Semantic not pedantic. The scientific image is just that, an image, a model. But you seem to say that the map is the territory. That atoms are really there but color is not --- as if our nervous systems weren't giving you the idea of atoms indirectly like everything else (according to your theory.) — plaque flag

I'm a scientific realist, not a scientific instrumentalist, if that's what you're getting at.

I'm just saying that it's artificial to call color unreal — plaque flag

I'm not saying that.

But string theory is just math. It's something in consciousness like redness. — plaque flag

I think you're being pedantic here. If string theory is correct then the entities that the theory describes – superstring – are the constituents of all material things. Just as if the theory of gravity is correct then the force that the theory describes – gravity – is the thing responsible for objects falling to the ground.

I think the entities within the scientific image exist at the same time and in the same world as roses and promises and concepts. — plaque flag

That's fine. I'm just saying that colours, like pain, are a type of brain activity, not a property of apples. They're still real. They're just not what naive realists think they are.

Why isn't math also just brain activity ? — plaque flag

I suppose it is. I'm not a Platonist.

You said your hand is really something like strings from string theory. Is that correct ? — plaque flag

If superstring theory is correct.

Why would math be more real than color ? — plaque flag

I'm not saying that math is more real than colour. I'm saying that colour is a type of sensation, i.e. brain activity, not a property of apples.

OK. So...what is a fire then really ? What is your hand really ? — plaque flag

Bundles of superstring according to one theory.

My gripe is that indirect realism smuggles in naive realism to set itself up with a world in which social organisms have sense organs and nervous systems. Taking all of that for granted, then intermediate images or some kind of dualism is postulated. — plaque flag

I don't think it smuggles in naive realism. It accepts scientific realism. But you highlight here the exact point Bertrand Russell made, as I explained here. Naive realism is self-refuting.

You must mean (?) that you feel pain when an internal image shows you 'your' hand in a fire. — plaque flag

I don't mean that.

There's nothing in principle that stops us from manually activating the occipital lobe in a manner similar to how it ordinarily responds to signals sent from the eyes. The article I linked to talks about attempts to do exactly that, e.g. to help the blind see.

So it's real, but maybe conscious experiences' properties are different from the properties of whatever is outside of our bodies, and whatever is outside of our conscious experience? — Moliere

Yes. Different things have different properties. Pain is a type of brain activity, and apples don't have brain activity so don't have properties of pain. Red is a type of brain activity, and apples don't have brain activity so don't have properties of red.

I'm trying to puzzle through how you make indirect realism coherent. — Moliere

I feel pain when I put my hand in the fire. The pain I feel is "in my head", not a property of the fire. Do you understand this much? Now just replace "feel pain" with "see red" and "put my hand in the fire" with "open my eyes and look in a particular direction". It's the exact same principle.

Just how you avoid what appears to be the problem for indirect realism: perception is indirectly connected to reality. So how does science get directly connected to reality such that the inference that it is indirectly connected isn't self defeating, and doesn't lead one back to direct perception? — Moliere

Also on this point, as Bertrand Russell explains, it is in fact direct realism that is incompatible with scientific realism:

Scientific scripture, in its most canonical form, is embodied in physics (including physiology). Physics assures us that the occurrences which we call ''perceiving objects'' are at the end of a long causal chain which starts from the objects, and are not likely to resemble the objects except, at best, in certain very abstract ways. We all start from "naive realism', i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow, are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our own experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. Thus science seems to be at war with itself; when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

But then if the direct realist tries to save the direct aspect of his position by arguing for scientific instrumentalism then he loses the realist aspect of his position, and might as well be an idealist.

perception is indirectly connected to reality. — Moliere

It's not indirectly connected to reality. My conscious experience is as real as everything else.

So how do you get to the properties of objects outside of the body when shapes, colours, tastes, and smells are properties that are only inside conscious experience, which is restricted to brain activity? — Moliere

You're asking why I'm a scientific realist rather than a scientific instrumentalist?

experience is not-real though causally connected to what is real — Moliere

I've never claimed that.

My claim is that things like shapes and colours and tastes and smells are properties of conscious experience, which is restricted to the brain, not properties of objects outside the body like apples and chairs.

Couldn't there be a metaphysics of perception? — Moliere

I suppose that depends on whether or not you're a dualist. If there is such a thing as a non-physical mind then it is literally meta physics.

Isn't that the distinction between direct and indirect? — Moliere

I think the distinction is that the direct realist believes that apples and their properties are manifest in conscious experience such that how an object appears is how it is (even when it doesn't appear), whereas the indirect realist believes that the properties which are manifest in conscious experience (e.g. shapes and colours and tastes and smells) are properties only of conscious experience, albeit causally covariant with (and perhaps in a sense representative of) apples and their properties.

Such as RussellA's worlds, where there is an external world and an internal world? — Moliere

I wouldn't read too much into such terminology. After all, there's no metaphysics involved when we talk about the "world of show business".

