“Color is that portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface. The amount of light that a surface reflects or absorbs determines its color.” — Richard B

Even addressing this specifically, if colour is “the portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface” then it is light that is coloured, not apples.

This seems problematic to say. Let take a simple scientific definition of color. “Color is that portion of the visible spectrum of light that is reflected back from a surface. The amount of light that a surface reflects or absorbs determines its color.” Notice in this definition there is no appeal to mind or brain. Light is not being produces by the brain/mind, but is independently being produce outside the brain/mind. — Richard B

It would be fallacious to equate colour in this sense with colour experience, and isn’t what is meant by colour realism.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/#PrimSimpObjeViewColo

Color Primitivist Realism is the view that there are in nature colors, as ordinarily understood, i.e., colors are simple intrinsic, non-relational, non-reducible, qualitative properties. They are qualitative features of the sort that stand in the characteristic relations of similarity and difference that mark the colors; they are not micro-structural properties or reflectances, or anything of the sort. There is no radical illusion, error or mistake in color perception (only commonplace illusions): we perceive objects to have the colors that they really have.

What it is like to be color-blind is what it is like to have the biology conducive to color blindness. We don’t need to insert sense-data, experience, qualia, and other figments between perceiver and perceived to account for these differences. — NOS4A2

We need to insert sense-data/experience/qualia to account for the first-person experience that should be evident to all of us. We’re not p-zombies. Biology doesn’t account for the hard problem of consciousness.

Or at least, I’m not a p-zombie. I assume others aren’t. Although maybe I should take your responses as evidence that you are.

The “character of their experience” is not different because no such property exists, biologically or otherwise. — NOS4A2

Yes it does. It’s what differs between the experience of the colour blind man and the typical man. It’s the seeing differently. We’re not just behavioural machines that respond to stimulus. There’s an inner quality to experience, a “what it is like to be” aspect that distinguishes us from p-zombies.

We know that the color-blind person sees it differently because his biology is different. We needn’t assume that something about the apple is different. Simple. Direct realism is maintained. — NOS4A2

If they see it differently then the character of their experience is different. If the character of their experience is different then the character of their experience isn’t the mind-independent nature of the external world. If the character of their experience isn’t the mind-independent nature of the external world then it isn’t direct realism. You’re just describing indirect realism but calling it direct realism.

I refer you to this. You’re arguing for semantic direct realism which is consistent with phenomenological indirect realism.

You have no response to any of the questions put to you. You claim the high ground of objectivity but cannot explain how you overcome the subjectivity you project onto everyone else. — unenlightened

I don't understand your questions.

My argument is simple; if scientific realism is true then indirect realism is true, and scientific realism is true.

You seem to think that if I'm an indirect realist then I can't also be a scientific realist? I don't understand why. Given that much of science involves things that cannot be directly seen, e.g. gravity, dark matter, electrons, etc. it then follows that any scientific realist doesn't have to directly see something to believe it to be there, and so therefore there is no contradiction in being both a scientific realist and an indirect realist.

There is, however, a contradiction in being both a scientific realist and a direct realist, given that scientific realism (and our current understanding of how perception works) entails indirect realism. Colours and smells are not mind-independent properties of objects but are products of brain activity that result from (usually) external stimulation. A direct realist has to reject modern science to maintain his position. And if I have to choose between accepting direct realism and accepting modern science, then I will accept modern science, and the indirect realism that follows.

Indirect realism is where I end, not where I start. I start from scientific realism, and I believe it for likely the same reasons as many other scientific realists. And those reasons have nothing to do with being able to directly perceive many of the things that science says are there. I believe in things despite not being able to directly perceive them. I'm sure many direct realists are the same.

I don't think I see the apple's colour, or the apple's shape, or the apple's surface; I think I see the apple, and I think the colourblind person sees exactly the same apple, and if you give the apple to Tommy the deaf dumb and blind kid, he will be able to feel and smell and taste the very same apple. — unenlightened

This is the intentionality argument for semantic direct realism, and has nothing to do with the phenomenological issue that is at the heart of the disagreement between direct and indirect realists. See here and here.

But, even more, surely we can be realists who are not scientific realists? That is, we may not infer that our scientific understandings are reality. — Moliere

Perhaps. Maybe direct realists have to be scientific instrumentalists, and reject the idea that the external world is exhaustively explained by something like quantum mechanics. You'd have to argue for something like that to be a colour realist, for example.

I thought SDR was saying that one would acknowledge that "I was talking to my parents" is true. — frank

Yes, which has nothing to do with perception.

That's a pretty picture; it looks to my dependent mind like a picture of some apples, with some kind of filter applied to one half. We direct realists may be naive, but we can tell the difference between a picture and an apple, and likewise between a filter and a red-green colourblind person.

