Both hypericin and @Michael keep adverting to naive forms of direct realism — Leontiskos

What is the difference between naive and non-naive direct realism?

Taking my earlier comment, the naive view is that:

1. Something is an object of perception iff it is a constituent of experience
2. Distal objects are constituents of experience
3. Therefore, distal objects are objects of perception

The indirect realist accepts (1) but rejects (2). Instead their view is that:

1. Something is an object of perception iff it is a constituent of experience
4. Sense data is the constituent of experience
5. Therefore, sense data is the object of perception

Assuming the non-naive direct realist rejects (2) and (5), it must be that they reject (1) and/or (4).

If they reject (4) but accept (1) then something other than sense data and distal objects is the object of perception. This wouldn’t be direct realism but a different kind of indirect realism.

If they reject (1) but accept (4) then, at the very least, they accept the existence of sense data. They must then provide an alternative to (1) to explain what it takes for something that isn’t a constituent of experience to nonetheless be an object of perception.

If they reject both (1) and (4) then, again, they must provide an alternative to (1), but also an alternative to (4) to explain which things are the constituents of experience.

But my own take is that being a constituent of experience is the only meaningful account of “directness”, and so if (2) is false then experience of distal objects is not direct, even if they are the objects of perception. In other words, if (1) is false then “we experience X directly iff X is the object of perception” is false, and so non-naive “direct” realism isn’t direct realism at all.

“Directness” is intended to resolve the epistemological problem of perception such that if perception is direct then there is no problem, but if (2) is false then the common kind claim is true and disjunctivism is false, the epistemological problem of perception remains, and so perception isn’t direct.

Can you cite your source? — Leontiskos

Sorry, it was referenced in an earlier comment. It’s from https://plato.stanford.edu/Entries/perception-problem/ quoting M.G.F. Martin’s defence of naive realist disjunctivism. It’s how to define the difference between a veridical experience and a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination.

And I think this is where demands to define "indirect" in terms of physical interactions becomes relevant. Perhaps there is some way to demarcate direct and indirect physical processes, although I am skeptical of this. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Using the examples from the SEP article, we can say that the experience of a distal object is direct iff the distal object is a constituent of the experience.

If we then say that indirect realism is the rejection of direct realism, we can say that the experience of a distal object is indirect iff the distal object is not a constituent of the experience.

Does the science of perception agree with or disagree with the claim that distal objects are constituents of experience? I think it disagrees with it. It certainly shows a causal connection, but nothing more substantive.

Direct realism would seem to require a rejection of scientific realism, perhaps in favour of scientific instrumentalism, allowing for something like colour primitivism and for experience to extend beyond the body, both of which are probably what was believed by the direct realists of old (and which is my uncritical, intuitive view of the world in everyday life).

Sokolowski's real focus in thought and language though, not perception. He goes on to elucidate how names, words, and syntax, are used intersubjectively to present the intelligibility of objects. Roughly speaking, the intelligibility of an object is exactly what we can truthfully say about it, what can be unfolded through the entire history of "the human conversation." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that's the sort of approach that many here are taking when they claim to be direct realists, even though whatever they're saying has nothing to do with the actual mechanics of perception, the relationship between perceptual experience and distal objects, or the epistemological implications thereof.

Howard Robinson calls this the retreat from phenomenological direct realism to semantic direct realism, and argues that semantic direct realism is consistent with indirect realisms like the sense-datum theory.

The patterns thus have a representational character in the sense that they disperse a representative form of the thing into the surrounding media. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the notion that they are representational is questionable. Phenylthiocarbamide is a chemical that some taste as bitter and some don't. For the sake of argument, let's assume that some taste it as sour. Which of "sourness" and "bitterness" is a representation of phenylthiocarbamide? Does it make sense to suggest that either is a representation? I think it makes much more sense to simply say that each is just an effect given the particulars of the eater's bodies.

Or perhaps "representation" is something that only works in the case of visual geometry? I think my thought experiment here brings even that into question. I don't think there's reason to treat sight as fundamentally different to any other mode of experience.

So, even if [1] those objects are implicated in the causes of the experience, [2] they also figure non-causally as essential constituents of it — SEP

This is the important part.

Indirect realists agree with [1] but disagree with [2], and if [2] is false then the epistemological problem of perception remains.

