Seeing Matters: The Remarkable Relevance of the Object-Representation Relationship to Science … and to Society!

The basic relationship between consciously-experienced representations, and material objects they represent, is hotly debated in some circles. But is it practically important? To investigate this, I introduce new symbolic notation, capable of labelling object, brain-perception, and conscious representation. Simple physics-based reasoning argues against identity of object and representation (rejecting e.g., direct realism). Nevertheless, a pivotal concern of the direct-realism school remains: how do we have knowledge of the world, if it’s only experienced indirectly? I sketch an indirect-school response, and review recent theoretical results showing how it simply doesn’t work in the dynamically-conventional setting (which is the hallmark of modern mainstream science). After illustrating how dynamically-conventional dysfunctions affect the foundations of science itself, I point to an experimentally-based resolution of knowledge-problems (and of the direct/indirect debate itself). Because the foundational problems for science affect its standing in society (for example, in its conflict with postmodernist ‘post-Truth’), the object-representation debate does turn out to have a practical significance, far beyond its conventional, academic/abstract/technical, framing.

Hearing, Seeing, and Hylomorphism

Aristotle, it is argued, defined visual perception and hearing as inextricably psycho-physical, not definable in terms of a purely psychological component and a purely physical one. The relevant capacities, like those involved in tasting, smelling and touching, are defined as essentially goal-directed enmattered capacities. They have to be inextricably psycho-physical in this way to be causes and effects of material processes. If this is correct, Aristotle did not accept that these types of perceiving are to be defined in terms of purely psychological phenomena realized in purely physical states or events. His account of all these types of perception follows the pattern set by his discussion of the emotions and desire and is best understood in terms of the Impure Form Interpretation, as developed in Chapters 1 and 2. It is not a version of the two component account proposed by some interpreters. It is further suggested that his account of visual perception is consistent with a version of direct realism, once his ontology of processes and activities is properly understood.

Qualia realism and representationalism

The article deals with the problem of naturalistic explanation of an essential feature of all conscious mental states – the phenomenal character. The conception of qualia realism can be considered as one of the options for a non-naturalistic explanation of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, it is believed that the phenomenal character of experience can be explained in terms of representational content that are more acceptable to naturalism. As a rule, in these discussions, qualia are identified with the non-representational properties of experience – mental paint. The author analyzes in detail the relationship between the concepts of “qualia” and “mental paint” in the key work of G. Harman. It is shown that Harman’s argument against qualia realism fails. He defined qualia in terms of the mental paint conception, which contains consequences that replace the original thesis of qualia realism. To attack the foundations of qualia realism in a more relevant way, the author develops A. Kind’s idea of the epistemic dimension of qualia. Kind points out that since the philosophers arrived at the question of the existence of qualia by considering the plausibility of functionalism, they were so focused on metaphysical considerations that they forgot that this phenomenon is connected in the first epistemic dimension. On the basis of this, a new version of the argument from transparency of experience versus qualia realism was proposed. The argument demonstrates that the qualia realism fails the test of introspective analysis of perceptual experience. Qualia turn out to be theoretical objects that do not fulfill their prescribed explanatory function. This undermines the foundations of metaphysical arguments against the reductionist approach to consciousness, since they proceeded from the assumption of the existence of referents of the concept of “qualia”. The variant of the explanation of the phenomenal character of experience in terms of representationalism also faces internal problems. In this regard, the author offers the option of direct realism, since it is well compatible with the transparency thesis and is generally consistent with the naturalistic attitudes of the representationalism.

Bookish Philosophy and Immediated Realism

Disputes among conflicting “schools of thought,” located predominantly in philosophy departments in universities throughout the world, have degenerated into an academic, bookish philosophy that threatens to replace the discourse of wonder with the jargon of specialists. An elite process of inbred, intellectual decay renders all schools to a discourse that restricts philosophical discourse to print media, professional / professorial standards replace open-ended discussion, and “publish or perish” deflates the value of discourse. Literacy becomes the benchmark of understanding, and illiteracy is equated with lack of understanding. A tyranny of the articulate dismisses the wisdom of ordinary discourse, and the book itself becomes a coffin whose colophon page is a gravestone inscribed with the date of death of the corpse text within. Escape from this inevitable condition can be found in a return to the ordinary, common language and direct realism of the everyday human through a process of mediation, unmediation, and immediation.

