Hey. Once again, for no particular reason while agreeing in a rhetorical fashion…..

I question whether all knowledge does require belief. — Janus

If such were the case, it reduces to belief being a necessary condition for knowledge. If it is true the only source for knowledge is experience, and there is no possibility of experiencing that which one merely believes, wouldn’t it follow that one cannot condition the other?

Pretty dumb, methinks, to merely believe I know how to ride a bike while I’m actually doing it, and conversely, even dumber to claim to know I can ride a bike by merely believing I’ve been on one and in control of it.

Maybe I believe I can’t know how to ride a bike cuz I’m a hopeless klutz who believes he shouldn’t use a hammer given the historical precedent of experiencing serious bodily injury. But then, out of sheer well-being necessity, I find myself riding a bike in order to escape the neighbor’s mutt. If knowledge requires belief, and the belief is negative the knowledge must also be negative thereby how to ride a bike should not have been known to me, and under sufficiently strong negative belief that I can’t know how, I shouldn’t have even bothered to try. Yet given that riding a bike….which I’m now doing….presupposes at least the awareness of the mechanics and principles by which bike riding is accomplished, re: I’m peddling upright in a progressive series of times, it is the case what I believe about bike riding (I can’t know how) has nothing whatsoever to do with my coming to know how to do it (YEA!! Look it me, here I am bike riding).

So did I switch beliefs and come to believe I can know how to ride a bike? Like that little engine that could? Seems kinds silly to me, to take the time to believe something at the same time I’m discovering it for myself in conjunction with the extant experience that bikes are inherently ride-able. Even if IthinkIcanIthinkIcanIthinkIcan is running through my brain, am I navigating positively because of that alone, or am I concentrating on the objects of certain mechanics and principles necessary for transportation via bicycle? Do I really need to believe in the authority of those principles in order to use them, especially considering the fact I’m only interested in their objects I use and not the principles themselves I merely think as given?

Wonder why Nike, instead taglining with “Just do it”, didn’t instead go with “Believe you can know how to do it then just do it”?

….a philosopher arrives at some logically valid statements…. — ucarr

….neuroscience discovers through long-term testing…. — ucarr

How would the scientist test the philosopher’s logically valid statements, the subject and predicate of which are merely abstract conceptions? At bottom would be Aristotle’s laws of thought, in which it is clear A = A would be impossible to test with deductive certainty.

I grant that science can test some philosophic statements, but I wanted to account for it, by stating that philosophers need no consult for that investigation which in no way involves natural law, which would include statements the validity of which are only logical.
———-

….it can work through unlimited higher orders of categorical thinking… — ucarr

….after reaching higher order X of categorical thinking…. — ucarr

Here the philosopher, specifically the metaphysician, would reject even his own the notion of unlimited higher orders of critical thinking, which makes the neuroscientist’s claims of brain data loss inherent in it, mistaken hence irrelevant. On the other hand, the philosopher may well acknowledge data transfer loss even for the levels of critical thinking he grants to human intelligence; he would simply label “forgetfulness” what the neuroscientist labels “plasticity”.

Interesting gedankenexperiment though.

no science is ever done purely a priori, and no philosophy is ever done purely a posteriori;
— Mww

Do you think it's also true when we switch the position of the two disciplines in the above statement? — ucarr

If the differences between the two hold, one cannot be switched with the other. So, first, it would have to be shown how they are not, in order to show how the purities by which each is conditioned, are removed. Still, it is the requisite of metaphysics that it is purely a priori, eliminating it from being even partially a posteriori, as the switch in positions would ask.
————

I suppose I'm saying science and philosophy are two sub-divisions, or specializations operating under one over-arching category. — ucarr

I might agree with that, iff the one over-arching category, is reason. Science and philosophy are both done by humans, and reason is the singular human condition, so….
———-

If a philosopher is not first a scientist, then they need to always maintain a direct line to someone who is. — ucarr

The philosopher doesn’t need a scientific consult if he is theorizing in, or merely speculating on, that which cannot at all be legislated by natural law. Or, in the interest of fairness, why would he?
————

I think the relationship between scientific truth and philosophical truth is bi-conditional. — ucarr

I don’t understand what bi-conditional means. Nevertheless, I’m not sure there is a relationship between truths predicated on an observable natural order, and truths predicated on speculative conceptual order.
————

philosophy differs from science merely in the determination and application of rules.
— Mww

I think this difference, when the two disciplines dialog constructively, for my reasons above, shrinks to a near vanishing point. — ucarr

If it is the case these two dialogue constructively only by means of reason, then the difference may well vanish with respect to the determination of rules, but would remain for the application of them, insofar as rules determined as governing empirical conditions cannot apply to abstract conceptions. Bearing in mind, of course, cause/effect is a principle, not a rule, and as such applies to both.

