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They don't claim that inference from sense data is automatic and infallible, so there is no firm foundational for representationalists.

How does Objectivism grapple with the problem of hallucinations, or of illusions? The possibility of either throws the infallibility of my perceptions into doubt. The possibility of my senses deceiving me is one of the really strong motivations for indirect realism.

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Your senses don't decieve you. Your senses infallibly represent some aspect of reality, given the nature of their functioning. It is your conceptual faculty that mis-identifies the data your senses give you.

Illusions are misidentifications, not misperceptions. Hallucinations are affects resulting in what senses report, due to a particular aspect of their internal functioning. If you get wacked on the head and "see stars" it is because the whack affects the internal mechanism of your senses.

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How does Objectivism grapple with the problem of hallucinations, or of illusions? The possibility of either throws the infallibility of my perceptions into doubt. The possibility of my senses deceiving me is one of the really strong motivations for indirect realism.
Before getting to hallucinations and illusions, we can dispense with indirect realism forever. To begin with, your senses cannot deceive you, since they aren't volitional beings. Indeed it is representationalism and its bizarre homunculus view of knowledge that makes the idea of your senses "deceiving" you sound plausible. Representationalism doesn't solve anything, it just interposes an intermediate layer between the outside world and your consciousness. The outside world is transduced to the projection screen in the brain by some physical system, just as with direct realism, so of you are color blind, what gets into the head is the same under both theories. Are you suggesting that representationalism somehow overcomes physical limitations? If not, i.e. if representationalism says "But we don't care about those limits", well, that is roughly the Objectivist response.

Before we procede to discuss the Objectivist account of knowledge, we need to put this silliness of indirect realism to rest. So why don't you go ahead and make whatever case you want to for the superiority of indirect realism over direct realism, and after that, we can move on to discussion of Objectivism.

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David,

Before we procede to discuss the Objectivist account of knowledge, we need to put this silliness of indirect realism to rest. So why don't you go ahead and make whatever case you want to for the superiority of indirect realism over direct realism, and after that, we can move on to discussion of Objectivism.

I have no interest in nor intention of doing so, especially since Rand herself sure sounds a lot like an indirect realist to me.

"A 'perception' is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of things." Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, Page 19.

"When we speak of 'direct perception' or 'direct awareness,' we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensation, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later; it is a scientific, conceptual discovery." Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivism Epistemology, Page 5 (I found this little fragment online, so I'm not sure of the context)

Rand seems to be saying that we are directly aware of percepts, and that these percepts are mental constructs formed by integration of sensations - which I assume are what the rest of the philosophical community means by sensa or sense data. That doesn't jive at all with what direct realism entails:

"Viewed as an alternative to representative realism in particular, direct realism involves two main theses. The first is a denial of the view referred to here as perceptual subjectivism: according to direct realism, in veridical cases we directly experience external material objects, without the mediation of either sense-data or adverbial contents. And the second direct realist thesis is then that the justification or reasons for beliefs about material objects that result from sense experience do not depend on the sort of inference from the subjective content of such experience that the representative realist appeals to, but can instead be accounted for in a simpler and less problematic way, one that depends in some way on the the truth of the first thesis. While the standard name for the view obviously derived from the first of these theses, it is the second thesis, which often receives relatively little attention in defenses of direct realism, that is ultimately the more important from an epistemological standpoint — for without it direct realism fails to constitute a genuine alternative to representative realism." SEP "Epistemological Problems of Perception"

Since Rand says that the direct objects of awareness are mental constructs, Rand's view appears to cash out as just a strong form of indirect realism that rejects any skepticism about the causal links between sensa and reality as it is.

I'm not interested in debating the problem of perception with you, I'm trying to find out what Rand's answer to the problem of hallucination is. I'm sure she answers the question herself in ITOE (which I know I need to read), but I'm out of town at a seminar and the only copy at the library here is checked out. Rand's answer to the problem of hallucination is going to help me determine if my catagorization of her as an indirect realist is right.