The idea is that there is some alternative vantage point which is more fundamental than phenomenal experience, and which makes inferences based on the phenomenal experience. — Leontiskos

There is. There's rational interpretation. There's the "thinking" self. See the duck-rabbit above. Sometimes I see a rabbit, sometimes I see a duck, even though nothing about the phenomenal experience has changed.

Much like a homunculus isn't required for self-reflection, a homunculus isn't required for indirect perception.

Let's take the SEP article.

Direct Realist Presentation: perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of ordinary objects.

...

Direct Realist Character: the phenomenal character of experience is determined, at least partly, by the direct presentation of ordinary objects.

...

On [the naive realist] conception of experience, when one is veridically perceiving the objects of perception are constituents of the experiential episode. The given event could not have occurred without these entities existing and being constituents of it; in turn, one could not have had such a kind of event without there being relevant candidate objects of perception to be apprehended. So, even if those objects are implicated in the causes of the experience, they also figure non-causally as essential constituents of it... Mere presence of a candidate object will not be sufficient for the perceiving of it, that is true, but its absence is sufficient for the non-occurrence of such an event. The connection here is [one] of a constitutive or essential condition of a kind of event.

Perhaps you could explain how to properly interpret the parts in bold.

Under any ordinary reading, the flower is not "directly presented in" or "a constituent of" the photo. The photo is just a photosensitive surface that has chemically reacted to light.

And by the same token, the flower is not "directly presented in" or "a constituent of" phenomenal experience. Phenomenal experience is just a mental phenomenon elicited in response to signals sent by the body's sense receptors.

So given the above account of direct/naive realism, direct/naive realism is false.

If I take a photograph of a flower, then the flower is in the photograph. — Luke

No it's not. The flower is on the ground. The photograph is in my pocket. The photograph is just a photosensitive material that has chemically reacted to light.

Distal objects are present in phenomenal experience in the same sense.

Which is not a direct sense. It's an indirect sense. The photograph is a representation of the flower and phenomenal experience is a representation (at least, perhaps, with respect to primary qualities) of distal objects.

By that standard, no perception can be direct. — Luke

Phenomenal experience is directly present in conscious awareness.

You really are just describing indirect realism but refusing to call it that.

In what sense are they not? — Luke

Phenomenal experience doesn't extend beyond the body. Distal objects exist beyond the body. Therefore, distal objects are not present in phenomenal experience.

Distal objects are a cause of phenomenal experience, but that's it.

This is even more apparent in the case of the stars we see in the night sky. Some of them have long since gone. A thing that doesn't exist cannot be present.

Otherwise, it just boils down to an ambiguity in the meaning of "perceive", with one camp taking it to refer to perceiving real objects and the other camp taking it to refer to the way those objects are perceived and the contents of our phenomenal experience. — Luke

Yes, that's something that I have argued many times before, and is why I keep saying that arguing over the grammar of "I see X" misses the point entirely.

Regarding the dress, for example, there is a sense in which we all see the same thing and there is a sense in which different people see different things. When considering the sense in which different people see different things, the thing they see, by necessity, isn't the distal object (which is the same for everyone).

The relevant issue is the epistemological problem of perception; the relationship between phenomenal experience and distal objects. Distal objects are not present in phenomenal experience and the features of phenomenal experience are not the properties of distal objects. That is indirect realism to me, as contrasted with the direct realist view that distal objects are present in phenomenal experience and that the features of phenomenal experience are the properties of those distal objects.

I think the very idea of an intermediary is a red herring. — frank

Yes, perhaps. I meant it as an intermediary between the "thinking" aspect of consciousness (that interprets and makes use of phenomenal experience) and the external world.

So perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are directly cognizant of phenomenal experience and through that indirectly cognizant of distal objects.

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. I meant phenomenal intermediaries. — Jamal

Phenomenal experience is the intermediary. The epistemological problem of perception questions the reliability of phenomenal experience in informing us of the nature of the external world. Direct realists argued that it is reliable, because phenomenal experience is the "direct presentation" of external world objects and their properties, whereas indirect realists argued that phenomenal experience is, at best, a mental representation of external world objects and their properties, and so is possibly unreliable.

At the very least we can apply modus tollens and simply say that if phenomenal experience is not reliable then these direct realists are wrong, even without having to ask what they actually mean by "direct presentation".

Nobody has ever thought that fire engines are red in the dark — Jamal

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.

Do we perceive the intermediaries or the distal stimulus? The intermediaries are part of the "mechanics of perception"; they are not the perceived object. — Luke

It's an ambiguous question.

