All this seems to be saying is that our body is continually responding to new stimulation, reshaping the neural connections in the brain and moving accordingly. That, alone, says nothing about either direct and indirect realism.

Direct and indirect realism as I understand them have always been concerned with the epistemological problem of perception.

The indirect realist doesn’t claim that we don’t successfully engage with the world. The indirect realist accepts that we can play tennis, read braille, and explore a forest. The indirect realist only claims that the shapes and colours and smells and tastes in experience are mental phenomena, not properties of distal objects, and so the shapes and colours and smells and tastes in experience do not provide us with direct information about the mind-independent nature of the external world.

This suggests that there is more to the visual phenomenon than just the raw retinal data. There is a sub-personal interpretive or organizational component that structures the experience in one way or another before it is given to conscious experience. — Pierre-Normand

I agree. But it is still the case that all this is happening in our heads. Everything about experience is reducible to the mental/neurological. The colours and sizes and orientations in visual experience; the smells in olfactory experience; the tastes in gustatory experience: none are properties of the distal objects themselves, which exist outside the experience. That, to me, entails the epistemological problem of perception, and so is indirect realism.

Why can't distal objects be constituents of experience — creativesoul

Because experience does not extend beyond the body – it’s the body’s physiological response to stimulation (usually; dreams are an exception) – whereas distal objects exist outside the body.

If physical reductionism is true then experience is reducible to something like brain states. What would it mean for distal objects to be constituents of brain states?

If property dualism is true then experience is something like a mental phenomenon that supervenes on brain states. What would it mean for distal objects to be constituents of mental phenomena that supervene on brain states?

For distal objects to be constituents of experience it would require that experience literally extends beyond the body to encompass distal objects. I accept that this is how things seem to be, and it's certainly how I ordinarily take things to be in everyday life, but this naïve view is at odds with our scientific understanding of the world.

Direct realism would seem to require a rejection of scientific realism, and presumably an acceptance of either substance dualism or objective idealism.

I think that you've given indirect realism too much credit. I see no reason to think that if colors are not inherent properties of distal objects that the only other alternative explanation is the indirect realist one. They can both be wrong about color. — creativesoul

If colour is experienced but not a property of distal objects then it must be a property of the experience itself. I don't see how there can be a third option.

With the phrase "visually appears to grow" I refer to the visual information about an objective increase in the dimensions of an object. — Pierre-Normand

The visual phenomenon grows (as shown by comparing it to the ruler held at arm's length from my face). If you infer from this that some distal object grows then you may have made a false inference.

But at least we've established the distinction between the visual phenomenon and the distal object. The visual phenomenon grows, the distal object doesn't, therefore the visual phenomenon is not the distal object.

We've also established the distinction between perception and inference. The inference (about the distal object) may be correct or incorrect, but the perception just is what it is (neither correct nor incorrect). It's not the case that given this distance from the object this is the size it should appear such that if I look at it through a pair of thick glasses then its increased size (relative to not wearing glasses) is an "illusion".

Perhaps also relevant is this experiment:

We are in an empty black room, looking at a wall. Two circles appear on the wall. One of the circles is going to grow in size and the other circle is going to move towards us (e.g. the wall panel moves towards us). The rate at which one grows and the rate at which the other moves towards us is such that from our perspective the top and bottom of the circles are always parallel.

Two different external behaviours are causing the same visual phenomenon (a growing circle). It's impossible to visually distinguish which distal object is growing and which is moving towards us.

And to repeat something I said earlier: indirect realism does not entail unsuccessful interaction with the world, and so successful interaction with the world does not entail direct perception.

Therefore, "direct perception" cannot be defined in terms of successful interaction with the world.

Do you believe that naive/direct realism cannot deny color as a property of objects? — creativesoul

I think that if they admit that colours are not properties of objects then they must admit that colours are the exact mental intermediary (e.g. sense-data or qualia or whatever) that indirect realists claim exist and are seen. And the same for smells and tastes.

So how is their position not indirect realism?