And the indirect access adds a metaphysical entity in between ourselves and reality, which is directly perceived but not real. — Moliere

There's nothing metaphysical about it (unless the mind is non-physical). Just look at perception from a purely biological perspective. Electromagnetic radiation stimulates the rods and cones in the eyes. This sends signals to the occipital lobe which processes visual information, which is then sent to the temporal lobe where the visual information is processed into memory and to the frontal lobe where the visual information is processed into intellectual reasoning and decision-making.

Now what happens if we ignore the eyes entirely and find some other means to activate the occipital lobe, such as with cortical implants or the ordinary case of dreaming? I would say that the subject undergoes a conscious experience. And I would say that their conscious experience is one of visual imagery, such as shapes and colours. Seeing shapes and colours does not require electromagnetic radiation stimulating the rods and cones in the eyes (or an apple to reflect said light). Seeing shapes and colours only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the cerebral cortex.

Given that seeing shapes and colours only requires the activation of the appropriate parts of the cerebral cortex, regardless of what triggers it, it's understandable why one would argue that the shapes and colours we see are "in the head" and not properties of apples. Seeing shapes and colours is no different in principle to feeling pain or hot or cold.

The brain activates, a sensation occurs, and we are cognitively aware of this sensation. We then (often) infer from this sensation the existence of some responsible external stimulus. The mistaken naive view is to think that the quality of this sensation (e.g. shape or colour or smell or taste) is a property of the external stimulus.

Sounds like you are begging the question now. — Richard B

Is being a scientific realist question begging?

What evidence do you have that external stimuli, when not being seen, are accurately described by our description of how they appear to us when seen?

Whether you describe a rock “ordinarily” or “scientifically”, neither is more fundamental than the other. Each serves it own purpose to adequately and accurately described our experiences. — Richard B

Only one accurately describes the independent nature of the external stimulus. The other describes an appearance, which is (at best) only representative of that external stimulus. Hence indirect realism.

We see the red apple and not its image — plaque flag

It’s both.

it's still there if we close our eyes ---and still red. — plaque flag

What does it mean for it to be red when not being seen?

I've tried to shift the focus to us talking about the apple and not the image of the apple — plaque flag

So you’re shifting focus away from perception.

I don't think science answers metaphysical questions — plaque flag

I don't think perception has anything to do with metaphysics. Perception has to do with biology and psychology and physics. and so science is the appropriate tool to use.

I like naive realism in the above. Scientific realism is already too indirect, in my view. — plaque flag

Well, I would say that the scientific evidence proves scientific realism and disproves naive realism. You might think that question begging, but I think I have more reason to believe in the truth of science than to believe in your theory about language.

People can be fooled (by their own nervous systems) into making incorrect judgments about the world. — plaque flag

The point is that them hearing and them making a judgement are two different things. Hearing voices happens when the primary auditory cortex is activated. We then judge this to either be a response to external world sounds or to be an hallucination. In neurological terms, first the temporal lobe is activated (we hear), and then the frontal lobe is activated (we make reasoned judgements about what we hear).

Consider that you saying they hear voices is just you joining them in their madness. I see why it's tempting, but I think it's cleaner the other way. — plaque flag

It's not me joining them in their madness. The primary auditory cortex in their brain really does activate. It's just that it activates without being sent signals by the cochlea.

A mentally ill person might mistakenly think they heard voices. — plaque flag

They do hear voices. They mistakenly believe that the voices originate outside their head. You confuse experience itself with our interpretation of experience. There is a difference between seeing and thinking, between perception and cognition.

That's its virtue. — plaque flag

No, that's why it fails to address the philosophical disagreement between direct and indirect realism. I've already shown you the SEP articles. There is simply far more to the argument than the overly simplistic grammatical issue that you are asserting.

The key point is that one sees the apple and not an image of the apple. Hence 'direct.' — plaque flag

That's an impoverished account of what it means for perception to be direct.

What does it mean to see an apple? What does it mean so see an image of an apple? What does it mean for the schizophrenic to hear voices?

Those initial terms we all understood are now in doubt, the external objects may or may not resemble the ideas. So, all the indirect realist can say is “some object caused an idea of rock” and “some object caused an idea of cat.” — Richard B

That's precisely why the indirect realist says that there is an epistemological problem of perception.

I would argue that our modern scientific understanding of the world, such as that of quantum mechanics, the Standard Model, string theory, etc. supports that conclusion above. The world is a mass of fundamental wave-particles, bouncing around, interacting with each another, and when the right stuff interacts in the right way, there's the conscious experience of seeing a red apple.

I've been trying to defend direct realism from a position that takes the philosophical situation itself as the only meaningful center of reality. — plaque flag

But you're not defending direct realism. Direct realism claims that there are mind-independent objects, with mind-independent properties, and that these mind-independent objects and their mind-independent properties manifest themselves in conscious experience such that conscious experience provides us with information about the nature of mind-independent objects and their mind-independent properties.