Anyway….worthy subject, but I can’t think of much else to say about it.

What is the difference between philosophy and science:

The short list, and assuming the human condition alone….
…..no science is ever done purely a priori, and no philosophy is ever done purely a posteriori;
…..philosophical truths are proven logically and are necessarily so, scientific truths are proven empirically and are contingently so;
…..no science is done that isn’t first a philosophical construct, from which follows….
…..a scientist is always a philosopher, but a philosopher is not always, nor needs be, a scientist;
…..all together, philosophy differs from science merely in the determination and application of rules.

…..is a judgement of truth the same as truth? I don't think that is how the two are commonly conceived. — Janus

Perhaps not commonly conceived, but common is so boring, innit? At the end of the day, each comes by and thereby possesses his own anyway, so….

A judgement of truth just indicates the condition of the object of the judgement. To judge a thing as the case, then to think or be led to think the negation of it, leads to self-contradiction, and conversely, to judge a thing as not the case, while equally a lawful truth, still leads to self-contradiction upon thinking or being led to think its affirmation.

I think there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief, although I also think that much of what is generally considered to be knowledge might be more accurately classed as belief. — Janus

As do I, but if there is a distinction, putting belief and knowledge in the same class kinda invalidates it.

But I get what you’re saying, I think, in that it is often the case one validly disputes another’s knowledge claim, while he can never dispute another’s mere belief with equal validity. By the same token, I can never dispute with myself the persuasion of belief with the conviction of knowledge, at any one time with respect to the judgement of one thing.

Still, regarding the question in general, this….

What distinguishes a 'fact' from a belief is that THAT PERSON ONLY (…) has decided…. — Chet Hawkins

….would be the focal point of the issue, insofar as whether opinion, belief or knowledge, any relative judgement of truth is a purely subjective effort. And even if that is the case, brain states aside, still leaves the method by which it happens.

At any rate, I agree there is a valid distinction.

So be it.

Take all the exception you like; you compound perception with experience, my presently considered pet peeve.

Ya know….it’s too bad the major reference material stipulates “perceptual experience”, so almost everyone just figures that’s the way it is. It used to be, back in the Good ol’ Days, that perception was one thing, experience was another, just as you’re describing the confusion of the road with the destination. But that road has to be built, which requires machinery of a certain type, and that’s what’s been neglected here for 37 pages.

Progress, donchaknow. Science can’t inform what kind of machinery is needed, so speculating on the construction has become passé, and we end up with no road at all. Not even a bumpy, potholed, wagon track, yet perception is conjoined with experience as if there was a gawdamn 6-lane freeway.

OK. Thanks.

And I guess if x is in a coma….. — Metaphyzik

Anthropomorphic tautologies with respect to x aside….on the off-chance you weren’t actually going there….the coma thing won’t work, if we’re keeping with the original cogito simpliciter you started with, in that Descartes counts thinking as such “because we are aware of it”.

But the simple cogito? (…) If there were no other way to exist other than to think…. — Metaphyzik

If it is I that thinks and given that there is thinking, then isn’t it necessary for “I” to be? Under these conditions, there is no way for “I” to be other than to think. Descartes used the term “exist” here and there, for which he should be forgiven, considerIng the general mandate of his thesis.

“…. This is the best way to discover what sort of thing the mind is, and how it differs from the body. How does it do that? I am supposing that everything other than myself is unreal, while wondering what sort of thing I am. I can see clearly that I don’t have any of the properties that bodies have—I don’t have a spatial size or shape, and I don’t move—because those properties all fall on the supposed-to-be-unreal side of the line, whereas we’ve just seen that I can’t suppose that I am unreal. So I find that the only property I can ascribe to myself is thought. So my knowledge of my thought is more basic and more certain than my knowledge of any corporeal thing.

