When you perceive this actual tree, is it’s greenness also actual? Or mental? Or what? — apokrisis

I side with mental on color, but not shape.

Simply seeing a tree with your own eyes is not enough for the tree to be considered non-mental. What if you're inside some sort of virtual reality, for example? You need context. — Magnus Anderson

We're in our world, regardless of what the actual metaphysics are. Does the act of perceiving a tree make us aware of the same sort of thing as it would while dreaming, hallucinating, visualizing?

That one made me laugh. Show me the simple definition of direct realism, or even indirect realism, in this SEP entry - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/ — apokrisis

It is simply stated as whether there is mental mediary we're aware of when perceiving an object. If no, then direct realism is the case.

The arguments for or against direct realism is where you get the "100 shades of gray". But the issue is stated simply, until everyone and their grandma goes off on tangents around the meaning of terms like direct, access, and realism. The semantic dispute over terms then gets conjoined with the arguments for and against the question of whether we behold a mental construct, or the thing itself.

So I ask you again, do we or do we not behold a mental construct of a tree when we see a tree? I honestly don't care which way you answer, since I'm not sure myself. But I do care about the argument being able to proceed without semantic muddle.

How can it be illegitimate to talk about the tree perceived in a dream? — apokrisis

Because perception doesn't occur in dreams. If you want to attack direct realism with dreams, then you need to say the experience is the same, That's the reason the argument from hallucination has bite.

These are deep philosophical issues, and not merely language games, for a reason. — apokrisis

I agree, but it never helps in these discussions when the result is endless semantic dispute because nobody ever agrees on how the terms should be used.

It's weird, because I can go to SEP and it will clearly state what direct realism is about, but then I come here, and it's muddled semantic confusion the entire time.

And I understand that not everyone will agree with a philosophical position. That's fine. But when we can't even agree on what terms mean, then the debate just meanders all over the place with people talking past one another. And i'm speaking in general here. We've had 100 page long disputes over apples and cats on mats in the old forum which went the same way.

There was one thread which ended with antirealism being associated with direct access, whatever that could mean. Basically, a melding of Wittgenstein and direct realism.

So good luck with your ambition making things really, really simple. These are deep philosophical issues, and not merely language games, for a reason. — apokrisis

I didn't come up with the direct/indirect realism debate.

Are we talking about a dream tree? — apokrisis

No, we're talking about the perceived tree. Is it a mental image or not? That's what direct/indirect realism comes down to. All this other stuff is confusing the issue.

Are you Marchesk or are you referencing something other than yourself by virtue of using "Marchesk"? — creativesoul

Charleston's referencing of Marchesk is ideal*, but I'm real. I'm physically identical to myself, although not the label.

* or perhaps not, shouldn't flatter myself

What feature (or physical property) of a computer is analogous to physiological sensory perception? — creativesoul

There isn't. The equivalence would be functional. Someone could probably a hook a camera up to a physical artificial neural network, where the neurons are somehow realized physically, instead of just being software functions. But it still wouldn't be biological.

Ok. I had always worked under the assumption that all binary code consists of true 'statements'. You're denying that? Right? — creativesoul

Yeah, the binary code can be any statement that can be represented by 1s and 0s.

So maybe the statement would be (in human terms):

"There is a 94.57% probability there is a cat in this Youtube video."

Which represents the confidence the network has in making the classification, I think.

Here's a link to simple neural network tutorial using Python that explains the basics, if you're curious about how actual code works (for simple examples):

https://medium.com/technology-invention-and-more/how-to-build-a-simple-neural-network-in-9-lines-of-python-code-cc8f23647ca1

I was just showing that code can be false, and that was pseudocode, but I updated with real code from a programming language.

It doesn't have anything to do with neural networks, just that you can represent false statements in code, and I'm using the unicode character for a cat face, because some programming languages let you use any unicode character.

Although maybe you meant the code has to be true in the error free sense, although errors can crop up while the code is running, of course.

