Theories of Perception

[Gordon Swobe]

I’ve noticed that people often conflate theories of perception with theories of mind. Here are the main theories of perception:

Direct Realism (Naïve Realism) - We perceive the world directly as it really is. Objects have the properties they appear to have, and perception gives us immediate, unmediated access to reality.

Indirect Realism (Representative Realism) - We perceive the world indirectly through mental representations or sense-data. Our perceptions represent external objects but are not identical to them.

Intentionalism (Representationalism) - Perceptual experiences have intentional content - they represent the world as being a certain way. The phenomenal character of experience is determined by what it represents.

Phenomenalism - Physical objects are logical constructions from sense-experiences. Talk about objects is really talk about actual and possible sensory experiences. 

Idealism - Reality is fundamentally mental or experiential. Physical objects exist only as perceptions in minds. To be is to be perceived (esse est percipi). 

Enactivism - Perception is an active, embodied process. We perceive by acting and interacting with the environment. Perception and action are inseparable.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

I created this app to help people identify their philosophy of perception. It is similar to my philosophy of mind assessment app, but much quicker as it makes no high-latency calls to an LLM. 

It is 20 multiple choice questions. 

Brent, you are largely concerned with the philosophy of perception and so I am curious to see how this app assesses your views.

Philosophy of Perception assessment app

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/847626ff-7482-42ce-82ed-a3602b26af46

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

This is how my app my assesses my own views. It is no surprise to me that I align with intentionalism. On this view, perceptions are mental states something like beliefs, hopes, and desires in so much as they are always about something. 

[Brent Allsop]

Wow, fascinating and educational.

Here are my results:

I've always struggled with understanding "intentionalism", but this reveals that my beliefs are someone intentional.

I think it is more about the ambiguity between, "My model/knowledge of the apple  is about the real apple out there" or is it more my model of the apple is about how good it will taste if a take a bite.

I struggle with all the possible answers because depending how I interpret the answers, they can mean almost anything, and they all can be right, depending on how you interpret or how you define the terms being uses.  In the end, I just selected the one I liked best, even though most all would work, if you defined things correctly.

Thanks for this very educational system.

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[Gordon Swobe]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2025 at 11:28 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Wow, fascinating and educational.

Excellent!

Here are my results:

I've always struggled with understanding "intentionalism", but this reveals that my beliefs are someone intentional.

I think it is more about the ambiguity between, "My model/knowledge of the apple  is about the real apple out there" or is it more my model of the apple is about how good it will taste if a take a bite.

I struggle with all the possible answers because depending how I interpret the answers, they can mean almost anything, and they all can be right, depending on how you interpret or how you define the terms being uses.  In the end, I just selected the one I liked best, even though most all would work, if you defined things correctly.

Thanks for this very educational system.

You’re welcome. I might build it out to make it even more educational.

Intentionalism is similar to indirect realism in that they both involve mental representations of objects in the external world, (no naive or direct realism), but as an intentionalist I reject as nonsensical the notion that I perceive only intermediate sense-data and that the object itself is invisible. 

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAK7-onuJsZUgjky-0D4%3DUemHb2%3DrU9Cx_ghMcm2YNTW49q2rBA%40mail.gmail.com.

[sp...@rainier66.com]

 

 

From: the-importa...@googlegroups.com <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Gordon Swobe

 

You’re welcome. I might build it out to make it even more educational.

 

Intentionalism is similar to indirect realism in that they both involve mental representations of objects in the external world, (no naive or direct realism), but as an intentionalist I reject as nonsensical the notion that I perceive only intermediate sense-data and that the object itself is invisible. 

 

-gts

 

 

 

Cool!

 

Gordon, I haven’t been posting here, but just reading it for the time being.

 

I have been thinking of a kind of parody version of this, but decided to hold on that for now, or indefinitely after I saw your real-world version.

 

Time for fun later, after we learn some real stuff.

 

Well done sir!

 

spike

 

 

 

 

[Gordon Swobe]

Thanks spike. Good to see you’re still around! I’m looking forward to your parody version.

-gts

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[Gordon Swobe]

Another important difference between indirect realism and my favored form of intentionalism: indirect realism bolsters the dualistic interpretation of Frank Jackson’s original Knowledge Argument that we were just discussing in another thread.

If Mary the color scientist sees a red tomato when she exits the black and white room and sees red for the first time, and if she is actually only seeing the sense-data, then what is the ontology of that sense data given that Mary already knew all the physical facts? The sense-data seems to have a mysterious, non-physical reality.

On intentionalism, the problem is solved. When Mary leaves the room, she perceives a red tomato. That red tomato is the representational content of her experience, not the sense data, and because she already knows all the physics of the tomato, she learns no new fact of reality not already explained by the physics. The redness seems new to her only because she is deploying a new first-person phenomenal concept of a physical fact already known objectively in the third person.

-gts

[Jason Resch]

Great work Gordon.

I obtained the following results (attached).

Jason 

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[Gordon Swobe]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2025 at 3:16 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

Great work Gordon.

Thanks.

I obtained the following results (attached).

Jason 

You’re all over the map! 

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUjy%3DBUsF91wKGgZmR%2BkVa4RebQMAJJB3%2BbvZSd6uTcuzA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Brent Allsop]

This language is all so ambiguous, it is so hard to know which interpretation to use.

On Thu, Oct 2, 2025 at 3:08 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Another important difference between indirect realism and my favored form of intentionalism: indirect realism bolsters the dualistic interpretation of Frank Jackson’s original Knowledge Argument that we were just discussing in another thread.

If Mary the color scientist sees a red tomato when she exits the black and white room and sees red for the first time, and if she is actually only seeing the sense-data

"seeing" has two parts 1. lots of different physical representations that don't have a redness quality (only being interpreted as 'red') and the final results, which is something that has a redness quality.  What are you referring to here?

 

, then what is the ontology of that sense data

To me, "sense data" is the data you can obtain by interpreting things that don't have a redness quality.  Please don't tell me they redefine 'sense data' something different from this intuitive common sense, consistent meaning?

given that Mary already knew all the physical facts? The sense-data seems to have a mysterious, non-physical reality.

On intentionalism, the problem is solved. When Mary leaves the room, she perceives a red tomato.

"perceive" is a synonym for "seeing"  (see issue with "seeing" above)

 

That [knowledge of the] red tomato is the representational content of her experience, not the sense data, and because she already knows all the physics of the [knowledge of the] tomato, she learns no new fact of reality not already explained by the physics. The redness seems new to her only because she is deploying a new first-person phenomenal concept of a physical fact [by 'first person' you mean directly aprehending the physics] already known objectively in the third person (i.e. "seeing" or "perceiving")..

-gts

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[Gordon Swobe]

Consider your now infamous red strawberry, Brent. You open your eyes and there it is before you on the table, present in your visual field.

Is this the correct picture?

Indirect Realism:
You <--- the sense data about the strawberry <-- the strawberry

The strawberry is really there (the realism part of indirect realism) but the strawberry itself is invisible (the indirect part of indirect realism). Is that your position?

If that is the correct picture then the problem as I pointed out with respect to Frank Jackson's thought experiment about Mary is that the sense data must be non-physical. It would seem on that account that dualism of some sort must be the case.

Better in my view to see it this way:

You <---> the strawberry

You might reply that this looks like naive realism, but it is not. It is intentionalism and the arrows point both ways for a reason: your act of beholding the strawberry is not entirely passive. Before you know that you are seeing a strawberry, your mind has already constructed a representation of it. That representation of the strawberry is the content of your mental state.

-gts


  
On Thu, Oct 2, 2025 at 3:45 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

This language is all so ambiguous, it is so hard to know which interpretation to use.

On Thu, Oct 2, 2025 at 3:08 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Another important difference between indirect realism and my favored form of intentionalism: indirect realism bolsters the dualistic interpretation of Frank Jackson’s original Knowledge Argument that we were just discussing in another thread.

If Mary the color scientist sees a red tomato when she exits the black and white room and sees red for the first time, and if she is actually only seeing the sense-data

"seeing" has two parts 1. lots of different physical representations that don't have a redness quality (only being interpreted as 'red') and the final results, which is something that has a redness quality.  What are you referring to here?

When Mary steps out of the room, she encounters your now infamous red strawberry. Her visual experience is of that red strawberry. What is the ontology of the redness? In other words, what is the nature of its existence? 

According to physicalists like you and me, the redness must have a physical ontology. But Mary already knew all the physics before she exited the room, and she had never seen redness. How is that possible? It is certainly not possible if Mary is representing the supposed sense-data that supposedly mediates her perception of the strawberry. 

 

, then what is the ontology of that sense data

To me, "sense data" is the data you can obtain by interpreting things that don't have a redness quality.  Please don't tell me they redefine 'sense data' something different from this intuitive common sense, consistent meaning?

given that Mary already knew all the physical facts? The sense-data seems to have a mysterious, non-physical reality.

On intentionalism, the problem is solved. When Mary leaves the room, she perceives a red tomato.

"perceive" is a synonym for "seeing"  (see issue with "seeing" above)

 

That [knowledge of the] red tomato is the representational content of her experience, not the sense data, and because she already knows all the physics of the [knowledge of the] tomato, she learns no new fact of reality not already explained by the physics. The redness seems new to her only because she is deploying a new first-person phenomenal concept of a physical fact [by 'first person' you mean directly aprehending the physics] already known objectively in the third person (i.e. "seeing" or "perceiving")..

-gts

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[Gordon Swobe]

 

Bertrand Russell wrote something to the effect that his field of vision is meaningless blotches of color and that his mind then infers the objects of perception. That is a statement of indirect realism. 

We moderns might think we’re pretty smart to say, like Bertrand Russell, that we do not perceive objects directly but only infer them, but there is a problem: Bertrand Russell cannot say he is aware of making any such inferences. They seem to be built into our perceptual apparatus. 

Enter intentionalism. The red strawberry comes to us fully constructed.

-gts

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[Brent Allsop]

Gordon,

Can we integrate this with Canonizer so we can better track, together, what everyone believes in a constantly self improving educating way?

We'd just need to seed the system with these 20 questions, and walk the people through supporting each of them, joining their appropriate answer camp for each question/topic.

I'm sure you are the world's best expert to have formulated these questions and answers so well.  In fact, way better than Chalmers and the surveys he does, but I bet Jason and others in their specific camps could help improve them over time, which is what canonizer allows, as it ensures everyone already in the camp agrees with any improvements.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNP%3DP_4%2BWfoZ8pS_%2BrZg7F%3DLLbJTsKzLgf4mebSHVVASPRg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Fri, Oct 3, 2025 at 4:55 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Gordon,

Can we integrate this with Canonizer so we can better track, together, what everyone believes in a constantly self improving educating way?

Of course.

We'd just need to seed the system with these 20 questions, and walk the people through supporting each of them, joining their appropriate answer camp for each question/topic.

I know the choices in the answers often seem similar, but this is because the differences in the theories can be subtle. Those schooled and committed to any particular theory should recognize from the wording which choice applies to them. Claude 4.5 wrote them.

As I build it out, I’ll add more explanations to help the user better understand the subtle differences in the choices.

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

Here is your oft-cited refraction illusion, Brent. The pencil appears broken (or bent) but we know it is straight. What shall we say about it?

According to indirect realism, the sense datum of the pencil is broken, and we see only the sense datum. The pencil itself is invisible. Is that your position, Brent?

According to intentionalism, we are simply misrepresenting the pencil. 

Who’s ever heard of invisible pencils, anyway? I don’t believe in them. 

