representation. We also seem to agree that we have perceptual experiences of; representations of; perceptions of; real objects. — Luke

We had also agreed that we are aware of perceptual experience. Do you now maintain that we are unaware of perceptual experience?

and if there is no possibility that the awareness is of a representation (since none of the links mention this possibility), — Luke

No, none of the links mention the possibility, "representation of a representation". Awareness of a perceptual experience does not imply awareness of a representation of perceptual experience. I think this is where you are hung up. To be aware of an object does imply awareness of a representation of an object. That is indirect realism. But to be aware of the representation itself does not imply an awareness of a representation of the representation. The conscious brain is constituted so as to be able to be directly aware of representations, "given" to it by other parts of the brain. Everything else it might be aware of, objects for instance, must be via these representations. Again, this is just indirect realism.

However, you are now saying that "perceptual experience is awareness". In that case, we are not directly aware of perceptual experience, because awareness and perceptual experience are the same thing. — Luke

It is incoherent to have a perceptual representation without an awareness of the perceptual representation.
Therefore, perceptual experience is representation coupled with an awareness of the representation.
Therefore, perceptual experience is (in part) awareness of the representation.
Therefore, perceptual experience is (in part) awareness.

What do you mean by "merely represents the object"? How might perception or perceptual experience be improved upon so that it does not "merely represent the object"? What better possibility are you alluding to? — Luke

"Merely" is not a value judgement. It is a contrast with the perceptual process, which itself may be directly of an object.

While,

"what we are actually, directly aware of, the perceptual experience, merely represents the object."
— hypericin

Replacing "merely" with "only" does not change the meaning I intended.

The two sides of the dispute argue over what that content is of, or what that content represents; whether it represents a real world object or whether it represents another representation. — Luke

Who here or anywhere is claiming that it represents another representation? It sounds like you are a indirect realist yourself, while believing indirect realism is the homunculus theory strawmanned by direct realists.

The brain, the nerves and real world objects are not part of our subjective, perceptual experience; they are not contained in the content of perception. When you see a real world object, that real object is neither physically inside your head nor even physically inside your mind.

My position is that our perceptual experience typically represents real world objects. That is, our perceptual experience is typically of real world objects; we typically perceive real world objects. The perceptual experience is the representation. We don't have another--a second--perceptual experience of that perceptual experience. — Luke

This sounds like typical indirect realism to me.

None of these references indicate that the dispute concerns awareness, only that it concerns perceptual experience: — Luke

Perceptual experience is awareness. "What is the awareness of?", is the question. A representation, or the world? None of these links mention the possibility, "a representation of a representation".

But mostly, I believe that the dispute between direct realists and indirect realists concerns whether or not we have direct perceptions/perceptual experiences of real world objects
— Luke

I also believe that a real world object is not part of a perception, and that only a representation of a real world object is part of a perception. I don't have physical (real world) objects in my mind; only representations of them.
— Luke

It would have been good if either this, or your other conception of the conflict, were actually agree upon in the first pages of this thread. Read together, these two passages end the dispute. — AmadeusD

It is almost as if @Luke has become a radical indirect realist!

Ironically, I disagree. Objects *are* part perception. But perception is a process, what we are actually, directly aware of, the perceptual experience, merely represents the object.

I believe that a perception is equivalent to a perceptual experience. My brain and nerves are not what I have perceptual experiences of, so I would not include these as being part of a perception. (Your diagram indicates that the brain generates the perception, and that the nerves transmit the perception, so maybe you agree.) — Luke

You are conflating perception and perceptual experience. A "perceptual experience" is not a perception when you are hallucinating, dreaming, etc. There is nothing you are perceiving, you are only experiencing. I call a "perception" the overall process that connects real world objects with the perceiving self, and "perceptual experience" what the self actually subjectively experiences.

Is this a disagreement on terminology, or substance? If terminology, what other word could fill the role I am giving "perception"?

