I’m a direct realist. Colour is a property of the world. My ontology includes the stuff of everyday experience—objects, surfaces, properties—as well as the stuff of science (cells, molecules, particles, black holes, etc). I’ve never heard a good argument for why I should want to eliminate everything except point particles or for why I should accept the incoherent notion that our perception of the world is mediated by illusory internal imagery. And, yes, I agree that contemporary materialism involves a Cartesian skeptical argument which presupposes a kind of crypto-dualism (i.e., an insubstantial homunculus that the world of colour and so forth can appear to and hence be illusory).
So do bats and bees and colour blind people see your red? if not whose is the right red—who is Directly Perceiving reality correctly? (There is a reason direct realism is also called naive realism).
There’s no such thing as my red or different reds that are individuated by perceiver. Different types of sensory organ allow us to see different aspects of the world. I’m blind to some aspects other animals can perceive and other animals are blind to some aspect I can perceive, and the same goes for various perceptual deficiencies.
if perceived qualities exist in external object, they have never been detected by science, as opposed to the 650nm reflectance characteristic, so it is a form of dualism (or rather pluralism: see below). It requires non-physical properties.
If perceived qualities exist in external objects, they need external objects to exist in. If some perceived qualities (dreams, after images) do not exist in external objects, then a sui generis method of projecting them into the world is assumed, which is required for non-veridical perception only. (An example is Everett Hall’s exemplification) Indirect realism requires only one mechanism for veridical and non veridical perception,(the difference between the two being down to the specific circumstances)
One of the motivation for direct realism is the idea that to perceive truly is to perceive things as they are. However, other kinds of truth don’t require such a criterion at all. A true sentence is generally not at all like situation it refers to. Truth in most contexts is the following of a set of normative rules which can themselves be quite arbitrary (as in rules linking symbols to their referents). Thus Direct Realism posits a sui generis kind of veridicality applying to perception only, along with several sui generis mechanisms to support it.
Another motivation for direct realism is a linguistic analysis : the argument goes that since sensory terms must have external criteria, then what is sensed and the way it is sensed are entirely external as a matter of metaphysics. However, a criterion is not, strictly speaking, a meaning. Smoke is a criterion of fire, but fire does not mean smoke — definitionally or linguistically. he questions “where are perceived qualities” and “how are sensation-words defined” just aren’t the same. It’s quite possible that we use reference to properties of external objects to “triangulate” what are actually inner sensations, since we don’t have public access to them. It is furthemore likely that the core meanings of sensations words are just the way thing seem — even even if we have to fulfil the pubic nature of language by using a public, external stimulous as the criterion of meaning for a response. For example: “red” is the way ripe tomatoes look. “Ripe tomatoes” is the publically availabl stimulus, but “red” doesn’t mean tomatoes — it means the way they look! In Fregean terms, this analysis is even more complex than the sense/reference dichotomy. Sensations words have a sense (in general: how an an X pears), an external referent and (X) and finally the phenomenal feel or sensation. The sense without the external referent does not fix the meaning of the internal referent. Once can know theoretically that “sweet” is the taste of sugar, but considerably more meaning is supplied by actually tasting sugar.
It is noticeable that Direct Realism applies much more readilly to sight than to other forms of perception. We never think that hearing the sound of a thing is the same as perceiving the thing as it is in itself. Likewise, textures, tastes and smells are of things. Pains are reactions to objects and events, not properties of external objects. Do we veridically perceive a brass tack as being painful? Pains are removed by anaesthetising the patient, not by changing the properties of the scalpel. Even direct realists have to concede that beauty is in the eye of the beholder: that easthetic reactions are not objective properties of objects. But this creates a dividing-line problem: is “marmite is horrible/yummy” an aesthetic reaction, or the registration of a property? We are wired up to percieve sour as nasty and sweet as nice: but surely to say that the nastiness or niceness is in the chemical is no different to saying the pain is in the brass tack.
It seems as though it is a unique feature of sightin humansthat it presents itself as an “open window on the world”. For all we know, other sensory modalitites might have that exalted position in other species. For instance, much more of a dolphin’s brain is devoted to processing sonar than to processing vision.
