Nicely set out!

What else can an organism do with this information but infer things (consciously or otherwise) about its environment? — hypericin

It seems odd to speak of simple organisms making inferences, conscious or otherwise, since the term usually applies to the deliverances of rational thought. I don't deny that so-called "higher organisms", cognitively complex organisms, including humans, can make inferences, but I don't see perceptions of anything in the environment as inferences, rather those perceptions are what inferences might be based upon.

What seems confused to me is this strange instance that seeing is this primordial thing, resistant to all analysis, such that "I think we see what the objects are" is somehow remotely adequate. Never mind what we actually understand about perception, that is

scientism
— Leontiskos — hypericin

We see objects as they are able to appear to us given their and our natures. The science of perception has shown us that naive realism does not take into account the relational character of perception. If those relations are as real as the percipients and the things perceived, then why should we speak in terms of indirectness or distortion?

See A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour and primitivism. Plenty of people thought – and probably still do, particularly if they are not taught science – that fire engines are red in the dark and that the presence of light simply "reveals" that colour. — Michael

It depends on what is meant by "are read". Obviously they cannot appear red in the dark. In any case even if, for the sake of argument, you assume there is a fact of the matter there, if you want to say that science, which is necessarily based on perception, shows us that fire engines are not red in the dark, then you are claiming that science, and by implication, perception shows us how things are, which is counter to your stated position.

:up: likewise

:up:

Cheers, I have also resonated with your recent explanations. I hope we are not in danger of finding ourselves with nothing to argue about! :smile:

I can’t justify receiving the lawful effects of light refraction while at the same time blaming my eyes for giving me blatant distortions. — Mww

I agree, but before a scientific understanding of what is going in it may have been puzzling, All I think these cases amount to are circumstances in which things appear to be different than they are when not found in the said circumstances.

It is an unusual use. I seem to remember coming across it before somewhere in a context where perceptions were being treated as inferences, but I can't recall the name of the philosopher.

I don't think we "infer the existence and nature of objects at a distance from the body" I think we see (if we are close enough to identify them) what the distant objects are. The way you are putting it seems confused to me, and liable, if taken seriously, to breed further confusion, and this may be the reason you cannot understand why others don't think about this the way you do.

Thanks for your articulate explanation. I have no argument with anything you've said there. I would use different language, though. I don't think I have a conviction that I have two hands, as if there could be any doubt. To my way of thinking 'conviction' like 'belief' suggests the possibility of being wrong. I know that I have two hands because I can see them, feel them, use them—there is no possibility of being wrong, no possibility of doubt.

Secondary qualities are the result of interactions between the body and the objects that display them. For example, of course colour considered as a visual phenomenon, cannot manifest as such except as seen. I see no puzzle in that.

For no particular reason….

”perception sometimes distorts reality. We know this to be so because mostly, it doesn't".
— Janus

How do we go about proving whatever distortion there may or may not have been, is caused by perception? — Mww

I agree with you, the phrasing is clumsy. It should have been put better. I was referring to things that proponents of IR usually cite such as sticks appearing bent when partly submerged in water. We perceive the stick as bent when it is really straight. It would have been better to say that we sometimes have distorted perceptions of reality (what is the case). The bent stick phenomenon is really no different than the kinds of things we see when we look into a convex or concave or badly distorted mirror.

I was arguing against the IR claim that perception always distorts reality. Our only access to reality, and hence where we derive the very notion of reality, is perception.

And to answer your question I don't want to try to prove that any distortion has been caused by distortion, because I think such perceptual distortions are caused by special circumstances.

The argument has nothing to do with the status of so-called 'secondary qualities' or particle physics and you seem to be conflating naive realism with direct realism, so I am a loss as to how to respond.

I think we can know when we are thinking a particular thought just as we can know when we are looking at any particular object. Those are about as certain as any certainty can get.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say Descartes' cogito is a counterfactual, if that is what you are saying, and if it isn't, then I don't know what you are saying.

As to the "intelligibility of nature' example, I think I agree with you since it would be absurd to demand that intelligibility be pointed to as an object of the senses.

I don't think certainty matters. What counts is what is most coherent and consistent with our experience.

Since, according to scientific understanding, thinking, like perceiving, is a process, I don't see why it would not, on the indirect realist argument, equally qualify as indirect. I also don't see why my direct knowledge that I am thinking a particualr thought is any less certain than my direct knowledge that I am perceiving, for example, a tree.