You seem to believe that the dispute between direct realists and indirect realists concerns whether or not we have direct awareness of our perceptions/perceptual experiences, instead of direct perceptions of real world objects. In fact, you appear to agree that we have direct perceptions of real world objects. — Luke

No!

The dispute is over whether perceptions allow direct or indirect awareness of real world objects. Perceptions can be directly of real world objects, by contrast with cases like photographs. But as I made very clear, in my conception of perception, we are not directly aware of everything that makes up a perception. We are only directly aware of perceptual experience.

The conversation is not progressing. I will try a different approach.

Here is a diagram of my conception of perception. Which parts do you disagree with?

A perception happens when an object in the world directly (touch, taste) or indirectly (smell, sight, hearing) stimulates nerve endings
— hypericin

It's unclear to me how you are distinguishing direct from indirect here. — Luke

Object perception in smell, sight, hearing are indirectly mediated by molecules, light, and sound waves respectively. But to be clear, this is not the indirection we are discussing.

I agree. However, the typical contrast for the indirect realist seems to be that a perception is, instead, directly of a representation. — Luke

Who is the typical indirect realist here?

How does the lack of awareness of a perceptual experience differ from the lack of a perceptual experience? — Luke

There is no difference.

I'm not sure why you are getting hung up over "awareness of perceptual experience". We already agreed that the self is aware of perceptual experience. When I say, "the self is only directly aware of perceptual experience", to point out that the self is *not* directly aware of what the perception is *of*, nor any of the other components of perception, would you have me say, "the self is only directly perceptual experience"? The "aware of" is necessitated by English.

why you seem to consider the perceptual experience itself to be insufficient. — Luke

As I pointed out in my last post perceptual experience is only one part of perception:

A perception happens when an object in the world directly (touch, taste) or indirectly (smell, sight, hearing) stimulates nerve endings, which transmit information to the brain, which (somehow) produces the perceptual experience. — hypericin

Perceptual experience is a necessary but insufficient condition for perception. If the perceptual experience is there but other parts are missing, we have things like dreams, hallucinations, and nerve misfirings.

the perceptual experience or representation is directly of worldly objects — Luke

For a "perception to be directly of worldly objects " makes sense to me by contrast with the case when the perception is mediated by other objects, i.e. a photo of an apple vs an apple.

Whereas I would call the perceptual experience the perception, you want to include an additional step and call your awareness of the perceptual experience the perception. — Luke

I think it is clear that the perceptual experience is not the perception. A perception happens when an object in the world directly (touch, taste) or indirectly (smell, sight, hearing) stimulates nerve endings, which transmit information to the brain, which (somehow) produces the perceptual experience. the only part of this process the subject is directly aware of is the perceptual experience itself. All the rest of it, the brain's interpretive processes, the nerves, the way the object stimulated the nerves, and above all the object itself, are parts of the perception that must be inferred, as the subject is not directly aware of them.

That is the question I think we are answering: "does perception afford the subject/self direct awareness of the world?", not "is perception considered as an abstract entity in some sense directly of the world?"

Of course that's 'the way it is', because I merely stated a consequence of what you're arguing for. If you believe that touching fire is not directly perceiving fire, then there's not much more I can say. — creativesoul

You are not making arguments, but merely appealing to common sense. There are venues where appeals to common sense carry some weight, this is not one of them.

Sure, and perceptual experience might also include, and/or be affected by, expectation, environmental conditions, and other stuff too. — Luke

Everything is affected by other things. If X is affected by Y, we don't generally say that X is X and Y

If you agree that our perceptual experience is not of a representation (i.e. is not of itself), then what do we have a perceptual experience of? Odour molecules? — Luke

Yes, The experience is of odor molecules. The whole point is we have no direct awareness of what experience is of. This is very obvious in the case of smell; until recently we didn't know odor molecules existed at all. All we are directly aware of is the smell, by way of which we are indirectly aware of odor molecules.
.

Here is an example of disqualifying us from directly perceiving by using our biological machinery and how they work as reason.

Makes no sense to me.