….I take the word ‘thought’ to cover everything that we are aware of as happening within us, and it counts as ‘thought’ because we are aware of it. (…)

….I’m not going to explain many of the other terms (in addition to ‘thought’) that I have already used or will use later on, because they strike me as being sufficiently self-explanatory. I have often noticed that philosophers make the mistake of trying to explain things that were already very simple and self-evident, by producing logical definitions that make things worse! When I said that the proposition I am thinking, therefore I exist is ‘the first and most certain thing to occur to anyone who philosophizes in an orderly way’, I wasn’t meaning to deny that one must first know what thought, existence and certainty are, and know that it’s impossible for something to think while it doesn’t exist, and the like. But these are utterly simple notions, which don’t on their own give us knowledge of anything that exists; so I didn’t think they needed to be listed…”
(Principia Philosophiae, 1, 8-10, 1644, in Bennet, 2017)

Ok. Thanks.

“….depends on the philosophical framework and the specific definition of these terms used in the discussion….”

Can’t disagree with that, at least.

As ChatGPT states: — Luke

Just curious. What did you ask of it, to get that statement?

psychology is becoming one of the most popular subjects for study. — Jack Cummins

Probably because on the one hand there’s no math in it and on the other, it’s socially more inviting than sports analytics.

In any case, what do you think about the argument overall? — Malcolm Lett

Overall, not too bad, except for the false attributions of Kantian metaphysics. It would have been better to go your own way and leave him out of it.

Which is merely a friendly way of saying my opinions would have been happier….

My question arises because neuroscience has changed the thinking of mind completely. — Jack Cummins

Perhaps, of a scant few, but Everydayman couldn’t care less if he tried, unless neuroscience lowers his grocery bill.

So, in the light of cognitive science and neuroscience, how, and what do you see as the overriding and outstanding issues of the philosophy of mind in the twentieth first century? — Jack Cummins

Yikes. Talk about a loaded question…….

If the conditions are limited to cognitive science and neuroscience, wouldn’t it be science of mind? Which leads to a contradiction, insofar as the science of mind would need to empirically decide the absence or impossibility of that which is necessarily presupposed, but never intended for empirical status, susceptible to, thus legislated by, methodological naturalism, re: scientific rigor.

If philosophy of mind, and because philosophy proper has no use of empirical experimentation, the light of neuroscience would seem to be pretty dim with respect to purely abstract conceptions, in spite of the gross reifications by which they arise.

So…overriding/outstanding issue? Neglect of lane.

We agree that correlations can be drawn prior to(far in advance of) experience, but I suspect for very different reasons. — creativesoul

Mine are: on the one hand all that which constitutes the representation of an object as it is perceived, which I call a phenomenon, correlated with representations for all that I think the phenomenon contains, which I call conceptions. The result is what my intelligence informs me about the object, which I call an understanding.

Yours are……?

I have a strong methodological naturalist bent, a preference for ontological monism….. — creativesoul

With respect to all that isn’t metaphysics, I also hold with methodological naturalism, if that means the employment of the scientific method for instances of cause and effect in the empirical domain. It is tacit rejection of supernatural or transcendent causality. I’m not cognizant of ontological monism, so I’m not inclined to address it. Little help here, maybe? Surely more sophisticated than “one ring to rule them all”, I imagine.

….compatible with, an evolutionary timeline. — creativesoul

This being aimed against the creationists?
—————

The experience is meaningful to the dog, but not the sensor. The sensor detects and the dog perceives the very same thing. — creativesoul

Ok, I get that. Because you already posit that experience is meaningful only to the creature, can half of each of your pairs be eliminated? Detection/perception eliminates detection because the creature perceives, and likewise, for sensitivity/sentience, sensitivity is eliminated. I wonder then, why you brought them up in the first place, just to dismiss them for their difference. Although, I must say, a creature senses as much as a photocell or a thermometer, albeit with different apparatuses.
—————

….it's akin to saying “creamy ice cream”. (…) perception is one element of experience. — creativesoul

Quite right. Who ever heard of ice cream that wasn’t creamy, just as who ever heard of an experience that wasn’t perceptual, or, perceptually instantiated. On the other hand, while the ice is of the cream, experience is not of the perception, but only of a determinable set of abstract intellectual predicates cognized as representing it.
—————-

I would not even agree with saying anything much at all stays between the ears aside from the biological structures residing there. — creativesoul

Ahhhh….but whatever it is that those biological structures do, remains within the structure where it is done. Whether neurological or metaphysical, whatever the origin of what seems to be my thoughts, are never that which ultimately appears as mere expression in public language or objective activity of any kind.
————-

I think you're saying something along the lines of not all experience includes language use. I agree. — creativesoul

More than that; I’m saying no experience at all, includes language use. My acquiring an experience is very different than me telling you about what it was, which manifests as me telling you all about what I know of the object with which the experience is concerned, or how I came into possession of it.
————-

Biological machinery(physiological sensory perception) completely determines what sorts of things can become part of a creature's correlations….. — creativesoul

Yep. Mother Nature seriously limited her favored creature, I think. Made us capable of discovering all these radiant energies, but failed to give us the physiology required to directly, or immediately, perceive them.