Take the duck-rabbit:



Sometimes I see a duck, sometimes I see a rabbit. A duck is not a rabbit. Therefore, is it the case that sometimes I see one distal object and sometimes I see another? No; the distal object is the same.

In this context "seeing a rabbit" and "seeing a duck" has less to do with the distal object and more to do with my brain's interpretation of the sensory input.

Take also the dress:



Some see a white and gold dress, some see a black and blue dress. A white and gold dress is not a black and blue dress. Therefore, there is a very meaningful sense in which what one group sees isn't what the other groups sees, even though the same distal object is involved (assuming that they're looking at the same computer screen).

This is why I think arguing over the grammar of "I see X" misses the point. The issue was always the epistemological problem of perception, which concerns the relationship between the features of phenomenal experience (colour, taste, size, distance) and the existence and properties of distal objects.

The relevant context is phenomenal experience, and perception phenomenally lacks intermediaries between experiencer and object of experience, therefore perception is direct. — Jamal

There are many intermediaries between phenomenal experience and, say, a painting on the wall. There's light, the eyes, and the unconscious processing of neural signals.

And, most importantly, the features of phenomenal experience (colour, smell, taste), are not properties of those distal objects, contrary to the views of naive realism.

I'll just quote the Wikipedia article on perception:

Perception (from Latin perceptio 'gathering, receiving') is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system. Vision involves light striking the retina of the eye; smell is mediated by odor molecules; and hearing involves pressure waves.

...

Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness.

...

The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, known as the distal stimulus or distal object. By means of light, sound, or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called transduction. This raw pattern of neural activity is called the proximal stimulus. These neural signals are then transmitted to the brain and processed. The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the percept.

To explain the process of perception, an example could be an ordinary shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates the retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus. The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example could be a ringing telephone. The ringing of the phone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus. The brain's interpretation of this as the "ringing of a telephone" is the percept.

There are many intermediaries between the distal stimulus and conscious awareness. In the case of sight there is light, the eyes, and the unconscious processing of neural signals.

I am consciously aware of percepts like colours and sounds and tastes. These percepts are not the distal stimulus or its properties.

This is what I understand by indirect realism.

On percepts, a useful case to consider is blindsight, in which the eyes are functional and most of the brain is functional, but the parts of the brain that involve visual percepts are not functional.

the senses don’t think. — Mww

That's why I specified the senses as being the second part to perception. The senses don't think and cognition doesn't sense. But perception involves both the senses and cognition. Take the duck-rabbit. Whether you see a duck or a rabbit involves more than just the raw sense data; it involves rational interpretation of that sense data.

That being the case, the meaningful sense in which we can say perception of distant objects is direct, is given from the fact the purely physiological operational status of sensory apparatuses is not effected by the relative distances of their objects. For your eyes the moon is no less directly perceived than the painting hanging on the wall right in front of you. — Mww

Simply saying that they're direct isn't explaining what it means to be direct. I offered the definitions from the SEP article above. The known mechanics of perception make clear that objects outside the body and their properties are not present in conscious experience (which does not extend beyond the body), and so in no meaningful sense are "directly presented".

Maybe you misunderstood what I meant by "distant". I just meant "situated outside the body".

If we draw enough meaningful correlations between green things and other stuff, we can become conscious of green things. That's not the same as being conscious of seeing green things. The apple is green. We can become conscious of green things before we know it. Being conscious of seeing the colour green is knowing how to group things by color and being aware of doing it. Being conscious of a big green monster does not require being conscious of seeing a green monster.

Seeing the color green as "green" is what we do after talking about it. — creativesoul

To repeat an earlier comment:

For the Rays, to speak properly, have no Colour. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this Colour or that. — Isaac Newton

This is what physics, neurology, and psychology recognise.

The post hoc naming of certain wavelengths (or reflective surfaces) using the name of the sensation ordinarily caused by such wavelengths seems to be leading you and others to equivocate.

The sensation is distinct from and different to the stimulus, even if we often use the same word to refer to both.

The sensory information that an organism receives from its environment is a perception. You are basically saying that our perceptions are direct. — Luke

There are (at least) two parts to perception; sensation and cognition. The sensation is the body's response to stimulation (e.g. photons interacting with the eyes or chemicals interacting with the tongue). The cognition is the brain's intellectual processing of that sensation.

Given these facts about the mechanics of perception, in what sense is perception of some distant object "direct"?