Touching the fire, on your view, is not directly perceiving the fire. Nonsense. — creativesoul

Yup. That's the way it is, your common sense opinions notwithstanding.

Right, so those parts of sense which are not attended to, not conscious, are not representations, but are presumably unconscious physical, neural effects. — Janus

No, you are missing the distinction between "not attended to" and "not conscious". Think of looking at a painting. You are aware of the visual gestalt of the whole painting, but you can only attend to an aspect of it, maybe the main theme of the painting. Then you can choose to focus on other details.

If most of the data is never brought to consciousness it does not seem apt to refer to it as "representation"; who is it being represented to? — Janus

Perceptual experience represents the world to conscious awareness. We are aware of a gestalt of perceptual experience, and can choose to attend to a tiny slice of it.

Since language and knowledge are inherently representative, I can't see how we could have language and knowledge without representation. — Janus

I was referring to perceptual experience as representation. I changed "representation" in the quote to perceptual experience for clarity.

It could be said that a perceptual experience simply is a representation. However, I made the weaker assertion that representation is only involved in a perceptual experience, because language and knowledge can also form part of a perceptual experience. — Luke

This is not necessarily weaker, just different. It seems more accurate to say that perceptual experience is a representation, and that language and knowledge might be stimulated by the perceptual experience, or might not, depending on whether we attend to it . After all, we receive a torrent of representative perceptual experience all the time, and most of it is unreflected upon. Only a small fraction receives attention, and anything like linguistic content.

Perceptual experience without language and knowledge is still perceptual experience. But language and knowledge without perceptual experience is just language and knowledge. Logically, language and knowledge is something that may be added onto perceptual experience, while the representation constitutes it.

This is not nitpicking, these distinctions are crucial to the discussion. If knowledge of an object is part of the perceptual experience itself, it may be considered as immediate as the representation. But if it only follows/stimulated from the representation, then this seems implausible

Moreover, if a perceptual experience is a representation (or is a representation plus language), then we do not have a perceptual experience of this representation. — Luke

Agreed

...

I'm confused about what would it take to qualify as direct perception to those who argue for indirect.

Anyone here have an answer? — creativesoul

I have an answer no one has given yet that I think is the correct one: lower organisms that do not use representational perception perceive directly.

Think of an amoeba, light hits a photo receptor, and by some logic the amoeba moves one way or the other.

If you regard this as "perception", then this is direct perception. If however perception for you entails the kind of representational perception we use, where the brain generates a virtual world for the centralized decision maker to evaluate and respond to, then perception is inherently indirect.

Perception need not entail recognition or identification of objects. We can have a perceptual experience of an object (e.g. for the first time) and be unable to identify the object. — Luke

My position is that perceptual experiences necessarily involve representation, but that we do not perceive a representation. — luke

When you smell something you cannot attribute to an object, the only thing you are aware of is the phenomenal experience of the smell, which is exactly the representation of the odor molecules to conscious awareness.

In your account, when we smell this unidentifiable smell, you say the perception involves a representation, but we are somehow unaware of this representation. We aren't aware of the object, and we aren't aware of its perceptual representation. What is it then that we are aware of?

True, perceptions are of many things. I'm not sure what your point is though. — Janus

Am I being that unclear? My point is not that perceptions are of many things. My point is that perception is not just "seeing an object", you have to at least conceptually recognize both phenomenal awareness and object awareness.

My position is that perceptual experiences necessarily involve representation, but that we do not perceive a representation. Instead, the representation helps to form the perceptual experience, which is then directly of its object. — Luke

What exactly are we doing then, when we smell something but are unaware what it is?

I would not class an hallucination as a perception because nothing is being perceived. — Janus

Perceptions combine the phenomenal experience of hallucinations with something being perceived. Hallucinations prove that perceptions are not unitary.

The point is not whether you confuse hallucination with reality, nor how much acid you've dropped. The point is you can't lump together awareness of objects with sensations, because hallucinations are subjective sensations without awareness of anything. Perceptions are both of these.