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I don't see how it is possible to discuss the matter with you rationally, since you seem to be hell-bent on "understanding" Objectivism by incorrectly analogizing Rand's philosophy to some other philosophy, based on a superficial similarity. Perhaps someone else has the patience to deal with you. I'll simply suggest that you read ITOE and make an attempt to understand it.

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Colin,

a. To refuse to make the argument David asked of you, because Rand "sounds a lot like" an indirect realist, and then to ask what is the position of Objectiivsm, really sort of shoots your credibility in the foot, doesn't it?

b. your quote is wholly unsatisfying. First, if you could please show what "without the mediation of either sense-data or adverbial contents" means, and how Rand specifically enters into that realm, that would be helpful. To put the two quotes side by side and sort of imply that they are similar is well, sloppy. Second, you skipped the 2nd thesis which is really more important, and where Rand could easily be said to fall on the side of the direct realist. Namely, that "reasons for beliefs about material objects that result from sense experience ... can ...be accounted for in a simpler and less problematic way, one that depends in some way on the the truth of the first thesis." Rand clearly falls on this side.

c. to answer your question as I understand it, a percept is not an entity that has been filtered in any way. It is completely subdividable back into it's component sensations. It is simply a mechanism the mind uses to group sensations and work with them. If I look at the stapler on my desk, I see dark black plastic, shiny bits of reflection that are white, rough black plastic, shiny metal, etc. But I perceive it, as a stapler, a percept. If you couldn't resovle that back into its component sensations, maybe you could make a case for indirect realism, but it is too direclty tied to the sensations themselves.

Edited by KendallJ
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David,

I don't see how it is possible to discuss the matter with you rationally, since you seem to be hell-bent on "understanding" Objectivism by incorrectly analogizing Rand's philosophy to some other philosophy, based on a superficial similarity.

I'm trying to approach Ayn Rand from the perspective of contemporary epistemology and see if she actually brings anything new to the table. She's saying that the direct object of perception is a mental object that is causally linked to physical objects. That's practically a definition of indirect realism. I'm not analogizing her, I'm catagorizing her, putting her in the framework of contemporary thought on the topic.

Kendall,

a. To refuse to make the argument David asked of you, because Rand "sounds a lot like" an indirect realist, and then to ask what is the position of Objectiivsm, really sort of shoots your credibility in the foot, doesn't it?

I think I know broadly the position of Objectivism on perception; I don't know if Ayn Rand ever articulated an answer to a particular problem in epistemology. I'm curious as to what precisely puts my credibility in question.

b. your quote is wholly unsatisfying. First, if you could please show what "without the mediation of either sense-data or adverbial contents" means, and how Rand specifically enters into that realm, that would be helpful. To put the two quotes side by side and sort of imply that they are similar is well, sloppy. Second, you skipped the 2nd thesis which is really more important, and where Rand could easily be said to fall on the side of the direct realist. Namely, that "reasons for beliefs about material objects that result from sense experience ... can ...be accounted for in a simpler and less problematic way, one that depends in some way on the the truth of the first thesis." Rand clearly falls on this side.

I'm not prepared to articulate a defense of some specific account of what sense data are. I'm simply going to say that you probably have an intuitive grasp of it anyways, and if you're interested, the literature on the subject is extensive. Adverbial contents is a reference to the adverbial theory of perception, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#3.2 . Rand enters the realm of saying our experience is mediated by sense data the second that she says "When we speak of 'direct perception' or 'direct awareness,' we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensation, are the given, the self-evident." What we are directly aware of is something mediated by some concept forming/integrative faculty and by sensation. A true direct realist will say that the direct objects of awareness are physical objects themselves.

And I didn't bother with the second thesis because it's dependent on the first, which Rand rejects.

c. to answer your question as I understand it, a percept is not an entity that has been filtered in any way. It is completely subdividable back into it's component sensations. It is simply a mechanism the mind uses to group sensations and work with them. If I look at the stapler on my desk, I see dark black plastic, shiny bits of reflection that are white, rough black plastic, shiny metal, etc. But I perceive it, as a stapler, a percept. If you couldn't resovle that back into its component sensations, maybe you could make a case for indirect realism, but it is too direclty tied to the sensations themselves.