Do we know yet? All I know for sure is the op's arguments are long forgotten — hypericin

The OP's arguments don't seem to be unrelated to the last series of posts. One of those arguments is that we only have access to perceptions, not the objects those perceptions are of. This seems to amount to saying we only see representations and not the objects represented. But if that were the case perception would give us a distorted picture of reality and I believe that claim has been adequately refuted by being shown to be self-contradictory or else simply baseless.

Another argument in the OP is that because perception is a process we should not think of it as direct. That, if accepted would leave us with no coherent notion of 'indirect', since the terms is meaningless without some criterion of directness that it can serve as the negation of. We have no such criterion except our ordinary notion of directly perceiving things, and this has been pointed out by several posters in several ways.

So, what do you see remaining of the OP's arguments that has not been addressed?

:up:

Perception sometimes distorts reality. We know this to be so because sometimes, it doesn't. Importantly, and you might agree that folk seem to keep missing this, we can only know that perception distorts reality if we know what is real. — Banno

I agree with this and would put it even more strongly as "perception sometimes distorts reality. We know this to be so because mostly, it doesn't".

Saying that we never perceive things as they are is self-refuting, incoherent, because we would need to perceive things as they are in order to know this. And on further investigation we do perceive things as they are in the special cases where perception does locally distort reality.

One of these must be true:

1. The science of perception is correct and suggests that perception distorts reality
2. The science of perception is correct and suggests that perception does not distort reality
3. The science of perception is incorrect and suggests that perception distorts reality
4. The science of perception is incorrect and suggests that perception does not distort reality — Michael

There is an unacknowledged premise in '1' and in any statement that claims that the science of perception shows us what is the case. The unacknowledged assumption is that perception, being that upon which the science of perception is necessarily based, gives us an accurate picture of what is the case.

Of course this assumption that perception generally gives us an accurate picture of what is the case does not rule out that sometimes in unusual circumstances it may not immediately give us an accurate picture. How else, though, other than via further perceptual evidence could we ever arrive at the realization that this has happened and correct our views?

So, '1' is invalid because the conclusion contradicts the hidden premise. '2' is valid because the conclusion does not contradict the hidden premise. '3' and '4' are not invalid, but if the science of perception is incorrect then what it tells us either way cannot be trusted.

The only contradiction is to argue that perception does not distort reality even though the science of perception suggests that it does. — Michael

The science of perception does not suggest that perception distorts reality generally speaking, but only in special circumstances. And further as I noted above it is only by means of perception that these mistakes can be corrected, and correction would only be possible if perception does not, by and large, distort reality.

The very notion that perception, globally speaking, distorts reality is incoherent anyway, since it is only via perception that we get any notion of reality. Any supposed reality beyond the possibility of our perceiving it is, since unknowable, completely useless as a point of comparison.

.

Damnation. Sorry. Well, this way I can claim it as my own. — Ciceronianus

It is a good one and it is yours by default.

Phenomenal experience is direct. We perceive the world via phenomenal experience. The world is first in the chain of events leading to phenomenal experience, and the experience is last. Therefore, we perceive the world indirectly. — hypericin

"Experience is the last in the chain leading to experience"?. I'm afraid I can make no sense of that other than to understand it as being a mere tautology.

That perception distorts reality isn't the assumption but the conclusion. — Michael

As a conclusion based on the assumption that perception enables an undistorted picture, namely the scientific understanding of perception, it is a contradiction of the grounding assumption, and therefore self-refuting.

:cool:

I do. We don't educate children the way we train horses, and this is for more or less the reasons you gave. — Leontiskos

We shouldn’t train horses the way we train horses either. — Joshs

There are both good and bad horse trainers, just as there are good and bad educators of humans.

I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "the indirection I described". I don't deny that perception is a process, what I deny is that the process can coherently be thought of as inherently distortive or illusory or that what we see are representations.

Ok well the scientific understanding of perception is very aware of the illusions I mentioned, so does that mean science is inherently self refuting? — flannel jesus

The science of perception doesn't claim that perception is illusory: that would be self-refuting.

:up:

Surely a baby does not do that explicitly, but at least at a subconscious level it does. — Lionino

Yes, I think so, which means that primally we experience ourselves as extended, even though in that primordial state, we are not consciously aware of doing so in any reflective sense.

