see e.g. Chapter 1 of Searle’s Seeing Things as They Are for an exposition of the view usually called direct realism (i’m pretty sure you guys (including the op) have something pretty different in mind than that view and i think it’s plausible you all would actually just agree with that view)
“Direct realism, also known as naïve realism, argues we perceive the world directly.” That…does not advance things.
″...the metaphysical question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by our conscious experience.” A deepity, a fake question resting on an equivocation over “the world we see around us”. Someone might reasonably use this phrase to refer either to the world outside ourselves, existing independently of our experience of it, or to refer to our (visual) experience of it. In the first case, “the world we see around us is the real world itself” is trivially true and “an internal perceptual copy of that world” trivially false. In the second case, it is the reverse. The confusion arises only because our everyday way of speaking rarely needs to distinguish the two things. Philosophers then confuse themselves by questing for the “true meaning” of the loose words.
The rest of the article sinks into the morass of philosophy.
I agree it’s a pretty unfortunate/silly question. Searle’s analysis of it in Chapter 1 of Seeing Things as They Are is imo not too dissimilar to your analysis of it here, except he wouldn’t think that one can reasonably say “the world we see around us is an internal perceptual copy” (and I myself have trouble compiling this into anything true also), though he’d surely agree that various internal things are involved in seeing the world. I think a significant fraction of what’s going on with this “disagreement” is a bunch of “technical wordcels” being annoyed at what they consider to be careless speaking that they take to be somewhat associated with careless thinking.
see e.g. Chapter 1 of Searle’s Seeing Things as They Are for an exposition of the view usually called direct realism (i’m pretty sure you guys (including the op) have something pretty different in mind than that view and i think it’s plausible you all would actually just agree with that view)
I haven’t read that book, but all I can gather from the publisher’s blurb and two reviews of it, one hostile and one favorable, is that it’s philosophy in the worst sense. What, if anything, Searle means by “direct realism” remains obscure to me.
So let’s try Wikipedia.
“Direct realism, also known as naïve realism, argues we perceive the world directly.” That…does not advance things.
″...the metaphysical question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by our conscious experience.” A deepity, a fake question resting on an equivocation over “the world we see around us”. Someone might reasonably use this phrase to refer either to the world outside ourselves, existing independently of our experience of it, or to refer to our (visual) experience of it. In the first case, “the world we see around us is the real world itself” is trivially true and “an internal perceptual copy of that world” trivially false. In the second case, it is the reverse. The confusion arises only because our everyday way of speaking rarely needs to distinguish the two things. Philosophers then confuse themselves by questing for the “true meaning” of the loose words.
The rest of the article sinks into the morass of philosophy.
I agree it’s a pretty unfortunate/silly question. Searle’s analysis of it in Chapter 1 of Seeing Things as They Are is imo not too dissimilar to your analysis of it here, except he wouldn’t think that one can reasonably say “the world we see around us is an internal perceptual copy” (and I myself have trouble compiling this into anything true also), though he’d surely agree that various internal things are involved in seeing the world. I think a significant fraction of what’s going on with this “disagreement” is a bunch of “technical wordcels” being annoyed at what they consider to be careless speaking that they take to be somewhat associated with careless thinking.