I'm not knowledgable enough regarding how computers work to say much at all regarding that. However, it is my understanding that binary code still underwrites it all. Is that correct? — creativesoul

It's all binary in that the circuit logic is based on boolean algebra (true/false or 1/0). The instructions a processor carries out are based on combinations of 1s and 0s. But the functionality humans care about is understood at an algorithmic level, because that's what we designed computers to do.

A trained neural network that recognizes a word would have a vector of positive and negative real numbers representing that word. But nobody really understands what those numbers represent. They're the outcome of training a network to recognize the word "cat" for example (written or auditory depending on the network). They're the different weights and biases of the inputs that make the network recognize "cat".

Of course those real numbers are stored as bit patterns.

As a stand in for all sorts of things from rudimentary seeing and hearing to complex linguistic conceptions... — creativesoul

A perception shouldn't be a synonym for a conception, so there needs to be some differentiating there. And a "cat watching" neural network is only classifying different pixel patterns that match up to what humans recognize as cats with a certain degree of accuracy.

Pay very close attention to how the term "perception" is being used in these discussions. — creativesoul

That's a good point. How do philosophers typically define perception?

see "that cat there", a judgement grounded in the matching development of a generalised capacity for categorising the world in terms of the long-run concept of "a cat". — creativesoul

The pigeon doesn't understand "the cat" as a cuddly pet or abstract concept, but it can still recognize it, and likely has a similar visual experience to humans.

If your argument is that the brain has the goal of being "as direct and veridical and uninterpreted as possible", then that is the view I'm rejecting. It is a very poor way to understand the neuroscientific logic at work. — apokrisis

Let's make this really, really simple. What is the result of visually perceiving a tree?

A. Seeing a mental image.

B. Seeing the tree.

I'll let your unsupervised neural network categorize the two.

No neuroscientist could accept that simple account. Neurons respond to significant differences in the patterns of connectivity they are feeling. And that can involve thousands of feedback, usually inhibitory, connections from processing levels further up the hierarchy. — apokrisis

And no computer scientist is going to say that all an algorithm is doing is reading a magnetic charge.

I can see why you might then protest that the shapes of objects are just self-evident - unprocessed, unvarnished, direct response to what is "out there". — apokrisis

The brain has to do be able to recognize a shape somehow. It's not magic, and shapes don't float along on photons into the eyes and travel from there on electrons into the homunculus sitting in the visual cortex.

A distinction needs to be made between naive realism, where unreflective and unscientific view of seeing the world is like looking out a window onto things. Obviously, that's not how it works. No philosopher is going to defend a totally naive view of vision which involves an object showing up in the mind magically. There has to be a process.

The question is whether the process of perception creates an intermediary which we are aware of when perceiving, or whether it's merely the mechanics of seeing, hearing, touching, etc.

The computer simply responds to the magnetic charge on the hard drive. — Michael

And if the algorithm in question is using thousands of GPUs or TPUs (tensor processing units) reading from a bunch of solid state drives over a server farm, or being fed data over a network?

You could argue that a neuron simply responds to an electrical charge from a connected neuron. What does that have to do with perception?

But in fact a choice of "what to see" is already embedded by the fact some human decided to point a camera and post the result to YouTube. The data already carries that implicit perceptual structure. — apokrisis

But you could use a camera stationed anywhere, and see what sort of objects an unsupervised network will learn to categorize.

And there are autonomous vehicles designed using deep learning techniques. A self driving car needs to be able to handle any situation a human might encounter when driving on the road. Here is a short video for one of those companies working on the challenge:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/how-driveai-is-mastering-autonomous-driving-with-deep-learning

How could we argue that the world is coloured as we “directly experience” it when science assures us it is not? — apokrisis

I just came across scientific direct realism on Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Locke's primary properties, like shape, would be directly perceived, while color would be the means by which we see shape, even though it belongs to our visual system.

Of course there are other flavors of direct realism that might say something different about color. Some would even be color realists, although I have a hard time seeing how that can be defended. But they do try.

I'm a realist who argues in favor of direct physiological sensory perception. I'm not sure if I'd say/argue that direct perception requires awareness of that which is being perceived. Awareness requires an attention span of some sort. Bacteria directly perceive. I find no justification for saying that bacteria are aware of anything at all... — creativesoul

I don't know whether philosophers spend much time debating perception in bacteria, but when it comes to human perception, the argument between direct and indirect realists is over whether we are aware of the objects themselves via perception, or something mental instead.