PERCEIVING THINGS IN THEMSELVES: ABŪ L-BARAKĀT AL-BAĠDĀDĪ’S CRITIQUE OF REPRESENTATIONALISM

What are the proper objects of perception? Two famous responses to this question hold that they are either the images of extramental objects, that is, the way in which they appear to us (representationalism), or they are the objects themselves (direct realism). In this paper, I present an analysis of this issue by Abū l-Barakāt al-Baġdādī (d. 1164/65), a post-Avicennian scholar whose impact on the history of Islamic philosophy has been largely neglected. Abū l-Barakāt argued against the traditional Aristotelian-Avicennian epistemological dualism, which distinguishes between the sense-perception of material particulars and the conception of immaterial universals in terms of the perceiver and/or the structure of perception. In Abū l-Barakāt's own theory, all epistemic acts have the unified structure of direct relation between one and the same perceiver (immaterial soul) and the objects themselves – both material and immaterial. His main thesis is that having corporeal organs is not necessary for sense-perception. In the final section of the paper, I show that Abū l-Barakāt's critique of the Aristotelian-Avicennian tradition was received as a breakthrough in epistemology. It may have also determined the epistemological theories of two of the most important post-Avicennian Islamic philosophers: Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) and Šihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 1191).

Is mental time travel real time travel?

Episodic memory (memories of the personal past) and prospecting the future (anticipating events) are often described as mental time travel (MTT). While most use this description metaphorically, we argue that episodic memory may allow for MTT in at least some robust sense. While episodic memory experiences may not allow us to literally travel through time, they do afford genuine awareness of past-perceived events. This is in contrast to an alternative view on which episodic memory experiences present past-perceived events as mere intentional contents. Hence, episodic memory is a way of coming into experiential contact with, or being again aware of, what happened in the past. We argue that episodic memory experiences depend on a causal-informational link with the past events being remembered, and that, assuming direct realism about episodic memory experiences, this link suffices for genuine awareness. Since there is no such link in future prospection, a similar argument cannot be used to show that it also affords genuine awareness of future events. Constructivist views of memory might challenge the idea of memory as genuine awareness of remembered events. We explain how our view is consistent with both constructivist and anti-causalist conceptions of memory. There is still room for an interpretation of episodic memory as enabling genuine awareness of past events, even if it involves reconstruction.

Idealism and the Identity Theory of Truth

In a recent article, Hofweber (2019) presents a new, and surprising, argument for idealism. His argument is surprising because it starts with an apparently innocent premiss from the philosophy of language: that ‘that’-clauses do not refer. I do not think that Hofweber's argument works, and my first aim in this paper is to explain why. However, I agree with Hofweber that what we say about ‘that’-clauses has important metaphysical consequences. My second aim is to argue that, far from leading us into idealism, denying that ‘that’-clauses refer is the first step toward a kind of direct realism about belief.

Embodied AI beyond Embodied Cognition and Enactivism

Over the last three decades, the rise of embodied cognition (EC) articulated in various schools (or versions) of embodied, embedded, extended and enacted cognition (Gallagher’s 4E) has offered AI a way out of traditional computationalism—an approach (or an understanding) loosely referred to as embodied AI. This view has split into various branches ranging from a weak form on the brink of functionalism (loosely represented by Clarks’ parity principle) to a strong form (often corresponding to autopoietic-friendly enactivism) suggesting that body–world interactions constitute cognition. From an ontological perspective, however, constitution is a problematic notion with no obvious empirical or technical advantages. This paper discusses the ontological issues of these two approaches in regard to embodied AI and its ontological commitments: circularity, epiphenomenalism, mentalism, and disguised dualism. The paper also outlines an even more radical approach that may offer some ontological advantages. The new approach, called the mind-object identity, is then briefly compared with sensorimotor direct realism and with the embodied identity theory.