Direct realists claimed that there is no epistemological problem of perception because distal objects are actual constituents of experience. Indirect realists claimed that there is an epistemological problem of perception because distal objects are not actual constituents of experience (and that the actual constituents of experience are something like sense-data or qualia or whatever).

Now we have so-called "direct" realists who seem to accept that distal objects are not actual constituents of experience (and so accept that something else must be) but still claim to be "direct" realists, which seems to have simply redefined the meaning of "direct" into meaninglessness and doesn't appear at all opposed to indirect realism.

To me, it's simple: experience is constituted of mental phenomena, not distal objects. The mental phenomena that constitute experience is what directly informs our understanding, and so there is an epistemological problem of perception. "Indirect realism" is the most appropriate label for this.

When you are hanging upside down, the flower pot sitting on the floor may momentarily appear as if it is inverted and stuck to the ceiling. — Pierre-Normand

It doesn't appear as if it's stuck to the ceiling. It appears as if the floor is up and the ceiling is down, which they are.

As you seem to think that gravity is relevant, I refer you again to an O'Neill cylinder:


There are three liveable "islands", each with their own artificial gravity. It is not the case that those living on Island 1 are seeing the world the "right way up" and those living on Islands 2 and 3 are seeing the world "the wrong way up" or vice versa.

And imagine someone were to use a jetpack to lift towards another island (and eventually fall towards it when they are sufficiently close to be affected by its gravity), maintaining their bodily orientation (i.e. head-first towards the other island's ground). At which point do you claim their visual orientation changes from "veridical" to "illusory"? The moment the other island's artificial gravity is sufficiently strong to pull them in?

Suppose you are walking towards a house. As your distance from it is reduced by half, the house doesn't visually appear to have grown twice as large. — Pierre-Normand

This is ambiguous. The visual appearance of the house certainly has gotten bigger. I can test this by holding a ruler at arm's length from my face as I walk towards the house. When I start walking the bottom of the house is parallel to the 10mm mark and the top of the house is parallel to the 20mm mark. As I walk towards the house the bottom becomes parallel to the 0mm mark and the top becomes parallel to the 30mm mark.

I'm not sure what other meaning of "visually appears to grow" you might mean. I accept that the house doesn't appear to have new bricks added into its walls or anything like that, but then I don't think anyone claims otherwise.

Or rather than walking towards the house, let's say I look through a pair of binoculars. Which of my ordinary eyesight and my binocular-enhanced vision shows the "correct" size of the house?

Much like visual orientation, visual size is also subjective. There's no "correct" orientation and no "correct" size. There's just the apparent orientation and apparent size given the individual's biology.

Some organism when standing on the ground may see with its naked eyes what I see when hanging upside down and looking through a pair of red-tinted binoculars. Neither point of view is more "correct" than the other. Neither point of view is illusory.

The eyes are active; they seek out and use the light, transducing it, converting it to signals for use by the rest of the body, in a similar way you mention. My guess is indirect realists do not consider such an act as an act of perception because it doesn't involve a mediating factor. — NOS4A2

They agree that the eyes move about their sockets and in response to stimulation by electromagnetic radiation send signals to the brain, which in turn sends signals to the muscles.

But like many direct realists (and unlike you) they also believe in first-person experience, and perception is related to this rather than just the body's unconscious response to stimulation. Flowers react to light from the Sun but they don't see anything because they're not conscious.

The traditional disagreement between direct and indirect realists concerns the phenomenology of first-person experience and its relationship to distal objects. The direct realist believes that this relationship is constitutive (entailing such things as the naive theory of colour), whereas the indirect realist believes that it is only causal (and so those things which are constituents of the experience are the intermediary).

I am a direct realist and do not believe distal objects and their properties are actual constituents of the experience. — NOS4A2

Then I don't know what you mean by "direct".

If both "direct" and indirect realists agree that distal objects and their properties are not actual constituents of the experience then what are they disagreeing about?

I try my best to make sense of the argument, but so far "experience" appears to be a roundabout way of describing the body, at least metaphorically.