Is access direct or indirect? Are objects really out there or just mental? Is there anyway we can tell? And to what extent does the mind construct those objects based on categories of thought that aren't necessarily reflected in the structure of the world?

You seem to be reifying our abstract description of how computers work. — Michael

Go read any description of artificial neural networks. When they want to get technical, they talk in terms of linear algebra, matrices, and finding the minimum slope for error correction. How the computer actually accomplishes computation is irrelevant.

To the extent that artificial neural networks function like biological ones, the physical instantiation is irrelevant. But nobody thinks they're exactly the same, only somewhat analogous. And of course the biological details matter for how a brain actually functions.

In what way is a wavelength really green? — apokrisis

It's not. I would favor a direct scientific realist account of perception. But in any case, one could argue that smell, sound, color are how we experience the world directly.

How does your particular definition of direct realism account for hallucinations and illusions? — apokrisis

It's not my definition, and I don't know whether direct realism is true. But it occurred to me that if neural networks are a crude approximation for how our perception works, then they do favor realism about the patterns being detected.

I don't know whether any neural network can be said to have illusions or hallucinations. Possibly illusions. Sometimes there are notable failures where it incorrectly recognizes the wrong pattern, despite otherwise having a high degree of success.

Yep. And that is the point. The OP certainly comes off as an exercise in naive realism. You can't both talk about a mediating psychological machinery and then claim that is literally "direct". — apokrisis

I meant direct in the philosophical sense, where direct realists argue that perception is one of being directly aware of mind-independent objects out there in the world, and not some mentally constructed idea in the head.

That there is neurological/cognitive machinery for perceiving objects directly is understood. That machinery is only a problem if it generates a mediating idea.

The direct realist debates always go off the rails on these points. That's why we get arguments about how objects aren't in the head, or light takes time to travel, and therefore direct realism can't be the case.

Realism is truly indirect as the brain is a hierarchical system attempting to predict its input. And the better practised it gets at that, the more it can afford to ignore "the real world". — apokrisis

Direct realism means awareness of mind-independent objects instead of some mental intermediary. For the hierarchal system to be indirect, our perceptual awareness would be of the hierarchy instead of the object that's being detected using the hierarchy.

Decisions still need to be made about the neural architecture, its width, depth, the neural activation responses on each layer, the anticipatory patterns of neurons and so on. — sime

You have a point there. What if we let the cats train the neural networks?

Even if this doesn't count as a critique of Kantianism, it does count against skepticism. And it shows how rudimentary perception can work on a direct realist account.

Precisely, cats all the way down.

The poll result shows the naiveté, of those voting. — charleton

Pretty sure the voters in the poll are aware of idealist arguments.

You cannot know existence except through the senses and this is an ideal reality. It is unavoidable. — charleton

Even if perception is ideal, that doesn't mean that existence is. But one doesn't have to accept that perception is ideal. Direct realism would deny that.

imprimatur — Wayfarer

Never came across that word before. If I have Google translate it to Korean, then French, and then back to English it says:

Print Authorization

My thoughts exactly (although I don't see how Buddhism fits in the picture). — Wayfarer

Robert Wright was arguing that Buddhism is supported by evolutionary psychology, and helps us overcome our attachment to desire and what not.

It’s not embodied cognition I wish to avoid - it is ‘neuro-reductionism’. ‘Oh, that’s just your brain’s way of keeping your genomes alive’. Remember, in our world, the human mind is simply a late arrival, on top of the work of the blind watchmaker, a dollop of apparent meaning-making ability atop the robot that's only mission is to progenerate. — Wayfarer

One of The Partially Examined life podcasts on Buddhism dealt with this. They argued that although evolution resulted in our brains being what they are, the brains themselves created a whole new means for generating rich mental life that was not specifically selected for by evolution.

It's basically an argument for emergent behavior, and thus genetic-reductionist view is faulty.