People are very often mistaken about their own mental events. — creativesoul

I can’t tell whether they have no use for understanding what such events are, they don't want to think it the case there are any mental events to be mistaken about, or, given mistakes, that mental events are necessary causality for them, which……for (a-hem) those of us in the know like you ‘n’ me……is a serious contradiction.
————

Finally, and even if disregarding all the above…..ontological monism? What do you mean by it; who might be its more recognizable advocate? And most of all, what does it do for you?

Can we agree from this, that experience is a stand-alone entity?
— Mww

I don't think so. I believe experience consists of simpler things. — creativesoul

OK.

Meaning, for example, emerges as a result of correlations being drawn between different things by a creature so capable. Meaning is necessary for experience. — creativesoul

I agree meaning is a result of correlations, but I prefer to allot the correlations to understanding, and the meaning thereof emerging from the correlations, to judgement, but for me both of these are procedurally far in advance of experience. For you, then, is meaning one of the simpler things experience consists of, hence necessary for it?

It's the difference between detection and perception, or between sensitivity and sentience. — creativesoul

Meaning is that difference? Sorry, you’ve lost me now. What you mean by those terms helps me locate them in the discussion.
———-

Case in point: perceptual experience. If every experience begins with perception, then perceptual experience is redundant insofar as it says nothing more than experience alone.
— Mww

Last I checked "perceptual experience" wasn't something I invoked. — creativesoul

I know, and didn’t mean to imply you did. I was kinda hoping you wouldn’t because you’d already recognized the lack of justification for doing so.
———-

I agree that all experience is meaningful but would add that it is meaningful to the creature having the experience. This delineates the discourse. Are you okay with that? — creativesoul

Absolutely, insofar as meaningful to the creature, if you meant only to the creature, is a purely subjective predication. What goes on between the ears stays between the ears, kinda thing. For me, this is a strictly metaphysical paradigm, and through the years here, I got the impression you didn’t wish to be so limited.
————

You're focusing upon language use. I agree with that much. — creativesoul

I am forced into language use by the discussion. I reject language use for that which the discussion is about, for the first-hand, immediate occurrence of it, by the creature having the experience, which must include all that by which the experience he has, is possible, whatever that may be.

Can we agree from this, that experience is a stand-alone entity?
— Mww

How do you get from what I wrote to what you suggest for agreement? — creativesoul

You said “meaningful” experience. I’m saying, first of all, every experience is meaningful, and second, if it is granted experience is an end, the culmination of a methodological process, it needs no adjective attached to it. Case in point: perceptual experience. If every experience begins with perception, then perceptual experience is redundant insofar as it says nothing more than experience alone. Besides, separating perception from experience, and if experience is the end, then perception becomes the means without contradiction or confusion.

I’m aware of what the current reference texts everyone’s so fond of, say. Just wondering what a guy who thinks for himself has to say.
————

the nature of our human intellect makes non-dualism impossible
— Mww

I'd like to see the support for this. — creativesoul

Yes/no, up/down, left/right, wrong/right. For every possible conception, its negation is given immediately, without exception. It is impossible for the human intellect to function at all without this fundamental principle of complementarity, and from it follows the ground of intrinsically dualistic logical systems.

If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'.

To ask of a relation presupposes a content; how can that which necessarily has content be nowhere and at no time?

I think Spinoza's solution, that there is only one substance with both attributes, works. — Janus

Of all those choices, this is provably closest to the case, but you know….that leaves us with phosphate and calcium ions, nanovolts and picometers that think. Or, a brain full of nothing but extended substances that don’t think.

We are well and truly screwed, ain’t we? (Grin)

I couldn’t remember where I found this, seems like ages ago, and your “dualism of substances” made me think of it again. So I dug it up, just to give maybe the first exposition of what the intent was behind it. Not meant to elicit a comment…just thought you might be interested, if you didn’t already know.