So do percepts lack any conceptual or cognitive aspects? Or does the particular arrangement of sensations that constitutes a perception have relational features?

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Pierre Le Morvan, an associate professor at the College of New Jersey, is a direct realist. He offers an articulation and defense of his view at http://www.tcnj.edu/~lemorvan/APR_Proof.pdf

I'd have to re-read this paper in detail to be certain of his position, but I think he has some philosophic flaws in his reasoning. That is, I don't think he completely answers the skeptics who claim that we don't perceive existence, but rather perceive something that is tied to existence. And I think he would say that Objectivism has a naive realism position. However, I am not fully familiar with what "direct realism", "indirect realism", and "naive realism" refer to in reality to say that the Objectivist position is any of these.

In Objectivism, perception is infallible, and what we perceive are entities. We don't perceive something that is somehow tied back to the physical object via conception, but rather perceive the object directly with our senses. We don't watch a little mental movie screen that then has to be interpreted to understand what the entity is -- we perceive the entities, directly, via a completely deterministic causal mechanism.

When Miss Rand speaks of an automatic integration, she is speaking about the functioning of our bio-mechanical mechanism (sensations that are automatically integrated into percepts) not something that is done with our volitional consciousness. In other words, one has no choice as to the object that is perceived and the perceptual form that it takes via our senses; we can't, for example, volitionally change the color of something as perceived by us; unlike, say, a computer program that can change the colors on a monitor screen via an algorithm. We don't have volitional control over that. And because we don't have control over that, it is epistemologically infallible.

The same can be said for the various perceptual forms (what is sometimes referred to as the output of sense modalities in some philosophies). When we perceive a coke can, for instance, we perceive it as cylindrical, red, silvery, cold, wet, heavy, etc. That is what the coke can is. It is one entity with all of these attributes. Since we do not volitionally keep all these aspects together with our consciousness -- i.e. we cannot choose to perceive the coke can as spherical, blue, stoney, dry, light weight, etc. -- then our perception is infallible. What we perceive is what the entity is.

Confusion over perception arises due to some philosophers using stolen concepts. That is, they take a higher level abstraction, such as "cylindrical" and claim that we impose this cylindricalness onto the perception of the coke can via conception. This is the Kantian premise; that our mind imposes cylindricalness onto the datum of the coke can perception. However, it doesn't work that way. The concept of "cylindrical" is an abstraction from the perception of cylindrical things, not the other way around. In other words, our concepts are derived from percepts; our percepts are not derived from concepts.

Edited by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.
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She's saying that the direct object of perception is a mental object that is causally linked to physical objects.
The quotes you gave (and everything I have ever read of Rand's) do not support your conclusion. Sensations are not "mental objects" -- what leads you to think that Rand considers sensations to be mental objects? Rand does not say that the direct objects of awareness are mental constructs. She contradicts your presumption, saying (ITOE p. 5, the third paragraph of the book) "Sensations, as such, are not retained in man's memory". At the most elementary, Objectivism-independent level, you simply don't understand that "sense data" and "sensations" are different. They differ crucially on the point that sensations are not "mental objects". The brain acts on the electro-chemical impulses -- sensations -- from the optic nerve so that the mind is directly presented with a percept (or a cat or a white field), and never creates "sense data", the characteristic intermediate object of representationalism.

I suggest that if you plan to attack Objectivism, you should at least learn what Objectivism is. Did you reject Objectivist metaethics after an equally cursory understanding of it?

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Kendall,

I think I know broadly the position of Objectivism on perception; I don't know if Ayn Rand ever articulated an answer to a particular problem in epistemology. I'm curious as to what precisely puts my credibility in question.