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ccc3a80a-5a38-4162-a7aa-fb3dee5654c3

Version 10 designed to be more educational:

✅ **Welcome Page**

- All 6 theories with descriptions and 4 bullet points each
- Book icons linking to in-depth articles

✅ **In-Depth Theory Pages**

- One-page articles for each theory
- Overview, Key Points, Problems & Criticisms, Notable Proponents
- Back button to return

✅ **20 Questions**

- Randomized answer options
- “Why this question?” collapsible link under each question
- Progress bar
- Previous/Next navigation

✅ **Results Page**

- Shows your primary alignment
- Complete breakdown of all scores
- “Learn More” button to explore your top theory
- “Take Quiz Again” button

[Gordon Swobe]

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/c6f31a18-4f10-4901-ac3e-e4766c08e211

[e...@disroot.org]

This is tough!

Sometimes I feel like several options could be what I believe, and in
order to find out, I'd have to sit down with a philosopher, linguist and
scientist and do some good old fashioned hair splitting!

Apparently I'm closest to being an indirect realist.

Best regards,
Daniel

On Fri, 3 Oct 2025, Gordon Swobe wrote:

> https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/c6f31a18-4f10-4901-ac3e-e4766c08e211
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 3, 2025 at 8:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ccc3a80a-5a38-4162-a7aa-fb3dee5654c3
>
> Version 10 designed to be more educational:
>
> ✅ **Welcome Page**
>
> - All 6 theories with descriptions and 4 bullet points each
> - Book icons linking to in-depth articles
>
> ✅ **In-Depth Theory Pages**
>
> - One-page articles for each theory
> - Overview, Key Points, Problems & Criticisms, Notable Proponents
> - Back button to return
>
> ✅ **20 Questions**
>
> - Randomized answer options
> - “Why this question?” collapsible link under each question
> - Progress bar
> - Previous/Next navigation
>
> ✅ **Results Page**
>
> - Shows your primary alignment
> - Complete breakdown of all scores
> - “Learn More” button to explore your top theory
> - “Take Quiz Again” button
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 3, 2025 at 1:25 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> [IMAGE]

> Here is your oft-cited refraction illusion, Brent. The pencil appears broken (or bent) but we know it is straight. What
> shall we say about it?
>
> According to indirect realism, the sense datum of the pencil is broken, and we see only the sense datum. The pencil
> itself is invisible. Is that your position, Brent?
>
> According to intentionalism, we are simply misrepresenting the pencil. 
>
> Who’s ever heard of invisible pencils, anyway? I don’t believe in them. 
>
> -gts
>
>
>
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Important Questions" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
> the-important-que...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNP%3DTRnaQrsWD-7PDtE53bPqDzkA1QAp2NY42ANpRxobncg%40mail.gmail.com.
>
>

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 6:46 AM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This is tough!

Sometimes I feel like several options could be what I believe, and in
order to find out, I'd have to sit down with a philosopher, linguist and
scientist and do some good old fashioned hair splitting!

Apparently I'm closest to being an indirect realist.

I would guess that most intelligent, educated people in the modern world are indirect realists by default, without realizing it. 

I lean toward intentionalism, but this is probably only because I have studied it. The theory is not intuitively obvious, but it avoids some counter-intuitive implications of indirect realism.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/5d39a583-61c8-96ab-bea0-df848d60c94c%40disroot.org.

[Gordon Swobe]

Important to understand that “intentionalism” is not about intent as we normally use that word. In philosophy, intentionality is about “the power of minds to be about, to represent, to stand for, things, properties, and states of affairs.”

The indirect realist says she does not see the red strawberry directly — that she only sees the sense data and infers the strawberry indirectly.

Nonsense, says the intentionalist. My visual experience is about the strawberry and that is what it means to see it. I might be mispresenting it for some reason, but I can see it.

-gts

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 12:33 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 6:46 AM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This is tough!

Sometimes I feel like several options could be what I believe, and in
order to find out, I'd have to sit down with a philosopher, linguist and
scientist and do some good old fashioned hair splitting!

Apparently I'm closest to being an indirect realist.

I would guess that most intelligent, educated people in the modern world are indirect realists by default, without realizing it. 

I lean toward intentionalism, but this is probably only because I have studied it. The theory is not intuitively obvious, but it avoids some counter-intuitive implications of indirect realism.

What are the problems you see with indirect realism?

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPkMb6Z0irpns-NRrs%3D1ENTNra3X6ZCjkHV7UaCMOsQWqA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 1:50 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Important to understand that “intentionalism” is not about intent as we normally use that word. In philosophy, intentionality is about “the power of minds to be about, to represent, to stand for, things, properties, and states of affairs.”

The indirect realist says she does not see the red strawberry directly — that she only sees the sense data and infers the strawberry indirectly.

Nonsense, says the intentionalist. My visual experience is about the strawberry and that is what it means to see it. I might be mispresenting it for some reason, but I can see it.

Are those two positions incompatible?

Why can't both be true?

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNP%3Dn5_Y5%2BwAVKeDokEG9_YoVbjZxos2tkRM%2B0Z-yuzoyYQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 12:21 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 12:33 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 6:46 AM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This is tough!

Sometimes I feel like several options could be what I believe, and in
order to find out, I'd have to sit down with a philosopher, linguist and
scientist and do some good old fashioned hair splitting!

Apparently I'm closest to being an indirect realist.

I would guess that most intelligent, educated people in the modern world are indirect realists by default, without realizing it. 

I lean toward intentionalism, but this is probably only because I have studied it. The theory is not intuitively obvious, but it avoids some counter-intuitive implications of indirect realism.

What are the problems you see with indirect realism?

I already demonstrated the main problem with indirect realism: everything is invisible!

“That bent pencil in the glass of water is not a pencil,” says the indirect realist. “It is sense data or an internal mental model and the pencil itself is invisible.”

Do you believe in invisible pencils? I do not. Perhaps invisible leprechauns use invisible pencils to send secret invisible messages.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUhPEC-q4gBjRbGEneyAH8BFSN2jmkEXWW7MGJtbMr%3DeqA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 2:30 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 12:21 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 12:33 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 6:46 AM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This is tough!

Sometimes I feel like several options could be what I believe, and in
order to find out, I'd have to sit down with a philosopher, linguist and
scientist and do some good old fashioned hair splitting!

Apparently I'm closest to being an indirect realist.

I would guess that most intelligent, educated people in the modern world are indirect realists by default, without realizing it. 

I lean toward intentionalism, but this is probably only because I have studied it. The theory is not intuitively obvious, but it avoids some counter-intuitive implications of indirect realism.

What are the problems you see with indirect realism?

I already demonstrated the main problem with indirect realism: everything is invisible!

“That bent pencil in the glass of water is not a pencil,” says the indirect realist. “It is sense data or an internal mental model and the pencil itself is invisible.”

Do you believe in invisible pencils? I do not. Perhaps invisible leprechauns use invisible pencils to send secret invisible messages.

I think that is just word play. "Invisible" in ordinary language, means we are unable to see something. And "seeing" in ordinary language refers to the act of using our eyes to collect data from the environment and construct an internal model for it.  So indirect realism does imply pencils are invisible (unless you abandon the usual meanings of ordinary language).

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPn-ZoJ4VEoz3URaHZXer0iO2JWL%3DKe%3DdXGyZB%3DMEXrONw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 12:39 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 2:30 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 12:21 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 12:33 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 6:46 AM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This is tough!

Sometimes I feel like several options could be what I believe, and in
order to find out, I'd have to sit down with a philosopher, linguist and
scientist and do some good old fashioned hair splitting!

Apparently I'm closest to being an indirect realist.

I would guess that most intelligent, educated people in the modern world are indirect realists by default, without realizing it. 

I lean toward intentionalism, but this is probably only because I have studied it. The theory is not intuitively obvious, but it avoids some counter-intuitive implications of indirect realism.

What are the problems you see with indirect realism?

I already demonstrated the main problem with indirect realism: everything is invisible!

“That bent pencil in the glass of water is not a pencil,” says the indirect realist. “It is sense data or an internal mental model and the pencil itself is invisible.”

Do you believe in invisible pencils? I do not. Perhaps invisible leprechauns use invisible pencils to send secret invisible messages.

I think that is just word play.

Hardly. The indirect realist must answer honestly that he does not actually see the pencil — that the pencil is invisible. This is what differentiates indirect realism from direct realism.

Yes, people don't usually talk that way in casual speech, but presumably our indirect realist is doing philosophy when we ask him about the pencil.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUjVvaCZr4%3D0BZ%2Bw_mX1XD00s7FQLVRJQ%3DxMr6u6saO3Gg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Brent Allsop]

To me this is all a problem of unclear and ambiguous terminology.

Gordon, you always only use the term "see", both for "seeing" and for "direct apprehension".  So when you say you "can't actually see" the pencil, what I think you really mean to say is that you "can't actually directly apprehend" the pencil.

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way.  But seeing like that is blind to direct apprehension, and cannot tell you what it is like without a dictionary back to a real directly apprehended quality.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNP%3Dgc-P%2BTaBmskuJSO4EJ2T5SNE88d-ZRafLmxaLcjf54A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

A day or two ago, I used the word “behold” almost accidently to describe what happens when one looks at a red strawberry under intentionalism. It occurs to me that this word is perfect for this purpose, as it emphasizes the proactive nature of perception. 

Your mind does not passively see a strawberry shape in your field of vision. It actively beholds the strawberry. You hold that strawberry in mind something like the way you also hold beliefs and desires in mind. These are all intentional states.

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

To me this is all a problem of unclear and ambiguous terminology.

Gordon, you always only use the term "see", both for "seeing" and for "direct apprehension".  So when you say you "can't actually see" the pencil, what I think you really mean to say is that you "can't actually directly apprehend" the pencil.

Fine. I try to make my language accessible to everyone because the world is packed full of morons.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAK7-onv8PC%2BHZxd4A9JnAX_BqDTLpgbYkUv7tqRfmv0s4L2ffg%40mail.gmail.com.

[e...@disroot.org]

> On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 6:46 AM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> This is tough!
>
> Sometimes I feel like several options could be what I believe, and in
> order to find out, I'd have to sit down with a philosopher, linguist and
> scientist and do some good old fashioned hair splitting!
>
> Apparently I'm closest to being an indirect realist.
>
> I would guess that most intelligent, educated people in the modern world are
> indirect realists by default, without realizing it. 
>
> I lean toward intentionalism, but this is probably only because I have studied
> it. The theory is not intuitively obvious, but it avoids some
> counter-intuitive implications of indirect realism.

This is exactly my point. My feeling is that if I would sit down with you, and
perhaps a scientist or two, in order to explain what I mean with the words that
are used in the questions, I would not be surprised if my position shifted.

Best regards,
Daniel

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way. 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you neither see nor apprehend the straight, unbroken pencil in the glass of water. 

Is that your position?  I've asked you several times. My app says you lean that way but I want to know specifically what you have to say about your own pencil illusion that you have posted dozens of times over the years.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAK7-onv8PC%2BHZxd4A9JnAX_BqDTLpgbYkUv7tqRfmv0s4L2ffg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 2:41 PM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This is exactly my point. My feeling is that if I would sit down with you, and
perhaps a scientist or two, in order to explain what I mean with the words that
are used in the questions, I would not be surprised if my position shifted.

I've added more educational material to the app. The welcome page lists the six theories with bullet points. Each question has a link to explain the question and you get a report at the end describing your most favored theory. 

If you do a quick study of the theories on the welcome page, it should help you see the subtle differences in the choices to the multiple choice questions. Each choice represesents one of the six theories.

Please suggest any further improvements. Thanks!

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ed5bd126-4ead-4947-9f6d-4f1bb69e3e97

-gts

Best regards,
Daniel

--
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[Gordon Swobe]

Just for you, Brent, I have added this question to the app: how do you complete this sentence?

The red strawberry is…

Direct Realism (Naïve Realism)
The red strawberry is… a mind-independent physical object with the property of redness that you are directly perceiving. The strawberry really is red, and you are seeing it as it actually is.

Indirect Realism (Representative Realism)
The red strawberry is… an external physical object that causes you to have a mental representation or sense-datum of redness. You directly perceive the mental image/representation, which is caused by and represents the actual strawberry (which may or may not be red in itself).