Your position doesn't defend this view, and so doesn't defend direct realism. Your position doesn't seem to say anything about perception at all.

Why would you think that free will, the capacity to make a choice, is superstition? Do you really believe that you do not have the capacity to choose? — Metaphysician Undercover

Not in the libertarianist sense. Either our decisions are determined by some prior cause or they occur spontaneously, neither of which seem to satisfy libertarian free will.

We might not even have it in the compatibilist sense. See unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain:

There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

At least that description pretends that promises and divorces aren't real. — plaque flag

I've said this many times before: antirealism isn't unrealism. Being a realist about something doesn't just mean that you believe that thing is real. You need to get past the use of the word "real" in the name.

There's one real world that we live in and talk about. I find it funny that that's not supposed to be realism. — plaque flag

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-sem-challenge/

According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independent of how humans or other inquiring agents take it to be. The objects the world contains, together with their properties and the relations they enter into, fix the world’s nature and these objects [together with the properties they have and the relations they enter into] exist independently of our ability to discover they do. Unless this is so, metaphysical realists argue, none of our beliefs about our world could be objectively true since true beliefs tell us how things are and beliefs are objective when true or false independently of what anyone might think.

I reject the idea of 'innate' nature. — plaque flag

Then you don't appear to be a realist of any sort, let alone a direct realist.

If I close my eyes, the apple is still red. — plaque flag

So what does "is red" mean? What is the physical property red?

Does gay marriage exist or not ? — plaque flag

Not in a metaphysical realist sense, unlike (perhaps) the existence of electrons.

So when you say that apples are red, are you saying that this is true in the metaphysical realist sense or the antirealist sense? Does the apple being red depend on us (on the way we perceive and talk about the world) or does it being red have nothing to do with us and everything to do with its innate nature?

This is a matter of how best to talk about this stuff. — plaque flag

"Best" as in "pragmatic" or "best" as in "true"? We're concerned with what's true.

This is a silly question !

It's a perfectly reasonable question. And direct realists do say that the properties we perceive objects to have are the properties they have even when not being perceived. That's what the "direct" in "direct realism" means. It's why they believed that there wasn't an epistemological problem of perception. This contrasted with indirect realists who said that the properties we perceive objects to have are properties of our mental phenomena (at least in the case of Locke's secondary qualities) and not properties of external objects. That's what the "indirect" in "indirect realism" means. It's why they believed that there was an epistemological problem of perception.

Our ordinary life in which we shop for groceries, promise to walk to the dog, return books to the library....is real. — plaque flag

That's not relevant to the epistemological problem of perception. What matters to this topic is whether or not objects like apples and cats exist even when not being perceived, and whether or not the properties they are perceived to have are properties they have even when not being perceived. And this is to be understood in a literally true and realist sense, not in some fictionalist (e.g. pragmatic narrative) or antirealist sense.

And you missed a paragraph from that description of Reid's philosophy:

Reid's picture, however, is more complex than such general statements of it may suggest. For Reid continues to accept Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities of objects. Locke held that, among our ideas of objects, some (such as shape) do resemble qualities of the objects that produce them, while others (such as color) do not. Of course, Reid cannot accept the distinction in those terms, so he does so in terms of 'sensations.' When we perceive objects, Reid claims, we find in ourselves certain sensations. Sensations are the effects of the causal influence of objects on us, and these are what lead the mind to perceive the object. Yet sensations themselves, being feelings, cannot resemble their objects (in this, Reid echoes Berkeley's famous claim that nothing can be like an idea except another idea). When, for instance, we perceive though touch that some object is hot, we feel a certain sensation. We know that feature of the object caused us to have that sensation, but we may not know anything about the feature other than that (unlike the case of the extension of the object, which we perceive directly). The feature of the object which produces the sensation of heat is a secondary quality, and all other secondary qualities are individuated in the same manner: via some sensation we have.

Reid noted that, as soon as this picture is in place, the question naturally arises as to just how far our ideas might diverge from their causes. Indeed, it begins to seem that we are completely cut off from reality, stuck behind a veil of ideas. This is a counter-intuitive conclusion, and Reid thinks it indicates that the original positing of ideas, as things we perceive that are distinct from the objects was misguided (here, the view echoes that of Antoine Arnauld in his debate with Nicolas Malebranche). Common sense, he argues, dictates that what we perceive just are objects and their qualities. — plaque flag

His reasoning appears question-begging. The world is counterintuitive. Quantum mechanics has shown that. Common sense doesn't trump scientific evidence.

I really don't think you've grasped my approach to this issue yet. — plaque flag

You're right, because I don't know what you're trying to say below:

Our articulation of the world is deeply historical and constantly being revised, but we live in that articulation. The scientific image describes relatively stable features of our world. But even its concepts evolve (Kuhn, etc.)

Regardless, I don't think your approach has anything to do with direct realism at all, even though you insist on using that label.