Is truth objective.......

[Zarathustra]

You don't have to perceive the ball "directly" to become aware of its reality, its factual existence.

No one really doubts that we perceive reality--as opposed to perceiving mere impressions or mental maps. We only pretend that we doubt it. How do I know? Because try as hard as you can to doubt the reality of the car you see going down the street, you still won't be able to step out in front of it (assuming you aren't suicidal). You *know* what you are seeing is more than a mental map, it's the fact of the car's existence. Doubting is just a game we play.

[Fist and Faith]

Sensing overkill now. Possibly to murmurs of "finally!".

Have you never seen my posts with rus? I could do this forever!

That was, for me, your best explanation. Good specific reasoning. I'll try to be so in my counter. Heh.

Obviously, you can't shine light on a brain and have it perceive. At all, much less more directly. The brain isn't a sensory organ, and eyes don't process/recognize patterns/consider.

Even if the brain had eyes in it, or whatever integrated visual system we can come up with, we would differentiate between the parts that sense and the parts that perceive. Because one group of molecules can't both sense and think. So we'd be right back in the same boat. What we have is what direct perception is. It's a unit. A joining of sensing and understanding.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

I believe the ball is real, and I believe we perceive it directly.

I believe the ball as real, but I don't understand how anyone can claim that we perceive it directly.

Because otherwise, one runs into the problem of Infinite Regress. One has to posit (like you seem to be basically doing) of a little, autonomous, real "we" (a tiny man, so to speak, trapped inside our heads/bodies) who sits at the control panel of an intermediary "meat machine" and interprets the data. And on and on.

[wayfriend]

What we have is what direct perception is. It's a unit. A joining of sensing and understanding.

But I don't disagree that the brain perceives. I am just saying that what it perceives is neural signals, not light, or sound.

Brain function necessitates something translates physical stimulii into neural signals. Neural signals are what the brain can operate on. However, the necessary corollary is that the brain operates on neural signals and not physical stimulii.

This is all backed up by science.

Look at it the other way: if we directly experience reality, then we directly experience truth. We may not understand it, but we would know only true things. This is, as I said, the purview of gods. We could not experience illusions, or virtual reality. We couldn't listen to a CD and think it sounds like music being played by a real band.

One has to posit (like you seem to be basically doing) of a little, autonomous, real "we" (a tiny man, so to speak, trapped inside our heads/bodies) who sits at the control panel of an intermediary "meat machine" and interprets the data.

That's basically a description of the ego. And I wouldn't repute it. Except the part about it goes on infinitely.

The Illusion of the Self

[Zarathustra]

Since WF is not going to do it, could someone else please explain how we ever know any objective/external truth at all, if all we ever deal with are neural signals and mental maps? Or maybe someone else could ask him, so he can keep pretending that I don't exist? Thank you.

From WF's own link:

Now that line of reasoning could be applied to all perception except that not all perception is an illusion. There are real shapes out there in the world and other physical regularities that generate reliable states in the minds of others.

I would agree with Harris that the idea of a self as most people think of it is an illusion, but that doesn't mean that we don't have a self. After all, who or what is experiencing that illusion? Who or what is being fooled into thinking that their self is more coherent and autonomous than it is?

There are some illusions that are also "real." An air traffic controller looking at blips on his screen is dealing with real planes. A doctor using telemedicine is conducting a real operation. An employee using teleconferencing is interacting with real people. And a self interacting with his "illusory" perceptions is a real agent interacting with a real world.

[Fist and Faith]

What we have is what direct perception is. It's a unit. A joining of sensing and understanding.

But I don't disagree that the brain perceives. I am just saying that what it perceives is neural signals, not light, or sound.

Brain function necessitates something translates physical stimulii into neural signals. Neural signals are what the brain can operate on. However, the necessary corollary is that the brain operates on neural signals and not physical stimulii.

This is all backed up by science.

Yes, all true. But even even if the brain operated on physical stimuli, it wouldn't be directly perceiving in the way you want. Directly perceivng light bouncing off of an object is not directly perceiving the object, even if there was no need for converting the light into neural signals. I know, I'm arguing your case for you. I'm just saying, this is the way reality works. This is direct in our universe. There's no such thing as directly perceiving in the way you're talking about. But yes, you're right.

[wayfriend]

There's no such thing as directly perceiving in the way you're talking about. But yes, you're right.

Thinking about this, I see this as a positive more than a negative. Consider music. Because a stereo system can produce the same sounds as a live musician, our mind receives the same perceptions. While intellectually we know that there are no musicians in our living room, to the sound-perceiving part of our mind, music is music, and we can enjoy it. If we perceived reality/truth directly, this would not be possible, I don't think. Nothing could be perceived as a musician except a musician. Nor could we watch a movie, for similar reasons.

A Cochlear implant takes it to the next level. Instead of replicating an experience at the sound-wave level, it replicates the experience at the nerve-impulse level. To the brain, impulses are impulses, and voila, people can hear.

And that's what Virtual Reality is all about. I'm not talking about Oculus, I'm talking about sci-fi futuristic Virtual Reality. By stimulating the brain's perceptions directly, we can create experiences that cannot be distinguished experientially from reality. This wouldn't be possible if we experienced reality directly. You can't fake the truth.

Another interesting point is that this whole mode of experiencing the world requires our brain to interpret what we see, hear, sense. This set of nervous impulses corresponds to a ball, this one to Led Zeppelin, etc. As a consequence, our brain has become the greatest interpreting machine ever created. Which is a pre-requisite, as far as I am concerned, for communication. It's conceivable to me, on a hunch level, that if we experienced reality directly, we'd never have evolved an ability to communicate. Because we wouldn't develop a highly complex interpretative function.

