Dreaming of Direct Realism
When I'm dreaming of a tree, I'm aware of a dream tree, which is something my mind cooked up. I can also day dream of walking in the woods and seeing a particular tree, in which case I'm aware of my imagined tree. In both cases, these are tree experiences only available to me.
When it comes to a perceived tree, direct realists deny that there is any sort of intermediary between the perceiver and the perceived tree. There isn't a tree experience standing in for, and related to the objective, publically available tree. There's no subjective idea in the mind we're immediately aware of instead of the tree out there in the world.
But it does raise a question. If my brain is capable of creating a private, virtual world some of the time, why not all the time? What makes perception different? Now this isn't a claim to skepticism, it's only a question of our mental content. It would seem the indirect realists would have the brain use the same sort of experience for all modes of experience, whereas the direct realist has to posit separate fundamental kinds. One is subjective, and the other is direct. Hallucinations, memories, dreams, altered drug states, mystical trance states, and the like would fall into the subjective category, whereas perception would be direct.
Either that, or deny that we have any sort of private, virtual world/theater. Which is a tactic Dennett has taken in his philosophical career, even to the point of denying that we have dream experiences. Dennett has said we are actually p-zombies, fooled by the zombic hunch. But what a hunch it is! I can visualize walking in the woods as I type.
When it comes to a perceived tree, direct realists deny that there is any sort of intermediary between the perceiver and the perceived tree. There isn't a tree experience standing in for, and related to the objective, publically available tree. There's no subjective idea in the mind we're immediately aware of instead of the tree out there in the world.
But it does raise a question. If my brain is capable of creating a private, virtual world some of the time, why not all the time? What makes perception different? Now this isn't a claim to skepticism, it's only a question of our mental content. It would seem the indirect realists would have the brain use the same sort of experience for all modes of experience, whereas the direct realist has to posit separate fundamental kinds. One is subjective, and the other is direct. Hallucinations, memories, dreams, altered drug states, mystical trance states, and the like would fall into the subjective category, whereas perception would be direct.
Either that, or deny that we have any sort of private, virtual world/theater. Which is a tactic Dennett has taken in his philosophical career, even to the point of denying that we have dream experiences. Dennett has said we are actually p-zombies, fooled by the zombic hunch. But what a hunch it is! I can visualize walking in the woods as I type.
Comments (10)
Life has dream-like aspects, but pain is real. I guess if you could get to a point where pain too was 'just a dream', either you'd be on opiates, or you'd be some kind of transcendent being. But for most of us the reality of pain is, in technical terminology, both apodictic, and first-person.
Anyway, direct realists do not deny perception. Direct realism is rather a stance in philosophy of perception. What does that mean? Well, it means that direct realists do not deny that perceptions are mental, that they're subjective experiences--that is, that perceptions are brain states. That's what perception IS after all, at least on a realist, materialist account: there's stuff in the world external to you and there's you as a sentient being; perception is the process of one's brain receiving information from externals. So what are direct realists saying differently than indirect realists such as representationalists? They're saying that what they perceive, that is, the information their brains process from the outside world, is "direct" and accurate (ceteris paribus--that is, in lieu of "defects," outside of illusions, etc.), contra a belief that their brains receive the information and then construct a representation, where there's no way to tell just how the representation is correlated to the external stuff.
The difference in a nutshell is akin to the difference between (unmanipulated) photography and painting, where with the paintings we have no way of knowing whether they're examples of impressionism, surrealism, Fauvism, abstract expressionism, photorealism, or anything else. In both cases we're talking about surfaces with images on them--photographic film or canvases, say, which is equivalent to the subjective experience aspect in this analogy, but in one case it's a matter of the image being a direct result of the light entering the camera and affecting the film, whereas in the other case there are interpretive, possibly transformational processes going on where the final result might resemble the source material only very abstractly.
Indirect realists are saying that we're only aware of the paintings, we're not aware of the processes leading up to the paintings, which are at least a couple processes removed from the source information. Direct realists say that we're aware of a photographic image which is a direct result of the source information. So it's still perception in direct realism's case. It's just a direct process.
Re dreams, hallucinations, daydreams and non-daydream, waking perceptions, for at least some of us, the non-daydream, waking perceptions have a very different quality to them than dreams, hallucinations and daydreams. And for some of us, there's always the concurrent awareness that something is a dream, hallucination or daydream. I can see where it would be confusing for someone for whom there aren't different qualities to each. But it's difficult for me to imagine what that experience would be like.
I thought it was about perception? So indirect realists are saying that we're only seeing the paining, not whatever processes lead up to the painting. We might be aware (via inference) of those preceding processes, but such things aren't being perceived.
I'm not sure what you're clarifying or taking issue with. I agree with your comment.
So the first issue is with the use of the phrase "aware of" rather than "see"? (seriously? haha)
Because otherwise, if you swap out "see" with "aware of," then "Indirect realists are saying that we only see the paintings, not also the processes leading up to them" is exactly what I said.
Re "aware of," if we're literally talking about paintings, how are you aware of them (normally, at least)? Well, by seeing them of course. Seeing is visual awareness.
Quoting Michael
With direct realism, we're saying that it's NOT like painting, it's like photography. I explained that in the post you responded to. I explained why it's direct versus indirect, etc.
So you're saying that if I see a photo of Hitler then I am directly seeing Hitler, not indirectly seeing him via a photo?
For one, if you see a photo of Hitler, you're inserting another step in the process. In the analogy, your perception is the photo. Your perceptual awareness isn't another step on top of or behind that.