Normally, I think that quoting oneself is a bit naff. But it is the clearest way I could think of to say that I did not intend to “smuggle” anything in. I intended to mark a change that is required to move from systems and machinery to reflection. The latter is a different category from the former. It’s a radical move. I’m not convinced that we can build from one to the other.
The second paragraph gives a common sense answer and the final paragraph is intended to call into question the philosophical issue - which, I’m glad to say, we agree on.
I’m not sure how to answer that question. I would say first that perceptions, on the whole, carry their conviction with them. Ib other words, under normal circumstances, we accept our perceptions as true. We need a reason - often a dissonant perception - to call one of them into question. Then we can make a positive decision or judgement about what’s going on. Does that help?
Fair enough on the smuggling point — I take you at your word. And I think the fact that you see a categorial shift between feedback systems and reflection actually puts us in pretty close agreement on the main issue.
I think part of whats making this tricky is that “perception” is doing a lot of different work in this conversation. Sometimes it seems to mean raw sensory experience — the sheer qualitative feel of seeing or hearing. Sometimes it means something richer, like recognizing what you’re seeing (thats a bear, thats a signpost). And sometimes — as when you say perceptions “carry their conviction with them” — it seems to include a kind of implicit judgment that what you’re perceiving is real.
Those are genuinely different things, and I think keeping them separate helps. Because my claim is pretty specific: the experiential component — the qualitative feel, however vivid or forceful — doesn’t by itself give you truth. The vividness of the wolf-dream shows that. What gets you to truth is a further act, call it judgment or affirmation or whatever you like, where you grasp that the conditions for saying “this is really so” have been met. That act can be habitual and near-instantaneous, which is probably why it looks like the perception just “carries” its conviction. But its still a different kind of act, even when it’s invisible to us.
So when you say perceptions normally carry their conviction — I think what’s actually happening is that we judge so quickly and habitually that the judgment feels like a feature of the experience itself. But conflating the two is exactly what makes the philosophical question hard to see clearly.
Your regression concern is not unique to my position, and reminds me of the kid that keeps asking, to every explanation, ‘why?’. Of course, you can always ask ‘why?’. Does this mean that explanation is impossible? Of course not. What it does mean is that explanation, and understanding, is necessarily incomplete, and must terminate somewhere. You cannot keep modelling the model forever.
That my ‘model’ of perception allows for this incompleteness is a feature, not a bug, We never grasp reality itself, and so incompleteness and uncertainty are necessary consequences. DR, in pretending that we do grasp reality, doesn’t seem to allow for these. Do you believe DR has somehow solved radical skepticism?
You didn’t answer me. How can a brain operationally grasp reality other than by modelling it?
Two things.
Regardless of the merits of (a) and (b), you haven’t explained why you think I even need (b). I don’t think my argument does.
Second, I don’t deny that the quale is a “manner of presentation” of a distal object. But this is not at all inconsistent with the quale being something other than the chime. Logically there are two possibilities: 1: the chiming quale is a part of the chime. Or, 2: the chiming quale is something other than the chime. But 1 is just naïve realism, which you have repeatedly denied. So I don’t see you having room to do other than agree with 2.
Again, it is helpful to look at real-world analogs. We have agreed that VS is indirect. Does it afford “genuine world-directness”? Or merely the illusion? I think it is genuine, in every way that matters. The subject (an apple in our running example) is causally connected to the screen, such that by looking at the screen, the viewer is effectively looking at the apple.
Is this some great mystery? I don’t see it. You will have to explain either how this is a mystery, or that this unproblematic world-directedness does not hold in the IR picture. To this second reply, in the past you have pointed to the existence of a physical screen as the relevant difference between VS and the IR picture. But that doesn’t help you here: if anything, it makes the VS more indirect. Yet, the world-directedness remains.
We started this discussion before, but I let it drop, which was a mistake, it is an important thread.
The lesson of counterfeit currency is that what makes a money currency is outside the physicality of the money. Two bills might be 100% physically identical, but only one may be money. The difference lies in the veridical histories of these two bills, and to the normative ideas of genuineness which are applied to these histories. But history is not contained in physicality. Physicality follows from history, but multiple histories can realize the same physicality.
The analogy to hallucination is undeniable. That a perception is of an object is outside the perception itself. This is logically certain as it is with currency, given that two identical perceptions possibly don’t share the property of being of objects. That a perception is of an object is determined by the veridical state of the world, and normative ideas applied to this state. Hallucination reveals that the veridical state of the world (let alone “the object itself”) cannot be disclosed by perception. Precisely because, (radically) multiple vertidical states can realize the same perception.