So let's just examine the raw physics. There is a ball of plasma 150,000,000 km away. It emits electromagnetic radiation. This radiation stimulates the sense receptors in some organism's sense organ. These sense receptors send electrical signals to the brain and clusters of neurotransmitters activate, sending signals to the muscles causing the organism to move.

What do direct realists believe is happening here that indirect realists don't believe, or vice versa?

And to bring back in our ordinary way of describing this, what does "I see the Sun" mean? Specifically, what do the words "I" and "see" refer to? When we say "my experience is of the Sun" what does the word "experience" refer to and what is the word "of" doing? Everyone agrees that the body reacts to stimulation by electromagnetic radiation originating from the Sun, but direct and indirect realists are presumably disagreeing about something?

But there are epistemological problems with indirect realism, and they are insurmountable. If one is privy only to his experience, or representation, whatever the case may be, how can he know whether they represent the real world? — NOS4A2

That's the point. Indirect realists believe that there is an epistemological problem precisely because the only information given directly to rational thought is the body's reaction to stimulation.

Direct realists believed that there isn't an epistemological problem because distal objects and their properties are actual constituents of the experience (and not just causes), and so entails things like the naive realist theory of colour. That's what it means for perception to be direct. But this view of the world was proven wrong by modern science.

Reading through, the play for indirect realism seems to be to pick two supposedly distinct aspects of a perceiver and to have one mediate perception for the other. This gives the impression that there are 3 parties, a relationship that is necessary for mediation, and for indirect realism.

But the distinction is abstract and has no empirical grounds. All one has to do is observe a perceiver and note that only two parties are involved in the perceptual relationship, and all the indirect realist has really done is implied that the perceiver mediates his own perception, which isn’t mediation at all. — NOS4A2

Indirect realists recognise that experience does not extend beyond the body, and so that distal objects are not constituents of experience, and so that the properties of the experience are not the properties of the distal objects. The relationship between experience and distal objects is nothing more than causal. As such there is an epistemological problem of perception and so direct realism fails, as direct realism was the attempt to explain why there isn't an epistemological problem of perception.

Must they, though? — jkop

Assuming that conscious experience is causally determined then yes. Given the same input (the stimulus) and the same processing (the central nervous system) then the same output (the experience) will result. Different outputs require either different processing or different inputs.

I'd say seeing a colour is neither right nor wrong, it's just a causal fact, how a particular wavelength in the visible spectrum causes a particular biological phenomenon in organisms that have the ability to respond to wavelengths in the visible spectrum. — jkop

That's the exact point I'm making, except I'm extending it to something that might usually be considered a "primary" quality – visual orientation.

You postulate that we (humans) have the experience with our kind of eyes / brain, so how come you say that another organism must have differently working eyes and brain to have the same experience? — jkop

For them to see when standing what we see when hanging upside down it must be that their eyes and/or brain work differently.

What do you mean by saying that photoreception is subjective yet not special?

I’m saying that whether or not sugar tastes sweet is determined by the animal’s biology. It’s not “right” for it to taste sweet and “wrong” for it to taste sour. Sight is no different. It’s not “right” that light with a wavelength of 700nm looks red and not “right” that the sky is “up” and the ground “down”. These are all just consequences of our biology, and different organisms with different biologies can experience the world differently.

I don't see how that's at all relevant to my point.

Consider some animal that has eyes in the palms of its hands rather than in its head. To see the "correct" orientation of the world, must its fingers point towards the sky, towards the ground, or towards the side?

Or is the very premise that there's a "correct" orientation mistaken?

The argument that there is no "correct" orientation or "correct' way of perceiving the world seems to me help make the case for direct realism rather than for indirect realism. Direct realists think it is possible for our perceptions of the world to be veridical, despite there being no "correct" way to perceive it (whatever that might mean). It is indirect realists who seem to think it is impossible for our perceptions to be veridical, and this seems to be because we either do not perceive the world "correctly" or because we cannot know whether we perceive the world "correctly". — Luke

My understanding is that direct realism entails A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour (and related theories on other sense modalities like smell and taste). The naive realist theory of colour is incorrect. Colours are a mental phenomenon caused by the brain reacting to the eyes being stimulated by photons. The same principle holds for other sense modalities. Therefore, direct realism is false.