For me saying that we see representations is more problematic and less parsimonious than saying we simply see things. — Janus

If we simply "see things" how do you account for hallucinations?

That we are aware of representations as well as the thing is more obvious with other senses such as smell. When you smell a lemon, you are aware of two things: that a lemon is nearby because you smell one, and the subjective sensation of smelling a lemon. Each of these two can occur without the other: you can be aware of lemons nearby without smelling them, and you can smell lemons without lemons being nearby, in the case of phantom smells. Any account of smell and any of the senses has to acknowledge these two distinct things.

A

That is, your perception would not be of a representation of the odour molecules; your perception would be of the odour molecules themselves. — Luke

Smell allows perception of a cake, or odor molecules. What the conscious self is directly aware of, is not the cake, not the odor molecules, but just the perception, the nice smell. The nice smell is a fiction, it does not exist anywhere outside of your head, even though our brains are arranged to make it seem as if perceptions are windows into the world.

Conscious self -> perceptions -> world.

The conscious self only directly experience perceptions, manifesting to it as phenomenal experience/qualia, which are the the illusions which allow the conscious self to interface with the world. I call them illusions because they present to the conscious self as if they themselves were the world. To accept this illusion is to be a naive realist.

Not because I'm not wanting to call the whole baseball experience an experience, but because when you list out all the direct experiences that are part of that experience -- all the qualia and first-person thoughts - it's still just a bunch of internal, immediate stuff. — flannel jesus

What makes all the internal, immediate stuff more than a hallucination or dream is that you are in fact experiencing a baseball game... via all the internal, immediate stuff.

I don’t think colours and sounds and smells and tastes “map” to objective features at all, and certainly not in a sense that can be considered “representative.” — Michael

I say that colors, sounds, smells, and tastes "map" to objective features in the same way that mathematical functions map from one domain to another. So the optical nervous system in a sense "maps" from 450nm light to subjective blue. Color represents kinds of light in the same way signs represents the signified, without being representative in the sense I think you mean.

The connection between distal objects and sensory precepts is nothing more than causal, determined in part by each individual’s biology. — Michael

If it were nothing more than causal, if that's the most we can say about it, it wouldn't be of any utility.

The “objective” world is a mess of quantum fields, far removed from how things appears to us. — Michael

That characterizes the world at one length scale, one that is not ours. The way we perceive the world is a perspective, one of infinitely many possible, tailored by evolution to represent as much as possible the slice of reality that is relevant to us. It is no more "wrong" or "illusory" than it is "objectively correct". If it were merely wrong or illusion, it would not be of any use.

Futher to my previous post, if I want to use the word 'experience' to only refer to those raw things we have immediate access to, the qualia, then I would say we don't "experience" a baseball game at all.

We experience the visual qualia, and we experience the series of thoughts which include the thought "I'm watching a baseball game" and "this game is fun / this game sucks" and etc. — flannel jesus

But then, you are kind of left with no word at all to describe your relation to the baseball game. There are plenty for what you are talking about: "phenomenal experience", "sense data", "qualia", your own "raw experience". These all mean more or less the same thing, afaict.

I don't want to say "you don't experience the baseball game", when you see it live, and even on TV. In both cases, you are causally connected to it in a nontrivial way, you think and feel about it, you have internal representations that map to objective features of it.

Your way of speaking seems to suggest a self locked in their own personal world. I have sympathy with the semantic/non-naïve direct realist intuition that we are in fact connected to the external world, and I agree with @Michael that epistemologically it and indirect realism are equivalent. I just differ from semantic realism in emphasizing the deeply mediate nature of this connection, the fact that there is truly nothing "direct" whatsoever about it.

↪hypericin These words are too abstract for me, an example might help. — flannel jesus

Consider the experience of watching a YouTube video of a man telling a story. Your mind is transported to the world of the story, it is what occupies your attention. But your experience of the story is indirect. More direct is your experience of the man and his voice, as you experience the story via his voice and gestures. But this experience is still indirect, what is even more direct is your experience of your computer making sounds and images, as you experience the man's voice and gestures via your computers monitor and speakers.