IR and DR seem to agree that when you see an object, there exists an electromagnetic reflection of an object, causing a photochemical reaction in the eye, which in turn causes impulses through the optic nerve and neurons firing in the brain. The direction of this chain of events is fairly clear, going from object to neurons firing.
Yet it seems that IR flips the direction inside the brain. For example, by assuming an additional brain event for the construction of a model of the object.
For DR the causal chain is constituitive for seeing the object. Detach any part and you don’t see anything. To assume additional mental model construction is unwarranted.
Beliefs about the object are indeed mental models, but that doesn’t mean that also the seeing is a mental model. Seeing presents the object in your conscious awareness.
I would appreciate if an indirect realist clarifies the causal chains a bit if possible.
What this means, how this happens, and whether or not this presentation counts as direct presentation is the crux of the issue. Lots of things are causally responsible for conscious awareness but not all of them are “presented” (whether directly or indirectly) in conscious awareness.
As an example, take two scenarios:
Scenario 1
Light from the Sun reflects off a tree onto a mirror and into our eyes
Scenario 2
Light from the Sun reflects off a mirror onto a tree and into our eyes
In scenario 1 we might say that the tree is “presented” in conscious awareness but not directly presented in conscious awareness, and in scenario 2 we will probably say that the mirror is not presented in conscious awareness at all. Causally there’s no relevant difference between the two scenarios, and so presentation of objects — especially direct presentation — must be explained in some additional terms.
The indirect realist argues that even in scenario 2 the tree is not directly presented in conscious awareness because direct presentation isn’t satisfied by this causal account alone; it’s only indirect presentation like with scenario 1. See this post that addresses the naive realist’s account.
There is no mental phenomenon called “red”. No such thing has ever been observed by any human being. If it has you’d be able to describe it. All you have observed and all you can describe are red objects.
This doesn’t follow. It’s like saying that if I have felt a headache then I should be able to describe it. I can’t describe a headache, only feel it and name it.
I’ve never observed the mental phenomenon red. I’ve only ever observed red objects. If you’ve observed it, what does this or any other mental phenomenon look like?
One can describe pain using descriptive terms like adjectives.
Red looks red. Cold feels cold. Bitterness tastes bitter. Sensations like these can’t be explained in other terms. They’re experienced and named and that’s it.
Such as? Is it comparable to describing red as being light or dark?
This would be like saying “we never see stars, only their light.”
Perhaps such a description could be substantiated on some account, although it also seems fair to say we see stars in virtue of their light (the light being a means, knowledge of the star, the actuality of the star informing the intellect, being the end).
I might suggest here that one of the problems with this whole division is that it tends to rest on the dyadic mechanist account of causality that arguably renders perception and knowledge themselves incoherent from the outset. No doubt, this model is very useful for certain sorts of problems (e.g., figuring out where billiard balls will roll when struck) but it rather deficient for many other uses.
Now all effects are signs of their causes. We could say that in perception and knowledge, the actuality of the thing perceived and known comes to be in the intellect. Elsewise, we would never know anything about how the world actually is. So, the actuality of the apple is carried (incompletely of course) in the ambient light. It interacts with the perceiver, according to the actuality of both. “Everything is received in the manner of the receiver.” But since it’s the same actuality/causal force in the apple as in the senses, and then in the intellect, there is a relationship here that might be called “direct,” whereas it is clearly “indirect” in the sense that there is mediation (and one’s head does not turn into an apple when one knows an apple).
IR normally takes on some form of representationalism, and I suppose this introduces new problems, but not necessarily. Most of the epistemic issues from representationalism don’t stem from the thesis itself (which doesn’t preclude the actuality/form of things being in the causes of representations per se), but rather from its metaphysics of appearances, where appearances can be arbitrarily related to reality. That is, to my mind, the real crux of the issue, and the problematic assumption. It’s just that this assumption tends to be more common to IR, although critics of IR often assume it themselves in their criticisms of IR.
That’s because you’re not talking about anything. Apples look red. Ice feels cold. Coffee tastes bitter. You’ve simply asserted that color is a mental phenomenon without actually observing it.
No we typically describe the intensity or duration. Throbbing, burning, sharp, etc.
I suppose my latest thread is relevant here. If reason is wholly discursive and calculative, then even if the actuality of things is “in” the senses, our understanding of what lies behind this “sense data” is always underdetermined and so any understanding of appearances is arbitrarily related to reality. That’s a sort of second level issue.