Hobbes’ objection:
“…. Hence it may be that the thing that thinks - the subject that has mind, reason or intellect - is something corporeal. Descartes assumes that it isn’t, but he doesn’t prove this. Yet the conclusion that he seems to want to establish is based on this inference….”

Descartes’ reply:
“…. I’ll explain the point briefly. It is certain that a thought can’t exist without a thing that is thinking; and quite generally no act or property can exist without a substance for it to belong to. But we don’t ·ever· come to know a substance immediately, knowing it in itself, but only through its being the subject of certain acts. This makes it perfectly reasonable and normal for us to use different names for substances that we recognize as being the subjects of radically different acts or properties, and then later on to consider whether these different names signify different things or one and the same thing. Now there are certain acts and properties that we call ‘corporeal’, such as size, shape, motion and all others that can be thought only in terms of spatial extension; and we label as ‘body’ the substance that they are in, i.e. the thing that performs the acts and has the properties. We can’t intelligibly suppose that one substance has shape, and another substance moves, and so on, because all these acts fall under the common concept of extension. There are other acts that we call ‘acts of thought’, such as understanding, willing, imagining, having sensory perceptions, and so on; these all fall under the common concept of thought or perception or consciousness, and we call the substance that has them a ‘thinking thing’ or a ‘mind’ or any name you like as long as you don’t confuse this substance with corporeal substance. That confusion would be very bad, because acts of thought have nothing in common with corporeal acts, and thought (the common concept of the former) is radically different from extension (the common concept of the latter). Once we have formed two distinct concepts of these two substances, it is easy, on the basis of what I have said in the sixth Meditation, to establish whether they are one and the same or different….”
(Descartes, Objections and Replies, Third Objections (Hobbes), Second Meditation: ‘The nature of the human mind’, 1642, in Bennett, 2017)

…..it is plausible to think….. — Janus

Yep, even Himself says we can think whatever we please. But honestly….what advantage is gained by affirming something as real without the possibility of demonstrating it? If it’s as simple as the real encompasses at minimum holding something in your hand, sheer parsimony on the one hand, and pure logic on the other, says if you can’t hold it in your hand, it ain’t real.

It’s all good.

I don't have a problem with the idea that there may be real things which we cannot deomstrate to be real. — Janus

I’m with you on that; there could be all sorts of real stuff just outside the limits of our intelligence. Still, for those things we cannot demonstrate to be real, we lose the warrant for calling them real. Possibly real is all we can say, and that’s pretty weak.

I would say it is real, although it cannot be directly observed. — Janus

I guess that’s the root of my discomfort: we have real things we can observe and we have real things we cannot even possibly observe. Seems to take something important away from being real. It isn’t that big a deal, though, until or unless one gets deep into the weeds, whereupon inconsistencies become apparent.

all meaningful experience consists of correlations drawn between different things. — creativesoul

Can we agree from this, that experience is a stand-alone entity?

Our differences may be a matter of taxonomy….. — creativesoul

Taxonomy. Hierarchal organization. Of correlations drawn between different things? In the interest of clarity, might this require a predetermination of domain of discourse? If a dialectic should follow here, seems imperative to be on the same page. You brought it up, so you should set the pace.

……Maybe not if you're a mind/body dualist or physical/mental dualist. — creativesoul

I gather from this our differences wouldn’t be merely a matter of taxonomy if I were one of those dualists. It has always been my position that simply the nature of our human intellect makes non-dualism impossible. Might be different with a greater knowledge base, but we don’t have it yet, so…..
—————

some language less creatures can see red cups in very much the same way we do, given similar enough biological machinery. However, that same creature cannot know that they're seeing a green cup — creativesoul

….cannot know they’re NOT seeing a green cup?
———-

If you refer to a dualism of aspects as opposed to a dualism of substances then I agree. — Janus

Cool. In this instance, I was.

You seem to count as real only that which the senses apprehend. — Janus

Depending on our agreement on “apprehend”, yes. Given as opinion based on parsimony based on theory, but, yes.

My point earler was that on that criterion causation is not real. — Janus

Is this to say you don’t agree? Your point would be that causation is real?

I’d use causality rather than causation, but in either case, these always represent a relation, or that under which the chronology of the concepts in a relation, is subsumed. As such, causality/causation is no more than a metaphysical explanatory device representing either the progression or regression of real things in relation to each other.