Intentionalism (Representationalism)
The red strawberry is… what your perceptual experience is about - it’s the intentional object of your experience. Your experience has representational content that represents a strawberry as being red. The phenomenal character of your experience (what it’s like to see red) is constituted by this representational content.

Phenomenalism
The red strawberry is… a pattern or collection of actual and possible sense-experiences. To say “there is a red strawberry” is really to say certain visual, tactile, and taste experiences occur now, and certain other experiences would occur if you were to reach out, bite it, rotate it, etc.

Idealism
The red strawberry is… an idea or collection of perceptions existing in your mind (and possibly in God’s mind or universal consciousness). The strawberry’s existence consists in being perceived. Its redness exists only as your conscious experience - there is no material strawberry independent of perception.

Enactivism
The red strawberry is… something you perceive through your embodied engagement with it. The redness emerges from the sensorimotor interaction between your body, the strawberry, and the lighting conditions. Your implicit knowledge of how the strawberry would look from different angles, how it would feel if grasped, constitutes your perception of it.

Here is the app:

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ca95898e-a350-4369-a82f-748f67230786

-gts

[e...@disroot.org]

On Sat, 4 Oct 2025, Gordon Swobe wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 2:41 PM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
> This is exactly my point. My feeling is that if I would sit down with you, and
> perhaps a scientist or two, in order to explain what I mean with the words that
> are used in the questions, I would not be surprised if my position shifted.
>
>
> I've added more educational material to the app. The welcome page lists the six theories with bullet points. Each question has a link
> to explain the question and you get a report at the end describing your most favored theory. 
>
> If you do a quick study of the theories on the welcome page, it should help you see the subtle differences in the choices to the
> multiple choice questions. Each choice represesents one of the six theories.
>
> Please suggest any further improvements. Thanks!

Thank you Gordon, will have a look!

Best regards,
Daniel

> https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ed5bd126-4ead-4947-9f6d-4f1bb69e3e97
>
>
> -gts
>
>
>
>
> Best regards,
> Daniel
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Important Questions" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
> the-important-que...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/c3cd2922-35ac-8045-1327-01b1ba8d5f2b%40disroot.org.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Important Questions" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
> the-important-que...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNP%3D0CJ_uU9Lja171Ufys3h9KP9-1tNqGwVohOf8jZ2VgLg%40mail.gmail.com.
>
>

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 4:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way. 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you neither see nor apprehend the straight, unbroken pencil in the glass of water. 

Is that your position?  I've asked you several times. My app says you lean that way but I want to know specifically what you have to say about your own pencil illusion that you have posted dozens of times over the years.

The retracted pencil is a bad example because that's how the light is actually falling on your eyes. How does intentionalism handle other deeper optical illusions due to how the brain processes color, for example the coke can that looks red while there is no real red color in the image? What is such an experience "about" ?

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPnKujFocd2n%3DhOgw4oVuSj1xAx8qddEacNWrXOKPn_1mg%40mail.gmail.com.

[sp...@rainier66.com]

 

 

From: the-importa...@googlegroups.com <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Gordon Swobe

Subject: Re: [TIQ] Re: Theories of Perception

 

>..A day or two ago, I used the word “behold” almost accidently to describe what happens when one looks at a red strawberry under intentionalism…-gts

 

Gordon there is another reason to use the term behold: it has largely fallen out of use.  I try to rescue slightly antiquated words, such as behold, trousers, bawcock, glabriety, Disney, that sort of thing.  OK clarification: I don’t try to rescue Disney.  But the other stuff is cool if you know the correct use of the antiquated terms.  So behold away sir.

 

spike

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 5:30 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 4:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way. 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you neither see nor apprehend the straight, unbroken pencil in the glass of water. 

Is that your position?  I've asked you several times. My app says you lean that way but I want to know specifically what you have to say about your own pencil illusion that you have posted dozens of times over the years.

The retracted pencil is a bad example because that's how the light is actually falling on your eyes. How does intentionalism handle other deeper optical illusions due to how the brain processes color, for example the coke can that looks red while there is no real red color in the image? What is such an experience "about" ?

The intentionalist says his experience is about a red coke can; that he is representing a red coke can. If he knows it is an illusion, he will say it is a misrepresentation of that coke can.

The indirect realist says he can see only a mental model or sense-datum of a can and it looks red; that the can itself is not visible and that he knows about it only indirectly.

It might seem like word play but there is a critical difference in the number of elements. The indirect realist counts three: the perceiver, the sense data or mental model, and the object. The intentionalist counts only the perceiver and the object.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUgZ6bFtsr2N6Yfw0uw8%3DtyABiYh3uienC6urd1MfchNug%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 9:19 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 5:30 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 4:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way. 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you neither see nor apprehend the straight, unbroken pencil in the glass of water. 

Is that your position?  I've asked you several times. My app says you lean that way but I want to know specifically what you have to say about your own pencil illusion that you have posted dozens of times over the years.

The retracted pencil is a bad example because that's how the light is actually falling on your eyes. How does intentionalism handle other deeper optical illusions due to how the brain processes color, for example the coke can that looks red while there is no real red color in the image? What is such an experience "about" ?

The intentionalist says his experience is about a red coke can; that he is representing a red coke can. If he knows it is an illusion, he will say it is a misrepresentation of that coke can.

The indirect realist says he can see only a mental model or sense-datum of a can and it looks red; that the can itself is not visible and that he knows about it only indirectly.

It might seem like word play but there is a critical difference in the number of elements. The indirect realist counts three: the perceiver, the sense data or mental model, and the object. The intentionalist counts only the perceiver and the object.

Thanks for that clarification.

Then I would ask the intentionalist: what's the point of the visual cortex? Roughly 30% of the cortex is used to support the visual system. If we can magically get from object to the perception without processing sense data, then what's the point of those billions of neurons wasting all that metabolic energy?

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPm4NzLBgEVMXnHqVA%3Dz5V9oPg_QZOOnEhBtajGU%3DG642Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 7:46 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 9:19 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 5:30 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 4:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way. 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you neither see nor apprehend the straight, unbroken pencil in the glass of water. 

Is that your position?  I've asked you several times. My app says you lean that way but I want to know specifically what you have to say about your own pencil illusion that you have posted dozens of times over the years.

The retracted pencil is a bad example because that's how the light is actually falling on your eyes. How does intentionalism handle other deeper optical illusions due to how the brain processes color, for example the coke can that looks red while there is no real red color in the image? What is such an experience "about" ?

The intentionalist says his experience is about a red coke can; that he is representing a red coke can. If he knows it is an illusion, he will say it is a misrepresentation of that coke can.

The indirect realist says he can see only a mental model or sense-datum of a can and it looks red; that the can itself is not visible and that he knows about it only indirectly.

It might seem like word play but there is a critical difference in the number of elements. The indirect realist counts three: the perceiver, the sense data or mental model, and the object. The intentionalist counts only the perceiver and the object.

Thanks for that clarification.

Then I would ask the intentionalist: what's the point of the visual cortex? Roughly 30% of the cortex is used to support the visual system. If we can magically get from object to the perception without processing sense data, then what's the point of those billions of neurons wasting all that metabolic energy?

Nobody is saying that when you behold a ripe strawberry, there isn’t a long story to tell in the language of neuroscience. Science is still uncovering that story.

The intentionalist simply denies that your brain or visual cortex generate any inner sense data for you to observe. You are not looking at a private mental replica of the strawberry. You are aware of the strawberry itself — as represented (or as misrepresented) by the activity of your visual system.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUgJuuRUVbVijwt3ELw-i1Va7_RcPVLB8pAQaunZApEy5w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Gordon,

There are multiple possibly true theories about what is out there consistent with what I know.

1. realism: There is a real physical straight pencil out there reflecting yellow light which my eyes detect (I see it).

2. idealism/solipsism:  something is rendering my subjective knowledge of the pencil, despite there being nothing out there, hence I don't really 'see' it, I only have false knowledge, or a dream of something that isn't really there.

Until I develop a neural ponytail, and am able to directly apprehend things outside of my skull (and thereby falsify one of these two theories), the best I can do is go with the simplest theory #1.

Does that answer your question?

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPnKujFocd2n%3DhOgw4oVuSj1xAx8qddEacNWrXOKPn_1mg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 10:50 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 7:46 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 9:19 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 5:30 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 4:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way. 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you neither see nor apprehend the straight, unbroken pencil in the glass of water. 

Is that your position?  I've asked you several times. My app says you lean that way but I want to know specifically what you have to say about your own pencil illusion that you have posted dozens of times over the years.

The retracted pencil is a bad example because that's how the light is actually falling on your eyes. How does intentionalism handle other deeper optical illusions due to how the brain processes color, for example the coke can that looks red while there is no real red color in the image? What is such an experience "about" ?

The intentionalist says his experience is about a red coke can; that he is representing a red coke can. If he knows it is an illusion, he will say it is a misrepresentation of that coke can.

The indirect realist says he can see only a mental model or sense-datum of a can and it looks red; that the can itself is not visible and that he knows about it only indirectly.

It might seem like word play but there is a critical difference in the number of elements. The indirect realist counts three: the perceiver, the sense data or mental model, and the object. The intentionalist counts only the perceiver and the object.

Thanks for that clarification.

Then I would ask the intentionalist: what's the point of the visual cortex? Roughly 30% of the cortex is used to support the visual system. If we can magically get from object to the perception without processing sense data, then what's the point of those billions of neurons wasting all that metabolic energy?

Nobody is saying that when you behold a ripe strawberry, there isn’t a long story to tell in the language of neuroscience. Science is still uncovering that story.

The intentionalist simply denies that your brain or visual cortex generate any inner sense data for you to observe. You are not looking at a private mental replica of the strawberry. You are aware of the strawberry itself — as represented (or as misrepresented) by the activity of your visual system.

But if it can be misrepresented, and that misrepresentation is what you see, then you cannot be accessing the object directly.

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPkO9xQmaEiJKbBE4DJ0GH-htNyrf%2B3drY2LnyZrDvLN4g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 9:22 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Does that answer your question?

No. I am asking you about the refraction illusion that you often post in which the pencil in the glass of water appears bent.

Which is true, or most true, for you?

A) You see only a mental image of a bent pencil, not the real pencil which is not bent.

B) You see a bent pencil and it is the real pencil. You are simply misrepresenting it on account of refraction.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAK7-onvqg8NFcW-Fg9r0CXJcSnmW_HO1pQWDRM4tQrAszZ1dRg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 9:47 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 10:50 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 7:46 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 9:19 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 5:30 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 4:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way. 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you neither see nor apprehend the straight, unbroken pencil in the glass of water. 

Is that your position?  I've asked you several times. My app says you lean that way but I want to know specifically what you have to say about your own pencil illusion that you have posted dozens of times over the years.

The retracted pencil is a bad example because that's how the light is actually falling on your eyes. How does intentionalism handle other deeper optical illusions due to how the brain processes color, for example the coke can that looks red while there is no real red color in the image? What is such an experience "about" ?

The intentionalist says his experience is about a red coke can; that he is representing a red coke can. If he knows it is an illusion, he will say it is a misrepresentation of that coke can.

The indirect realist says he can see only a mental model or sense-datum of a can and it looks red; that the can itself is not visible and that he knows about it only indirectly.

It might seem like word play but there is a critical difference in the number of elements. The indirect realist counts three: the perceiver, the sense data or mental model, and the object. The intentionalist counts only the perceiver and the object.

Thanks for that clarification.

Then I would ask the intentionalist: what's the point of the visual cortex? Roughly 30% of the cortex is used to support the visual system. If we can magically get from object to the perception without processing sense data, then what's the point of those billions of neurons wasting all that metabolic energy?

Nobody is saying that when you behold a ripe strawberry, there isn’t a long story to tell in the language of neuroscience. Science is still uncovering that story.

The intentionalist simply denies that your brain or visual cortex generate any inner sense data for you to observe. You are not looking at a private mental replica of the strawberry. You are aware of the strawberry itself — as represented (or as misrepresented) by the activity of your visual system.