The SEP article on the problem of perception offers these definitions:

Direct Realist Presentation: perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of ordinary objects.

...

Direct Realist Character: the phenomenal character of experience is determined, at least partly, by the direct presentation of ordinary objects.

What does "direct presentation" mean if not literal presence? Given the actual mechanics of perception, conscious experience does not extend beyond the brain/body, and so distant objects and their properties are not present in conscious experience, and so in no meaningful sense does conscious experience involve the "direct presentation" of those distant objects or their properties.

The IEP article on objects of perception offers this account:

There are, however, two versions of direct realism: naïve direct realism and scientific direct realism. They differ in the properties they claim the objects of perception possess when they are not being perceived. Naïve realism claims that such objects continue to have all the properties that we usually perceive them to have, properties such as yellowness, warmth, and mass. Scientific realism, however, claims that some of the properties an object is perceived as having are dependent on the perceiver, and that unperceived objects should not be conceived as retaining them.

...

Scientific direct realism is often discussed in terms of Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The Primary qualities of an object are those whose existence is independent of the existence of a perceiver. Locke’s inventory of primary qualities included shape, size, position, number, motion-or-rest and solidity, and science claims to be completing this inventory by positing such properties as charge, spin and mass. The secondary qualities of objects, however, are those properties that do depend on the existence of a perceiver.

Physics, neurology, and psychology have refuted naive direct realism. Secondary qualities like colour and taste are the body's response to certain kinds of stimulation; they are not properties of the stimuli.

The scientific direct realist may be right in the sense that primary qualities are properties of the stimuli, but given the mechanics of perception it is clear that any primary qualities in conscious experience are only of the same type, not also of the same token. As has been mentioned above, conscious experience does not extend beyond the brain/body, and so distant objects and their properties are not present in conscious experience. Anything like "sense-data"/"qualia" that explains secondary qualities also explains primary qualities, albeit any primary quality sense-data can be considered an accurate representation of the stimuli's properties.

So, again, in what meaningful sense can we still say that perception of distant objects is "direct"? I think, as Robinson argues, many so-called "direct" realists here have retreated from the debate regarding the mechanics of perception to an unrelated and irrelevant argument about grammar, which has no bearing on the substance of indirect realism or on the epistemological problem of perception.

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. — Janus

The entirety of vision and other senses is the result of interactions between the body and the forces (e.g. light and sound and chemicals in the air) that stimulate its sense receptors, and it is that sensory result that is processed by our intellect and with which we infer the existence and nature of objects at a distance to our body. The distant objects quite clearly aren’t present in sensory experience given that sensory experience doesn’t extend beyond the body.

How anyone can either reject this or think it anything other than indirect realism is what puzzles me.

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. — Janus

Once you accept that “secondary qualities” are not mind-independent properties of external world objects then you have to ask what are secondary qualities? Perhaps something like sense data/qualia? But once you accept that parts of vision are just sense data, and once you understand how vision works, it should be obvious that all of vision (and other modes of sensory experience) is sense data, even if the “primary qualities” in sense data are a mostly accurate representation of the mind-independent properties of external world objects. That’s indirect realism.

And even with “primary qualities” it isn’t so clear cut, e.g with the example here.

But on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, what are the primary qualities with respect to hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling?

For the Rays, to speak properly, have no Colour. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this Colour or that. — Isaac Newton

This is what physics, neurology, and psychology recognise.

The post hoc naming of certain wavelengths (or reflective surfaces) using the name of the sensation ordinarily caused by such wavelengths is leading you and others to equivocate.

The sensation is distinct from and different to the stimulus. This is easier to understand with other senses such as smell and taste and is why I think the almost exclusive focus on sight is unproductive.

We’ve looked in all the objects involved and have found no thing nor substance worthy of the noun-phrase. So perhaps it’s all a fiction after all.

In any case, it cannot be shown that there is any such intermediary standing between the perceiver and the perceived, there simply is no evidence to support any dualism of any kind. — NOS4A2

Consciousness doesn’t extend beyond the body, so objects outside the body are not present in my consciousness, and those objects’ properties are not present in appearances.

That suffices as indirect realism for me.

But what is “sensory experience”? — NOS4A2

That is still an open question. Perhaps property dualism is correct and sensory experience, and consciousness in general, is a non-physical phenomenon that supervenes on brain activity.

At the very least we have to accept that sensory terms like colour and taste do not refer exclusively to the surface properties of things like apples, and to take care not to conflate these uses.