I'm also a bit skeptical of Dawkins gene-centric view of evolution. Seems to me the organism is the instrument of evolution, not the genes themselves. And in the case of social species, it's the group as much as the individual, even though group selection is controversial.

I think the theory would only become undeniable if human behavior could be reliably predicted on a gene-computer. And I mean the computer should print off the next philosophical masterpiece or great work of literature, before it would have otherwise been written. Until we get that kind of concrete prediction, we really just have faith in a paradigm. — t0m

That sort of prediction is impossible because it leaves off the environment required to create the next philosophical masterpiece. It also leaves off the brain. Genes don't encode everything about the brain. Rather, it's just enough information for brains to form. All the learned behaviors and knowledge of a brain are because of the brain, not the genes. And brains live inside bodies, and bodies live inside environments with other bodies. Genes can't predict culture.

It's like imagining that you could predict what sort of cultural artifact an intelligent robot would make loosed upon the world from just it's circuit diagram.

Some folks voted other. Does this mean neutral monism, or does it mean both? Kant can be understood to say there is a real world, but we construct our experience of a world, which may be quite different.

I'm curious about a synthesis between the two, since it would seem there have been compelling arguments in favor of both. I tend more toward scientific realism than direct, so I would be okay with a Kantian synthesis, provided it didn't leave the real totally unknowable.

If we can get at the real world through careful investigation, which is different from our experiences of it, then that would be both realism and idealism, without giving up at skepticism.

IOW, the ideal realist would say the skeptic is lazy, and gives up too easily. It's hard work knowing what's real. Just a thought - I have heard one realist philosopher say pretty much that.

presume that everyone is in agreement that the conditions of assertion of a and b are not generally inter-translatable. Wittgenstein mentioned in PI that the experiential criteria for (b) are "what he says and does", but that (a) cannot be given experiential criteria in terms of other words. — sime

I understand I and He to be two different people perceiving something red, unless one is lying. I can think in terms of watching a movie or reading a book where one characters is first person and the other is third. The book or movie can easily can change perspective so the audience or reader can see both experiencing red.

Why do I think other people perceive red? Because they're human beings who also have first person experiences. So I come to KNOW that someone else sees red by their behavior or language, but I cognate that they are like me in the first person.

I can put myself in someone else's shoes and imagine the experiences they have, unless it's something I have no experience of. When they tell me they see red, or I see them looking at something red, I understand this from my first person experiences of seeing red. Unless they're colorblind.

That's how you can translate from a to b. I don't agree with Witty. The alternative is a slippery slope to solipsism.

hat too seems pretty uncontroversial, as long as you don't get into specifics. Does anyone really deny that? — SophistiCat

Pretty sure some people have sided rather strongly with the environmental side of the debate when it comes to human behavior and mental characteristics. The concern is that the EO Wilson's and Stephen Pinker's are advocating biological determinism and social darwinism. Alos concerns over sexism and racism.

Really? What do you mean by "human nature," anyway? What would be the difference between possessing and not possessing "human nature?" — SophistiCat

The idea of human nature is that human beings are born predisposed to certain behaviors and attitudes, or predispositions, in the generalized sense. As opposed to being born blank slates and being formed entirely by the environment. So the whole nurture versus nature debate, but for the human species and not just individuals.

But it's admittedly a nebulous, generalized concept. I would say that human beings have a sort of general nature that differs from other animals in some ways. For example, we weren't born dogs, as a dog trainer might tell a human who's treating their dog like a child.

Or take Project Nim, where a human mother attempted to raise a baby chimp along with her children as part of a study on to what extent Chimps could learn language. It didn't turn out so well, because well, chimpanzees have different abilities and predispositions to humans, despite their similarities to us.

Even though you've lost (waking) consciousness,and (as in dream-sleep) don't know about the life you were in, you're still you, with your subconscious feelings, experience, perception, awareness (of feelings and experience). — Michael Ossipoff

But I'm not the same me, because in a different body, I will have different feelings, experiences, perceptions, etc.

The most you can say is that it's some kind of energy, but who knows. — Sam26

Is that enough to call it "me"? To say that I left one body to enter another one?