Again, how do you know so much about other people's inner worlds when you don't even have access to the common outer world? — unenlightened

I don't understand what you are asking. Do you or do you not accept that some people are colour-blind; that the colours they see things to be are not the colours that you see things to be? If so then you must accept that direct realism fails as it cannot be the case that both you and the colour blind person directly see the apple's "real" colour and that you see different colours.

As it happens, I am short-sighted; it doesn't make me think the world is blurry until it gets with 30 cm of my face, it makes me think I cannot see as well as I'd like. — unenlightened

That's exactly the point. The structure of your experience is one thing, the mind-independent nature of the world is another thing, and it's the structure of your experience that informs you, not the mind-independent nature of the world. You see a blurry world, but the external world isn't blurry. The blurriness is all in your head. And so too is the colour, the smell, the taste, the feel, etc.

What do you mean by red herring ? — RussellA

The epistemological problem of perception asks whether or not we can trust that our experiences show us the nature of the external world. It's a question regarding the relationship between phenomenology and mind-independent properties. Indirect realists argued that we can't trust our experiences to show us this because phenomenology is at best representative of mind-independent properties (although I would go further and say that it isn't even representative of them, it's only causally covariant with them). Direct realists argued that we can trust our experiences to show us this because there is no distinction between phenomenology and mind-independent properties (i.e. there is no "sense data").

The semantic realist argument related to intentionality doesn't address this issue at all. In response to the indirect realist arguing that when I talk to my parents on the phone, I don't hear their actual voices, I only hear the sounds made by the phone's speaker, the semantic realist argues that I'm talking to my parents, not to my phone. It's a red herring response.

Oh, that's news to me. I thought colour blind people couldn't see colours. — unenlightened

This is an example that shows the difference between how most people see things and how someone with red-green colour blindness sees things.



And I suspect a mantis shrimp with their far more advanced eyes would see something very different to both. It can't be the case that we all see things as they directly are and that how we see things is different. But, again, more than that our current scientific understanding of the world and perception shows that it's naive to think of colours as being mind-independent properties at all, such that one of the mantis shrimp, the typical human, or the man with red-green colour blindness is seeing the apples' "real" colours "correctly".

Searle proposes the "intentionality of perception". — RussellA

This is the exact red herring that is almost always brought up in the debate between direct and indirect realism. There's a paper by Howard Robinson, Semantic Direct Realism, that addresses this:

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.

My previous example of talking on the phone is a good example of this. In terms of intentionality I'm talking to my parents, not to my phone, but it still counts as an example of indirect communication. The same is true of face-to-face communication. In terms of intentionality I'm talking to (and seeing) my parents, but given the physics and mechanics of external objects and light and sound and the central nervous system, the phenomenology of experience is indirect.

Is it not the naive assumption that there are brains and eyes and noses and internal and external worlds? — unenlightened

I addressed this here. Either we assume that there are brains and eyes, and then the science of perception shows indirect realism to be the case, or we assume that there aren’t brains and eyes, and so that indirect realism is the case.

It is impossible to maintain both direct realism and our scientific understanding of the mechanics of perception and the world. It’s either direct realism or scientific realism, but not both. I side with scientific realism, and so therefore indirect realism.

What is the source of your sophisticated indirect realism? — unenlightened

The fact that a colour blind person and I can both look at the same thing and yet see different colours. It therefore follows that at least one of us isn’t seeing the colours that the object “really” has.

And compared to something like a mantis shrimp, every human is colour blind.

And more than that, the very notion of objects having a mind-independent colour is refuted by modern science. Objects have a surface of electrons that interact with electromagnetic radiation in such a way that it reflects and/or emits photons at a particular wavelength, which then happens to stimulate in most humans the experience of the colour red. But to then argue that therefore “redness” is a property of that object is as nonsensical as arguing that because most humans get hurt when they’re punched in the face then “pain” must be a property of other people’s fists.

Then why not assume we have trees? — unenlightened

We can, and do. But that doesn’t refute indirect realism. It is still the case that the look and smell and taste and feel of a tree is a mental “representation” and not a mind-independent property that is “directly” perceived.

A direct realist is naive to think that shit smells — unenlightened

It’s not naive to think that shit smells. It’s naive to think that shit having a smell (especially a bad smell) is a mind-independent fact that we “directly” perceive.

Things have a smell only for organisms that have an olfactory sense, and only if their olfactory sense responds in a certain way to the chemicals exuded by those things. And the quality of that smell depends on the organism itself; things that smell bad to us can smell good to something else, e.g a dung beetle.

