A quick pedantic comment: direct realism (as treated in the literature of philosophy of perception), is just the thesis that our perception puts us into direct contact with external properties/objects. Exactly what this entails will vary from account to account, but it’s generally understood to entail that the contents of perception (as well as the contents of our perceptual beliefs + discourse) are about external properties and objects. Note that this says nothing about whether perception is essentially representational or not. Contrast this with indirect realist accounts like the sense data theory, which claims that the contents of perception literally are sense data. When you think about an entity that you perceive, you’re just thinking about a sense datum, not some object out there in the world.
So you can believe our experience is just a representation of what an external object is, but still believe in direct realism. In fact, representationalism is billed as a form of direct realism. It is naive realism which is the view that external objects and/or qualities literally constitute the objects and/or qualities in our experience, which the representationalist denies.
What you’re really getting at here is whether the qualities and properties of our sensory experience are *worldly*. That is, whether they are shared in common with the external objects being represented. Many representationalists hold that the answer is yes, that when we represent an external entity, we somehow incorporate its actual properties and qualities into our experience.
I think this is very dubious (at least if you buy into a naturalist account of representation), not least for the reasons you mention here. But even if we reject the worldly properties assumption, that doesn’t necessarily entail we have to abandon direct realism, since we might think that the contents of perception are still directly about the external entities themselves. For example, you might be an epistemic and semantic externalist who thinks that perceptual content is just determined by our brain states being in the right sort of causal contact with these external entities, irrespective of whether perceived entities and actual entities happen to share properties in common.
Thank you, that is very helpful!--I had not picked up on this way of distinguishing naive from direct realism. On the correct taxonomy, my target then is certainly naive realism. I'll fix that in the post:)
That was a beautiful and thought-provoking read! The philosophical importance of anal ejections should certainly not be underestimated (or even bodily discharge, lest we exclude areas like the aesthetics of piss and the epistemology of puke)!
Maybe this commits us to a functionalist shitology. I personally don’t see the case against direct realism. But it definitely weakens the case for psychophysical harmony, which posits that our mental states that correlate with phenomena (or physical states) are rational. However the subjective side of this, whether I enjoy the smell of shit, does not hinge on the verticality of the perception, but maybe some sort of cultural imbuement of stimulus response with regard to a taboo. So basically what I’m saying is, shit smells the same to us and flies, we just have a different evaluative disposition. But, if it was demonstrated that the olfactory receptors were doing something fundamentally different in the case of flies, chemically, then we would have reason to assume that in fact they has a different experience in addition to a different evaluative disposition, and vice versa. So anyway, this whole topic seems largely empirical.
Yes, smell certainly isn't the strongest datum to make this case from, as it is very hard to determine whether there is genuine variation or only evaluative variation. As I mention in a footnote, however, there is pretty strong evidence for other sorts of perceptual variation. I would be lying if I said I didn't choose the example of shit for shits and giggles, as it isn't really the strongest way to put the idea.
Interesting, I missed the footnote. Personally, I don’t think variations in physical properties challenge veridicality of perception. It would just be counterfactually true that if I had x property I’d have y experience. Sure it’d be difficult to account for all of the possible variables, but in translating these various perceptual quirks between each other, we’d arrive at something similar to the principle of relativity in physics (not the theory of relativity) you can read about it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_relativity. Which means there is a common reality that can be construed coherently with direct realism. But this is conjecture, that comes from me passively thinking about light and sight, I haven’t read much on it.
I certainly also don't want to give up on the idea that there *is* an objective reality out there, or that we can have veridical perception! Rather, my problem is with the idea that the object of my perception is the object in the world. I instead want to say that the thing I perceive is some sort of mental representation, or maybe even a sense datum (I don't have very settled views here), rather than the object *out there*. A perception is then veridical in virtue of standing in the right sort of causal relation to the world: I veridically perceive the computer I am currently writing on, because my visual and tactile experience is caused by the object in the world in the right sort of way; but my perception would not be veridical if it was caused by my eating magic mushrooms or being psychotic or something, since it wouldn't have the right sort of causal relation to the world.