But if it can be misrepresented, and that misrepresentation is what you see, then you cannot be accessing the object directly.

I didn’t say directly, as I don’t want to conflate intentionalism with direct realism. The difference again is in the number of elements. The intentionalist does not represent to himself some internal model or image of the strawberry as in indirect realism. He represents the strawberry to himself. 

Illusions and hallucinations are a matter of accuracy in the representations, not “false mental images.”

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUhwhc23oCKxBVGs55%3D%3DA8jK8GT4tWViCNoLaL3w25Fnjg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2025, 12:57 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 9:47 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 10:50 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 7:46 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 9:19 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 5:30 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 4:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way. 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you neither see nor apprehend the straight, unbroken pencil in the glass of water. 

Is that your position?  I've asked you several times. My app says you lean that way but I want to know specifically what you have to say about your own pencil illusion that you have posted dozens of times over the years.

The retracted pencil is a bad example because that's how the light is actually falling on your eyes. How does intentionalism handle other deeper optical illusions due to how the brain processes color, for example the coke can that looks red while there is no real red color in the image? What is such an experience "about" ?

The intentionalist says his experience is about a red coke can; that he is representing a red coke can. If he knows it is an illusion, he will say it is a misrepresentation of that coke can.

The indirect realist says he can see only a mental model or sense-datum of a can and it looks red; that the can itself is not visible and that he knows about it only indirectly.

It might seem like word play but there is a critical difference in the number of elements. The indirect realist counts three: the perceiver, the sense data or mental model, and the object. The intentionalist counts only the perceiver and the object.

Thanks for that clarification.

Then I would ask the intentionalist: what's the point of the visual cortex? Roughly 30% of the cortex is used to support the visual system. If we can magically get from object to the perception without processing sense data, then what's the point of those billions of neurons wasting all that metabolic energy?

Nobody is saying that when you behold a ripe strawberry, there isn’t a long story to tell in the language of neuroscience. Science is still uncovering that story.

The intentionalist simply denies that your brain or visual cortex generate any inner sense data for you to observe. You are not looking at a private mental replica of the strawberry. You are aware of the strawberry itself — as represented (or as misrepresented) by the activity of your visual system.

But if it can be misrepresented, and that misrepresentation is what you see, then you cannot be accessing the object directly.

I didn’t say directly, as I don’t want to conflate intentionalism with direct realism. The difference again is in the number of elements. The intentionalist does not represent to himself some internal model or image of the strawberry as in indirect realism. He represents the strawberry to himself. 

At best, this is indirect realism in denial, at worst it is magical thinking. You can't delete the step of sensory processing in order to shrink the number of elements in the story, and at the same time, insist that 1. it is not direct realism, and 2. blame inaccurate processing by the [deleted] sensory system for any instances of misrepresentation.

Deleted things can't have any effects. If they're not deleted, you're back to 3 elements in the story just as in indirect realism. And if they are deleted you're back to direct realism.

Jason

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPmsj4MAHXnMAXZjyXvrsGbwQMTOsuJLGcP3-%3DZk8%3DFFyA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 11:28 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Oct 5, 2025, 12:57 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 9:47 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 10:50 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 7:46 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 9:19 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 5:30 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025, 4:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 1:34 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

See involves a chain of causal events (and is entirely abstract), and we can 'see' the pencil in that way. 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you neither see nor apprehend the straight, unbroken pencil in the glass of water. 

Is that your position?  I've asked you several times. My app says you lean that way but I want to know specifically what you have to say about your own pencil illusion that you have posted dozens of times over the years.

The retracted pencil is a bad example because that's how the light is actually falling on your eyes. How does intentionalism handle other deeper optical illusions due to how the brain processes color, for example the coke can that looks red while there is no real red color in the image? What is such an experience "about" ?

The intentionalist says his experience is about a red coke can; that he is representing a red coke can. If he knows it is an illusion, he will say it is a misrepresentation of that coke can.

The indirect realist says he can see only a mental model or sense-datum of a can and it looks red; that the can itself is not visible and that he knows about it only indirectly.

It might seem like word play but there is a critical difference in the number of elements. The indirect realist counts three: the perceiver, the sense data or mental model, and the object. The intentionalist counts only the perceiver and the object.

Thanks for that clarification.

Then I would ask the intentionalist: what's the point of the visual cortex? Roughly 30% of the cortex is used to support the visual system. If we can magically get from object to the perception without processing sense data, then what's the point of those billions of neurons wasting all that metabolic energy?

Nobody is saying that when you behold a ripe strawberry, there isn’t a long story to tell in the language of neuroscience. Science is still uncovering that story.

The intentionalist simply denies that your brain or visual cortex generate any inner sense data for you to observe. You are not looking at a private mental replica of the strawberry. You are aware of the strawberry itself — as represented (or as misrepresented) by the activity of your visual system.

But if it can be misrepresented, and that misrepresentation is what you see, then you cannot be accessing the object directly.

I didn’t say directly, as I don’t want to conflate intentionalism with direct realism. The difference again is in the number of elements. The intentionalist does not represent to himself some internal model or image of the strawberry as in indirect realism. He represents the strawberry to himself. 

At best, this is indirect realism in denial, at worst it is magical thinking. You can't delete the step of sensory processing in order to shrink the number of elements in the story,

Do you think I am an idiot who doesn’t know about the brain and sensory processing? You just have no idea what I am talking about. 

Do you think I pulled intentionalism theory out of my, uh,  “hat” the way you do your theories? 

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUhR1FYOfgH3o1Yv3ax7jZd-F1AmM1cSmFD2o-DzzXpvDw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

Where do indirect realists live? They must live in indirect reality. They cannot see or live in reality, but they’ve heard of it. 🤣

-gts

[Jason Resch]

Okay then please clarify for me: Do we experience the result of sensory processing, or so we experience the object directly?

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPmGVZGNy1XTH9YfZgWNar61TZnrEVRK_UyHYxohgwOCJQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

In intentionalism, you are not aware of your sensory processing or of any image or mental model produced by your sensory processing. You’re also not directly aware of the strawberry in the relational way meant by direct realists. The directness is epistemic, not relational. You are aware of the strawberry as represented. 

Note that the representation of the strawberry is not the object of perception. The strawberry as represented is the object. The former would be indirect realism.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUgFNqgsRpwRecQuYbmoqf6qeSfPrmY0ztTcvqiObaB%2Bpg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

If true, that would make it impossible to explain optical illusions such as this:

https://www.creativebloq.com/news/coca-cola-optical-illusion-still-confusing

If you disagree, can you say how an intentionalist would explain this illusion while denying our awareness of any image produced by sensory processing?

You’re also not directly aware of the strawberry in the relational way meant by direct realists. The directness is epistemic, not relational.

I don't understand the last sentence.

You are aware of the strawberry as represented. 

If you parse out the word "Represented" you get "re- (again)" with "-presented (shown)" in other words "shown again." What is it that is doing the "showing again," under intentionalism?

Note that the representation of the strawberry is not the object of perception. The strawberry as represented is the object. The former would be indirect realism.

How is this new representation produced? What produces it?

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPkoh_VBJYV9KjGic04ChMV5J_DHF1HBJ4Z%2BX64ArYVk-Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

I already wrote to you about that illusion, but evidently you didn’t read or understand it.

If you disagree, can you say how an intentionalist would explain this illusion while denying our awareness of any image produced by sensory processing?

My brain over-generalized on the Coca Cola logo and inferred red where it didn’t exist, but it never created an internal mental image of the can for me to inspect. Why should it? I am already inspecting the external can.

In intentionalism, your perceptual machinery is more analogous to eyeglasses than a camera. You’re not cut off from reality and looking at pictures or videos of it indirectly, and you are also not seeing it directly in the direct/naive sense. You are looking at reality, but wearing glasses that might distort it.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUi2X3o5M%2BheTEKXhdQ4nT1n1PRXrBC_LFsSD38J6w7N2Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

The illusion has nothing to do with memories or expectations regarding coke bottles. You can crop out just the red-looking square and the illusion still works.

but it never created an internal mental image of the can for me to inspect. Why should it? I am already inspecting the external can.

In intentionalism, your perceptual machinery is more analogous to eyeglasses than a camera. You’re not cut off from reality and looking at pictures or videos of it indirectly, and you are also not seeing it directly in the direct/naive sense. You are looking at reality, but wearing glasses that might distort it.

Then what are dreams?

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNP%3DyZqNFTQtO2d%2B8ok-4wTUFB4dUT_Dzii3WApKcTAF33w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

I already explained it above when you raised an objection about the 30% of the brain devoted to visual processing. That processing re-presents the raw visual information to you as a complete strawberry. 

You never see or experience the processing in the background. The strawberry is the object of perception, not any supposed internal sense-datum or mental model. 

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUi2X3o5M%2BheTEKXhdQ4nT1n1PRXrBC_LFsSD38J6w7N2Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2025 at 11:30 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

My brain over-generalized on the Coca Cola logo and inferred red where it didn’t exist,

The illusion has nothing to do with memories or expectations regarding coke bottles. You can crop out just the red-looking square and the illusion still works.

You are mistaken, but that is not important here. What matters is that you are representing a red can that is actually only black and white. Your misrepresentation is not on account of your observance of a faulty image in your mind. No such mental image exists. You’re simply misrepresenting the can.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUhfNMmZrvFrY4QrCzjTDaCKuN2mMLEbpjGLYnR6Qx5JnQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2025 at 11:30 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Oct 5, 2025, 11:41 AM Gordon Swobe

In intentionalism, your perceptual machinery is more analogous to eyeglasses than a camera. You’re not cut off from reality and looking at pictures or videos of it indirectly, and you are also not seeing it directly in the direct/naive sense. You are looking at reality, but wearing glasses that might distort it.

Then what are dreams?

Dream states are intentional states like any other. In dreams, we represent objects to ourselves just as we do when awake, but the representational content is not real. 

Dreams are evidence for intentionalism and representationalism generally as they demonstrate how phenomenal consciousness consists in how objects are represented, not in their existence. 

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

This version is a complete rewrite (revibe?) It is now a tutorial with seven chapters for seven theories.

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/4f49623d-f875-4b97-a30f-3c3ae62022fa

-gts

[e...@disroot.org]

On Sun, 5 Oct 2025, Gordon Swobe wrote:

> This version is a complete rewrite (revibe?) It is now a tutorial with seven chapters for seven theories.
>
> https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/4f49623d-f875-4b97-a30f-3c3ae62022fa

Hello Gordon,

Do you have any similar tests for other areas of philosophy?

Best regards,
Daniel

> -gts
>
> --
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> .
>
>

[Gordon Swobe]

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 3:49 AM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On Sun, 5 Oct 2025, Gordon Swobe wrote:

> This version is a complete rewrite (revibe?) It is now a tutorial with seven chapters for seven theories.
>
> https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/4f49623d-f875-4b97-a30f-3c3ae62022fa

Hello Gordon,

Do you have any similar tests for other areas of philosophy?

I do! This app aims to assess one’s philosophy of mind. It is more time consuming as it makes calls to an LLM on every question. I might try to find a way to make it quicker.

Philosophy of Mind Assessment

https://mind-scape-8b050842.base44.app

These apps are easy to write with a little help from AI, and I always learn something new along with you.

-gts

Best regards,
Daniel


> -gts
>
> --
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> .
>
>

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[e...@disroot.org]

On Mon, 6 Oct 2025, Gordon Swobe wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 3:49 AM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, 5 Oct 2025, Gordon Swobe wrote:
>
> > This version is a complete rewrite (revibe?) It is now a tutorial with seven chapters for seven theories.
> >
> > https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/4f49623d-f875-4b97-a30f-3c3ae62022fa
>
> Hello Gordon,
>
> Do you have any similar tests for other areas of philosophy?
>
>
> I do! This app aims to assess one’s philosophy of mind. It is more time consuming as it makes calls to an LLM on every question. I
> might try to find a way to make it quicker.
>
> Philosophy of Mind Assessment
> https://mind-scape-8b050842.base44.app
>
> These apps are easy to write with a little help from AI, and I always learn something new along with you.