How can we know, therefore, that we "really" have eyes and brain? How can we know that we cannot know? How can we know that the telephone "really" works the way you claim it works? How does an indirect realist escape from global epistemological scepticism? — unenlightened

If we assume that we do have eyes and brains, and that the mechanics of perception is as we currently understand it to be, then the explanation above shows indirect realism to be the case. If we assume that we don’t have eyes and brains, and that the mechanics of perception isn’t as we currently understand it to be, then we’ve assumed indirect realism to be the case.

Either way, it just isn’t possible to maintain direct realism.

In the case of indirect realism, the DA converter is your central nervous system. You have no way to assess how the construction of your own CNS compares to the source of the stimulus. That's a long standing problem with indirect realism — frank

That's not a problem with indirect realism. That's the very point that indirect realism is making. The argument between direct and indirect realism is regarding the epistemological problem of perception; how can we know that the external world "really is" as we see and hear and feel it to be? The indirect realist argues that we can't know this, because the quality of our experiences is determined not just by the external stimulus but also by our eyes and brain.

Seeing an apple is, in principle, just like talking to you on the phone. It's indirect. There's a lot of stuff going on in between that manipulates what is seen and heard. I can't know that it's really you I'm talking to, or that what you sound like on the phone is what you would sound like were we to meet in real life, and I can't know that the thing outside my head really is an apple, or that the colour I see it to be (red) is the colour it has even when I'm not looking. And in fact on this latter point, I think the very idea of external things "having" colours even when not being looked at (i.e. colour realism) is nonsense, and so indirect realism is certainly correct on that account.

Another oddity with indirect realism is that it implies that communication is always between me and someone I've constructed. — frank

How so? Do you think of a phone call as direct communication with someone? Or as communication with a person constructed by the phone's speakers?

I would say that if I talk to someone on the phone then it is both indirect and the case that I am talking to them, not to the phone or whatever. And this shows the very flaw with the direct realist's "semantic" argument against indirect realism. Simply arguing that we "see a tree, not a mental representation of a tree" doesn't actually address indirect realism at all.

Here's my incredible photoshopping skills at work.



The sphere with blue and green patterns is a mental "representation" of the external wave-particles that stimulate the receptors in left man's eyes. The sphere with orange and brown patterns is a mental "representation" of the external wave-particles that stimulate the receptors in the right man's eyes. That is indirect realism.

Once again, arguing over the semantics of whether we should say "I see the external thing(s) that stimulate the receptors in my eye" or "I see a mental 'representation' of the external thing(s) that stimulate the receptors in my eye" is a red herring.

The question is: does indirect realism undermine itself? If you note in the image above, the indirect scenario has a guy seeing a faulty representation of the object. If this is his only access to the world, can he be an indirect realist without contradiction? In other words, if his view of the world is faulty (or at least possibly unreliable), why should he believe the impressions that led him to consider indirectness in the first place? — frank

Your picture promotes the very misleading premise that the indirect realist argues against. The thing between the two men shouldn't look like anything. The thing in the middle should, at best, be a mass of wave-particles, which both men then see as whatever they see it to be, e.g. a sphere with blue and green patterns.

If the castle is as free as the small flat, how do we distribute housing? Maybe ownership only gets handed down from the previous system, meaning the castles are in possession of the ones who previously owned it, but nothing would prevent the poor to move in when the rich die. — Christoffer

Well, single people get flats, families get houses, castles get knocked down and replaced with something more reasonable, and those who continue to work in whatever jobs can't be done by AI get extra money and so can buy the nicer stuff.

I find the potential futures we face due to AI changing the nature of work in relation to people's concept of purpose through work, to be fascinating as it is a very possible future we face. — Christoffer

Yes, a lot of people seem to think of work as being something other than an economic necessity. Not something I've ever understood. I do it because I have to do it to earn money. I don't do because it's "fulfilling" or an indictor of good character or whatever.

Anyway, apologies @Pierre-Normand for going off topic.

I'm not saying we won't improve. I'm saying it has the capacity to outcompete us. For example, someone who has traditionally hired a blogger to create content can probably already achieve a similar or even superior result in many cases using this tool. And we're just beginning. E.g. Movies scripted by AI and acted by photo-realistic avatars are probably not far around the corner. It's a socially transformative technology and it appears to be moving very quickly. — Baden

Hopefully we're heading towards a world where most of the work is done by AI and the rest of us get a decent universal basic income.

He knows some of the idiots who support him are unhinged and will riot if he's arrested.

The fear of you acting on them influences me, the voter. — NOS4A2

Then your fear is the election interference, not my words.

It certainly does influence voters. — NOS4A2

So my words can influence you, the voter.

