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 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.