[Fist and Faith]

I think music would still be music. It's the vibrations in the air. Doesn't matter if the vibrations are caused by instruments or a stereo.

[wayfriend]

I think music would still be music. It's the vibrations in the air. Doesn't matter if the vibrations are caused by instruments or a stereo.

In the hypothetical case, if we perceived reality directly, then we would perceive musicians directly. Not through sound. Since we would not perceive any musicians in a stereo, it would not be perceived as the same thing to us.

If you perceive reality directly, you can't hack the channel. You can't simulate something with something else - the reality would be different no matter what you tried. This is really good when it comes to determining facts. But often, like with stereos, it can be useful to create simulated perceptions.

[Fist and Faith]

But musicians aren't music. We perceive them as the different things they are, and would even if directly.

[Avatar]

I think music would still be music. It's the vibrations in the air. Doesn't matter if the vibrations are caused by instruments or a stereo.

Needs an ear to interpret those vibrations...otherwise all you have is vibrations.

--A

[Fist and Faith]

Yeah, but we're pretending our brains can directly perceive things.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

EDIT: Redacted. May repost later.

[wayfriend]

But musicians aren't music. We perceive them as the different things they are, and would even if directly.

I think we're quite abusing the analogy at this point.

How do you perceive musicians playing music? By sight or by sound? (I hope you don't feel them. ) Either way, it's indirect. Substitute TV for Stereo, and the point is the same - indirect perceptions allow the possibility for the perceptions to be simulated.

But the point I'm trying to make is this: Just like you cannot see blueness in something that has no blue in it, an imaginary person who perceived reality directly could not perceive musicians if there are no musicians in it. Music from a stereo would not - could not - sound like musicians. A person in a picture would not look like a person, either - there's no person in it.

If you want to talk about perceiving music vs perceiving musicians, well, the whole analogy falls apart, yeah.

[Fist and Faith]

I'm honestly not trying to be difficult. I don't think I understand the premise. Why would someone who perceived reality directly not perceive light and sound directly? You seem to be saying there would be no photons bouncing off of things, and no vibrating air. I'm thinking those things would still exist, but they would hit the brain directly, instead of being filtered through things like the retina, optic nerve, eardrum, etc. But that doesn't mean the perceiver wouldn't interpret them. People might not compose music with the same tones and combinations of tones as we do now (it might just as easily have gone a different route anyway), and the frequency we perceive as blue might be perceived in a different way. Still, there would be sound and light. And we would still have thoughts and opinions about them.

Am I anywhere near what you're talking about?

[wayfriend]

Why would someone who perceived reality directly not perceive light and sound directly?

I am saying that they would not perceive light in order to see a ball -- they would perceive a ball. That's the essence of directly. They would not perceive sound in order to hear musicians play -- they would perceive musicians.

Would they also perceive sound and light as well? Sure. So that's where my visualization suffers. Pretend they don't.

If you perceive musicians directly, recorded music won't be anything even closely similar. If you perceive a ball directly, a picture of a ball won't be anything even closely similar. That was my point. Which was only to serve my more main point, which is that not perceiving things directly can be advantageous.

The sound and the light would indeed be similar in those cases. But why would such a person try to interpret light or sound, in order to know that musicians or a ball is present? There'd be no need to. It would be a secondary phenomenon, like a shadow or an echo.

[Fist and Faith]

I don't know... It sounds like you want it both ways. You want musicians making music. Music which, I must assume, travels in the form of vibrating air. If not, why are we calling it music? And yet, you don't want that vibrating air perceived, not even without the filter out the hearing organs/structures. You want it perceived directly from the musicians. Kind of telepathically? Not that there isn't some validity to this. Beethoven composed even after going totally deaf, so the music, as far as he was concerned, never took to the air. It was only ever in his head.

Still, he didn't begin composing after being born deaf. He composed music because of the vibrating air that he'd heard a million times. And if that's not why the musicians you're postulating compose, then I don't know what we're talking about. If that is why your musicians compose, then they aren't even imagining the music not being heard via vibrating air.

[Zarathustra]

I am saying that they would not perceive light in order to see a ball -- they would perceive a ball. That's the essence of directly.

Don't we perceive balls? If we know the object in question is both a) a ball and b) it's real/present, and we know these two facts by perceiving the object, then in what sense are we not perceiving the ball? If I held a ball before you and asked, "Do you see this ball?" and you responded, "No, I see only my own brain neural impulses," you would be lying. You don't see your brain impulses. You don't see your neurons firing. You see the ball! How could you possibly hit the ball with a bat (for instance), if you didn't see it? Sure, light is bouncing off of it, and you're seeing that, but that's just what seeing is: detecting objects with light. Sure, you're neurons are firing, but that's what seeing *is.*

Sure, we can be misled by illusion. We can answer, "Yes, I see a ball" when there isn't actually a ball there. But this doesn't justify thinking that every claim of seeing balls is therefore false.

[wayfriend]

Kind of telepathically?

I cannot imagine what "direct perception of reality" would entail. I can only deduce by logic that the perception must arise directly from the object perceived - nothing in between. As (IMO) it doesn't exist, that's all I got. Except to say (again) that it must be how an omniscient omnipresent omnipotent being would perceive things, too.

[Fist and Faith]

Yeah, I didn't really think telepathy was right. I just used it because it's a familiar example of what seems to be more direct perception of another person than signals going through our senses.