Yea? Nay?

Why must one know what it is they are perceiving in order to be perceiving it? That makes no sense. — creativesoul

It does make no sense. I for one reject the very idea.
————-

Senses include neural events. — creativesoul

Of course, but neural events are not that which is given to the senses to be represented. Neural events in the senses just are the representations the senses afford.
————-

…..the grim specter of dualism looms with all its problems and aporias. — Janus

HA!!! Brain blind. I like it. But ya know…..if brain blind is true, then dualism must be true, problems and all. I’d even go as far as to say, because brain blind is true, dualism is necessarily true, insofar as it is impossible dualism is not true. There is that which we live in as things, and that which we create merely because of the things we are.

To me, because it seems most plausible, because we seem to have no cogent reason to doubt, that thoughts are neural events, then I count them as real and causal. — Janus

You’re not alone, I’m sure. But the fact I keep harping on, is that we do not think in terms of that which makes neural events real. Or, if this shoe fits better, what the brain does in its manufacture of our thoughts, in no way relates to what is consciously done with them.

I’m sticking with the notion that my senses will never be given my neural events, from which follows I can never represent a real-time, first order neural event as a phenomenon. As for every single possible real object ever given to my senses, every single one of them will be represented as a phenomenon. Thoughts are represented, but as conceptions, not as phenomena, and this is sufficient to mark the validity of the distinction between the real of things, re: neural events, and the not-real of abstract conceptions, re: thoughts.

But, as you say, that’s just me I guess.

I am interested in dropping the description and unhelpful arguments about what's "real". Seems the approach I've offered allows that to happen and focuses upon the effects/affects. — creativesoul

I thought your approach was…..

Now, whatever shall we do with realism?
— Mww

That which is real has affects/effects. — creativesoul

….and because I don’t subscribe to that approach in toto, isn’t the onus on me to describe the disagreement and argue the support for it?

….the divorce of perception and reality has even less appeal to me. — creativesoul

Agreed, this being the starting point of our current discourse.

I also do not place much value on "the given". — creativesoul

Ehhhhh…..that just indicates we don’t have to go look for things perceived. They’re everywhere we are, which means for us there is nowhere they’re not, which is the same as being given. Epistemologists cherish the term, ontologists hate it.
—————

I’d eliminate abstract conceptions having affect/effect from being real.
— Mww

What if abstract conceptions only have effects if they are actually thought, and every actual thought is a neural (i.e. real) event? — Janus

Doesn’t that just say neural events are real? No one doubts that, but no one can map from such physical neural event to a metaphysical abstract conception with apodeictic certainty, either. Probably less chance of self-contradiction, if it be the case neural events can be real and causal, but abstract conceptions are limited to being causal.

Does this mean that abstract concepts such as beauty are real? — RussellA

I’d eliminate abstract conceptions having affect/effect from being real. — Mww

If you took beauty to be an abstract conception, why would you ask me, of all people, if it meant that such conceptions are real, when I just stated for the record the elimination of them as being real?

I assume it makes more sense of direct realism. — creativesoul

To me it does, but then, this quintessential yankeevirgobabyboomer likes each thing in its place. This goes here does this, that goes there does that, working rather that interfering with each other.

Your offer of realism being that which has affect/effect makes it so everything having an affect or being effected, is real. I’d eliminate abstract conceptions having affect/effect from being real. Of course, that conception having an effect or being affected, is only so through another abstract conception. Rather than call those abstracts having affect/effect unreal, it’s suitable just to call them valid and their relation to each other, logical.

Whether by parsimony or necessity, makes no difference to the occassion, that the real is directly given to that creature capable of receiving it, which is merely to be undeniably affected by it, and with respect to the human creature, the inverse holds the same truth value, insofar as it is impossible to directly receive that which is not real, for we would never be aware of an affect.

Now, whatever shall we do with realism?
— Mww

That which is real has affects/effects. — creativesoul

Ok, but I guess I’d favor a more eliminative version.

The representationalist ends up claiming that we only perceive our internal states…..

Mmm, no; no, he doesn’t. Or, rather, he shouldn’t.

the observer does not immediately perceive or experience the environment, but only her mental representation thereof.