Well, qualifying your knowledge of Objectivism on perception as "knowing broadly", then claiming that Rand meant this or that on a particular topic. And then using that as a basis for not actually having to back up an argument.

And I didn't bother with the second thesis because it's dependent on the first, which Rand rejects.

Actually, you used the phrases "seems to", and "appears to" with regard to Rand's position, so unless you're now sure of her position then your analysis would warrant treatment of the 2nd. Also, your hypothesis on the first is only by implication through Rand's treatement of percepts. She is actually quite explicit I believe about the senses as valid, and the primacy of existence. Since your own quote recognizes the 2nd hypothesis as the more crucial, you've sort of based your whole claim on a somewhat odd little house of cards. You have to be very right on what exactly Rand meant in order to hold that argument together, and since you know the material only broadly, you run the risk of getting it very wrong, which David and I have already pointed out that you did.

So do percepts lack any conceptual or cognitive aspects?

I believe that is the claim. Lack conceptual aspects for sure. I'm not sure what you mean by cognitive aspects.

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David,

The quotes you gave (and everything I have ever read of Rand's) do not support your conclusion. Sensations are not "mental objects" -- what leads you to think that Rand considers sensations to be mental objects? Rand does not say that the direct objects of awareness are mental constructs. She contradicts your presumption, saying (ITOE p. 5, the third paragraph of the book) "Sensations, as such, are not retained in man's memory".

Whether they're retained or not is irrelevant. I'm not aware of any neccessary connection between persistance and existance. Regardless, my use of the term mental objects was too strong. At the very least, her use of the nouns percept and sensation entails that there is some object that those terms refer to. And unless my percept of a cat is identical to some physical cat, Rand is not a direct realist. Perhaps you're right, and I am just misunderstanding her use of the terms sensation and percept. Show me where I go astray then: are you saying that for Rand percepts and sensations are not entities? And if so, how exactly do her semantics of perception cash out?

At the most elementary, Objectivism-independent level, you simply don't understand that "sense data" and "sensations" are different. They differ crucially on the point that sensations are not "mental objects". The brain acts on the electro-chemical impulses -- sensations -- from the optic nerve so that the mind is directly presented with a percept (or a cat or a white field), and never creates "sense data", the characteristic intermediate object of representationalism.

The mind is directly presented with a percept - not the cat or white field itself. That in and of itself is enough to make Rand an indirect realist. Any kind of tertium quid is enough, whether or not it bears a direct causal connection, an unquestionably infallible connection, even, to a physical referent. Whatever the nature of Rand's account of sensation, she's presenting it as some kind of intermediary between other entities in our mind. Unless Rand is saying that the electrochemical response our bodies have to other physical entities are, in fact, what percepts reduce to - in which case you place her in the odd position of saying that she's a direct realist about facts of our biochemistry but an indirect realist about things external to our nervous system, since those things are simply not what the mind is presented with. Unless Rand is saying that cats and white fields are the direct objects of perception, or even maybe that relational features existing between us and cats are the objects of perception, she's simply not a direct realist in the sense that the philosophical community uses the term.

I suggest that if you plan to attack Objectivism, you should at least learn what Objectivism is. Did you reject Objectivist metaethics after an equally cursory understanding of it?

Since I haven't actually presented an attack on the Objectivist view of perception, this is something of a non sequitur. I'm making an exegetical point a point about what Rand is saying, not whether she's right or wrong. Saying that Rand is really an indirect realist about perception or an immanent realist about universals, even if she didn't know it, isn't the same thing as saying that Rand's view of perception is wrong.

And in short, I rejected her metaethics because her attempt to ground out value in goal directed action doesn't have anything resembling a necessary or sufficient account of what goal directed action consists in. It's extraordinarily difficult, in fact, to provide an account of goal direction that wont be overinclusive or underinclusive with respect to Rand's attempt to generalize a notion of value out of it. Peikoff's attempt in OPAR to limit the scope of what entities can be considered to take goal directed action by appeal to the idea of alternatives conflicts with Rand's view of causation. That's the root of my disagreement. I'm going to elaborate on it later this month

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Kendall,

Well, qualifying your knowledge of Objectivism on perception as "knowing broadly", then claiming that Rand meant this or that on a particular topic.