If some self-proclaimed direct realist rejects the naive realist theory of colour then it isn't clear to me what the word "direct" means to them, or how their position is in conflict with the indirect realist who also rejects the naive reality theory of colour.

I'm guessing it's something to do with this. We have phenomenological indirect realists and semantic direct realists talking past each other.

Now, it's true that when your turn you head all the way upside down, some illusion regarding the orientation of the external world may ensue. — Pierre-Normand

There is no illusion.

There are two astronauts in space 150,000km away. Each is upside down relative to the other and looking at the Earth. Neither point of view shows the "correct" orientation of the external world because there is no such thing as a "correct" orientation. This doesn't change by bringing them to Earth, as if proximity to some sufficiently massive object makes a difference.

Also imagine I'm standing on my head. A straight line could be drawn from my feet to my head through the Earth's core reaching some other person's feet on the other side of the world and then their head. If their visual orientation is "correct" then so is mine. The existence of a big rock in between his feet and my head is irrelevant.

See also an O'Neill cylinder.

And just for fun: is Atlas carrying the Earth or lying on it with his legs in the air? We can talk about which of Atlas or the Earth has the strongest gravitational pull, but that has nothing to do with some presumptive “correct” visual orientation.

World maps are indeed conventional, like many other artificial symbols, but misleading as an analogy for visual perception. Visual perception is not an artificial construct relative conventions or habits. It is a biological and physical state of affairs, which is actual for any creature that can see.

For example, an object seen from far away appears smaller than when it is seen from a closer distance. Therefore, the rails of a railroad track appear to converge towards the horizon, and for an observer on the street the vertical sides of a tall building appear to converge towards the sky. These and similar relations are physical facts that determine the appearances of the objects in visual perception. A banana fly probably doesn't know what a rail road is, but all the same, the further away something is the smaller it appears for the fly as well as for the human. — jkop

That's not relevant to what I'm saying.

When I hang upside down and so see the world upside I'm not hallucinating or seeing an illusion; I am having a "veridical" visual experience.

It is neither a contradiction, nor physically impossible, for some organism to have that very same veridical visual experience when standing on their feet. It only requires that their eyes and/or brain work differently to ours.

Neither point of view is "more correct" than the other.

Photoreception isn't special. It's as subjective as smell and taste.

Direct and indirect then both apply, in different senses: direct because connecting in an unbroken chain; indirect because involving links and transformations. — bongo fury

What would a "broken" chain be? Is seeing my face in a mirror an "unbroken" chain and so "direct" perception of my face? Is watching football on TV an "unbroken" chain and so "direct" perception of a football match?

I guess, the same work as "actually"? — bongo fury

So when you say that the flower's properties are "directly presented in and constitutive of the photo" you're saying that the flower's properties are actually presented in and constitutive of the photo? Well that's factually incorrect. The flower (and its properties) is a thousand miles away, and cannot exist in two locations at once.

Also, the flower is organic whereas the photo isn't, so I'm not even sure which properties you're claiming to be "presented in and constitutive of the photo".

But isn't that our eyes? Our eyes receive light physically upside down. Our brains spin it around.

If some creature had upside down eyes relative to us, it would be up to their brain how they experience the visual orientation, not necessarily the way their eyes are positioned. — flannel jesus

What your eyes and brain do when hanging upside down is conceivably what some other organism's eyes and brain do when standing on their feet. Neither point of view is privileged. Much like an "upside down" globe is as a valid as the traditional globe, an "upside down" perspective is as valid as the one you're familiar with.

The below is only "upside down" as a matter of convention.

many of its properties, and its downstream physical effects, are indeed directly presented in and constitutive of the photo — bongo fury

What do you mean by the flower’s properties being directly presented? What is the word “directly” doing here?