70% of the time, sure. 30% of the time, not so much. — NOS4A2

But notice that nothing about phenylthiocarbamide has changed. Its existence and its properties are 'fixed'. So how can it be that a chemical with a fixed existence and fixed properties is sometimes bitter and sometimes not?

It must be that "is bitter" doesn't refer to phenylthiocarbamide at all. It's a pragmatic fiction; a naive projection of our sensations. It is just the case that when phenylthiocarbamide stimulates the sense receptors in some people's tongues, a bitter experience is elicited.

Do bitter representations or sense-data have phenylthiocarbamide in them? — NOS4A2

No, precisely because "this is bitter" doesn't (always) mean "this contains phenylthiocarbamide", much like "this is green" doesn't (always) mean "this emits photons with a wavelength of 500nm".

There is a meaningful sense in which terms like "bitter" and "green" don't refer to any property of some external stimulus. I would say that first and foremost they refer to the quality of the conscious experience, and that we might then also use them to refer to the ordinary cause of that quality of experience.

Would you say an object that appears green is not green? — NOS4A2

That depends on whether or not "is green" and "appears green" mean the same thing.

If they mean the same thing then it's a truism that an object that appears green is green, but then to say that an object is green is just to say that an object appears green, and so says nothing that conflicts with indirect realism.

If they mean different things then it depends on what "green" means. An object is a collection of atoms with a surface of electrons that absorb and emit photons of various wavelengths. Does the word "green" refer to something here? If it doesn't then an object isn't green.

If it does refer to something here, then what does it refer to? Perhaps "green" means "emits photons with a wavelength between 500 and 600nm". But then what do we mean when we say that an object is green but appears blue? Does it mean that the object emits photons with a wavelength between 500 and 600nm but appears to emit photons with a wavelength between 450 and 495nm? I don't think so.

I think colour terms like "green" and "blue" and "red" ordinarily refer to something else when we are talking about how a thing appears. The "green" in "is green" means something different to the "green" in "appears green". They share the same word because of the consistency with which the former is causally responsible for the latter. This has unfortunately led some to equivocate.

This is why I prefer to talk about things other than sight, because there's less room to equivocate because there's more variety in how we respond to the same stimulation. For example, there's phenylthiocarbamide, a chemical that tastes bitter to 70% of people but is tasteless to everyone else.

We might say that food tastes bitter because it contains phenylthiocarbamide, and so "this is bitter" means "this contains phenylthiocarbamide", but then the 30% of people who find phenylthiocarbamide tasteless will agree that it contains phenylthiocarbamide but disagree that it's bitter.

So is food that contains phenylthiocarbamide bitter?

What does "is bitter" mean? What does "tastes bitter" mean? What does "bitter" mean?

Well sure, one implies a little more certainty than the other. A little more examination ought to suffice and relieve any doubts. What is it about the object that says otherwise? — NOS4A2

Sorry, I'm a bit confused now as my comment originally misunderstood your answer but your response now suggests that I understood it correctly? Were you saying that they mean the same thing or that they mean different things?

I don’t think so. — NOS4A2

Then "this object is green but looks green" isn't a contradiction, and so "this objects looks green therefore it is green" is a non sequitur, and so "we know that the object is green because it looks green" is false.

Sorry, misread my own question.

If "this object is green" and "this object looks green" mean the same thing then "we know that the object is green because it looks green" means the same thing as "we know that the object looks green because it looks green" which says nothing to address the arguments made by either direct or indirect realism.

We know the object is green because we because that’s what it looks like. — NOS4A2

Do these mean different things?

1. The object is green
2. The object looks green

There's more than swarms atoms in fundamental physics, such as the forces that bind atoms together so that they necessarily form what we in our scale see as cars etc — jkop

Yes, but that "what we in our scale see as cars" depends on us (and our sense organs) and is an essential component. The notion that a car is reducible to atoms and the forces that bind them together is a false one, but is unavoidable if you try to remove humans from the equation.

I think the article I referenced here addressed something like this, although I don't have access to it at the moment to confirm.

Carrying on from this, the argument is something like:

If ordinary macroscopic objects are fully mind-independent then ontological reductionism is correct.
Ontological reductionism is incorrect.
Therefore, ordinary macroscopic objects are not fully mind-independent.