It is unlikely that there is a single set of perceived qualities, even though they are already over and above physical properties). It is reasonable assumption that different species perceive differently. A tomato would have to have or be able to generate different perceived qualitites accroding to whether a dog , a bee or a martian is looking at it. The “have” option goes from dualism to a wild pluralism. The “generate” option requires some completely undetected causal mechanism. If I take LSD and the colours of the tomato become more intense, as perceived by me, how does it know that something has changed in me? It’s riduclous to suppose that a turd has the ability to waft attractive scents to flies and revolting stenches to humans
Tastes and smells have “yum” and “yuk” reactions attached to them that have to be relevant to the interests of an organism. Tastes and smells are not neutral and objective chemical tests, they carry a hefty behavioural loading relative to the interests of the organism and that means they must be specific reactions in the organism
Indirect realism and dualism are two different theories: a theory of indirect realism need not employ non-physical qualia. An adverbial theory of qualia (for instance) need not be indirectly realistic.
Some kind of dualism — where the perceived properties are supervening on my brain-states is more parsimonious even if dualistic. ( But it does not need to be dualistic, as noted above.itself.) The differences between dog-qualia, bee-qualia, human-qualia and martian-qualia can be accounted for by the differences between dog-brains, bee-brains, human-brains and martian-brains under a uniform set of rules.
The considerations here are almost entirely naturalistic. Science can determine whether or not the same mechanisms are involved in veridical perception and illusion. Whatever objections can be made against dualism on the basis of Occam’s razor can be made more strongly against the pluralism of direct realism. This is not a matter of metaphysical imponderables. Direct Realism could be argued on the basis of the disadvantages of Indirect Realism, but what are they? Scepticism? Indirect realism is usually argued on the basis that the brain is known to operate in a certain way. However, a sceptical conclusion undermines the evidence. If brains are just appearances in minds, there are no brains. Since scepticism is self-refuting, there is no need to resist indirect realism because of its supposed consequences.
I can compare the colour of a surface to the colour of a standardised colour chip, which is as objective as, say, measuring something using a ruler. Colours may not participate in any phenomena found in the physical scientist’s laboratory, but they do participate in the behaviour of organisms found in the psychologist’s laboratory. So I fail to see a problem here.
Indirect realism requires two mechanisms for veridical and non-veridical perception, the same as direct realism: one for when an object is seen and one for when it isn’t. Direct realism is more parsimonious because it doesn’t needlessly posit an intervening representation or image in either case.
This isn’t my motivation so I won’t address it.
See above.
I disagree that direct realism more easily applies to sight. Direct realism is the best account of the phenomenology of all perception. I feel the texture of an object. I hear events, not objects, of course. Water dropping, pans crashing, musical instruments being player, a person talking, etc. I smell fresh bread, then I taste it. What I do not do is see, hear, touch, taste or smell intervening representations or images. So I’m not sure how indirect realism could more easily apply to these things. Pains, on the other hand, aren’t perceived, they’re had. Nobody would claim a pain is in the object causing me pain. (I’ll address aesthetic response below.)
All perception puts us in contact with the world. I’m not sure what you’re saying here.
I’ve already addressed this. A bee, dog, martian, etc, would be able to perceive different aspects of the same object. That doesn’t mean the object has to somehow “generate” those properties for each organism. It has them. Bees can perceive a subset, dogs a different subset, martians another subset.
Direct realists are not committed to the idea that everything is in the environment, as if we were somehow taking things that don’t rightfully belong to the environment and arbitrarily resettling them there. Reactions to things are had by the organism. Taste and smell are implicated in ingesting foreign objects and are obviously more closely allied with specific reactions in the organism because of this.
The very idea of perceiving something other than the world implies that there is something other than the world to be perceived. You can say it’s a representation or image or model or whatever, and then try to butcher those terms into making sense, but at some point you’ve got to light it all up with “qualia” or “consciousness” or some other quasi-mystical notion. Nobody has figured this out, but even if they did, there still wouldn’t be any good reasons to be an indirect realist.
Direct realism doesn’t claim that objects have dog-qualia and human-qualia and bee-qualia instead of dog-brains having dog-qualia, etc, as you seem to think. Direct realism denies that there are qualia at all. Objects have coloured surfaces. Note that if there were qualia those qualia would have to be coloured in some sense, so you’re missing something from your supposedly parsimonious account.
The best argument for direct realism is that it’s phenomenologically accurate. The biggest flaw of indirect realism is that it’s committed to some sort of mysticism, regardless of how your dress it up. You can move the problem around, call it “qualia” or “consciousness” or whatever, but it never goes away. It’s a picture show in the mind or brain, and that’s silly.
I can compare the colour of a surface to the colour of a standardised colour chip, which is as objective as, say, measuring something using a ruler.
Not quite. Colour is a three-dimensional subspace of the infinite-dimensional space of possible light spectra, but which subspace it is depends on the spectral sensitivities of your cone cells. OTOH I do think that the cone cells of the supermajority of all humans use the exact same molecules as photoreceptors, but I’m not quite sure of that.
