Timeline for How does the direct realist explain illusions like the Müller-Lyer illusion?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
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| Jun 5 at 11:48 | comment | added | Olivier5 | @Kevin Thank you for the link. I agree it is a poorly-argued paper. My opinion of Searle as a smart ass was seriously affected... Turns out he can be just as superficial as anybody else. This being said, personally I never could figure out what "property dualism" means exactly. I think I am a dualist in that I believe in human agency, in the power of human thoughts while also believing in the existence of inanimated matter. IOW, I believe there is such a thing as life, and also such a thing as death, and they are not the same. Apparently that makes of me a dualist... | |
| Jun 2 at 14:23 | vote | accept | edelex | ||
| Jun 4 at 18:37 | |||||
| Jun 2 at 4:47 | comment | added | Kevin | @Olivier5: This is more or less the same objection that people raise against Searle's Chinese Room argument. IMHO the more successful objection is (perhaps surprisingly) to directly accuse Searle of property dualism, which apparently upset Searle enough that he felt the need to write an entire essay rebutting it. Personally, I did not find this essay overly persuasive, but I would encourage reading it as it goes into this subject matter in some detail. | |
| May 31 at 14:15 | comment | added | J D | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| May 31 at 6:49 | comment | added | Olivier5 | If one willingly ignores biology as being "under the hood", one would be left with a naïve impression of immediate access to reality, just like a car driver who ignores mechanics could be left with the naïve impression that the car obeys his commands. | |
| May 31 at 6:25 | comment | added | Olivier5 | Seems to me that Searle is "underthinking himself into monism". He is shying away from the graringly obvious, due to an irrational fear of dualism. | |
| May 30 at 22:03 | comment | added | J D | But as for the other stuff being "intermediate", Searle simply lumps all of that into the Background, which is his all encompassing term for what goes on under the hood and to which we have no conscious access. For Searle, there are no mental representations, and that resolves issues regarding the problem of mind-body duality. | |
| May 30 at 22:02 | comment | added | J D | @Olivier5 Well, the problem is the subject of a lengthy attack on in the book, but includes the idea that if we are only capable of communing with phenomena and not noumena, then we are overstating our uncertainty and overthinking ourselves into dualism (if there are no representations, then nature of mental changes); he proposes biological naturalism atop of his direct realism. | |
| May 30 at 20:37 | comment | added | Olivier5 | Besides, what's the problem in assuming a mental representation as the final product of all this neural activity involved in seeing? One view syntetised by our brain based on 2 different images captured by 2 eyes, mind you, a fact which already implies a treatment of the input, a synthesis between 2 pictures. | |
| May 30 at 20:31 | comment | added | Olivier5 | Considering Searle's insistence, in the book you linked to, on states of affairs functioning causaly in producing perceptual experience, it seems that for Searle, a causal link must exist between the objective thing being observed and its observation (subjective perception by a human being). If memory serves, for vision this causal link includes photons, a dedicated, complex organ called an eye, which functions like a camera, chemical photo-receptors triggered by certain precise wavelengths, and millions of neurons processing the image in real time. Isn't all this "intermediate"? | |
| May 30 at 18:58 | comment | added | J D | These intermediaries stand for or represent to the mind the objects of that world. " - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… Directly is the adverb by which we discount indirect realism. Consider Kant's Das Ding an sich. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself | |
| May 30 at 18:58 | comment | added | J D | @Olivier5 Searle's direct realism objects to representational theories of mind. "The representational theory of mind attempts to explain the nature of ideas, concepts and other mental content in contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science and experimental psychology. In contrast to theories of naïve or direct realism, the representational theory of mind postulates the actual existence of mental representations which act as intermediaries between the observing subject and the objects, processes or other entities observed in the external world... | |
| May 30 at 16:34 | comment | added | Olivier5 | "In both cases, we observe Venus [or the coin] directly." What does the word "directly" mean here? What work does it do? We certainly observe a coin or a planet, but what does it mean to observe it "directly"? | |
| May 30 at 16:30 | history | edited | J D | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 30 at 16:24 | history | answered | J D | CC BY-SA 4.0 |