A claim for which I provided textual evidence I found in an excerpt from ITOE. Having particular knowledge of what is entailed by some written statement by a person has no connection to knowing what that person's beliefs on a different question are.

And then using that as a basis for not actually having to back up an argument.

Back up an argument? What argument? I said the problem of hallucinations is a motivator for indirect realism. That's an empirical statement about members of the philosophical community and what draws them to a position. I have not, and will not on this forum, put forward any arguments in favor of indirect realism. I'm simply uninterested in engaging in that debate here.

Actually, you used the phrases "seems to", and "appears to" with regard to Rand's position, so unless you're now sure of her position then your analysis would warrant treatment of the 2nd.

I'll provide analysis of the second contigent upon the presentation of a defeater to my conclusions on the first.

Also, your hypothesis on the first is only by implication through Rand's treatement of percepts.

I don't deny this, and I didn't claim that Rand explicitly denies the first thesis.

She is actually quite explicit I believe about the senses as valid, and the primacy of existence.

A position which is not incompatible with indirect realism. One can think that conclusions reached on the basis of the senses are infallible while thinking that the direct object of perception is something other than the external referent of the percept.

Since your own quote recognizes the 2nd hypothesis as the more crucial, you've sort of based your whole claim on a somewhat odd little house of cards. You have to be very right on what exactly Rand meant in order to hold that argument together, and since you know the material only broadly, you run the risk of getting it very wrong, which David and I have already pointed out that you did.

I'll run the risk, and recant my position on the exegesis of Rand's answer to the problem of perception if it's demonstrated to me that it's incorrect. I'm more interested in finding out if my catagorization of Rand as an indirect realist is inaccurate than I am in crafting a characterization that you'll find difficult to refute or mischaracterizing my level of knowledge for sophistic reasons.

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Your senses don't decieve you. Your senses infallibly represent some aspect of reality, given the nature of their functioning. It is your conceptual faculty that mis-identifies the data your senses give you.

Illusions are misidentifications, not misperceptions. Hallucinations are affects resulting in what senses report, due to a particular aspect of their internal functioning. If you get wacked on the head and "see stars" it is because the whack affects the internal mechanism of your senses.

OK, Colin, I can see you're going to stick with your methodology until someone answers you.

I'm curious if this explanation was not worth discussing?

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How does Objectivism grapple with the problem of hallucinations, or of illusions? The possibility of either throws the infallibility of my perceptions into doubt. The possibility of my senses deceiving me is one of the really strong motivations for indirect realism.
Until you can learn to use your ability to focus, specifically to avoid the shotgun approach that you currently employ, I don't think I know how to educate you on this matter. Stop talking about indirect realism. Be open to the Objectivist epistemology, and don't try to grasp Objectivism in terms of its relationship to representationalism. Either you accept the Objectivist epistemology, or you reject it. If you reject it, you can then pursue representationalism, some kind of Huemerian epistemological foundationalism, or skepticism, or whatever floats your boat. Just decide whether you want to pursue an interest in Objectivist philosophy, and if do, then we can explain the nature of your errors. One example of such an error is the miscreant notion "problem of illusions". There is no problem.

The only possible response that you can have that will not result in major condemnation of you as an intellectual evader is a set of relevant direct quotes from the writing of Ayn Rand which supports your claim that Objectivist epistemology is a version of representationalism. I've given you direct quotes from ITOE which show that you are in error. The proper responses are either (1) acknowledgement of your exegetical error or (2) ante-raising, by producing relevant material from the actual philosophy of Ayn Rand which does point in the direction of Objectivism as a species of representationalism. These are the only two intellectually honest options open to you. Intellectually dishonest honest arguments can be directed here.