I’m a direct realist. Colour is a property of the world. My ontology includes the stuff of everyday experience—objects, surfaces, properties—as well as the stuff of science (cells, molecules, particles, black holes, etc). I’ve never heard a good argument for why I should want to eliminate everything except point particles or for why I should accept the incoherent notion that our perception of the world is mediated by illusory internal imagery. And, yes, I agree that contemporary materialism involves a Cartesian skeptical argument which presupposes a kind of crypto-dualism (i.e., an insubstantial homunculus that the world of colour and so forth can appear to and hence be illusory).
So do bats and bees and colour blind people see your red? if not whose is the right red—who is Directly Perceiving reality correctly? (There is a reason direct realism is also called naive realism).
There’s no such thing as my red or different reds that are individuated by perceiver. Different types of sensory organ allow us to see different aspects of the world. I’m blind to some aspects other animals can perceive and other animals are blind to some aspect I can perceive, and the same goes for various perceptual deficiencies.
Ten problems with direct realism:
if perceived qualities exist in external object, they have never been detected by science, as opposed to the 650nm reflectance characteristic, so it is a form of dualism (or rather pluralism: see below). It requires non-physical properties.
If perceived qualities exist in external objects, they need external objects to exist in. If some perceived qualities (dreams, after images) do not exist in external objects, then a sui generis method of projecting them into the world is assumed, which is required for non-veridical perception only. (An example is Everett Hall’s exemplification) Indirect realism requires only one mechanism for veridical and non veridical perception,(the difference between the two being down to the specific circumstances)
One of the motivation for direct realism is the idea that to perceive truly is to perceive things as they are. However, other kinds of truth don’t require such a criterion at all. A true sentence is generally not at all like situation it refers to. Truth in most contexts is the following of a set of normative rules which can themselves be quite arbitrary (as in rules linking symbols to their referents). Thus Direct Realism posits a sui generis kind of veridicality applying to perception only, along with several sui generis mechanisms to support it.
Another motivation for direct realism is a linguistic analysis : the argument goes that since sensory terms must have external criteria, then what is sensed and the way it is sensed are entirely external as a matter of metaphysics. However, a criterion is not, strictly speaking, a meaning. Smoke is a criterion of fire, but fire does not mean smoke — definitionally or linguistically. he questions “where are perceived qualities” and “how are sensation-words defined” just aren’t the same. It’s quite possible that we use reference to properties of external objects to “triangulate” what are actually inner sensations, since we don’t have public access to them. It is furthemore likely that the core meanings of sensations words are just the way thing seem — even even if we have to fulfil the pubic nature of language by using a public, external stimulous as the criterion of meaning for a response. For example: “red” is the way ripe tomatoes look. “Ripe tomatoes” is the publically availabl stimulus, but “red” doesn’t mean tomatoes — it means the way they look! In Fregean terms, this analysis is even more complex than the sense/reference dichotomy. Sensations words have a sense (in general: how an an X pears), an external referent and (X) and finally the phenomenal feel or sensation. The sense without the external referent does not fix the meaning of the internal referent. Once can know theoretically that “sweet” is the taste of sugar, but considerably more meaning is supplied by actually tasting sugar.
It is noticeable that Direct Realism applies much more readilly to sight than to other forms of perception. We never think that hearing the sound of a thing is the same as perceiving the thing as it is in itself. Likewise, textures, tastes and smells are of things. Pains are reactions to objects and events, not properties of external objects. Do we veridically perceive a brass tack as being painful? Pains are removed by anaesthetising the patient, not by changing the properties of the scalpel. Even direct realists have to concede that beauty is in the eye of the beholder: that easthetic reactions are not objective properties of objects. But this creates a dividing-line problem: is “marmite is horrible/yummy” an aesthetic reaction, or the registration of a property? We are wired up to percieve sour as nasty and sweet as nice: but surely to say that the nastiness or niceness is in the chemical is no different to saying the pain is in the brass tack.
It seems as though it is a unique feature of sightin humansthat it presents itself as an “open window on the world”. For all we know, other sensory modalitites might have that exalted position in other species. For instance, much more of a dolphin’s brain is devoted to processing sonar than to processing vision.