Thanks but it was

:up: I think we agree that philosophy can be thought as an art, but that it has its own unique concerns, its content being generally more intellective than affective, while its form may be aesthetically pleasing or not. — Janus

The difference is that the person and their excellence, excellence in our eyes and theirs, is an end in itself. We want people to be free, and in being free they must understand why they act and accept it "with the rational part of the soul." A merely continent person is always unstable, and in a way, unfree. They want to act in vice and are at war with themselves (Romans 7). But education aims at the enhancement of freedom and harmonization of the person, giving them the tools to harmonize themselves. Training only focuses on the ends of behavior. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is a very idealistic view of education. It doesn't accord at all with my experience of the education system, at least at the primary and secondary levels. The tertiary, as I have experiebced it, has some of the virtues your idealistic vision sees.

And why does that mean the scientific understanding of perception is incorrect? I'm pretty sure the scientific understanding of perception is aware of these illusions, these distortions. — flannel jesus

I haven't said the scientific understanding of perception is incorrect. I've said that if the assumption is that perception as such distorts reality then the scientific understanding of perception, which is itself based on perception, cannot be trusted. To trust it and base arguments on it, would on that assumption, be a performative contradiction.

I am at al loss here as I don't know what you are trying to say.

We before anything else proprioceptively experience our bodies as extended—mouth here, ears, nose, eyes, hands, belly, legs and feet etc, all in different places.

Missed this before. It doesn't seem apt to speak of all maps, simply inasmuch as they are not the territory, as "wrong" and as you say some maps are better than others anyway. Perhaps it would be alright to say that maps are more or less adequate, or if you lean towards the negative, more or less inadequate.

It's a funny metaphor in a way, because ordinarily we can know both map and territory.

Philosophy attempts to clarify life's limits via 'thought-experiments' (aporia) of distinctions, connections, hierarchies ... whereas Art attempts to mystify – intensify – 'feeling alive' via 'representative examples' (idealizations) of craft, performance or participation. — 180 Proof

:up: I think we agree that philosophy can be thought as an art, but that it has its own unique concerns, its content being generally more intellective than affective, while its form may be aesthetically pleasing or not.

Simple names function as the names of simple objects, but this does not mean they name things in the way tables and chairs do. They are not the names of 'this' or 'that'. They are about the form not the content of propositions. — Fooloso4

Again, this seems conceptually similar to the ding an sich since the term does not refer in the ordinary sense as with naming table and chairs but is about the form "in itself' as opposed to 'for us'.

There is a coherent conception of directness though. Our ordinary perceptions, and against these the seeing things indirectly through tinted glasses, distorting mirrors, telescopes, radar, periscopes and so on make sense.

If there were no coherent conception of directness, then there would be no coherent conception of indirectness. So really my question "against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it" implied against what coherent conception other than ordinary perception.

If we have direct access to the world then there is no distortion, if our access is indirect then it is distorted. Think about looking at the world through rose tinted glasses or reflected in a convex mirror for example.

Of course, distortion is without meaning except in relation to lack of distortion, just as indirectness has no meaning except in relation to directness. There is no absolute picture here to be found, it is all dialectic. The only choice to be made is between which way of speaking is most apt in particular contexts.

So those who claim it is a fact that we only have indirect access to the world are speaking in absolutes. Our ordinary perception must be the criterion of directness against which indirectness find its sense, otherwise the wheels are spinning but we are going nowhere. So, if the claim is that perception is indirect, against what coherently conceived directness would we be contrasting it?

What's giving you trouble?

The risk when just deserts leaves the picture is most acute when it comes to criminal justice. There, when we cease to focus on what is deserved, and instead only focus on the pragmatics of recidivism and incentives, we risk falling into a conception of the justice system as largely a tool for properly training people to behave in accordance with the law, the way we might "train" a horse. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The training of people, the 'civilizing' of them. although obviously more complex, is essentially no different than training horses. some people, like some horses, train better than others,

For me the purpose of the arts is the creation of novel ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and thinking. The 'novel' part is where the creative imagination comes into play.

And if you're okay with direct realists just assuming that they're perceiving the world as it is, you should be equally okay with indirect realists just assuming they're perceiving the world through their senses and their brain is creating their experience of the world. If direct realists just get to assume they are right, so do indirect realists. If indirect realists cannot just assume they're right, neither can direct realists.

I don't see a difference here in the applicability of skeptical questioning. — flannel jesus

If indirect realists are OK with assuming they're perceiving the world through their senses and their brain is creating their experience of the world then they are accepting that the scientific picture of perception is accurate.

How does this differ from the direct realist claims that the scientific picture of the world is accurate? To me, indirectness suggests distortion—if there is distortion then we cannot rightly assume the scientific picture of perception is accurate.