The regress I’m pointing to isn’t generic, it’s targeted specifically at your particular formulation. You said: when multiple models converge, we can judge they’re probably accurate. I’m asking: what is the epistemic status of that judgment? On your account, it’s a model too. So either it has some non-model-based authority — in which case you’ve admitted a cognitive act that isn’t just modelling — or it doesnt, and your convergence criterion is just one more model all the way down with no normative grip. That’s not a child asking “why,” that’s a specific structural problem about how your framework can ground its own rationality.
And no, I don’t think DR “solves” radical skepticism. I think radical skepticism is incoherent on its own terms — the skeptic has to presuppose rational norms (evidence, coherence, implication) to even formulate the skeptical argument, and those norms only have authority if cognition isn’t just model-building. Skepticism is parasitic on the very capacities it denies.
A brain doesn’t “grasp reality.” A person grasps reality by experiencing, understanding, and judging — and those acts are carried out through the brain the way speech is carried out through the larynx. You wouldn’t ask “how does a larynx mean something?” The larynx doesn’t mean anything. The speaker does, through the larynx. Same structure here. The question “how does a brain grasp reality?” already concedes the reductive identification of knowing with neural processing, which is exactly whats under dispute.
Your original argument moved from “we perceive qualia” to “qualia don’t require distal objects” to the conclusion that perception is fundamentally of qualia rather than of the world. That inference only goes through if qualia are objects perceived — ie the things perception is of. If qualia are instead the manner in which we perceive objects, then the fact that you can have the manner without the object (hallucination) doesn’t show that normal perception is directed at the manner. It just shows that the act can misfire. So yeah, I think you need (b).
This is a false dichotomy. You’re offering: either the quale is part of the chime (naive realism), or it’s “something other than the chime.” But there’s a third option you’re not seeing: the quale is neither part of the chime nor a separate object. It’s the act of experiencing the chime — it’s on the side of the subject, not a thing between subject and object. When I hear the chime, the qualitative character belongs to my hearing, not to the chime and not to some intermediary mental item. The chime is what I hear; the quale is how my hearing goes when I hear it.
When someone watches an apple on a screen, the world-directedness of that experience isn’t generated by the screen. It’s supplied by the viewer, who directly perceives the screen and understands it as representing something elsewhere. The viewer brings intentionality to the screen — the screen doesn’t produce it.
So yes, VS affords genuine world-directedness. But it does so because there’s a perceiver at the end of the causal chain who can see the screen and grasp what it’s showing. The directedness lives in that person’s cognitive acts, not in the causal relay.
Now try to run the IR picture the same way. The brain builds an internal model. Who perceives the model? If you say “the person perceives the model,” you need to explain what that act of perceiving is. Is it another model? Then you’ve got a regress. Is it some kind of direct awareness of the model? Then you’ve conceded that direct awareness is possible — you’ve just relocated its object from the world to a neural representation. Either way the analogy doesn’t do what you want it to. VS works precisely because it terminates in a direct perceiver. If you had to put another camera pointed at the monitor and another monitor displaying that feed, on and on, you’d never get world-directedness at all.
The “physical screen” point I made before wasn’t about the screen making things more indirect. It was about the screen being the kind of thing a perceiver can be directly aware of. Thats exactly what makes the analogy disanalogous.
I think you’ve actually followed the analogy to exactly the right place but drawn the wrong conclusion from it. Yes — what makes a bill genuine currency is external to its physical makeup. It depends on causal history, institutional context, normative frameworks. Completely agree. But notice what that implies: determining whether a bill is genuine requires cognitive acts that aren’t themselves reducible to inspecting the bill’s physical features. You have to understand what currency is, trace provenance, apply normative standards. The genuineness isn’t disclosed by just staring harder at the paper.
Now apply that back. You’re saying: “what makes a perception veridical is outside the perception itself.” Fine — I agree! Whether my perception of the rock is veridical isn’t settled by the perception alone. It’s settled by further cognitive acts — checking, corroborating, judging. This is exactly what I’ve been saying. Perception alone doesn’t give you certainty. Judgment does the work of ratifying or correcting perception, and judgment operates by grasping the sufficiency of evidence, not by building another model.