The representationalist observer immediately perceives the environment, but only experiences representations of it.

getting a representation of the world into the head (…) sets up a logical regress analogous to the classic homunculus problem of picture-in-the-head theories

(Sigh) The representationalist sneers at this funny talk. Second-order talk about what goes on in the head creates the folly; the head, in going about its first-order business, on its own sine qua non cognitive methodology, is destroyed by logical regress, which makes it patently obvious that isn’t what happens. It is, then, if this foolishness does seem to go on, the talk about it is catastrophically wrong.

this returns us to Hume's problem, for interpreting a representation presumes prior knowledge of the environmental entities for which the representations stand

Hume’s problem was solved, so it’s a mistake to return to it. Interpreting a representation is a logical function manifest in conceptual relational consistency, re: judgement, which is not a presumption of knowledge.

One may perceive the environment (the object of awareness) by means of an internal state (the vehicle of awareness)

One doesn’t perceive by means of internal states, he understands his perceptions by internal states. He perceives by the sensory apparatuses. The vehicle(S) of awareness then, are the senses. The internal state is the representation of what the awareness is about, which presupposes it. The vehicle of comprehension, the internal state, is not the vehicle of awareness, the senses.

But the question persists: what goes on in the perceiver when she becomes aware of an environmental object, if not getting a description of it into her head?

Getting it into his head? This implies the description has already been determined and comes from someplace else, another example of funny talk. If the system determines the description, it isn’t gotten into the head so much as being born there.

What goes on is an internal construction relating the real object he perceives to what he shall know it as. Bye bye homunculus dude and his reservations in the Cartesian theater.

perception may be conceptualized as a relation between the perceiver and the environment, in which the perceiver is aware of or in contact with ordinary environmental objects.

Whoa. Finally. Something uncontentious. Sorta. Perception MUST be conceptualized as that relation, in order to prevent all that follows from stumbling all over itself, insofar as to be aware of and to be in contact with, is not to experience.

The contact is direct, so much so that light is absorbed by the eye, and utilized in such an intimate fashion that there is no way such a process could be in any way indirect…. — NOS4A2

Agreed, but restricted to the eye. Nothing internally and outside the eye uses light.

A functional internal carotid artery, for instance, which supplies blood to the head, is required for sight — NOS4A2

The carotid artery and assorted peripherals may be necessary, but are not sufficient for vision or any sensation predicated on a particular physiology; they aren’t involved in nor benefit from the various processes themselves.

For whatever each perceptual apparatus provides, there is that which is both sufficient and necessary for the process to continue, which reduces to a specificity congruent with the mode of sensation.

It just doesn't make sense to me that the perceiver can be the intermediary for himself. — NOS4A2

Depends on what one thinks is contained in a sensation. If he thinks mere sensation is not enough for knowledge, then it is reasonable to suppose the remainder is provided by the perceiver himself, in which case he is his own intermediary, even if only between the thing he directly senses, and that with which he complements the sensation indirectly, in order to represent its object to himself.

I don’t know how you could smell the cake more directly. Would it be without the causes? — Luke

The way this all makes the most sense, is if the point of the query here…..

In what sense is an olfactory sensation caused by odour molecules in the air stimulating the sense receptors in my nose the "direct" perception of a cake in the oven? — Michael

….is that you can’t get to “cake in the oven” from the mere effect of molecules on the receptor neurons, insofar as this is the direct causality for the sense of smell, but there is as yet still nothing given from this sensation alone, that justifies an experience. You’d be better off, I think, if you’d just said, “how you could smell more directly”, leaving the as-yet undetermined thing sensed by means of the olfactor process, out of it.

I mean….lots of times we come into a room, take in an odor, and have no idea what object the smell represents, right? Same with all the other senses, some to a greater degree than others.

Anyway….just sayin’.

Yes, quite right. — Leontiskos

Ha!!! Yeah, but who’s gonna believe it was that easy? Except us of course.

And good musings to you as well.

On an empirical analysis, from what I’ve gathered the only direct perceptual relationship one can have with the world is with himself. Man perceives himself, ie. his pain or his tastes, not so much any outside factors which might cause them. — NOS4A2

Am I correct in supposing you mean by direct perceptual relationship, is with one’s body? But that can’t be right, for to perceive one’s body under empirical analysis is not to perceive one’s pains and tastes, insofar as these are not perceptions at all, but qualitative, or, technically, aesthetic, feelings one has, as you say, without consideration of which outside factors which might cause them.

