True, I may have been over-simplifying.
But the DR says that they know that chairs and tables exist in the world, whilst the IR says something exists in the world which we perceive as tables and chairs.
If I could sit on the chair and have a coffee which is put on the table, then they are the real chairs and table.
If I saw the objects which looked like a tree stump and a storage box, and if I saw some folks were using them as chairs and tables, then I would understand the objects were the chairs and tables. Or not even seeing the folks, I could imagine the tree stump could be used as a chair in BBQ, and the storage box could be used as a table also storing all the BBQ gadgets and tools inside.
Because my perception is working via my whole bodily sense organs, memories, imagination, inference, reasoning and thoughts too, some situations would only require my physical sense organs such as eyes and ears, and I can straight tell what the object is by only sense perception.
But in other situations, I would need to use my imagination, inference and reasoning to know what the objects is, because of lack of data or the nature of the objects such as God or souls or the galaxies and blackholes or atoms and nucleus, or the tree stump looking object which is actually a chair.
Summing your position up. Some things I can directly see, touch, taste, smell and hear using my five senses, such as chairs. I can then use my memories, imagination, inference, reasoning and thoughts about chairs. But there are some things I cannot directly see, touch, taste, smell and hear using my five senses, such as atoms. I can still use my memories, imagination, inference, reasoning and thoughts about atoms.
When you say I could sit on a chair then it is a real chair suggests that you believe chairs exist in the world, making you a Direct Realist. An Indirect Realist believes that something exists in the world, whilst chairs exist only as a concept in the mind.
Even though we can reason about chairs and atoms, we would not know about them if information did not come through our five senses, in that we see chairs and read about atoms. All we know is because of information coming through our five senses.
The DR believes that there is a temporal causal chain from information leaving an object in the world, whether a chair or a book about atoms, to their perception of it in the mind.
The DR believes that light leaves the object, enters the eye, travels up the optic nerve as an electrical signal, initiates neural activity in the brain before being perceived by their mind.
The DR talks about this causal chain as real, whilst the IR may talk about the same causal chain as a metaphor for what is really happening in the world.
The DR believes that there is a real chair or book about atoms in the world, and is the same as they perceive it in their minds.
The Indirect Realist disagrees, and agrees that there is something in the world, but not as they perceive it in their mind.
My argument is that because of the nature of such a temporal causal chain, it is a logical impossibility to know from a perception in the mind a prior cause in the world.
As an analogy, imagine walking into a room where a snooker game is being played and seeing a snooker ball at rest. It is a logical impossibility to know, just by looking at the snooker ball at rest, the snooker ballâs immediately prior position.
It is up to the Direct Realist to show how it is logically possible, just by knowing any link in the temporal causal chain, its immediately prior link. DR depends on that as a workable theory.
Your description on DR IR is very good. Thank you.
However, when you missed the sight of the snooker ball position because you came into the room after the snooker balls are set, you donât know the exact position of the balls, because you havenât seen it. If you want find it out, you just need to guess it. You cannot get it wrong, because the snooker balls were somewhere on the snooker table.
We definitely know what chairs and tables are when we see them in front of us.
We donât not know what God, souls and atoms are, because we havenât seen them, in which case they are in the realm of Things-in-Themselves, as Kant drew the boundary of our perception. In this case, you must use faith, inference, reasoning and intuition for accessing the objects, which cannot be known by our bodily sense organs.
You donât know that they were somewhere on the table. Someone could have just put them on the table.
Both the DR and IR definitely know what a chair is, and both see a chair in front of them.
However, the DR thinks the chair exists in the world, whilst the IR does not think that the chair exists in the world but exists as a concept in their mind.
Neither the DR nor IR have seen God, souls or the atom, but can infer what they are using reason and imagination.
The grounds that cause appearances are not objects. The grounds from which appearances arise consist of our sense organsâ interaction with objects and the ways they reflect or emit light, sounds, smells etc. For example, you donât see your eyeâs or brainâs response, nor the electromagnetism that a visible object reflects. You see the object, and thatâs what it means to see it directly. Hence direct realism. No need to assume a second realm of invisible things in themselves.
You need to then debate on the level of knowledge. How accurately do you have to know to say that you know something? If you were in another planet like Mars, then even saying the snooker balls are in the Earth could be quite accurate knowledge.
If you need to be more accurate, even the snooker balls were in Europe not in Australia could be OK, when you are looking down from some other galaxy.
But point here seems to be you didnât witness the position of the snooker balls, and yet asking you to figure out the exact position of them sound unfair if not irrelevant.
IR folks seem to be claiming an absurdity here. If they see the chair and table in front of them, and can sit on them drinking coffee on the table, but still thinks the chair and table are just concepts in their head sound strange.
Thatâs fair enough. Those objects could be indeed concepts in the head.
The way objects reflect light sound, smell. And the way these powers interact with our sense organs.
I see the effects of objects and my interpretation of these. These I do see directly. The ground of out which these effects come about, we donât know.
Of course, if you say an object just is a bunch of properties, you can do that. It is a legitimate view.
My criticism is that youâre violating the principle of parsimony. While I believe you when you say your head hurts, it is simply untrue and misleading to assert you are in possession of another distinct entity that no one else but yourself can sense.
You could say it a different way and evoke the same meaning, but without violating the principle of parsimony:
âMy head aches; itâs why I take paracetamol, and in taking paracetamol my head no longer aches.â
Now we neednât try to figure out the nature of abstract objects and figurative entities because your head is the topic, and we know enough and have seen enough of heads to have a basic and shared understanding.