The photo is hung up on my wall. The flower is 1,000 miles away. There is a very literal spatial separation between the photo and the flower. The flower and its properties do not exist in two locations at once.

It seems to me that you are just needlessly, and meaninglessly, throwing in the word “directly”. Whatever you mean by “direct” here isn’t what is meant when debating the epistemological problem of perception.

You might say that the photo resembles the flower (as seen in real life), but then any indirect realist can agree.

In your thought experiment, somehow, this relative inversion between the contents of the two species' (or genders') respective visual experiences is a feature of their "private" qualia and is initially caused by the orientation of their eyes. But what does it even mean to say that an animal was born with its eyes "upside down"? Aren't eyes typically, functionally and anatomically, symmetrical across the horizontal plane? And since our eyes are camera obscura that already map the external world to "upside down" retinal images, aren't all of our eyes already "upside down" on your view? — Pierre-Normand

Why is it that when we hang upside down the world appears upside down? Because given the physical structure of our eyes and the way the light interacts with them that is the resulting visual experience. The physiological (including mental) response to stimulation is presumably deterministic. It stands to reason that if my eyes were fixed in that position and the rest of my body were rotated back around so that I was standing then the world would continue to appear upside down. The physics of visual perception is unaffected by the repositioning of my feet. So I simply imagine that some organism is born with their eyes naturally positioned in such a way, and so relative to the way I ordinarily see the word, they see the world upside down (and vice versa).

It makes no sense to me to claim that one or the other point of view is “correct”. Exactly like smells and tastes and colours, visual geometry is determined by the individual’s biology. There’s no “correct” smell of a rose, no “correct” taste of sugar, no “correct” colour of grass, no “correct” visual position, and no “correct” visual size (e.g everything might appear bigger to me than to you – including the marks on a ruler – because I have a more magnified vision). Photoreception isn't special.

Deductive reasoning is when the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises.

Inductive reasoning is when the conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from the premises but is nonetheless reasonable to infer.

For example, "if you don't stop shouting then I am going to turn the car around" doesn't necessarily entail that if the children stop shouting then the mother won't turn the car around, but it is nonetheless a reasonable inference. As such it is a case of inductive reasoning.

Paintings and human texts indeed (often) purport to be about objects in the world. But this purport reflects the intentions of their authors, and the representational conventions are established by those authors. In the case of perception, the relation between the perceptual content and the represented object isn't likewise in need of interpretations in accordance with conventions. Rather, it is a matter of the experience's effectiveness in guiding the perceiver's actions in the world. You can look at a painting and at the scenery that the painting depicts side by side, but you can't do so with your perception of the visual world and the visual world itself. — Pierre-Normand

There are paintings of things that no longer exist and books written by dead authors about past events. So in which presently existing things is such intentionality found?

But I don't even think that intentionality has any relevance to the debate between direct and indirect realism, which traditionally are concerned with the epistemological problem of perception; can we trust that experience provides us with accurate information about the nature of the external world? If experience doesn't provide us with accurate information about the nature of the external world (e.g because smells and tastes and colours are mental phenomena rather than mind-independent properties) then experience is indirect even if the external world is the intentional object of perception.

After struggling for a couple of days with ordinary manipulation tasks and walking around, the subject becomes progressively skillful, and at some point, their visual phenomenology flips around. — Pierre-Normand

Does it actually "flip around", or have they just grown accustomed to it? I've read about the experiments in the past and the descriptions are ambiguous.

In the case that they do actually "flip around", is that simply the brain trying to revert back to familiarity? If so, a thought experiment I offered early in this discussion is worth revisiting: consider that half the population were born with their eyes upside down relative to the other half. I suspect that in such a scenario half the population would see when standing what the other half would see when hanging upside down. They each grew up accustomed to their point of view and so successfully navigate the world, using the same word to describe the direction of the sky and the same word to describe the direction of the ground. What would it mean to say that one or the other orientation is the "correct" one, and how would they determine which orientation is correct?

