You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Michael

Comments

Okay, so this is where the Common Kind Claim comes in. If we accept that (2) is false (that perception is not direct) then the phenomenal character of...
January 10, 2026 at 18:08
Perhaps, but then by "perceptual belief" I mean "a belief that the world is as it appears". What do you mean by the term? So to be very explicit, I'll...
January 10, 2026 at 17:39
Then we have two separate questions: 1. Is direct perception required for our perceptual beliefs about the world to be justified? 2. Is perception dir...
January 10, 2026 at 17:07
Then I really don't understand what you are trying to argue, or how it relates to the dispute between direct and indirect realism. Again, the direct r...
January 10, 2026 at 16:44
Phenomenal character isn't truth apt but the premise "I am experiencing such-and-such phenomenal character" is, and so this latter proposition can fun...
January 10, 2026 at 16:21
I didn't mean to suggest that the phenomenal character of experience is sufficient to infer mind-independent facts about the environment (although the...
January 10, 2026 at 15:19
"Seeing" and "talking about" do not mean the same thing. They are seeing the image on the screen and they are seeing the ship and they are talking abo...
January 10, 2026 at 14:39
And yet the example should show that the usage will change if the phenomenal character of experience changes, even though nothing about the strawberry...
January 09, 2026 at 17:28
I'm not claiming that we do. I'm only showing that our words can, and do, refer to these beetles. In a situation like the below, both may agree with t...
January 09, 2026 at 15:05
For the sake of argument, let's assume that direct realism is true. I directly hear the sound waves being produced by my telephone. Do I (directly) ex...
January 09, 2026 at 11:11
As I clarified in my comment, I meant to say that I take no stock in the private language objection to indirect realism. You claimed that if indirect ...
January 09, 2026 at 10:58
I slightly misworded my first sentence. I meant to say that I hold no stock in the argument that the PLA refutes indirect realism. But on the PLA, let...
January 08, 2026 at 21:21
I meant to say that I hold no stock in the argument that the PLA refutes indirect realism. You appear to be accepting that these people are talking ab...
January 08, 2026 at 21:16
I hold no stock in the private language objection. A society of people born with unremovable visors on their heads with sensors on the outside and a s...
January 08, 2026 at 21:02
You said this, as if it were objectionable: "Pretty ad hoc. Now we have both direct and indirect perception happening in the same individual for the s...
January 08, 2026 at 20:46
Yes? That's how indirect perception works. You directly perceive some X and because of that indirectly perceive some Y. Even the direct realist must a...
January 08, 2026 at 20:36
I didn't say only ever. I explicitly said here that "in the non-hallucinatory case there is both hearing voices-as-mental-phenomena and hearing voices...
January 08, 2026 at 20:10
But direct (naive) and indirect realism, as traditionally understood, are concerned with what sorts of things are phenomenally present to the mind (an...
January 08, 2026 at 18:35
The problem is that you are using your definition of "I see X" (such that it is true only if X is a real object in the environment) to (mis-)interpret...
January 08, 2026 at 10:10
I'll copy the argument from Epistemological Problems of Perception: 1. Nothing is ever directly present to the mind in perception except perceptual ap...
January 08, 2026 at 09:47
Then perhaps I haven't explained myself clearly, because indirect realism argues that because perception of the world is not direct (i.e. its features...
January 07, 2026 at 19:23
Yes, and hallucinated voices are mental phenomena. Ergo, the thing being heard is a mental phenomenon. The Common Kind Claim is that this sense of hea...
January 07, 2026 at 18:53
Arguing that schizophrenics don't hear voices, only hallucinate voices, is such a pointless argument that fails to address the actual philosophical su...
January 06, 2026 at 20:12
Well, I'd at least question the use of the phrase "is needed" in (2). If the wave function is real and quantum states really are in a superposition un...
January 06, 2026 at 18:14
These are not contradictory positions. It is both the case that (a) the phenomenal character of experience is not truth-apt and the case that (b) we u...
January 06, 2026 at 17:46
I agree; they are making inferences about something in their environment. But they are using the phenomenal character of their experience to make this...
January 06, 2026 at 16:22
So let's take the dress that some see to be white and gold and others black and blue. Let's simplify it for ease to a computer screen that some see to...
January 06, 2026 at 15:26
It's not clear what you're saying. Quantum mechanics is an attempt to describe the behaviour of all matter and energy in the universe. If consciousnes...
January 06, 2026 at 15:06
This is a largely irrelevant semantic point but I don't think representation requires intention. If John and Jim are identical twins (or lookalikes) t...
January 06, 2026 at 14:05
These are two different claims: 1. The phenomenal character of experience is determined by distal objects 2. The phenomenal character of experience is...
January 06, 2026 at 11:51
As does the indirect realist. The dispute between the direct and indirect realist isn't just a semantic dispute about whether or not it is proper to d...
January 05, 2026 at 20:57
The epistemological question concerns the mind-independent nature of the world. For example the chemical composition of an apple and it reflecting cer...
January 05, 2026 at 19:56
I would argue that the fundamental dispute between the direct and indirect realist concerns the relationship between sensory content and distal object...
January 05, 2026 at 18:53
I think the point being made is that the same wavelengths of light can cause different colour experiences in different individuals (e.g. because of di...
January 05, 2026 at 17:48
Okay, but it's still the case that almost all of that environment isn't in direct physical contact with my eyeball; only the light is. So clearly "dir...
January 05, 2026 at 17:05
But our eyes don’t (usually) touch apples “directly”, yet direct realists claim that we see apples directly. So although there is ambiguity in what th...
January 05, 2026 at 16:36
Then isn't a veridical experience the experience of imagery plus a true judgement? I believe Clarendon is just saying that the imagery (mental phenome...
January 05, 2026 at 15:03
Isn’t an hallucination, by definition, a (waking) mental image that does not “correspond to” and is not caused by some appropriate distal object? And ...
January 05, 2026 at 14:05
Indirect realism is still realism, so I don’t understand the relevance of those references. We don’t really know what mental phenomena — or as scienti...
January 05, 2026 at 12:35
I’m explaining what I believe most indirect realists believe. Mental phenomena exist and have qualities that are neither identical to nor similar to t...
January 05, 2026 at 01:39
Mental phenomena are either reducible to neurological phenomena or are emergent. They are what occur when we dream, and what don’t occur when we are u...
January 05, 2026 at 01:22
It's not. It's a red herring that distracts from the actual phenomenological and epistemological questions. Do mental phenomena exist, and if so are i...
January 04, 2026 at 22:44
I'm explaining the historical distinction between direct and indirect realism, and how each position addresses the epistemological problem of percepti...
January 04, 2026 at 22:34
That's not what naive taste realists (or naive colour realists with respect to colour) mean. The historical dispute between direct and indirect realis...
January 04, 2026 at 21:16
And now this:
January 04, 2026 at 14:57
I think so, which is why the Wikipedia article on direct and indirect realism says "indirect perceptual realism is broadly equivalent to the scientifi...
January 04, 2026 at 12:59
Yes, and so the relevant questions are; what and where is colour and what and where is taste? The indirect realist says that colour and taste are some...
January 04, 2026 at 12:40
This may help: /uploads/resized/files/jl/1acwvp460sge9igz.png /uploads/resized/files/wx/fm8h4f10xia1miby.png
January 04, 2026 at 12:29
Cover one half of the picture, and then imagine the other half of the ice cream being a mirror of what you can see. For the indirect realist the ice c...
January 04, 2026 at 12:22
I disagree. You seem to be defining perception of X as direct perception of X, and so this would entail that indirect perception of X isn't perception...
January 04, 2026 at 11:28