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RussellA

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I am in a room with the door closed. I hear a sound I infer is from outside the room that sounds like a bark. You say that hearing this sound means th...
January 22, 2026 at 17:34
There is ordinary language and philosophical language. In ordinary language, when looking at a ship in front of them, both the Direct and Indirect Rea...
January 22, 2026 at 11:46
I am in a room with the door closed, I hear a sound. I infer that the sound came from outside the room. I may be wrong, but I infer it. In this case, ...
January 22, 2026 at 09:38
There is ordinary language, “I indirectly see the ship through my telescope and I directly see the ship in front of me”. There is philosophical langua...
January 22, 2026 at 09:25
The Direct Realist falls into the duality of the Homunculus Strawman problem: “If a homunculus (a little person) is needed inside the mind to process ...
January 22, 2026 at 09:15
I perceive my pain. I am the perceiver and my pain is what is perceived. If there was a duality between perceiver and perceived, a duality between me ...
January 21, 2026 at 13:15
Yes, there is the sensory mental state “I feel pain” and there is the intellectual mental state “I reason that the pain was caused by something mind-e...
January 21, 2026 at 13:04
There is a relation between perceiver and physical object. But there is no relation between perceiver and a mental state if the perceiver IS the menta...
January 21, 2026 at 11:26
What does the Indirect Realist believe? The homunculus infinite regress problem arises when the mind is assumed to be a separate entity to the brain, ...
January 21, 2026 at 09:35
What do words mean? Wittgenstein’s “meaning is use” suggests that the meaning of a word is determined by how the word is used in language in a languag...
January 21, 2026 at 09:19
Adding my tuppence worth. I may regularly perceive in my mind a grey circle, which I infer to the best explanation has been caused by a regularity in ...
January 20, 2026 at 14:54
I appreciate your feedback on my thesis. You agree that the form of each link and the content of each link in the causal chain can change. But all inf...
January 20, 2026 at 09:18
We see the colour red when looking at a wavelength of between about 620nm to 750nm. We have the concept of the colour red through personal insight. We...
January 20, 2026 at 09:10
John Searle in The Philosophy of Perception and the Bad Argument wrote about the identity between the perception and experience.
January 19, 2026 at 16:28
What the Direct Realist proposes is a logical impossibility The bent stick argument is a weak argument against Direct Realism (DR), in that the Semant...
January 19, 2026 at 16:14
That’s the question, which of IR and DR is more rationally compelling. ======================================================== I don’t understand how...
January 18, 2026 at 17:30
A stick in water looks bent. The Semantic Direct Realist’s (SDR) position is that of indirect perception but direct cognition. The SDR is saying that ...
January 18, 2026 at 15:33
@"Michael" I would appreciate it if sometime you could find any flaws in my main argument against Direct Realism (both Phenomenological Direct Realism...
January 18, 2026 at 09:39
The DR accepts there is a temporal causal chain from something in the mind-external world to their perception. For example, we can conceptualise that ...
January 17, 2026 at 15:06
When I see a table, am I seeing one object, the table, or five objects, the table top and four legs? ===================================== I see an ap...
January 17, 2026 at 10:07
I will stick to Presentism, as this still makes my point. The Indirect Realist (IR) and Direct Realist (DR) agree 1 - There is a temporal causal chain...
January 17, 2026 at 09:37
The Indirect Realist does not believe that a cup exists in the mind-external world, but only exists in the mind as a concept. In the mind-external wor...
January 16, 2026 at 15:54
Yes, both the DR and IR believe that a mind-external world exists. Even if there were no humans, there would still be a mind-external world. Yes, even...
January 16, 2026 at 13:31
No. I need the concept of a cup in my mind before I know I am looking at a cup. If I don’t know the concept of a cup, I don't know what I am looking a...
January 16, 2026 at 11:28
In Presentism, how can the Sun persist through change, when only the present moment in time exists. The Sun cannot exist in the past when the past doe...