If the appropriate task of realism is to describe the world for the sake of some semblance of accuracy, we neednât suggest there is more than one entity at work here, because one can prove with a simple glance that there isnât.
A reasonable definition of knowledge is justified true belief.
If I am living on Mars, I may believe that there are snooker balls on Earth because I saw the World Snooker Championship from the Crucible Theatre on TV. However, this would not be knowledge unless it was true that the World Snooker Championship was filmed in Sheffield.
The IR would agree that there is something in front of them in the world, and would agree that this something in front of them is a particular instantiation of the concept of a table.
A concept is a set of particular instantiations of that concept.
The IR would agree that they see in front of them in the world a particular instantiation of the concept of a table, but would not agree that they are seeing the concept of a table in front of them in the world, as concepts only exist in the mind.
The phrase âmy head achesâ doesnât describe anything that my skull is doing, or anything that my skin is doing, or anything that my hair is doing. It describes one of these:
- Something my brain is doing
- Something that emerges from something my brain is doing
(1) is only parsimonious if it does in fact explain headaches, but itâs not obvious that headaches can be reduced to neural activity in this way.
Regardless, I donât care which of (1) or (2) is true. In saying that headaches are mental phenomena Iâm not saying that mental phenomena arenât physical phenomena or that theyâre not reducible to (1).
So letâs assume (1) for the sake of argument. My head aching is something my brain is doing. But also; my foot aching is something my brain is doing. It might seem as if itâs something my foot is doing, but thatâs an illusion â like a phantom pain, except the limb still exists. And it might be that my brain is doing this thing because my foot is injured, but pain is nonetheless something my brain is doing.
And seeing colours is something my brain is doing too, even if it seems as if the colour is a property of some distal object like an apple.
You often argue that if the above is true then if Iâm seeing something blue then you ought be able to open up my skull and see something blue in my brain, but this is as incoherent as arguing that if my head is hurting then you ought be able to open up my skull and have a headache of your own.
You see blue only when your brain is doing the appropriate thing, just as you have a headache only when your brain is doing the appropriate thing.
Again, the science of colour and perception is clear on this.
According to indirect realism, you never see the object, only your own mental copy of it. Hence the skepticism, that the object or some part of it, is impossible to know. But if you never see the object, then why even bother about realism? Idealism would be more consistent. Also, how could only a part of the object be unknowable? In order to see it, you must use your eyes, from a point of view etc which will distort the form of the object. But that doesnât mean that it has a visible form-in-itself which is not visible to us. What are your reasons for the skepticism?
Not quite.
According to indirect realism you never have direct perception of an object. Indirect perception of an object is still perception of the object.
For example, Iâve never had direct perception of Donald Trump, but Iâve seen him plenty of times on television â which is an example of indirect perception.
You need to be precise with your phrasing else youâre susceptible to equivocation.
Nice try⌠Indirect means that the object of perception is a mental entity by way of which you see the object. Hence indirect.
By saying that âindirect perception is still perception of the objectâ, you equivocate between IR and DR. Not so nice.
Seeing Donald Trump on television is both a) indirect perception of Donald Trump and b) seeing Donald Trump.
You are equivocating when you argue that (b) is true only if (a) is false.
I have not argued that.
You said:
This is false. We see things even if we only have indirect perception of them, like Donald Trump on television.
You need to be precise with your wording, because these do not mean the same thing:
- We do not see objects, only mental phenomena
- We do not have direct perception of objects, only of mental phenomena
Indirect realism argues for (2), not (1).
If direct realism is true then these are true:
- I have direct perception of my television
- I have indirect perception of Donald Trump when I watch television
- I see both my television and Donald Trump when I watch television
If indirect realism is true then these are true:
- I have indirect perception of my television
- I have indirect perception of Donald Trump when I watch television
- I see both my television and Donald Trump when I watch television
I donât particularly have a dog in the direct/indirect realism topic per se. That is, I donât tend to use these terms nor think about things in this manner.
Having said that, I donât believe that I see a mental âcopyâ, I see mental construction caused by stimulus, thatâs all I see. There is nothing that is being copied. Something is being transformed (sense data), true, not copied.
Yes, âidealismâ can be counterposed to realism. But itâs not necessary. Itâs not as if my ideas are not real and something else is, or that something other than my ideas are more real than my ideas.
I think the counterpoint to realism would be something like Nelson Goodmanâs âirrealismâ, thatâs quite different.
Why the skepticism? The nature of human knowledge and the way we access information. Itâs even hard to think what a perspectiveless view (a view from nowhere) would even be like. That may be truly âobjectiveâ, but impossible in principle, because objects require a point of view.
Ok, transformed sense data by way of which you can identify or refer to a real object. All the same, then you donât see the real object directly, only your own sense data.
Yeah, I think he would say that an object is as many ways it can be. As a direct realist I agree. For example, red paint can look brown or grey under different light conditions. Itâs red under ordinary conditions, e.g. daytime sunlight. Goodman might add that itâs ordinary only by convention, while a direct realist says that itâs ordinary because of the physics and biology.
Thatâs how I read him too. I think there are conventions to be sure, but there is a world, otherwise all you have are âversionsâ (theories). But theories of what? More versions? That doesnât make sense to me, but, who knows?