I don't think that visual geometry is any different in kind to smells and tastes and colours. The distinction between "primary" and "secondary" qualities is a mistaken one (they're all "secondary"). But if I were to grant the distinction then how would you account for veridical perception in the case of "secondary" qualities? Taking this example from another discussion, given that in this situation both Alice and Mark can see and use the box, describe it as being the colour "gred" in their language, and agree on the wavelength of the light it reflects, does it make sense to say that one or the other is having a non-veridical (colour) experience, and if so how do they determine which? Or what if sugar tastes sweet to Alice but sour to Mark? Is one having a non-veridical taste?

Or perhaps “veridicality” only applies to visual geometry? If so then what makes vision (and specifically this aspect of vision) unique amongst the senses? To me it’s all just a physiological response to sense receptor stimulation.

it is the visible property of the rain that determines the phenomenal character of the visual experience — jkop

I don't think anyone disagrees, but that doesn't say anything to address either direct or indirect realism. It simply states the well known fact that the physics of cause and effect is deterministic (at the macro scale).

Given my biology, when light of a certain wavelength stimulates the rods and cones in my eyes I see the colour red, and when certain chemicals stimulate the taste buds in my tongue I taste a sweet taste. Given a different biology I would see a different colour and taste a different taste.

Because perception is direct. — jkop

I don't see how that answers my question. If visual experience is one thing and rain is another thing then why can't you separate them?

Or are you saying that rain and the visual experience are the same thing? Even though visual experience occurs within the body and the rain exists outside the body?

I can't separate my visual experience from the rain — jkop

Why not? Visual experience does not extend beyond the brain/body, but the rain exists beyond the body, and so they must be separate.

As I am also attempting to explain, it is the indirect realists who are facing a challenge in explaining how the inner mental states that we enjoy can have intentional (referential) relations to the objects that they purport to represent that are apt to specify the conditions for those experiences to be veridical. — Pierre-Normand

I suspect the answer to that is the answer that explains how paintings can have intentional relations to the objects that they purport to be of or how words can have intentional relations to the objects that they purport to describe.

On the disjunctivist view, the phenomenal character of this experience isn't exhausted by an inner sensation or mental image. Rather, it consists in your very readiness to engage with the apple — Pierre-Normand

What is the difference between these two positions?

1. The phenomenal character of experience includes the inner sensation, the readiness to engage with the apple, and the expectation that we can reach it.

2. The phenomenal character of experience is exhausted by an inner sensation. In addition to the phenomenal character of experience, we are also ready to engage with the apple and expect to reach it.

The disjunctivist, in contrast, can ground perceptual content and veridicality in the perceiver's embodied capacities for successful interaction with their environment. — Pierre-Normand

I think there might be some degree of affirming the consequent here. That if perception is veridical then we will be successful isn't that if we are successful then perception is veridical.

If I am blindfolded then I can successfully navigate a maze by following verbal instructions, or simply by memorising the map beforehand. Or perhaps I wear a pair of VR goggles that exactly mirrors what I would see without them.

I think something other than "successful interaction" is required to define the difference between a veridical and non-veridical experience.

Also I don't think language is at all relevant and is in fact a red herring. Presumably deaf, illiterate mutes who aren't blind can see colours.

It's possible that the colour that one deaf, illiterate mute sees some object to be isn't the colour that some other deaf, illiterate mute sees the object to be.

With respect to physicalism, the question is whether or not this difference in colour perception requires differences in biology, and with respect to naive realism, the question is whether or not one of them is seeing the "correct" colour (in the sense that that colour is a mind-independent property of the object).

First of all, does it make sense to speak of shared sensations? — sime

Possibly shared type, but not shared token.

The claim is that if it's conceivable that Mark and Alice have no relevant physical differences and yet see different colours despite looking at the same object then colours are non-physical.

And just for fun let's carry on from this and assume that the box in question reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm. If we show the above image to Mark and Alice then this is what they will see:




Both Mark and Alice will agree that the left hand side of the image shows the colour of the box as seen in real life (named "gred" in their language), although Alice will disagree with the right hand side being labelled "Alice's POV".