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David,

Until you can learn to use your ability to focus, specifically to avoid the shotgun approach that you currently employ, I don't think I know how to educate you on this matter. Stop talking about indirect realism. Be open to the Objectivist epistemology, and don't try to grasp Objectivism in terms of its relationship to representationalism. Either you accept the Objectivist epistemology, or you reject it. If you reject it, you can then pursue representationalism, some kind of Huemerian epistemological foundationalism, or skepticism, or whatever floats your boat. Just decide whether you want to pursue an interest in Objectivist philosophy, and if do, then we can explain the nature of your errors. One example of such an error is the miscreant notion "problem of illusions". There is no problem.

The only possible response that you can have that will not result in major condemnation of you as an intellectual evader is a set of relevant direct quotes from the writing of Ayn Rand which supports your claim that Objectivist epistemology is a version of representationalism. I've given you direct quotes from ITOE which show that you are in error. The proper responses are either (1) acknowledgement of your exegetical error or (2) ante-raising, by producing relevant material from the actual philosophy of Ayn Rand which does point in the direction of Objectivism as a species of representationalism. These are the only two intellectually honest options open to you. Intellectually dishonest honest arguments can be directed here.

There's a third response: denial of one of your premises. The quote (singular) that you provided from ITOE says that sensations are not retained in the memory. As I've already said. that doesn't contradict the reading of Rand that I've offered, and in fact has nothing to do with what the direct object of perception is. Allow me to recapitulate my analysis:

Rand's claim that percepts, an arrangement of sensations that is the product of some integrative faculty, are the direct objects of awareness, is incompatible with direct realism, which holds that physical objects are the direct objects of awareness. The thesis that when I perceive a cat, I am aware of a set of sensations whose existence is causally linked to some cat in my field of vision and which are automatically integrated and presented to my mind is inconsistant with the thesis that when I perceive a cat, I'm directly aware of a cat. The latter thesis is direct realism. Since Ayn Rand's view contradicts it, but she is still a realist about the existence of said cat, she must be an indirect realist.

And I can't very well stop talking about indirect realism and answer your challenge at the same time.

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Rand's claim that percepts, an arrangement of sensations that is the product of some integrative faculty, are the direct objects of awareness, is incompatible with direct realism, which holds that physical objects are the direct objects of awareness. The thesis that when I perceive a cat, I am aware of a set of sensations whose existence is causally linked to some cat in my field of vision and which are automatically integrated and presented to my mind is inconsistant with the thesis that when I perceive a cat, I'm directly aware of a cat. The latter thesis is direct realism.

Just to offer a point of clarification: Objectivist epistemology does not hold that percepts "are the direct objects of awareness". The "direct object" of awareness is existence. Percepts are the base-level form of that awareness. Or to put it another way: Perception is the means, but what we perceive is existence.

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Objectivist epistemology does not hold that percepts "are the direct objects of awareness". The "direct object" of awareness is existence.
Yeah, that's right. I remotely remember struggling with this point and thinking that somehow we had to be first "aware of sensations" and then consciously construct percepts as secondary objects from.... well, what? No modern direct realist has even claimed that the mind directly grasps objects without the mediation of a sense organ such as eyes (the millenia-dead guys may have had bizarre ideas but they are not my problem). We perceive reality, and out means is the sense organs.

The simple fact is that there is no reason to posit such nonsense as an intermediate mystical thing like "sense data" or "brain spots". Rand, of course, never posited any such silliness, so it is ludicrous to say that she did. Rand aside, I can't imagine any modern philsopher proposing representationalism except of course as a reductio ad absurdum or a practical joke.

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At the very least, her use of the nouns percept and sensation entails that there is some object that those terms refer to. And unless my percept of a cat is identical to some physical cat, Rand is not a direct realist. <snip> The mind is directly presented with a percept - not the cat or white field itself. That in and of itself is enough to make Rand an indirect realist. Any kind of tertium quid is enough, whether or not it bears a direct causal connection, an unquestionably infallible connection, even, to a physical referent. Whatever the nature of Rand's account of sensation, she's presenting it as some kind of intermediary between other entities in our mind.