I never brought up the influence angle, but should you remain consistent, maybe you can alter my mind with your words enough so as to influence me to believe that threatening civil unrest should an election not go your way is not election interference. — NOS4A2

What is election interference if not the unjust influence of an election? In what way do threats of civil unrest interfere with an election if not by influencing the result? And in what way do threats of civil unrest influence the result if not by influencing voters?

Perhaps given your propensity for sorcery you can move me with your words to believe the same as you do. — NOS4A2

Well that's a transparent deflection.

Again, your words are not influencing anything. My belief that you may act on your words do. Is this going completely over your head? — NOS4A2

You believing what you do isn't me engaging in election interference.

and threat of this future activity is more than enough to get people to do what you want. — NOS4A2

Sorry, but my words are still not influencing anything.

You can't even maintain a consistent argument across two posts.

Yeah, sorry, your words are still not influencing anything. They do not have the causal effects you pretend they do. Your words only reveal what you think. What influences me are my own fears of what might happen should you get violent and burn my business down. — NOS4A2

Then threats of protests aren't election interference. They don't prevent people from voting. They don't make it harder for people to vote. They don't dissuade people from voting. They don't persuade them to vote for someone else.

If Trump supporters didn't vote for Trump because they were afraid then they only have themselves to blame for his loss.

Given the mass violence and rioting of that year, you don’t think threatening the country with more civil unrest is any kind of threat to voters? — NOS4A2

What does it matter if it's a threat to voters? It's not election interference because according to you we can't influence other people, and so can't influence their decision to vote (or not):

Linguistic activity does not have the causal effects you claim they do. At best such activity makes concrete what the speaker thinks. Here they reveal what Isaac thinks, nothing more. The effects on me never manifest, however. I’ll be sure to let you know if they do, though. — NOS4A2

According to you, any Trump supporter who chose not to vote out of fear of what would happen were Trump to win only has himself to blame. You can't blame them not voting on Democrat protestations.

Are you finally going to abandon this position? And perhaps also argue that people shouldn't be allowed to threaten protests? That would also require abandoning your free speech absolutism.

what is threatening mass protest should their opponent win and advocating for the censorship of opposing views? — NOS4A2

A First Amendment right?

Certainly not election interference as according to you it’s impossible to influence another’s decision to vote.

Election interference is now “preventing or making it harder for people to vote”, according to Michael. — NOS4A2

Election interference is letting people vote, according to NOS4A2.

What was once a form of voter fraud became legal in many states right before an election, and it worked in the current president’s favor. “Democracy”, right? — NOS4A2

It made it easier for voters to vote, and the fact is that the majority of voters preferred Biden. So yes, that’s democracy.

Whereas the opposing view, that making it easier for voters to vote is a bad thing because it favours one’s opponent, is textbook anti-democratic authoritarianism.

They altered laws because it would have otherwise been illegal to do what they did. — NOS4A2

Yes, that’s what it means to change a law. This is such absurd rhetoric.

Sorry, repeating “democracy” isn’t going to work. — NOS4A2

Sorry, but denying the fact that making it easier for voters to vote is a good thing isn’t going to work.

There is really no way to defend censoring information that makes your favourite candidate look bad, so don’t bother. — NOS4A2

I’m not defending it. I’m saying that it isn’t election interference. It doesn’t prevent or make it harder for people to vote, and according to your logic it doesn’t influence voting decisions.

No matter the explanation they’ve told you and therefor what you’ve come to believe, and no matter how many times you try to invoke “democracy”, altering state election laws, fundamentally changing how voting itself occurs in the run up to the biggest election in US history is interfering in an election in my opinion. — NOS4A2

Your opinion is wrong. Making it easier for voters to vote is to the betterment of democracy.

But denying people access to information prohibits them from making an informed decision. — NOS4A2

You can’t make an informed decision if you’re being fed misinformation. That would make for a misinformed decision.

Oh, it’s all “making it easier for voters to vote”. — NOS4A2

Changing the laws to allow for early mail in ballots and the like is making it easier for voters to vote. It’s not election interference.

The … social media censorship all makes sense now. — NOS4A2

According to your own logic this can’t be election interference because it’s impossible to influence another’s decisions, and so censoring a Facebook post isn’t going to dissuade a Trump supporter from voting for Trump.

Altering state voting laws in the run-up to an election, getting social media to censor opponents, and threatening businesses with an army of astroturf protesters ready to protest the results should Trump win, is election interference. — NOS4A2

Making it easier for voters to vote isn’t election interference.

And according to you, it’s impossible to influence another’s choices, so unless you want to make the claim that Trump voters were physical prevented from voting, your claims make no sense.