Thank you very much Gordon. Will try!

Best regards,
Daniel

> -gts
>
>
>
>
>
> Best regards,
> Daniel
>
>
> > -gts
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Important Questions" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
> > the-important-que...@googlegroups.com.
> > To view this discussionvisithttps://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPkH05q%2BDw8O7dOvm5kdT4Ps_NLNU%2B%2BfKBrzb7EDtcPqnQ%40mail.gmai
> l.com
> > .
> >
> >
>
> --
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>
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>
>

[e...@disroot.org]

> Do you have any similar tests for other areas of philosophy?
>
> I do! This app aims to assess one’s philosophy of mind. It is more time consuming as it makes calls to an LLM on every question. I
> might try to find a way to make it quicker.
>
> Philosophy of Mind Assessment
> https://mind-scape-8b050842.base44.app
>
> These apps are easy to write with a little help from AI, and I always learn something new along with you.

Sadly this one does not work for me. I choose a basic asumption, then I briefly
see "doing bayesian analysis", and then I get a blank screen that says "Category
Analysis" and nothing more happens. =(

Best regards,
Daniel

[Brent Allsop]

Yes, stating what you believe, and what others believe is quite educational.

It results in constant improvement as ever more consensus is built.

I continue to learn a lot thanks to Gordon's work.

We also have a socratic survey titled: "Are you Qualia Blind" over on Canonizer if you are interested:

https://canonizer.com/topic/592-Are-You-Color-Quality-Blind/1-Agreement?is_tree_open=0

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPk9bD7X4zX40qqkf-LZ6eB_8Fz_iJovxen--2ZBWPKhuw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

I’ve seen this also, and it was due to the high latency of the language model. If you had stayed on the page for a few more seconds, it probably would have finished rendering.

-gts

Best regards,
Daniel

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[e...@disroot.org]

> I’ve seen this also, and it was due to the high latency of the language model. If you had stayed on the page for a few more seconds,
> it probably would have finished rendering.

Ah yes... tried it again and now it was slightly faster. Maybe because the US is
right now eating lunch? ;) Hopefully they will eat until I finish the
quiz! =)

Best regards,
Daniel

> -gts
>
>
> Best regards,
> Daniel
>
> --
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>
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>
>

[e...@disroot.org]

Nope... sadly after a while, I just get a blank screen and no text
materializes. Waiting for more than 2 minutes gets frustrating.

The positive is that based on the questions I did answer I'm a
materialist/physicalist, with some behaviouralist leanings.

This did not come as a surprise to me, and seems to be in line with what I
myself thought I was.

Best regards,
Daniel

[Gordon Swobe]

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 1:01 PM efc via The Important Questions <the-importa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Nope... sadly after a while, I just get a blank screen and no text
materializes. Waiting for more than 2 minutes gets frustrating.

Thanks for letting me know. I’m working on a new version that doesn’t make so many calls to the LLM. 

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

Note that both indirect realism and intentionalism are representational theories of representation. 

The indirect realist claims he is looking at his internal represention, making the strawberry itself invisible.

The intentionalist wants nothing to do with any supposed invisible strawberries. He sees the strawberry as represented.

 -gts

[Gordon Swobe]

I meant “Note that both indirect realism and intentionalism are representational theories of [perception]”

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

Jason, when you objected that intentionalism does not explain why the brain is 30% devoted to visual processing, you were probably thinking of direct realism. Vision is simple on the direct realism view, but the direct realist cannot explain misperceptions without falling back on some kind of process-heavy (mis)representationalism.

The intentionalist says all perceptions are representations, some accurate and some not.

 -gts

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025, 9:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jason, when you objected that intentionalism does not explain why the brain is 30% devoted to visual processing, you were probably thinking of direct realism. Vision is simple on the direct realism view, but the direct realist cannot explain misperceptions without falling back on some kind of process-heavy (mis)representationalism.

The intentionalist says all perceptions are representations, some accurate and some not.

I can agree with the statement that all perceptions are representations. You'll recall in my test 4/20 of my answers fit with intentionalism. Hence my confusion with your statement that the position is not mutually compatible with indirect realism. You're explanations for what they're not compatible all seem to be that it is more like direct realism but with the possibility of having "blurry glasses" between the subject and object of perception.

If this is indeed an accurate description of intentionalism then I find that position inconsistent and refuted for the reasons I've already given. But if there are versions which claim only that all perceptions are representations, that is something I find no issues with.

Jason 

 -gts

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[Brent Allsop]

Thanks for this picture, as a picture is worth a thousand words, and I'm still struggling to understand what intentionalism is or how it could be engineered to work.

The first problem I have is that at least in the indirect realism (representational qualia) theory the strawberry should not have a redness quality.  True, it reflects what we call 'red' light, but that has nothing to do with qualities.  Why don't you give it B's redness quality which is your greenness???  We know there are all the qualities of the rainbow in the brain, yet we 'see' it as only 'grey matter'.  Everything must be false colored in any good theory.

That is why I portray the strawberry in black and white to avoid this terrible confusion most people make in their thinking.

The second problem I have is that the picture for intentionalism is in contradiction with the text.  The text talks about 'representational content' but the picture has no such 'representational content'.  Do you need to render knowledge of a strawberry in the brain or not?  If so, why don't you show that in the brain in the picture?  If not, how would that ever work to have knowledge without that knowledge, itself, being something.

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[Gordon Swobe]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 4:14 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025, 9:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jason, when you objected that intentionalism does not explain why the brain is 30% devoted to visual processing, you were probably thinking of direct realism. Vision is simple on the direct realism view, but the direct realist cannot explain misperceptions without falling back on some kind of process-heavy (mis)representationalism.

The intentionalist says all perceptions are representations, some accurate and some not.

I can agree with the statement that all perceptions are representations. You'll recall in my test 4/20 of my answers fit with intentionalism. Hence my confusion with your statement that the position is not mutually compatible with indirect realism. You're explanations for what they're not compatible all seem to be that it is more like direct realism but with the possibility of having "blurry glasses" between the subject and object of perception. If this is indeed an accurate description of intentionalism then I find that position inconsistent and refuted for the reasons I've already given. 

I don’t understand why you call it inconsistent.

But if there are versions which claim only that all perceptions are representations, that is something I find no issues with.

In all versions of both intentionalism and indirect realism, perceptions are always representations. This similarity probably explains why my app gave you points toward both, but you cannot actually hold both as true.

You need to decide:

Are you looking at your internal representation of the object instead of at the object as represented? If so, indirect realism.  

Are you looking at the object as represented? If so, intentionalism. 

This difference is not merely semantics. It is critical for certain purposes. Frank Jackson’s Knowledge argument illustrates this. If Mary opens the door and sees new internal sense data or an internal model representing a red tomato then we need to explain the apparent non-physical ontology of the model or sense data. 

If she sees the tomato, there is no third element to explain. This also makes a lot more sense. Mary and I don’t believe in invisible tomatoes.

-gts

Jason 

 -gts

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[Gordon Swobe]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 9:36 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 4:14 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025, 9:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jason, when you objected that intentionalism does not explain why the brain is 30% devoted to visual processing, you were probably thinking of direct realism. Vision is simple on the direct realism view, but the direct realist cannot explain misperceptions without falling back on some kind of process-heavy (mis)representationalism.

The intentionalist says all perceptions are representations, some accurate and some not.

I can agree with the statement that all perceptions are representations. You'll recall in my test 4/20 of my answers fit with intentionalism. Hence my confusion with your statement that the position is not mutually compatible with indirect realism. You're explanations for what they're not compatible all seem to be that it is more like direct realism but with the possibility of having "blurry glasses" between the subject and object of perception. If this is indeed an accurate description of intentionalism then I find that position inconsistent and refuted for the reasons I've already given. 

I don’t understand why you call it inconsistent.

But if there are versions which claim only that all perceptions are representations, that is something I find no issues with.

In all versions of both intentionalism and indirect realism, perceptions are always representations. This similarity probably explains why my app gave you points toward both, but you cannot actually hold both as true.

You need to decide:

Are you looking at your internal representation of the object instead of at the object as represented? If so, indirect realism.  

Are you looking at the object as represented? If so, intentionalism. 

This difference is not merely semantics. It is critical for certain purposes. Frank Jackson’s Knowledge argument illustrates this. If Mary opens the door and sees new internal sense data or an internal model representing a red tomato then we need to explain the apparent non-physical ontology of the model or sense data. 

If she sees the tomato, there is no third element to explain. This also makes a lot more sense. Mary and I don’t believe in invisible tomatoes.

A reasonable objection here might be, How can the intentionalist say that Mary actually sees the red tomato if she sees only what he calls the “tomato-as-represented”? 

The intentionalist answers is that this is just how perception works. To perceive anything is to represent that thing.

-gts

[Gordon Swobe]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 8:20 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for this picture, as a picture is worth a thousand words, and I'm still struggling to understand what intentionalism is or how it could be engineered to work.

The first problem I have is that at least in the indirect realism (representational qualia) theory the strawberry should not have a redness quality.  True, it reflects what we call 'red' light, but that has nothing to do with qualities.  Why don't you give it B's redness quality which is your greenness???  We know there are all the qualities of the rainbow in the brain, yet we 'see' it as only 'grey matter'.  Everything must be false colored in any good theory.

That is why I portray the strawberry in black and white to avoid this terrible confusion most people make in their thinking.

You can think of the strawberry in black and white in the picture if it makes more sense to you. I have it red for all three theories because they all see, directly or representationally, a red strawberry. 

The second problem I have is that the picture for intentionalism is in contradiction with the text.  The text talks about 'representational content' but the picture has no such 'representational content'. 

The content of the representation is the strawberry as represented. The strawberry is all you see, which is why there is no separate image for the representation.

You represent the strawberry to yourself, not your representation of it.

Do you need to render knowledge of a strawberry in the brain or not?  If so, why don't you show that in the brain in the picture? 

The brain is the physical mechanism that generates the phenomenal representations. (You do also have conceptions of your representations, also called phenomenal concepts, but that is another subject.)

If not, how would that ever work to have knowledge without that knowledge, itself, being something.

Everything is physical, if that is what you are asking. 

When you look at the moon through your telescope, you do not see your telescope or some intermediate image of the moon inside your telescope. You behold the moon.

In an analogous way, you behold the strawberry through your perceptual machinery, not your brain or some intermediate image of the strawberry inside your brain. 

I like the word “behold” because there is a sense in which the mind actively reaches out and holds the strawberry. 

-gts

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 8:16 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Note that both indirect realism and intentionalism are representational theories of representation. 

The indirect realist claims he is looking at his internal represention, making the strawberry itself invisible.

The intentionalist wants nothing to do with any supposed invisible strawberries. He sees the strawberry as represented.

 -gts

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[Gordon Swobe]

Indirect realism also has a terrible homunculus problem. 

If you are an indirect realist looking at your inner mental model of the strawberry and not at the external strawberry then your inner spectator is also an indirect realist looking at his inner mental model of the strawberry, ad infinitum.

If your inner spectator actually sees the strawberry then you are not an indirect realist, after all. You only thought you were.

-gts

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[Gordon Swobe]

Indirect realism is also called the sense-data theory or the empirical theory of perception. G. E Moore and Bertrand Russell and others popularized it in the early 20th century. These are some of my favorite philosophers, but I think they got this wrong.

They had an understandable motivation: with the success of empirical science, direct (naive) realism became difficult to accept. Now that we know about the physics of light and color, it makes little sense to say that strawberries are actually red on their surfaces.

And so like good empiricists, these philosophers and others popularized the idea that we see only the sense data, not the strawberry itself, and that our brains assemble that data into an internal model or picture of the strawberry. The picture cannot be the strawberry, so the theory goes, on account of science tells us that the real strawberry is not red. 