I think you grossly misunderstand the Objectivist position. We perceive existence (i.e entities and their attributes) directly, with no ideational content acting as a mediary between existence and our consciousness. There is also no projection content or interpretive content between our mind and existence.

[From ITOE]A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of "direct perception" or "direct awareness," we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery.
[emphasis added]

In other words, we perceive existence in a certain way because we have a certain perceptual awareness mechanism that we cannot get beneath. A "percept" is the Objectivist scientific way of saying when we see something we see it as colored, shaped, sized, weighted etc. as the form of perception. However, these perceptual forms do not stand in between the existent (that which exists independent of our consciousness) and our mind's grasp of that existent via perception. We see color because we have eyes, and we do not perceive color as somehow separated from shape or size because this is automatically integrated by our sensory apparatus.

In other words, going back to my coke can example, the perception of the coke can is a direct awareness of one entity, the coke can, even though we perceive it in various perceptual forms (color, shape, heavy, etc.). We can even thump it with our finger and get a sound out of the coke can. These various forms of awareness (sight, hearing, taste, tactile, smell) are automatically integrated into the awareness of the entity directly via the nature of our perceptual mechanism. We are not aware of something (your misunderstanding of what Miss Rand means by the term "percept") that we then have to interpret in order to grasp the entity mentally.

This type of misunderstanding resulting from starting from the premises of non-Objectivist thinkers is exactly what I meant when I said there is no translation of Objectivism into other philosophic systems. The direct realist you asked us to look into denies that things are actually colored. Of course they are colored, but one must have eyes of a certain type in order to perceive those colors. In other words, the coke can is red; the ripe apple is red; the red jelly bean is red; the red pen in front of me is red. And I think that if one is going to deny that things are colored, then that person is not as direct a realist as he believes that he is; because in a fully functioning visual perception, it is obvious that things are colored.

Edited by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.
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This type of misunderstanding resulting from starting from the premises of non-Objectivist thinkers is exactly what I meant when I said there is no translation of Objectivism into other philosophic systems. The direct realist you asked us to look into denies that things are actually colored. Of course they are colored, but one must have eyes of a certain type in order to perceive those colors. In other words, the coke can is red; the ripe apple is red; the red jelly bean is red; the red pen in front of me is red. And I think that if one is going to deny that things are colored, then that person is not as direct a realist as he believes that he is; because in a fully functioning visual perception, it is obvious that things are colored.

The ambient light must also be of a certain type. If you looked at things in a room lit by pure blue light you would literally see only black and blue. The color perception requires three things: the rods/cones (properly functioning); the ambient light (if it is white it has all the visible frequencies) and the object itself. The chemical makeup of the surface of an object determines what frequencies are absorbed and what are reflected.

Bob Kolker

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Kendall,

OK, Colin, I can see you're going to stick with your methodology until someone answers you.

I'm curious if this explanation was not worth discussing?

Sorry, I lost sight of it by getting bogged down in the exegetical debate with David. Anyways, thank you for the explanation. Can you explain what you mean by a misidentification, though? At what point in the sense organ-integrative faculty-mind chain does Rand think that takes place?

Edited by cmdownes
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David,

Rand aside, I can't imagine any modern philsopher proposing representationalism except of course as a reductio ad absurdum or a practical joke.

Mark Crooks, Herbert Feigl, Steven Lehar and Bertrand Russell all adopt(ed) forms of indirect realism. Descartes and Locke too, depending on one's sense of "modern". It's hardly an absurd position on its face, whatever one thinks of its untenability.

Edited by cmdownes
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The ambient light must also be of a certain type. If you looked at things in a room lit by pure blue light you would literally see only black and blue. The color perception requires three things: the rods/cones (properly functioning); the ambient light (if it is white it has all the visible frequencies) and the object itself. The chemical makeup of the surface of an object determines what frequencies are absorbed and what are reflected.