As an example, "I drive a car" is true but "a collection of atoms drives a collection of atoms" is false. Therefore, I am and/or the car is not reducible to just being a collection of atoms. But there's no way to draw a mind-independent distinction between cars and collections of atoms. That distinction is only meaningful in the context of the world as-seen and as-understood and as-talked-about by organisms like us.

Collections of atoms exist independently of us, but that this collection of atoms is a car is not independent of us.

(B) solves (or appears to solve) a number of philosophical problems, which is why it shows up perennially. — frank

And introduces new (bigger?) problems, like why did the conveyor belt come back with six dots rather than three? And why/how do things cease to exist when we turn around and come back into existence when we turn back?

Ordinary language is tied to a frame of reference where the direction of the center of gravity of the Earth plays an important role. So it's not really a problem to translate, "Banno (in Oz) reached down to catch the cup falling off the table." to a frame of reference suitable for an accurate understanding of what happened. — wonderer1

In my scenario here, both groups use the same word to refer to the direction of the Earth's gravitational centre.

But what one group sees when standing on their feet is what the other group sees when standing on their head, and vice versa.

It's not the case that one of the groups is seeing things the "right way up" and the other isn't, because there is no "right way up". There's just the way each group ordinarily sees things given their physiology.

The point is: fundamentally, there's no difference. — frank

I don't understand this. There is a difference between something continuing to exist and something ceasing to exist and then coming back into existence.

But say a community finds (B) to be more parsimonious. They would advise you to accept (B) unless there's actual evidence to the contrary. — frank

Presumably one of us is wrong. Either (A) is more parsimonious or (B) is more parsimonious. I'm not sure that logic is relative.

Think of two scenarios:

A. Contemporary science starts with the assumption that each person is a body responding to stimulation (and simultaneously altering the environment). The image is similar to a computer arrayed with analog to digital converters. The question scientists grapple with is how the computer is creating a seamless experience out of the flood of data.

B. Now compare this to Berkeley's view: the "stuff" isn't even out there until we turn our gazes upon it.

What draws one to accept A over B? — frank

Say we have a conveyor belt, and situated in the middle is a device that prints a dot on the conveyor belt at regular intervals. We watch it print three dots and then turn around. We wait a few seconds and turn back. We now see six dots.

According to (A), the conveyor continued to exist and the device continued to print dots at regular intervals.

According to (B), the conveyor belt and the device ceased to exist and then reappeared, albeit the conveyor belt now has six dots rather than three.

I would say that (A) is the more parsimonious explanation and so should be favoured, unless there's actual evidence to the contrary.

Wouldn't they "flip" the image in the way your paper describes, seeing the world right way up? — Banno

There is no "right way up". There's just the way things seem to you and seem to me, determined entirely by how our bodies respond to stimulation.

For there to be a "right way up" would seem to require something like absolute space and/or a preferred frame which I believe is at odds with modern scientific theory.

Here's a relevant paper I've referenced before.

The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism (PDR). PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism (SDR), the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories.

It's "distorted" in the sense that objects appear to be coloured (in the sense argued by primitivist realists like Keith Allen), even though they aren't, as our science shows. Objects are just a collection of atoms that emit and absorb electromagnetic radiation of certain wavelengths, and certain organisms like us experience the colour red when the relevant sense receptors are stimulated by electromagnetic radiation of ~700nm.

Have you noticed how little of the SEP article on the problem of perception has to do with either direct/indirect realism, or with the science? — Banno

It defines terms like:

Direct Realist Presentation: perceptual experiences are direct perceptual presentations of ordinary objects.

...

Direct Realist Character: the phenomenal character of experience is determined, at least partly, by the direct presentation of ordinary objects.

And the science shows that this isn't the case. Consciousness doesn't extend beyond the brain, so conscious experience doesn't extend beyond the brain, so objects beyond the brain are not present (and so are not "directly presented") in conscious experience at all.

Conscious experience is just a response to the body being stimulated by some external force like light, sound, or chemicals in the air. Our projection of this conscious experience and its qualities (such as colour) out into the world is simply a pragmatic fiction.

The indirect realist almost has to invent the direct realist in order to get this debate going. — Banno

It's what direct realism always was, e.g. going back to Aristotle. Direct realists believed in things like A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour/primitivism, whereas indirect realists believed that colour is a mental phenomenon (which may be reducible to brain states).

Now that the science shows that the indirect realists are right, it seems that direct realists have retreated to a completely different position, consistent with indirect realism, but insist on calling themselves direct realists anyway.