Indirect realism seems perfectly sensible on the face of it, but if we see only sense-data and not the world, then on what grounds can a realist say the external world even exists? They threw the baby out with the bathwater.

-gts

 

[Jason Resch]

So this is your motivation for preferring intentionalism: you want some way to eliminate Cartesian doubt.

But wanting something to be a certain way isn't an argument for something to be a certain way.

We already know that Cartesian doubt for programs follows as a consequence of Turing universality: computer programs can't know their underlying hardware/reality because they could always be in a VM/emulator.

What does Turing universality mean then for AI/Robot perception and consciousness, when we can mathematically prove that they can't access or know their fundamental reality?

Does indirect realism then apply to AI/robots, but not to humans? It seems to me humans fare no better when it comes to them knowing whether or not they're stuck in a simulation.

Jason

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025, 10:36 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 4:14 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025, 9:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jason, when you objected that intentionalism does not explain why the brain is 30% devoted to visual processing, you were probably thinking of direct realism. Vision is simple on the direct realism view, but the direct realist cannot explain misperceptions without falling back on some kind of process-heavy (mis)representationalism.

The intentionalist says all perceptions are representations, some accurate and some not.

I can agree with the statement that all perceptions are representations. You'll recall in my test 4/20 of my answers fit with intentionalism. Hence my confusion with your statement that the position is not mutually compatible with indirect realism. You're explanations for what they're not compatible all seem to be that it is more like direct realism but with the possibility of having "blurry glasses" between the subject and object of perception. If this is indeed an accurate description of intentionalism then I find that position inconsistent and refuted for the reasons I've already given. 

I don’t understand why you call it inconsistent.

I should have said inconsistent with what we know. For example:

How does indirect realism deal with the color magenta, which we know to be completely fabricated by our visual system (as all extra-spectral colors are).

How does indirect realism deal with the fact that some people (such as yourself) taste soap in cilantro. Which set of people is more correctly experiencing the "real taste"?

And if conscious entities can directly perceive what is real and what is not, then this means either the Church-Turing thesis is false, or functionalism is false. Either is a ground-breaking result in its respective field.

But if there are versions which claim only that all perceptions are representations, that is something I find no issues with.

In all versions of both intentionalism and indirect realism, perceptions are always representations. This similarity probably explains why my app gave you points toward both, but you cannot actually hold both as true.

You need to decide:

Are you looking at your internal representation of the object instead of at the object as represented? If so, indirect realism.  

Are you looking at the object as represented? If so, intentionalism. 

This difference is not merely semantics. It is critical for certain purposes. Frank Jackson’s Knowledge argument illustrates this. If Mary opens the door and sees new internal sense data or an internal model representing a red tomato then we need to explain the apparent non-physical ontology of the model or sense data. 

If she sees the tomato, there is no third element to explain. This also makes a lot more sense. Mary and I don’t believe in invisible tomatoes.

No one does.

Jason 

-gts

Jason 

 -gts

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[Gordon Swobe]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 6:34 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025, 6:49 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Indirect realism is also called the sense-data theory or the empirical theory of perception. G. E Moore and Bertrand Russell and others popularized it in the early 20th century. These are some of my favorite philosophers, but I think they got this wrong.

They had an understandable motivation: with the success of empirical science, direct (naive) realism became difficult to accept. Now that we know about the physics of light and color, it makes little sense to say that strawberries are actually red on their surfaces.

And so like good empiricists, these philosophers and others popularized the idea that we see only the sense data, not the strawberry itself, and that our brains assemble that data into an internal model or picture of the strawberry. The picture cannot be the strawberry, so the theory goes, on account of science tells us that the real strawberry is not red. 

Indirect realism seems perfectly sensible on the face of it, but if we see only sense-data and not the world, then on what grounds can a realist say the external world even exists? They threw the baby out with the bathwater.

So this is your motivation for preferring intentionalism: you want some way to eliminate Cartesian doubt.

That is not what I wrote, but yes indirect realism has roots in the problems Descartes created with his dualistic philosophy.

Indirect realism creates what is called the “veil of perception.” As I have explained, it makes the strawberry and the entire world invisible.

That we cannot see the world should be a red flag to you and any sensible person that something isn’t right with this theory of perception. It is this veil of perception that motivated intentionalism.

But wanting something to be a certain way isn't an argument for something to be a certain way.

We already know that Cartesian doubt for programs follows as a consequence of Turing universality: computer programs can't know their underlying hardware/reality because they could always be in a VM/emulator.

What does Turing universality mean then for AI/Robot perception and consciousness, when we can mathematically prove that they can't access or know their fundamental reality?

Does indirect realism then apply to AI/robots, but not to humans? It seems to me humans fare no better when it comes to them knowing whether or not they're stuck in a simulation.

If we ever create conscious robots with phenomenal consciousness then everything I’ve written here would also apply to them. If the robot has sufficient intelligence, it will listen to me and reject indirect dualism. :)

-gts

Jason

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[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025, 8:24 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 6:34 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025, 6:49 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Indirect realism is also called the sense-data theory or the empirical theory of perception. G. E Moore and Bertrand Russell and others popularized it in the early 20th century. These are some of my favorite philosophers, but I think they got this wrong.

They had an understandable motivation: with the success of empirical science, direct (naive) realism became difficult to accept. Now that we know about the physics of light and color, it makes little sense to say that strawberries are actually red on their surfaces.

And so like good empiricists, these philosophers and others popularized the idea that we see only the sense data, not the strawberry itself, and that our brains assemble that data into an internal model or picture of the strawberry. The picture cannot be the strawberry, so the theory goes, on account of science tells us that the real strawberry is not red. 

Indirect realism seems perfectly sensible on the face of it, but if we see only sense-data and not the world, then on what grounds can a realist say the external world even exists? They threw the baby out with the bathwater.

So this is your motivation for preferring intentionalism: you want some way to eliminate Cartesian doubt.

That is not what I wrote, but yes indirect realism has roots in the problems Descartes created with his dualistic philosophy.

Indirect realism creates what is called the “veil of perception.” As I have explained, it makes the strawberry and the entire world invisible.

That we cannot see the world should be a red flag to you and any sensible person that something isn’t right with this theory of perception. It is this veil of perception that motivated intentionalism.

But wanting something to be a certain way isn't an argument for something to be a certain way.

We already know that Cartesian doubt for programs follows as a consequence of Turing universality: computer programs can't know their underlying hardware/reality because they could always be in a VM/emulator.

What does Turing universality mean then for AI/Robot perception and consciousness, when we can mathematically prove that they can't access or know their fundamental reality?

Does indirect realism then apply to AI/robots, but not to humans? It seems to me humans fare no better when it comes to them knowing whether or not they're stuck in a simulation.

If we ever create conscious robots with phenomenal consciousness then everything I’ve written here would also apply to them. If the robot has sufficient intelligence, it will listen to me and reject indirect dualism. :)

The two aren't compatible.

If there could be a conscious robot then we could run that conscious robot in a VM/VR. But then if it could tell the difference between virtual reality and real reality by perceiving the two differently, then the programs would diverge in behavior, and hence violate the Church-Turing thesis (you would have a program that could tell what hardware/substrate it was running on).

Jason 

-gts

Jason

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[Gordon Swobe]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 6:58 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025, 10:36 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 4:14 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025, 9:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jason, when you objected that intentionalism does not explain why the brain is 30% devoted to visual processing, you were probably thinking of direct realism. Vision is simple on the direct realism view, but the direct realist cannot explain misperceptions without falling back on some kind of process-heavy (mis)representationalism.

The intentionalist says all perceptions are representations, some accurate and some not.

I can agree with the statement that all perceptions are representations. You'll recall in my test 4/20 of my answers fit with intentionalism. Hence my confusion with your statement that the position is not mutually compatible with indirect realism. You're explanations for what they're not compatible all seem to be that it is more like direct realism but with the possibility of having "blurry glasses" between the subject and object of perception. If this is indeed an accurate description of intentionalism then I find that position inconsistent and refuted for the reasons I've already given. 

I don’t understand why you call it inconsistent.

I should have said inconsistent with what we know. For example:

How does indirect realism deal with the color magenta, which we know to be completely fabricated by our visual system (as all extra-spectral colors are).

I’m advising against indirect realism. I think you want to know about intentionalism.

You represent some object as magenta, but magenta is not the object. It is not a thing, nor is any color. Magenta is just how your brain represents that combination of wavelengths reflecting off the flower. 

How does indirect realism deal with the fact that some people (such as yourself) taste soap in cilantro. Which set of people is more correctly experiencing the "real taste"?

There is no “real taste.” Flavors, like colors, are ways that your particular brain represents objects. The flavor of cilantro seems highly sensitive to small neurological differences between individuals, but so what.

And if conscious entities can directly perceive what is real and what is not, then this means either the Church-Turing thesis is false, or functionalism is false. Either is a ground-breaking result in its respective field.

I try not to use that word “directly” in this discussion as it suggests direct realism, which is nothing like intentionalism.

But if there are versions which claim only that all perceptions are representations, that is something I find no issues with.

In all versions of both intentionalism and indirect realism, perceptions are always representations. This similarity probably explains why my app gave you points toward both, but you cannot actually hold both as true.

You need to decide:

Are you looking at your internal representation of the object instead of at the object as represented? If so, indirect realism.  

Are you looking at the object as represented? If so, intentionalism. 

This difference is not merely semantics. It is critical for certain purposes. Frank Jackson’s Knowledge argument illustrates this. If Mary opens the door and sees new internal sense data or an internal model representing a red tomato then we need to explain the apparent non-physical ontology of the model or sense data. 

If she sees the tomato, there is no third element to explain. This also makes a lot more sense. Mary and I don’t believe in invisible tomatoes.

No one does.

You believe in invisible tomatoes if you believe Mary sees only an internal mental picture or sense-datum of the external tomato. That is indirect realism.

-gts

Jason 

-gts

Jason 

 -gts

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[Gordon Swobe]

Again, Jason, you need to decide:

Are you looking at your internal representation of the object instead of at the object as represented? If so, indirect realism.  

Are you looking at the object as represented? If so, intentionalism. 

Perception is always representation, but consider that if you can see only representations of objects and not the objects they represent, then you need another representation to represent that representation, and that one and that one and that one in an infinite regress.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUgy0Su%3DjNy3jyFsdYP8YSyO3%2BuVRpybNji2ZXJEe6isWw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025, 9:43 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 6:58 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025, 10:36 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 4:14 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025, 9:53 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jason, when you objected that intentionalism does not explain why the brain is 30% devoted to visual processing, you were probably thinking of direct realism. Vision is simple on the direct realism view, but the direct realist cannot explain misperceptions without falling back on some kind of process-heavy (mis)representationalism.

The intentionalist says all perceptions are representations, some accurate and some not.

I can agree with the statement that all perceptions are representations. You'll recall in my test 4/20 of my answers fit with intentionalism. Hence my confusion with your statement that the position is not mutually compatible with indirect realism. You're explanations for what they're not compatible all seem to be that it is more like direct realism but with the possibility of having "blurry glasses" between the subject and object of perception. If this is indeed an accurate description of intentionalism then I find that position inconsistent and refuted for the reasons I've already given. 

I don’t understand why you call it inconsistent.

I should have said inconsistent with what we know. For example:

How does indirect realism deal with the color magenta, which we know to be completely fabricated by our visual system (as all extra-spectral colors are).

I’m advising against indirect realism. I think you want to know about intentionalism.

Oops I meant to write intentionalism above.

You represent some object as magenta, but magenta is not the object. It is not a thing, nor is any color. Magenta is just how your brain represents that combination of wavelengths reflecting off the flower. 

So according to intentionalism, we experience a representation rather than object itself. I have no problem with saying that.

But then how is this any different from the claim of indirect realism that we experience a representation the brain creates from sensory information obtained from the object?