No one here is denying that our perception of something is dependent upon our sensory apparatus, the metaphysical circumstance, and the nature of the entity. The fact that things do change color under different lighting conditions proves that we perceive the entity and not some mental construct; for if we perceived a mental construct, then there would be no reason for the apple to look non-red in light that has no red light in it, or even in a dark room or at night when there is little or no ambient light.

However, if one is going to deny color as being awareness of the entity that is external to the mind, then one can also deny the sweet taste of a ripe apple, the smooth texture of its skin, and the aroma of a fresh baked apple pie. And if one is going to deny all of that, then one is basically left in a position such that one would have to claim that we do not perceive the entity. So, if a "direct realist" is going to deny color, then he would also have to deny those other qualities as telling us anything about the entity. And if he is going to do that, then he is falling for the Kantian premise that our minds are cut off from existence even in perception.

The direct perception of something does not require any scientific knowledge of any type in order to perceive the entity and it's perceptual qualities -- i.e. we don't have to know that the apple skin has a chemical nature such that it absorbs most frequencies of light and reflects the red light in order to perceive it as red. In fact, as I've mentioned before, it is the perception of the apple (i.e. direct awareness of the entity) that gives us the starting point in which to develop the science of chemistry. Even without all of that advanced science of light, chemistry, photon absorption, and neuro-biology of the senses, we still perceive the apple for what it is: A red tasty fruit that can be used to make succulent pies.

What one of the posters was getting at about misidentifications is that while perception is infallible, our volitional mental grasp of what it is can be mistaken. For example, let's say one is driving down the highway and one hears a voice over the radio that says: "Tom, we were in Arlington...have fun driving all the way back to Dallas." There is no denying that the voice was heard. But it is possible for one to volitionally misidentify that voice as belonging to Hannible Hector as apposed to who it really belonged to, because maybe the voices sound similar; so that we judge it to be one voice when in fact it was another. However, this is not a mistaken perception, but rather a mistaken recall of memory of a person's voice that one may not have heard in a long time.

Similarly, one may be at an airport and swear that one saw someone who one recognizes, but given the fact that you didn't tell anyone that you were going to be at the airport at that time, he may be hesitant to talk to that person, because how did they know you were going to be there? There is such a thing as a happenstance meeting of someone from the past, say if one is in a big city or at an airport at a busy holiday traveling day; but is it happenstance or was one being set up? This is a conscious judgement call. The perception of the person was unmistakable and infallible; the identification of who it is can be mistaken, as well as the context (happenstance or set up). That is, one might mistakenly identify the person as Marilyn Monroe or that one is on Candid Camera (or being scrutinized by on-lookers as to how one will react upon seeing Marilyn Monroe at an airport). If it really was Marilyn Monroe, then one might want to stop by and say hello, and maybe kiss her passionately; but not if it is a set up for Candid Camera, because some things are meant to be private and not spied upon by others.

But a mistaken identification does not deny the actual observation of an entity, one of it's attributes, or something about the entity that is grasped by direct perceptual awareness. The mistake in these cases come from an analysis of the perceptually given, and not in the perception itself.

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Kendall,

Sorry, I lost sight of it by getting bogged down in the exegetical debate with David. Anyways, thank you for the explanation. Can you explain what you mean by a misidentification, though? At what point in the sense organ-integrative faculty-mind chain does Rand think that takes place?

Conceptual mis-identification. Binswanger had a good discussion on this at his OCON presentation on Perception last year. If you stick a pencil in to water, the resulting image looks like a bent pencil (due to the differences in the refraction of light). To really say that the pencil is bent is a conceptual mis-identification of reality. It is a different percept, but misidentified.

Anyway, that was discssing illusions. I thought you were interested in hallucinations.

David's point brings up an interesting questions. Assuming that no direct realist actually denies sense organs (as if our eyes are simply non-causal tunnels directly into our brains), what exactly does direct realism say about them?

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