But you conclude from this that “the veridical state of the world cannot be disclosed by perception.” That doesn’t follow. What follows is that perception is fallible and requires judgment to complete the cognitional process. The existence of counterfeits doesn’t show that nobody ever possesses real money. It shows you need more than surface inspection to tell. Similarly, hallucination shows that perception alone doesn’t guarantee veridicality. It doesn’t show that perception-plus-inquiry can’t reach the real.
You keep treating the fallibility of perception as proof of a veil. But fallibility only entails a veil if you assume the only cognitive resource available is the perceptual act itself. If there are further acts — understanding, checking, judging — that aren’t just “more perception,” then fallibility is just… fallibility. A limitation to be worked around, not a prison.
Saying that pain is intense and sharp and lasts for 5 seconds doesn’t describe pain in the way that you’re asking me to describe colours. Lots of things that aren’t pain can be intense and sharp and last for 5 seconds, including colours (and tastes and smells). So when do you get to the part where you describe pain?
But more importantly; what is pain? I say a mental phenomenon.
The words “red”, “cold”, and “bitter” here refer to the sensations that such things cause us to experience when looking at, touching, and drinking them.
Such things might look, feel, and taste different to different organisms with different sensory systems; and not because they “lack” the ability to perceive the colour, feeling, or taste inherent in the objects but because such objects just don’t cause them to experience such sensations.
If you’ve experienced phenomena such as sensations you ought to be able to describe them, draw them, photograph them, or in some way document them, just as we can with everything else we’ve experienced, like apples, ice, and coffee.
Given this, how does one believe that apples are not red but something in the body called “redness” is, ice is not cold but something in the body called “coldness” is, coffee is not bitter but something in the body called “bitterness” is?
Because that’s what our science has determined. Material objects just reflect light at various wavelengths, as determined by the arrangement of electrons on their surface. These are not colours. Colours are a type of visual experience, no different in principle to pain, that occur when the appropriate areas of the brain are active. This explains how hallucinations, synaesthesia, and differences in colour perception are possible.
One of the major problems with color has to do with fitting what we seem to know about colors into what science (not only physics but the science of color vision) tells us about physical bodies and their qualities. It is this problem that historically has led the major physicists who have thought about color, to hold the view that physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess. Oceans and skies are not blue in the way that we naively think, nor are apples red (nor green). Colors of that kind, it is believed, have no place in the physical account of the world that has developed from the sixteenth century to this century.
Not only does the scientific mainstream tradition conflict with the common-sense understanding of color in this way, but as well, the scientific tradition contains a very counter-intuitive conception of color. There is, to illustrate, the celebrated remark by David Hume:
“Sounds, colors, heat and cold, according to modern philosophy are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind.” (Hume 1738: Bk III, part I, Sect. 1 [1911: 177]; Bk I, IV, IV [1911: 216])
Physicists who have subscribed to this doctrine include the luminaries: Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Newton, Thomas Young, Maxwell and Hermann von Helmholtz. Maxwell, for example, wrote:
“It seems almost a truism to say that color is a sensation; and yet Young, by honestly recognizing this elementary truth, established the first consistent theory of color.” (Maxwell 1871: 13 [1970: 75])
This combination of eliminativism—the view that physical objects do not have colors, at least in a crucial sense—and subjectivism—the view that color is a subjective quality—is not merely of historical interest. It is held by many contemporary experts and authorities on color, e.g., Zeki 1983, Land 1983, and Kuehni 1997. Palmer, a leading psychologist and cognitive scientist, writes:
“People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive.” (Palmer 1999: 95)
Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus. This distinction is critical for understanding neural representations, which must transition from a representation of a physical retinal image to a mental construct for what we see. Here, we dissociated the physical stimulus from the color seen by using an approach that causes changes in color without altering the light stimulus.
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Color is a perceptual construct that arises from neural processing in hierarchically organized cortical visual areas.
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We now know that the colors we see follow from biological neural representations generated by light, but light itself carries no color.
And yet if you tell you your child you’ll get whichever lollipop she picks out, and she says, “I want the red one," would you say, “Sweetie, the lollipops don’t have colors"?
If she accepted that, and said, “I want the one that looks red to me,” would you say, “I can’t possibly know how things appear to you”?
How we speak and act in everyday life does not determine facts about physics or physiology. What matters is what our science has determined, and the science is clear on the matter; colours are a visual sensation. That we talk about them as if they’re something else is irrelevant, and simply demonstrates that English grammar developed according to a naive and erroneous understanding of the world.
Cool. So would you say the child doesn’t strictly speaking want “the red lollipop" because there’s no such thing? Or would you say she wants something that doesn’t exist? Or something else?