How is information about the object getting into the brain to create a representation, if not through the senses?

How does indirect realism deal with the fact that some people (such as yourself) taste soap in cilantro. Which set of people is more correctly experiencing the "real taste"?

There is no “real taste.” Flavors, like colors, are ways that your particular brain represents objects. The flavor of cilantro seems highly sensitive to small neurological differences between individuals, but so what.

Then this representation is a "third thing" between the object and the perceiver. You are just relabeling "sensory data" as a "representation". It's the same theory.

And if conscious entities can directly perceive what is real and what is not, then this means either the Church-Turing thesis is false, or functionalism is false. Either is a ground-breaking result in its respective field.

I try not to use that word “directly” in this discussion as it suggests direct realism, which is nothing like intentionalism.

But if there are versions which claim only that all perceptions are representations, that is something I find no issues with.

In all versions of both intentionalism and indirect realism, perceptions are always representations. This similarity probably explains why my app gave you points toward both, but you cannot actually hold both as true.

You need to decide:

Are you looking at your internal representation of the object instead of at the object as represented? If so, indirect realism.  

Are you looking at the object as represented? If so, intentionalism. 

This difference is not merely semantics. It is critical for certain purposes. Frank Jackson’s Knowledge argument illustrates this. If Mary opens the door and sees new internal sense data or an internal model representing a red tomato then we need to explain the apparent non-physical ontology of the model or sense data. 

If she sees the tomato, there is no third element to explain. This also makes a lot more sense. Mary and I don’t believe in invisible tomatoes.

No one does.

You believe in invisible tomatoes if you believe Mary sees only an internal mental picture or sense-datum of the external tomato. That is indirect realism.

Then you believe it too, since you say we only see representations, never the object itself directly. Invisible tomatoes for everyone.

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPkCpFkbnQ-vF-Qk7tCNdERadzKhd7LOtb6dKQR0JePs8w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025, 10:14 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Again, Jason, you need to decide:

Are you looking at your internal representation of the object instead of at the object as represented? If so, indirect realism.  

Are you looking at the object as represented? If so, intentionalism. 

Perception is always representation, but consider that if you can see only representations of objects and not the objects they represent, then you need another representation to represent that representation, and that one and that one and that one in an infinite regress.

No infinite regress is needed. The brain receives information from senses, and creates a picture of the outside world for itself.

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNP%3DCD2GWUHQa3MzD95Xd8d4GWvo5WhZpnHdJ5d-6PsbZyQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

You’re still missing the point. I reposted this and am re-re-posting it:

Again, Jason, you need to decide:

Are you looking at your internal representation of the object instead of at the object as represented? If so, indirect realism.  

Are you looking at the object as represented? If so, intentionalism. 

Perception is always representation, but consider that if you can see only representations of objects and not the objects they represent, then you need another representation to represent that representation, and that one and that one and that one in an infinite regress.

The infinite regress is another red flag that direct realism is wrong.

Basically, as I have it, indirect realism was an over-reaction to the shocking scientific realization, after tens or hundreds of thousands of years, that our natural, intuitive direct/naive realism was, well, naive. 

It is a little more complicated than our ancestors thought, but their impulse was correct. 

Of course we represent the external world and not merely our internal pictures of it. Of course we do. That is why we have these five senses.

-gts

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[Jason Resch]

I fail to see the difference. Am I looking at a a yellow representation of a banana, or a banana as represented by yellow? Is this the line you are asking that we draw?

Jason 

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[Gordon Swobe]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 7:02 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I fail to see the difference. Am I looking at a a yellow representation of a banana, or a banana as represented by yellow? Is this the line you are asking that we draw?

I am not personally asking you to draw any lines. I am trying to help you understand intentionalism in the philosophy of perception. If you want to learn then you need to pay attention.

 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you are looking at your inner representation or sense-datum of a yellow banana. It is as though you are looking at a photo of a banana, and the banana itself is invisible. In fact, the entire world is invisible to all five of your senses. You see only your mental pictures of the world. Is that your position?

If you agree that invisible bananas are preposterous and that intentionalism makes more sense, you will say that you are looking at the banana as represented. You are not looking at any internal mental photo. You’re representing the banana as yellow and as external to you, which it is.

You represent the banana as external to you and as having the surface reflectance property called yellow. Your representation is accurate, which does not mean you see it directly, but which does mean that see it as clearly as if you were seeing it directly.

If the banana is actually green then you are still representing the banana, but you are MISrepresenting it as yellow.

If there is no banana then you are still representing a banana as yellow, but you are dreaming or hallucinating. 

No matter whether your representation is accurate or a misrepresentation, you do not see any internal representation. You see the banana as you have represented it — as yellow and external to you. Of course.

Indirect realism is like the defunct Cartesian theater. There is no theater in your brain, but indirect realists never got the memo.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUgFauUqwk7Q9ZKR8Y6%3Dkc0nWHpAodFSq1qDn5%3DgnOPojg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 10:18 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 7:02 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I fail to see the difference. Am I looking at a a yellow representation of a banana, or a banana as represented by yellow? Is this the line you are asking that we draw?

I am not personally asking you to draw any lines. I am trying to help you understand intentionalism in the philosophy of perception. If you want to learn then you need to pay attention.

 

If you are an indirect realist then you must say you are looking at your inner representation or sense-datum of a yellow banana. It is as though you are looking at a photo of a banana, and the banana itself is invisible. In fact, the entire world is invisible to all five of your senses. You see only your mental pictures of the world. Is that your position?

Isn't this just the standard position that cognitive science has well established? The skull, after all, isn't transparent to visible light. How else could your brain see what is outside it then, but using sensory data to construct an image of what is out there?

If you agree that invisible bananas are preposterous and that intentionalism makes more sense,

This is an absurd contortion of language. I am surprised you don't see it as such.

you will say that you are looking at the banana as represented. You are not looking at any internal mental photo. You’re representing the banana as yellow and as external to you, which it is.

You represent the banana as external to you and as having the surface reflectance property called yellow. Your representation is accurate, which does not mean you see it directly, but which does mean that see it as clearly as if you were seeing it directly.

Again this runs counter to everything in science -- and not even new science. Even in Galileo's time, be understood that colors were inventions of our perceptual system, and not real properties of light rays.

If the banana is actually green then you are still representing the banana, but you are MISrepresenting it as yellow.

If there is no banana then you are still representing a banana as yellow, but you are dreaming or hallucinating. 

No matter whether your representation is accurate or a misrepresentation, you do not see any internal representation. You see the banana as you have represented it — as yellow and external to you. Of course.

Indirect realism is like the defunct Cartesian theater. There is no theater in your brain, but indirect realists never got the memo.

I don't see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theaters or homunculi. I think these are made up flaws you use to justify a preference for a theory which either sounds exactly the same as the one you dislike, or when pressed, describe it the theory you like in a way that runs counter to well-established science regarding how the brain works.

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPkK8Fen4LsHnLHinGFvNZp3UP3LzqUdnvTO86X79UDrzw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

> I don’t see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theater…

If you think you are looking at your internal representation then you are imagining you have eyes inside your head looking at that representation as if were displayed on a movie screen.

This is not complicated. 

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUhQRDihaLNW%2BkDgnVXbE_vTDWQRMBpkWipNboWg_7Zerw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 10:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don’t see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theater…

If you think you are looking at your internal representation then you are imagining you have eyes inside your head looking at that representation as if were displayed on a movie screen.

This is not complicated. 

What's complicated is why you think this same critique doesn't equally apply to intentionalism.

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPnyBj2pqXtG64NzOJ%3DkL34tG0Rq-k7F%3D2T-zWiwpbyJXw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Brent Allsop]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 1:12 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 8:20 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for this picture, as a picture is worth a thousand words, and I'm still struggling to understand what intentionalism is or how it could be engineered to work.

The first problem I have is that at least in the indirect realism (representational qualia) theory the strawberry should not have a redness quality.  True, it reflects what we call 'red' light, but that has nothing to do with qualities.  Why don't you give it B's redness quality which is your greenness???  We know there are all the qualities of the rainbow in the brain, yet we 'see' it as only 'grey matter'.  Everything must be false colored in any good theory.

That is why I portray the strawberry in black and white to avoid this terrible confusion most people make in their thinking.

You can think of the strawberry in black and white in the picture if it makes more sense to you. I have it red for all three theories because they all see, directly or representationally, a red strawberry.

I disagree, they do not.  People that suffer from achromatopsia see the strawberry as having your greyness quality, and there are gazilions of other variations where the strawberry is not represented as your redness, especially including where someone has specifically re-engineered themselves (with colored glasses?) to represent the strawberry with your greenness quality.  

 

The second problem I have is that the picture for intentionalism is in contradiction with the text.  The text talks about 'representational content' but the picture has no such 'representational content'. 

The content of the representation is the strawberry as represented. The strawberry is all you see, which is why there is no separate image for the representation.

You represent the strawberry to yourself, not your representation of it.

This is simply due to the fact that evolution has engineered our visual knowledge to represent the redness quality of the strawberry as if the quality was the quality of the strawberry, itself.  There is no reason for us to have the more complex model where there is also knowledge of our knowledge (with the redness quality of the model in our head, in addition to our knowledge of the strawberry (in black and white).  But if we are to understand and theorize about consciousness, we must think of this naive realism model evolution has engineered us as having as being wholly inadequate for engineering purposes.

It's the same way our visual knowledge is engineered to represent a geocentric solar system.  It very literally seems like a flat sun, pasted on the sky, is going around us.  But of course, our intellect knows this is completely false, and we cognitively think of it in a very different way from what it seems.

Oh, the cartesian theater argument is quite an old argument put forward by old friends of mine like Marvin Minskey (may he rest in peace) and many others before him.  But, again, just because our knowledge of our spirit is represented as if we were perceiving the redness quality of our knowledge of the strawberry, doesn't mean that is physically the case.  It's all just a 3D model of ourselves in our 3d model of the world, subjectively bound.   There is no perception going on, just direct apprehension of all the qualities into one unified experience for the brain, not any piece of knowledge in the brain.  You can imagine the same kind of knowledge of characters in a computer game system.  Just because it seems like  things are happening to them, doesn't mean they really are.  It is all just represented the way it is.

When we have out of body experiences, it is our knowledge of our spirit, leaving our knowledge of our head, all in our brain.  So, in my opinion, while there are models of all this, which is everything we know, there is no infinite loop homunculus perceiving our knowledge in an infinite loop.

 

[Gordon Swobe]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:31 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 10:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don’t see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theater…

If you think you are looking at your internal representation then you are imagining you have eyes inside your head looking at that representation as if were displayed on a movie screen.

This is not complicated. 

What's complicated is why you think this same critique doesn't equally apply to intentionalism.

In intentionalism, you don’t see any supposed internal image or representation of the banana in any imagined internal Cartesian theater. You have no eyes in your brain. You see the banana itself as represented.  

Your brain represents it as a yellow banana out there on the table. That is what you see and that is what it is. 

This is no small task for your brain, which is why so much of your brain is dedicated to visual processing and why I like to say that you behold the banana. Perception is not passive. 

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUiUK%2BwxbHQc3vDB5KB655-fpjt%2BMdohWkTwTBVbaYqapQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 3:14 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:31 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 10:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don’t see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theater…

If you think you are looking at your internal representation then you are imagining you have eyes inside your head looking at that representation as if were displayed on a movie screen.

This is not complicated. 

What's complicated is why you think this same critique doesn't equally apply to intentionalism.

In intentionalism, you don’t see any supposed internal image or representation of the banana in any imagined internal Cartesian theater. You have no eyes in your brain. You see the banana itself as represented.  

This still feels like doublespeak to me:

"It's represented but it's not a representation." "It's not direct but you see it as it is, out there."

Your brain represents it as a yellow banana out there on the table. That is what you see and that is what it is. 

