Marchesk

Yes, and then the pain of a stubbed toe afterward. The nerves in your skin provide tactile perception.

You're experiencing kicking the rock, which is painful.

On Star Trek you can, if you disable the Holodeck safety protocols.

Using transcranial magnetic stimulation, it's possible to elicit an experience. We might call it a hallucination. But what if it were possible to crea...

An experience of an external object that results from use of your sensory organs.

That is a good point. Technology works, we're able to survive, experiments are repeatable, etc.

I seriously doubt you actually agree with Street's position, but perhaps I never fully understood yours. I took you to argue for direct access to tree...

I see what you're saying, but it really is equivalent to the indirect realist position, assuming you allow for those external inputs. What you're argu...

Good of you to finally join the conversation. Now all we need is TGW and Landru to make this topic great again. But, you ignored the post where Street...

We don't, but we do (sometimes) worry about what we're perceiving. To quote random scientist in Mr. Robot: "And I'm fascinated by the greatest unsolve...

Here's a thought. If a neurological account of qualia could ever be provided, then perhaps a sophisticated form of direct realism would be defensible,...

One account makes the external stimuli open to skepticism. To the extent we care about skepticism, it matters. We don't have to care, but some people ...

Keep in mind that we start off with naive realism, then realize there are problems for the naive view. This leads to alternative suggestions. But if a...

You answer is that it exists as a potential to be perceived. My answer is that it just exists. Question for you: how does a potential causally explain...

True, but that's the exact reasoning the indirect realist uses. The direct realists doesn't need to infer an independent world. We already perceive it...

It hasn't.

There is a physical world that exists in space and time regardless of whether humans beings are around to perceive it. And by physical, I mean the wor...

The link is perception. If the philosophical position results in being unable to say that one is perceiving things or events external to oneself, then...

Epiphenomenal ectoplasm is where I draw the line on meaningful philosophical discussion, but that's just me. I kind of like the sound of it, though.

I think it primarily means there is a larger world humans are but a small part of. We are late on the evolutionary scene, we only occupy the land surf...

So you think an issue worth debating needs to have technological application for it to help attain eudaimonia? Do you feel the same way about art, lit...

So little at stake for what? It has large stakes in metaphysics. It's been of importance to many philosophers. Anyone can ask whether what they percei...

This doesn't work, because we have experiences of things which aren't out there, and the things out there can't fully explain the things in here.

Because I find it extremely lacking, and it makes science into a fiction. It also means other people are a potential experience.

It means under certain lighting conditions (it's sunny out), the air molecules scatter light at a wavelength that we see as blue.

Are some of the perceived properties also properties of the object being perceived? Locke thought so.

On the direct realist account, perceived objects would have the same properties when nobody is perceiving them. I can't fully buy into this, because i...

Objective would mean the properties that give rise to the experience. This would be the properties of the external inputs.

That's a cheap way to dismiss a philosophical issue. But whatever.

I didn't come up with the direct/indirect realism debate, so what you're really saying is that professional philosophers who think it's meaningful don...

How the fuck do you think scientists came up with a theory of QM? By sitting in their armchairs and dreaming it up? Or running a shit ton of experimen...

But it's not. I have no problems understanding it.

Science attempts to be creature independent, and describe the world as it is. That's why we arrive at theories like QM.

If it has nothing to do with perception, how would we know about it? On an empirical account of knowledge, there must be something perceptible which l...

That the alternative is an absurd, gappy and brute account of individual experiences, or solipsism? Or appeals to God and universal consciousness.

But doesn't science do exactly that by extracting the properties which aren't creature dependant to arrive at an abstract picture? Nagel's view from n...

Yeah, if you want to go full Kant. Streetlight's post would also be Kantian. The external inputs could be the noumena. It's just that when you arrive ...

Incidentally, is there a Godwin's equivalent law for metaphysical discussion and QM?

If one is realist about wave-particles, but not biological structures, sure.

One can. Wouldn't that be mereological nihilism? And does biology still fit in there somehow?

Yeah, it does follow. Evolution is a fictional account of species because it didn't happen on an anti-realist reading, anymore than God created all th...

I'm suggesting anti-realism is wrong because it can't explain why anything happens. The instrumentalist explanations are just-so stories. We don't kno...

But that anti-realist can't answer the question of why there is coffee, while the realist can appeal to chemistry. For the anti-realist, coffee is bru...

The external object or environment itself. Direct realism is a sophisticated form of naive realism. Things are as they appear, under normal conditions...

How is it not? What are the external inputs? What are their properties? Do any of those properties show up in our experiences? I don't see how it does...

This part is particularly intriguing. I can just hear some philosophers gnashing their teeth over this. Would love to see Dennett's reaction to it.

So we're left with mathematical abstractions?

Very interesting, thanks. That would seem to largely support indirect realism, even if you're not interested in framing it that way. It also seems to ...

What it means is that there is a circular object that gives rise to the experience of seeing a circular shape, and that's why two people can have simi...

Science claims otherwise. There is big universe that exists beyond and before, and after us. But our everyday experiences tell us the same thing. The ...