Steve, maybe this will help. In a message about 10 days ago that I am just getting to, you say,

"As far as I can tell, you acknowledge *everything* about representationalism, except for the one single statement that you know for a fact that your experience is *direct*, *not* an experience of a representation. Can you not see a contradiction here?"

And my response is, no, I cannot see a contradiction there because there is not a contradiction there. Nor even any tension. We mostly do not experience our representations, certainly it is not experience of our representations that gives us experience of the world by some sort of inference. That I take it is an observable matter of fact. Mostly people can tell you little or nothing about their reps, only about what the reps have made them conscious of. And my story is: our representations represent, and via our representations we experience, not the vehicles, the reps themselves, but their objects -- not the reps but what the reps are about.

Which of the following do you mean by the term "direct perception" (or "direct representationalism")

A: I recognize that every pixel's worth of experience that I have, comes to me courtesy of representations in my brain, and that I cannot know anything that is not explicitly encoded in my brain. Nevertheless, the knowledge I have from experience is knowledge *of* external objects.

B: There are representations in my brain, but my experience transcends those representations and has awareness of things out in the world beyond my brain which are not explicitly represented in my brain. There are things in my experience which are not explicitly represented in my brain.

Do you see a significant difference between these two statements? Would you agree at least that they cannot both be true at the same time?

Steve

I don't know why you consider this issue so important, esp. given that I have commented on it I think three times now, but I am against magic in science so am closer to A than to B, with the various caveats that I have mentioned earlier.

Andrew

It can't be a question of proximity, either you believe A or you believe B. They are completely different epistemological positions. Or you can tell me that you haven't decided. But you can hardly say you are certain of something if you have not chosen between two significantly distinct alternatives.

The fact that you dither before this choice is clear evidence that you have a fuzzy bistable image of experience, as something that is partly inside, and partly outside your head, and your answer varies depending on how the question is posed. I suspect that you are avoiding making the choice outright because you sense that it will get you into a logical trap, which in fact it will, whichever alternative you choose, even if you choose a fuzzy half-way alternative.

Because if you admit A, then you are an out-and-out INdirect representationalist, and your talk of direct perception is a description of the vivid subjective sensation of perception *as if* it were direct.

But if you choose B, you are in another logical trap, because now you have to explain how things can be experienced without being explicitly represented in your brain.

What? I do not believe exactly A as stated for the various reasons I've given, but I believe A modified and nothing like B. What could be wrong with that?

I choose A with appropriate modifications to bring it in line with contemporary vision science in the ways I have explained, and nothing remotely like B.

> The fact that you dither before this choice is clear evidence that
> you have a fuzzy bistable image of experience,

It is no evidence of any such thing, as you know perfectly well.

> as something that is partly inside, and partly outside your head,

That stupid attribution again! As I have said over and over, I do not believe that anything in the vehicle of experience is outside the head. Experience is *about* something outside the head, but no part of experience *is* outside the head. What is so hard to understand about that distinction?

This is turning into a weird experience. I have never seen someone with such ability so consistently and persistently fail to understand what I am trying to say. Most 2nd-year students get it fairly easily, let alone someone with your background and accomplishments.

> I believe A modified and nothing like B. What could be wrong
> with that? ...

Ok, then you are an out-and-out representationalist.

>> Because if you admit A, then you are an out-and-out INdirect
>> representationalist,
>
> Not in the slightest. A and direct representationalism are completely
> compatible.

Ok, then you will have to explain to me what is the difference between direct and indirect representationalism. Not just the vague words, that the representation is *of* something external, but specifically, how would it influence the design of a robot. Is there a difference between a direct and indirect representational robot? Or are they necessarily identical?

Back at the very beginning of our debate, in

http://listserv.uh.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0504&L=psyche-d&D=0&P=10745

you said:

"Our brain has the capacity to work its way down the causal chain to experience the kickoff point. How we can do this is a wonderful mystery but that we do it seems, to me at least, pretty much beyond question. When I open my eyes, I see the world around me."

And I hear it again recently:

"That I take it is an observable matter of fact."

Here is exactly our problem with coming to an understanding. You are taking as an initial axiomatic hypothesis that your experience is of the world itself, and you are so certain that this is an "observational matter of fact" that you cannot begin to think otherwise. Its that paradigm thing. Thats why our debates go round and round in endless circles.

But you have to understand that it is exactly that initial assumption that is being called into question, so you cannot argue by just saying again, and again, and AGAIN! that it is self-evidently true. Is there any evidence, besides the vivid impression that it simply must be so, to support direct perception? Is it really an "observable matter of fact"? Exactly what is it in the nature of experience that demonstrates conclusively that experience is direct?

Is it the fact that visual experience blinks out when we close our eyes? That proves that perception is direct?

Or is it that the world is warped into a fish-eye-lens perspective that seems to follow us around wherever we go? Does that prove that perception is direct?

http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/cartoonepist/cartoonepist7.html

Or the evidence of dreams and hallucinations, virtual worlds of experience that we know to be illusory. Does that prove perception is direct?

Or visual illusions; vivid spatial structures that we know for a fact are not there? Is that the "observable matter of fact" that perception is necessarily direct? http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/bubw3/illus.gif

Is it not at least *possible* that your experience *is* of the representation? Can you not entertain this as a hypothetical possibility? Or is it like belief in God, for those who have it, so foundational an assumption that you cannot consider the alternative? Because unless you entertain the alternative as a possibility that **might actually be true**, it is futile debating an issue that you take to be axiomatic. That just leads to a futile cycle of endless debate, because we are arguing from different foundational assumptions.