Yes it does. He had to. — Hanover

Fair. I suppose a more appropriate response is to say that any claim that we should or shouldn't do something is true only if hard determinism is false, and so if hard determinism is true then the claim that we shouldn't hold people responsible is not true.

We assign culpability to people who are not actually culpable. — Truth Seeker

Yes. But asking if we should makes no sense, given that we don't have a choice.

I think hard determinism is true. — Truth Seeker

If hard determinism is true then we don't choose to hold people responsible; we just do. Asking if we should makes no sense.

If hard determinism is true, then no one is morally culpable.

I am not sure if this follows. Consider a basic sketch of compatibalist free will as one's relative degree of self-determination: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Compatibilism is soft determinism, not hard determinism. If hard determinism is true then compatibilism is false.

However, if hard determinism is true, then it is inevitable that X murdered Y. In that case, X is not actually culpable. The actions of X are as determined and inevitable as death by an earthquake. We don't hold earthquakes culpable for murder, but we hold adult humans of sound mind culpable for murder. Should we though? — Truth Seeker

Your question presupposes that we can choose to hold people responsible or not, i.e. that hard determinism is false. If hard determinism is false then we should hold people responsible.

The question is, does scientific progress ultimately lead to self-destruction or major destabilization of human civilization? — SpaceDweller

I suspect so. Global travel increases the likelihood of a global pandemic, excessive industrialisation increases the use of non-renewable resources and the likelihood of harmful climate change, and automated systems controlled by an artificial intelligence is vulnerable to coding errors and sabotage.

I suspect we die off before we're capable of interstellar colonisation.

We'd need excessive regulation to avoid that, but capitalism won't allow it.

you have internal representations that map to objective features of it. — hypericin

That’s an open question too. 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.”

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

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

I’ve only seen red things. — NOS4A2

I see red things when I dream and hallucinate. Those with synesthesia might see red things when they listen to music with their eyes closed in a dark room. These are visual percepts. They occur in ordinary waking experience too. The colour red as present in these visual percepts is not a property of distal objects.

I have no problem understanding the argument, only the entities we’re dealing with. And that the indirect realist cannot point to any of these entities, describe where they begin and end, describe how and what they perceive, nor ascribe to them a single property, is enough for me to conclude that they are not quite sure what they are talking about, and that this causal chain and the entities he puts upon them are rather arbitrary. — NOS4A2

They can point to the visual cortex and temporal lobe. Visual percepts and rational awareness are either reducible to the activity in the brain or supervene on them. But the hard problem of consciousness hasn't been resolved yet so it's still an open matter.

If you want an account that does not assume anything like mental properties or a first person perspective then the claim is that perception is the neurological processing of certain streams of information. By physical necessity any information processed by the brain is located in the brain. The unconscious involvement of the eyes may be a prerequisite (if you deny that we see things when we dream and hallucinate) but it itself is not a constituent of conscious perception - and the distal object itself is certainly not a constituent of it either.

Hence the epistemological problem of perception. The brain has no direct access to the information that constitutes distal objects. We have to assume and hope that the information it directly processes is capable of accurately informing us about the existence and nature of those distal objects.

But again, your position lacks a referent. — NOS4A2

It's what the sighted have and the blind (including those with blindsight) don't have. It's what occurs when we dream and hallucinate.

As it stands, no intermediary exists between perceiver and perceived. — NOS4A2

If you define "perceiver" in such a way that it includes the entire body and "perceived" in such a way that it includes the body's immediate environment then what you say here is a truism.

But this isn't what indirect realists mean which is why you've misinterpreted (or misrepresented) them.

You might not believe in something like "rational awareness" and "sensory percepts" but the indirect realist does, and their claim is that sensory percepts are the intermediary that exist between rational awareness and distal objects. The colour red is one such sensory percept. A sweet taste is another.

The odour molecules are a part of that unperceived causal chain. — Luke

The odour molecules are perceived. I smell them.