Within this framework, the indirect realist says that this is still indirect, that there is a fundamental, bedrock, direct layer of experience. Of course, this is subjective sensory experience, because you experience every aspect of the world only via sensory experience. — hypericin

An experience had via a more direct experience.

So then I agree that there is no such thing as "indirect phenomenal experience", "indirect qualia", but there is "indirect experience", right?

Your analogies are all about things that aren't *experience itself*. A TV isn't experience itself. A baseball game isn't experience itself. I think you misunderstood the words you quoted from me. — flannel jesus

You seem to be using the word "experience" and "experience itself" as if they only meant "phenomenal experience". There are other kind of experience, right?

If Jodie had told you herself, instead of hearing it from Bob, or if you went to the baseball game and saw it live, instead of watching it on TV, then these would be direct perceptions, right? — Luke

I would experience Jodie's words directly, instead of via Bob, and the game directly, instead of via the TV. But these events would still be experienced by me via my phenomenal experience of them, so in that sense they are experienced indirectly.

In the cases of hearing about Jodie from Bob, and watching the game on TV, there are (at least) two levels of indirection: the explicit one of the examples, and the implicit one that indirect realism points out.

The word "direct" and "indirect" don't really seem to apply to experience itself to me - experience is experience, it's fundamental, it's nothing else other than itself. Direct and indirect can be words we use to categorize casual chains that lead to experience, but not experience itself. — flannel jesus

Disagree. Applying direct and indirect to experience is the only way I've seen to make sense of this question. Casual chains lead to a mare's nest of problems and ambiguities, this way is intuitive and easy to understand.

To indirectly experience x is to experience it via a more direct experience. To directly experience x is to experience it without an intermediary experience.

The best example might be TV. When you are watching something, say a baseball game, you are experiencing it, but only indirectly, via the direct experience of the TV itself. The baseball game is casually connected to the TV, the features on the TV map to features of the game. Yet, what you experience is not the game itself, but in fact a representation of it.

Once you understand that, the claim indirect realists are making becomes clear; all of experienced reality stands in relation to phenomenal experience as the baseball game stands in relation to the TV. It is a bedrock layer of direct experience via which everything else is experienced(a positive claim, not mere negation of direct realism).

What inference(s) are you making? — Luke

In "perceptions of the world", that a perception is indeed "of the world", and not a hallucination, must be inferred. Because, this information is not contained within the perception itself.

It seems like you've labelled experiences without an external cause as "direct" and experiences with an external cause as "indirect". That's kind of just stipulating that perception of real-world objects is indirect, which is begging the question. — Luke

No. An experience of heat on my skin is direct, not because it doesn't have an external cause (there may be a match an inch from my skin), but because the experience has direct phenomenological content, and is not subject to doubt. I may doubt the cause, but I cannot doubt the feeling of heat itself. Whereas, if Bob told me what Jodie said this morning, I may indeed be aware of what Jodie said this morning, but only indirectly. What I am directly aware of, my actual experience, are the words Bob told me.

This I think is the essence of the direct/indirect divide. And the indirect realist claims that there is no direct experience of objects, because all such experience must be via phenomenal experience, which is the bedrock, most direct kind of experience, and the directness that is in contrast to the indirectness of object experience.

We are aware of our perceptions. I take issue with your distinction between direct/indirect awareness. — Luke

We are aware of our perceptions? But you've been saying, and just in this very post, that

You don't perceive your perceptual experience. — Luke

We are aware of our perceptions, but we don't perceive our perceptual experience? The latter just seems like a more awkward, less grammatical form of the former.

You agree that we can both perceive objects, and have awareness of perceptions in themselves? This is most clear with senses other than sight. So when we are tasting a pickle, we are perceiving the pickle, gaining awareness of the pickle, via taste. But there is also the sensation of taste itself, the salty, tangy experience of tasting a pickle.