January 16, 2026 at 11:14
Suppose on many different occasions I see the same combination of things, such as a square shape being cream in colour. Using my reason I can infer th...
January 16, 2026 at 09:09
This relates back to the Ship Of Theseus. Is an object the same object after having all of its original components replaced with others over time? It ...
January 15, 2026 at 17:38
From my position of Indirect Realism: Suppose in my mind I have the concept of something that I know as “cup”. Suppose I perceive in my senses a singl...
January 15, 2026 at 15:51
Absolutely. Linguistically, I could call an animal with a long proboscis, tusks, large ear flaps, pillar-like legs, and tough but sensitive grey skin ...
January 15, 2026 at 13:03
It depends what you mean by “the object perceived no longer exists”. Light takes 8 min 20 sec to travel from the Sun to the Earth. The Sun we look at ...
January 15, 2026 at 10:57
I agree that my premise was wrong. I am using perception in the sense of cognition, rather than seeing. We need premises that the IR and DR can agree ...
January 14, 2026 at 09:40
Your reply gives me plenty of food for thought. Yes, I am saying that it is logically impossible for the mind to directly know how things are in a min...
January 13, 2026 at 12:42
There are two aspects to sensations and being truth-apt. If I perceive a bent stick, then it is always true that I perceive a bent stick, therefore no...
January 13, 2026 at 09:20
Basically the choice between Indirect Reason and Direct Reason. The question is, is it logically possible for the human mind to know “how things are” ...
January 13, 2026 at 08:42
The word "judgment" means deciding what is true or false. What is true or false means being answerable to how things are. In this sense, yes, as defin...
January 12, 2026 at 14:44
When looking at either a ship or a photograph of a ship, both the Semantic Direct Realist (SDR) and Indirect Realist agree that perception is indirect...
January 12, 2026 at 14:08
Based on the Merriam Webster Dictionary, normative means conforming to norms, and norms means a principle that ought to be followed. I agree that huma...
January 12, 2026 at 10:10
It is possible to infer from a single sensory experience, such as “I see an orange screen”, what exists in a mind-external world, but the probability ...
January 11, 2026 at 16:43
Suppose you make the judgement that if you see an orange screen in your mind then there is an orange screen in the world. Your judgement is true if wh...
January 11, 2026 at 13:18
The indirect realist reads the book The Republic by Plato and says that our knowledge about Socrates is indirect. The direct realist reads the book an...
January 11, 2026 at 12:43
I may perhaps now understand your position. Rationalism vs Empiricism In the grand debate between Rationalism and Empiricism, I would tend to position...
January 11, 2026 at 11:35
I agree. The major premise is the judgement = the screen is orange in the world if I am seeing orange in my mind. The minor premise is the senses = I ...
January 10, 2026 at 17:44
Inferences I see a wet umbrella and infer that it is raining outside. In my senses I am seeing orange and infer that in the world the screen is orange...
January 10, 2026 at 16:49
To my understanding of perception: Stage one is the mental, introspective, singular, particular phenomenal experience in the senses when the eye is di...
January 10, 2026 at 11:37
Where is the meaning of a word fixed? Each individual has five senses. All information about anything external to the individual can only pass through...
January 09, 2026 at 17:50
As an Indirect Realist, it would be illogical to reject any representational aspect, and not sensible not to treat phenomenal experience as epistemica...
January 09, 2026 at 13:59
Yes, in this respect, your position and that of the Indirect Realist is the same, in that phenomenal experience is non-conceptual and therefore cannot...
January 08, 2026 at 15:44
I may have a phenomenal experience, which is a singular, specific and particular experience. Some call it a “qualia”, which may or may not be a useful...
January 08, 2026 at 09:56
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January 08, 2026 at 08:38
Pain is a feeling. As you say, when I feel pain, I don’t need to think about it for a while and judge that I feel pain. Are you saying that when you s...
January 07, 2026 at 16:58