Steve

There is a bunch of things to say about this. I think the fact that we are consc of the world around us is self-evident and close to undeniable and I think that only someone emmeshed in a theory and interpreting said theory in questionable ways would have any inclination to deny it. I mean, ask yourself, which is more likely to be true, this platitude or something as complicated as a theory? That, however, is far from the end of the story. I also think that science starts from our commonplace experience and should deny said experience only when it has some reason to do so. No such reason has been given. Finally, being self-evident does not mean being beyond evidence and argument. I have advanced both for direct representationalism. Evidence: the kicking analogy, the examples. Argument: that no notion of directness more committing than the notion at work when I say that I am directly conscious of the words I am typing can even be defined, so you cannot say what is missing when you said that perception is indirect.

My starting point is neither an assumption nor unargued. And yours?

Andrew

> I think the fact that we are consc of the world around us is
> self-evident and close to undeniable and I think that only someone
> emmeshed in a theory and interpreting said theory in questionable
> ways would have any inclination to deny it.

That there is the problem! We will never get anywhere in our discussion if you begin from the outset with the assumption that the conclusion is already determined. Thats why we keep going round and round in circles!

But we have to get back to that assumption itself, and instead of taking it as a *given*, tell me *why* you choose to believe it. If you have never contemplated anything else but just *know* this to be true, then you will have little success repeating again, and again ... AND AGAIN! that it is obviously so. You have to tell us WHY it is obviously so, and ***in terms that do not include those initial assumptions***. Otherwise your reasoning becomes circular.

Why are you so certain that perception is direct? Is it from the observed nature of experience? But how would experience be any different if it were NOT experienced directly, but if we were indeed viewing a representation? ***What difference would it make to the appearence of experience?***

>> as something that is partly
>> inside, and partly outside your head,

> That stupid attribution again! As I have said over and over, I do
> not believe that anything in the vehicle of experience is outside
> the head. Experience is *about* something outside the head, but no
> part of experience *is* outside the head.

You say: "no part of experience is outside the head"

What about my experience of this computer screen? I'm talking about the part of the experience that appears as a solid volumetric structure right here before me, and that vanishes when I close my eyes. That appearing and disappearing spatial structure is my visual experience. And now *where* did you say that you locate that vivid spatially structured experience? No part of it is outside the head?

Steve

The computer is outside my head, my experience of it is inside my head. No part of my experience appears as a volumetric structure, inside me or out. The computer does. In fact, the only volumetric structure, in all likelihood, is the computer. The chances that representations *are* the kind of structure that they *represent* is vanishingly small, given the nature of the neural net that makes up the representation.

AB

Wow! Very revealing! We get to the core of the matter at last!

> No part of my experience appears as a volumetric structure, inside
> me or out. The computer does. In fact, the only volumetric
> structure, in all likelihood, is the computer.

Its like Glen Sizemore and Neil Rickert: at the very crux of the problem you pull a change of definitions. Experience is not spatially structured, only the world is!

There are many aspects of experience, and one aspect is a spatially structured one. Unless you profoundly redefine the meaning of experience, my experience undeniably takes the form of a spatial structure. It may also replicate the structure *of* something in the world, *if* I am not hallucinating. But the structure in my experience is plainly evident whether in hallucination or perception. Can you possibly deny that?

When you hallucinate a cube, there exists a vivid spatial structure in your experience. Where is THAT experience located? In your head or outside of it?

Steve

No change of definition. (In fact, I don't even know what you mean by this.) If one mixes up properties of the represented and properties of what is doing the representing, nothing but confusion can result. The sentence, 'Boxes can be square', is not square. A picture of the three dimensional building is not three dimensional. (And if there were a three-dimensional rep of the building, it would not in all likelihood have a three-dimensional structure anything like the structure that it represents.) And so on. I thought that that was one thing that was common currency among all researchers now. I'd bet my hat that there are no analogue structures isomorphic to structures in the world of any kind in the neural assemblies of the brain, let alone analogue spatial structures.

And of course there are definitely no parts of any experience that exist outside the brain, something that could be read from, or into, a previous message of yours. That would be mysterianism of the worst kind.

Andrew

> When you hallucinate a cube, there exists a vivid spatial structure
> in your experience. Where is THAT experience located? In your head
> or outside of it?

I should have added a comment on this statement. There exists a *representation* of a vivid spatial structure, for sure. However, no spatial structure is needed for that. Who knows what the structure of the neural net that represents the cube is like but it would be astonishing it turned out to have a little homunculus cube buried in it. (And we would then need another little cube to represent the first little cube, and ... . A vicious infinite regress is looming.)

AB

Yes! Now we are getting to the root of it! This is not endless cycling, we are now getting to the meat of our difference of viewpoint.

> Who knows what the structure of the neural net that represents the
> cube is like but it would be astonishing it turned out to have a
> little homunculus cube buried in it.

From my perspective it would be astonishing if it did NOT have a little analogical cube in there somewhere! Thats what this debate is really all about!

Here's the part of your understanding that I don't understand:

> There exists a *representation* of a vivid spatial structure, for
> sure. However, no spatial structure is needed for that.

What is the *ontology* of the hallucinated cube? What are the "pixels" of its experienced surface defined by? What physical substrate holds or registers their color and spatial location? And do you not experience a volumetric spatial continuum, every point of which is experienced simultaneously and in parallel, in the form of continuous volumes and surfaces in a perceived void. Whatever the physical reality behind that experience, is that not a description of the *information content* of your experience of a hallucinated cube?

Steve