It is unlikely that there is a single set of perceived qualities, even though they are already over and above physical properties). It is reasonable assumption that different species perceive differently. A tomato would have to have or be able to generate different perceived qualitites accroding to whether a dog , a bee or a martian is looking at it. The “have” option goes from dualism to a wild pluralism. The “generate” option requires some completely undetected causal mechanism. If I take LSD and the colours of the tomato become more intense, as perceived by me, how does it know that something has changed in me? It’s riduclous to suppose that a turd has the ability to waft attractive scents to flies and revolting stenches to humans
Tastes and smells have “yum” and “yuk” reactions attached to them that have to be relevant to the interests of an organism. Tastes and smells are not neutral and objective chemical tests, they carry a hefty behavioural loading relative to the interests of the organism and that means they must be specific reactions in the organism
Indirect realism and dualism are two different theories: a theory of indirect realism need not employ non-physical qualia. An adverbial theory of qualia (for instance) need not be indirectly realistic.
Some kind of dualism — where the perceived properties are supervening on my brain-states is more parsimonious even if dualistic. ( But it does not need to be dualistic, as noted above.itself.) The differences between dog-qualia, bee-qualia, human-qualia and martian-qualia can be accounted for by the differences between dog-brains, bee-brains, human-brains and martian-brains under a uniform set of rules.
The considerations here are almost entirely naturalistic. Science can determine whether or not the same mechanisms are involved in veridical perception and illusion. Whatever objections can be made against dualism on the basis of Occam’s razor can be made more strongly against the pluralism of direct realism. This is not a matter of metaphysical imponderables. Direct Realism could be argued on the basis of the disadvantages of Indirect Realism, but what are they? Scepticism? Indirect realism is usually argued on the basis that the brain is known to operate in a certain way. However, a sceptical conclusion undermines the evidence. If brains are just appearances in minds, there are no brains. Since scepticism is self-refuting, there is no need to resist indirect realism because of its supposed consequences.
I can compare the colour of a surface to the colour of a standardised colour chip, which is as objective as, say, measuring something using a ruler. Colours may not participate in any phenomena found in the physical scientist’s laboratory, but they do participate in the behaviour of organisms found in the psychologist’s laboratory. So I fail to see a problem here.
Indirect realism requires two mechanisms for veridical and non-veridical perception, the same as direct realism: one for when an object is seen and one for when it isn’t. Direct realism is more parsimonious because it doesn’t needlessly posit an intervening representation or image in either case.
This isn’t my motivation so I won’t address it.
See above.
I disagree that direct realism more easily applies to sight. Direct realism is the best account of the phenomenology of all perception. I feel the texture of an object. I hear events, not objects, of course. Water dropping, pans crashing, musical instruments being player, a person talking, etc. I smell fresh bread, then I taste it. What I do not do is see, hear, touch, taste or smell intervening representations or images. So I’m not sure how indirect realism could more easily apply to these things. Pains, on the other hand, aren’t perceived, they’re had. Nobody would claim a pain is in the object causing me pain. (I’ll address aesthetic response below.)
All perception puts us in contact with the world. I’m not sure what you’re saying here.
I’ve already addressed this. A bee, dog, martian, etc, would be able to perceive different aspects of the same object. That doesn’t mean the object has to somehow “generate” those properties for each organism. It has them. Bees can perceive a subset, dogs a different subset, martians another subset.
Direct realists are not committed to the idea that everything is in the environment, as if we were somehow taking things that don’t rightfully belong to the environment and arbitrarily resettling them there. Reactions to things are had by the organism. Taste and smell are implicated in ingesting foreign objects and are obviously more closely allied with specific reactions in the organism because of this.
The very idea of perceiving something other than the world implies that there is something other than the world to be perceived. You can say it’s a representation or image or model or whatever, and then try to butcher those terms into making sense, but at some point you’ve got to light it all up with “qualia” or “consciousness” or some other quasi-mystical notion. Nobody has figured this out, but even if they did, there still wouldn’t be any good reasons to be an indirect realist.
Direct realism doesn’t claim that objects have dog-qualia and human-qualia and bee-qualia instead of dog-brains having dog-qualia, etc, as you seem to think. Direct realism denies that there are qualia at all. Objects have coloured surfaces. Note that if there were qualia those qualia would have to be coloured in some sense, so you’re missing something from your supposedly parsimonious account.
The best argument for direct realism is that it’s phenomenologically accurate. The biggest flaw of indirect realism is that it’s committed to some sort of mysticism, regardless of how your dress it up. You can move the problem around, call it “qualia” or “consciousness” or whatever, but it never goes away. It’s a picture show in the mind or brain, and that’s silly.
Not quite. Colour is a three-dimensional subspace of the infinite-dimensional space of possible light spectra, but which subspace it is depends on the spectral sensitivities of your cone cells. OTOH I do think that the cone cells of the supermajority of all humans use the exact same molecules as photoreceptors, but I’m not quite sure of that.