Philosophy of perception is probably the most important type of wisdom there is. You're talking shit in this article, but consider this related problem: How might one go about enduring a Viking "blood eagle" while gleefully singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" until the end? Solve this problem = gain superpowers
Substack, asking the important questions
A quick pedantic comment: direct realism (as treated in the literature of philosophy of perception), is just the thesis that our perception puts us into direct contact with external properties/objects. Exactly what this entails will vary from account to account, but it’s generally understood to entail that the contents of perception (as well as the contents of our perceptual beliefs + discourse) are about external properties and objects. Note that this says nothing about whether perception is essentially representational or not. Contrast this with indirect realist accounts like the sense data theory, which claims that the contents of perception literally are sense data. When you think about an entity that you perceive, you’re just thinking about a sense datum, not some object out there in the world.
So you can believe our experience is just a representation of what an external object is, but still believe in direct realism. In fact, representationalism is billed as a form of direct realism. It is naive realism which is the view that external objects and/or qualities literally constitute the objects and/or qualities in our experience, which the representationalist denies.
What you’re really getting at here is whether the qualities and properties of our sensory experience are *worldly*. That is, whether they are shared in common with the external objects being represented. Many representationalists hold that the answer is yes, that when we represent an external entity, we somehow incorporate its actual properties and qualities into our experience.
I think this is very dubious (at least if you buy into a naturalist account of representation), not least for the reasons you mention here. But even if we reject the worldly properties assumption, that doesn’t necessarily entail we have to abandon direct realism, since we might think that the contents of perception are still directly about the external entities themselves. For example, you might be an epistemic and semantic externalist who thinks that perceptual content is just determined by our brain states being in the right sort of causal contact with these external entities, irrespective of whether perceived entities and actual entities happen to share properties in common.
Hope this helps!
Thank you, that is very helpful!--I had not picked up on this way of distinguishing naive from direct realism. On the correct taxonomy, my target then is certainly naive realism. I'll fix that in the post:)
My pleasure! :)
Have you read about the metaphysics of farts? https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/think/article/metaphysics-of-farts/6BD856AD874E9B23DC0AAD80CB465397
That was a beautiful and thought-provoking read! The philosophical importance of anal ejections should certainly not be underestimated (or even bodily discharge, lest we exclude areas like the aesthetics of piss and the epistemology of puke)!
Maybe this commits us to a functionalist shitology. I personally don’t see the case against direct realism. But it definitely weakens the case for psychophysical harmony, which posits that our mental states that correlate with phenomena (or physical states) are rational. However the subjective side of this, whether I enjoy the smell of shit, does not hinge on the verticality of the perception, but maybe some sort of cultural imbuement of stimulus response with regard to a taboo. So basically what I’m saying is, shit smells the same to us and flies, we just have a different evaluative disposition. But, if it was demonstrated that the olfactory receptors were doing something fundamentally different in the case of flies, chemically, then we would have reason to assume that in fact they has a different experience in addition to a different evaluative disposition, and vice versa. So anyway, this whole topic seems largely empirical.
Yes, smell certainly isn't the strongest datum to make this case from, as it is very hard to determine whether there is genuine variation or only evaluative variation. As I mention in a footnote, however, there is pretty strong evidence for other sorts of perceptual variation. I would be lying if I said I didn't choose the example of shit for shits and giggles, as it isn't really the strongest way to put the idea.
Interesting, I missed the footnote. Personally, I don’t think variations in physical properties challenge veridicality of perception. It would just be counterfactually true that if I had x property I’d have y experience. Sure it’d be difficult to account for all of the possible variables, but in translating these various perceptual quirks between each other, we’d arrive at something similar to the principle of relativity in physics (not the theory of relativity) you can read about it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_relativity. Which means there is a common reality that can be construed coherently with direct realism. But this is conjecture, that comes from me passively thinking about light and sight, I haven’t read much on it.
I certainly also don't want to give up on the idea that there *is* an objective reality out there, or that we can have veridical perception! Rather, my problem is with the idea that the object of my perception is the object in the world. I instead want to say that the thing I perceive is some sort of mental representation, or maybe even a sense datum (I don't have very settled views here), rather than the object *out there*. A perception is then veridical in virtue of standing in the right sort of causal relation to the world: I veridically perceive the computer I am currently writing on, because my visual and tactile experience is caused by the object in the world in the right sort of way; but my perception would not be veridical if it was caused by my eating magic mushrooms or being psychotic or something, since it wouldn't have the right sort of causal relation to the world.
Well shit
Philosophy of perception is probably the most important type of wisdom there is. You're talking shit in this article, but consider this related problem: How might one go about enduring a Viking "blood eagle" while gleefully singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" until the end? Solve this problem = gain superpowers