The indirect realist position says that subject perceives subject, or subject is both the subject and the object of perception at the same time. — NOS4A2

If that is the case, he is seriously under-informed, for there is an argument in which that condition is disavowed. It is disavowed because the subject when treated as object, and object when treated as subject, can only occur under conditions that contradict themselves. It is the proverbial transcendental argument, which may or may or garner any favor these days, to be sure.
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Grammatically speaking, this throws the subject/object relationship out the window. — NOS4A2

Dunno about grammatically speaking, but it certainly jeopardizes the subject/object relationship metaphysically. Reason enough for me and logical/methodological dualists in general I’ll wager, to forsake the idea.

The only way out of this quagmire, I think, is to posit that the object of perception is something supernatural. — NOS4A2

Perhaps, but the best way to prevent the quagmire from arising in the first place, is to limit objects of perception to the external arena, or, which is the same thing, to limit the objects of perception to those things conditioned by space and time. The concept here, substituting for something supernatural, I’d call something immanent.

Hopefully I understood what you meant to say. If not, my bad and if you want, you’re invited to correct me.

Pardon me whilst I philosophize for a few minutes here; do with it as you will.

How can "perceptions of the world" be "direct", if the "of the world" must be inferred from the perceptions — hypericin

Is this rhetorical? Perceptions of the world is unintelligible, direct perceptions of the world, superfluous. Human perception is limited to things, and even if “of the world” is inferred as the conception representing that to which the totality of things belongs, there is nothing given from that suggesting the world is that of perception.

How can we perceive objects themselves if even the object's existence at all is not a part of the perception? — hypericin

Existence is not part of perception, but for that which is perceived the existence of it is necessary, insofar as the perception of that which does not exist, is impossible. Existence is denied as a property, but nonetheless necessary as a logical condition.
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perceptions are exactly what we are (directly) aware of. — hypericin

How is it not that things are what we are directly aware of, because of the perception of them? It does not follow that because perception enables our awareness of things, that we are aware of the perceptions.

Perception is that by which objects are directly given; sensation is that by which of objects we are directly aware. These together and by themselves, are both sufficient and necessary to justify the doctrine of direct realism. Indirect realism, then, is merely a consequence of, or perhaps a supplement to, that doctrine.

The feeling of heat on my skin, feelings of anger or contentment, the sounds and feeling of playing the drums, are all direct. — hypericin

Just like that, if you’d agree these feelings and sounds are all nothing more than sensations, the heat, the source and the playing, respectively, being the perceptions, the cause of the heat, the object of anger, the drums played, respectively, being the things in the world given to perception.
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We certainly don't "just see" trees and chairs. — hypericin

I agree, even though without a critical analysis is certainly seems that way. The overall efficiency of the human intellectual system permits the disregard for normative methodological processes, sometimes called mere habit, even if their full operational capacity remains necessary. This is manifest generally in it not being not self-contradictory when we say we see a chair as such, that we are technically referencing a certain knowledge a priori, that what we actually are seeing has already been sufficiently represented and now resides in either memory, for Everydayman and psychologists, or for the pure metaphysician, in consciousness. In other words, one can only truthfully say he sees a chair iff he already knows what a chair is, commonly called just plain ol’ experience.
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Perceptions of objects are representations of these objects, and so our perceptions of the object is indirect, because we perceive via representations. — hypericin

Light comes in the front of the eye as perception of something, gets all jumbled around, something quite different from light goes out the back. Where, in the eye itself, is a representation generated?

Pressure waves come in the front of the ear as perception of something, gets all jumbled around, something quite different from pressure waves goes out the back. Where in the ear is a representation generated?

If that which comes out the back is very different from what came in the front, there is no intrinsic contradiction in denying perception to that which comes out the back. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to grant that the very difference coming out the back as a sensation, just is the representation of that which came in the front as a perception, regardless of what’s happening in between?

We don’t perceive via representation; we have representation because of what we perceive. It’s a matter of time, if not physiology, but better if both. It is, therefore, the representation of objects that are indirectly acquired with respect to direct perceptions of them.

The metaphysically correct term for the indirect acquired representation of objects given directly from perception followed immediately by the sensation from which we become aware of them, is phenomena. But phenomena do not belong to perception, but to sensation, which is technically what comes out the back side of perceiving apparatus, and is very different than what has come in the front of it. And insofar as the object perceived is real, the phenomenon that represents it, in its very difference from it, cannot be real in the same manner as the object itself.

End philosophizing. Have a smurfy day.