This is no small task for your brain, which is why so much of your brain is dedicated to visual processing and why I like to say that you behold the banana. Perception is not passive. 

I agree perception is not passive. Would you agree it is the brain that is that is doing the activity required for perception?

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNP%3DgPYBKOqoA88prNaiikVG0qF-sAfhxHOjH%3DnxzPRTdTg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 11:07 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 1:12 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 8:20 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for this picture, as a picture is worth a thousand words, and I'm still struggling to understand what intentionalism is or how it could be engineered to work.

The first problem I have is that at least in the indirect realism (representational qualia) theory the strawberry should not have a redness quality.  True, it reflects what we call 'red' light, but that has nothing to do with qualities.  Why don't you give it B's redness quality which is your greenness???  We know there are all the qualities of the rainbow in the brain, yet we 'see' it as only 'grey matter'.  Everything must be false colored in any good theory.

That is why I portray the strawberry in black and white to avoid this terrible confusion most people make in their thinking.

You can think of the strawberry in black and white in the picture if it makes more sense to you. I have it red for all three theories because they all see, directly or representationally, a red strawberry.

I disagree, they do not. 

Excuse me, Brent, but this is my diagram, not yours, and all three of them are having the same exact experience of seeing a red strawberry. They are perfectly healthy with normal vision.

Only their theories of perception differ. Here it is again for your edification.

-gts

 

The second problem I have is that the picture for intentionalism is in contradiction with the text.  The text talks about 'representational content' but the picture has no such 'representational content'. 

The content of the representation is the strawberry as represented. The strawberry is all you see, which is why there is no separate image for the representation.

You represent the strawberry to yourself, not your representation of it.

This is simply due to the fact that evolution has engineered our visual knowledge to represent the redness quality of the strawberry as if the quality was the quality of the strawberry, itself.  There is no reason for us to have the more complex model where there is also knowledge of our knowledge (with the redness quality of the model in our head, in addition to our knowledge of the strawberry (in black and white).  But if we are to understand and theorize about consciousness, we must think of this naive realism model evolution has engineered us as having as being wholly inadequate for engineering purposes.

It's the same way our visual knowledge is engineered to represent a geocentric solar system.  It very literally seems like a flat sun, pasted on the sky, is going around us.  But of course, our intellect knows this is completely false, and we cognitively think of it in a very different way from what it seems.

Oh, the cartesian theater argument is quite an old argument put forward by old friends of mine like Marvin Minskey (may he rest in peace) and many others before him.  But, again, just because our knowledge of our spirit is represented as if we were perceiving the redness quality of our knowledge of the strawberry, doesn't mean that is physically the case.  It's all just a 3D model of ourselves in our 3d model of the world, subjectively bound.   There is no perception going on, just direct apprehension of all the qualities into one unified experience for the brain, not any piece of knowledge in the brain.  You can imagine the same kind of knowledge of characters in a computer game system.  Just because it seems like  things are happening to them, doesn't mean they really are.  It is all just represented the way it is.

When we have out of body experiences, it is our knowledge of our spirit, leaving our knowledge of our head, all in our brain.  So, in my opinion, while there are models of all this, which is everything we know, there is no infinite loop homunculus perceiving our knowledge in an infinite loop.

 

--

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[Brent Allsop]

Then would you agree that when someone looks at a brain, and sees 'grey matter'  they are perceiving it "as it is"?

Would you also agree that this view is blinding them to the fact that that stuff that only reflects gray light contains all the qualities of the rainbow and more?

Would you agree that this view is a primary reason people don't yet know the true color quality of things?

And would you agree that this blindness to true qualities is the only reason people think there is a 'hard problem' or an 'explanatory gap'?

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPmd0%3DNShLUxWZDU%2Bjc06-hUA%2Brjgazec5ur06afhcxwSg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 1:25 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 3:14 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:31 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 10:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don’t see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theater…

If you think you are looking at your internal representation then you are imagining you have eyes inside your head looking at that representation as if were displayed on a movie screen.

This is not complicated. 

What's complicated is why you think this same critique doesn't equally apply to intentionalism.

In intentionalism, you don’t see any supposed internal image or representation of the banana in any imagined internal Cartesian theater. You have no eyes in your brain. You see the banana itself as represented.  

This still feels like doublespeak to me:

"It's represented but it's not a representation." "It's not direct but you see it as it is, out there."

Forget that the caveman intuition of naive direct realism ever existed.  As moderns, we know we have brains that process the visual inputs before they register as conscious experience. 

The indirect realist claims this process means we are conscious of internal representations of the external world. 

The intentionalist says nonsense. There is no inner image and the brain has no internal eyes to see any such image in any supposed Cartesian theater. 

The brain processes the inputs and 

 represents them represents them to consciousness with no intermediate representations. One representation, not two.

If we must think in terms of an inner theater then you are not observing the stage or movie screen. You are looking directly into the lens of the movie projector and your conscious experience is the screen.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUi8ra9pJ17QQFDJuswbfZq0QWXPAvj6CtGaK2peEXSMkg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gordon Swobe]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 1:25 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree perception is not passive. Would you agree it is the brain that is that is doing the activity required for perception?

Of course, though there is a bit of processing even before the brain. The eyes are actually an extensIon of the brain proper.

The key point I’m trying to make here is that your visual system processes the raw data from the external world and represents it to phenomenal consciousness. That is the only representation. There are no intermediate representations.

Because there is only one representation (your conscious experience), it makes no sense to say that you see your internal representations.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUi8ra9pJ17QQFDJuswbfZq0QWXPAvj6CtGaK2peEXSMkg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Thu, Oct 9, 2025, 9:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 1:25 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 3:14 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:31 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 10:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don’t see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theater…

If you think you are looking at your internal representation then you are imagining you have eyes inside your head looking at that representation as if were displayed on a movie screen.

This is not complicated. 

What's complicated is why you think this same critique doesn't equally apply to intentionalism.

In intentionalism, you don’t see any supposed internal image or representation of the banana in any imagined internal Cartesian theater. You have no eyes in your brain. You see the banana itself as represented.  

This still feels like doublespeak to me:

"It's represented but it's not a representation." "It's not direct but you see it as it is, out there."

Forget that the caveman intuition of naive direct realism ever existed.  As moderns, we know we have brains that process the visual inputs before they register as conscious experience. 

The indirect realist claims this process means we are conscious of internal representations of the external world. 

The intentionalist says nonsense. There is no inner image and the brain has no internal eyes to see any such image in any supposed Cartesian theater. 

The brain processes the inputs and 

 represents them represents them to consciousness with no intermediate representations. One representation, not two.

If we must think in terms of an inner theater then you are not observing the stage or movie screen. You are looking directly into the lens of the movie projector and your conscious experience is the screen.

This would be more believable if not for the fact that we can dream. With what eyes do we see the objects of our dreams?

Jason 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CAJvaNPmUdGoR_2FW9SAW2%2BhZ-yQ9D-VU32eqrXFNXmddifmBqQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Brent Allsop]

On Thu, Oct 9, 2025, 9:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 1:25 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 3:14 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:31 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 10:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don’t see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theater…

If you think you are looking at your internal representation then you are imagining you have eyes inside your head looking at that representation as if were displayed on a movie screen.

This is not complicated. 

What's complicated is why you think this same critique doesn't equally apply to intentionalism.

In intentionalism, you don’t see any supposed internal image or representation of the banana in any imagined internal Cartesian theater. You have no eyes in your brain. You see the banana itself as represented.  

This still feels like doublespeak to me:

"It's represented but it's not a representation." "It's not direct but you see it as it is, out there."

Forget that the caveman intuition of naive direct realism ever existed.  As moderns, we know we have brains that process the visual inputs before they register as conscious experience. 

The indirect realist claims this process means we are conscious of internal representations of the external world. 

The intentionalist says nonsense. There is no inner image and the brain has no internal eyes to see any such image in any supposed Cartesian theater. 

There is an inner image or model, but there are no causal detectors like eyes, since we directly apprehend the knowledge as part of a computation process. Being aware of all of it at the same time is the computation.

 

[Gordon Swobe]

The question is whether you see those supposed inner images. If you think you are aware of your inner images or models and not the world itself then you are an indirect realist. Your inner observer of those models must also be an indirect realist, so he is also looking at only at his internal model of the internal model. That observer must also have an internal observer of his internal model, and so on.

If you think you aware of the world itself, and you are not a direct/naive realist, then you’re probably an intentionalist. 

-gts

 

--
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[Gordon Swobe]

On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 8:32 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 9, 2025, 9:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 1:25 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 3:14 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:31 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 10:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don’t see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theater…

If you think you are looking at your internal representation then you are imagining you have eyes inside your head looking at that representation as if were displayed on a movie screen.

This is not complicated. 

What's complicated is why you think this same critique doesn't equally apply to intentionalism.

In intentionalism, you don’t see any supposed internal image or representation of the banana in any imagined internal Cartesian theater. You have no eyes in your brain. You see the banana itself as represented.  

This still feels like doublespeak to me:

"It's represented but it's not a representation." "It's not direct but you see it as it is, out there."

Forget that the caveman intuition of naive direct realism ever existed.  As moderns, we know we have brains that process the visual inputs before they register as conscious experience. 

The indirect realist claims this process means we are conscious of internal representations of the external world. 

The intentionalist says nonsense. There is no inner image and the brain has no internal eyes to see any such image in any supposed Cartesian theater. 

The brain processes the inputs and 

 represents them represents them to consciousness with no intermediate representations. One representation, not two.

If we must think in terms of an inner theater then you are not observing the stage or movie screen. You are looking directly into the lens of the movie projector and your conscious experience is the screen.

This would be more believable if not for the fact that we can dream. With what eyes do we see the objects of our dreams?

You’ve already asked about dreams and I have explained dreams at least twice here in the last week.

In dreams, you are representing objects to phenomenal consciousness just as in waking life. But similar to illusions, they are misrepresentations.

Your dreams are not projected onto some inner movie screen for to watch.

-gts

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUjhGYM5m%3D3bvuyYSoPkjqEJKgXSBEPWFyEuFXABape5eA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jason Resch]

On Thu, Oct 9, 2025, 12:29 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 8:32 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 9, 2025, 9:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 1:25 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 3:14 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 9:31 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 10:55 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don’t see that indirect realism leads to Cartesian theater…

If you think you are looking at your internal representation then you are imagining you have eyes inside your head looking at that representation as if were displayed on a movie screen.

This is not complicated. 

What's complicated is why you think this same critique doesn't equally apply to intentionalism.

In intentionalism, you don’t see any supposed internal image or representation of the banana in any imagined internal Cartesian theater. You have no eyes in your brain. You see the banana itself as represented.  

This still feels like doublespeak to me:

"It's represented but it's not a representation." "It's not direct but you see it as it is, out there."

Forget that the caveman intuition of naive direct realism ever existed.  As moderns, we know we have brains that process the visual inputs before they register as conscious experience. 

The indirect realist claims this process means we are conscious of internal representations of the external world. 

The intentionalist says nonsense. There is no inner image and the brain has no internal eyes to see any such image in any supposed Cartesian theater. 

The brain processes the inputs and 

 represents them represents them to consciousness with no intermediate representations. One representation, not two.

If we must think in terms of an inner theater then you are not observing the stage or movie screen. You are looking directly into the lens of the movie projector and your conscious experience is the screen.

This would be more believable if not for the fact that we can dream. With what eyes do we see the objects of our dreams?

You’ve already asked about dreams and I have explained dreams at least twice here in the last week.

In dreams, you are representing objects to phenomenal consciousness just as in waking life. But similar to illusions, they are misrepresentations.

This is just as I described indirect realism: the brain constructs an image for itself to see.

You don't need eyes inside your head, or infinite regress, or a homunculus for this to work. Being something capable of generating and having a visual experiences is simply part of the architecture and functionality of our brains.

Your dreams are not projected onto some inner movie screen for to watch.

None of us have suggested this is how it works.

Jason 

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