Direct Experience of Reality

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

There’s a lot of philosophy that concerns itself with what we can Know. Not just know, but somehow Know. And a significant proportion of it concludes that we can’t actually Know about external objects - we perceive things only indirectly, the objects-in-themselves are something else entirely to our perceptions and conceptions of them. We have only sense-data that we try to assemble into a model of the world, but the noumena, the Objects-in-themselves, are forever unknown, only indirectly experienced.

But what would direct experience look like? What are we missing, that someone who could Know the things-in-themselves would have? What we have is what knowledge is. When people talk of indirect experience, there is the tendency to think of seeing shadows against the curtain implying something outside - but this is a very specific example. Visual appearance is mediated by light, and light needn’t take a direct path from source to the eye… but what is it to indirectly smell something, for example? To indirectly feel cold?

Dreams are often pointed to as evidence that we live our lives inside our heads… but dreams are distinguishable from reality, as a total experience. We talk of things having a dream-like quality, or pinching ourselves to see if we’re dreaming. Dreams are absorbing only for as long as you don’t ask yourself whether you’re having a dream, and you usually do so after things get disorientating for a while. If you don’t, you wake up in a sweat (or laughing, or turned on, or troubled, etc) and say “I’ve just had the most vivid dream”…

A lot of trouble comes from the word “real”. When we ask ourselves (non-philosophically) if something is real, it’s in opposition to something else - illusion, fairy tale, optical trickery, artifice. There’s a real and an unreal, and we are wondering whether it is the former. Philosophers, asking “what is real”, can be tempted to forget the former option and conclude that “real” is impossible to know, so everything may/could/must be not-real… while that’s not what the question is. It’s a complex word, though, and highly context-sensitive,so to avoid a five-page digression in the OP I’ll leave it there.

In short - we have direct experience of the world. Not because of higher metaphysical reason, or some divine/Platonic apperception of Things-As-They-Are, but because what we have is what direct experience is. It doesn’t get more direct than life, in the world.

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perhaps direct experience is something of an oxymoron. experience requires an experiencer, and an experiencer necessarily has certain filters between it and reality. what we have, as you point out, is kinda as direct as it gets.

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If you could go down to the level of an individual atom you would see that the objects around us we perceive as solid are actually 99.999+% empty space. We sense things not as they are but how they are in accordance to what is useful to us. Or we try to. We are incapable of perceiving the smallest things, the largest things, the slowest things, the fastest things. In fact this is an extreme understatement we only perceive a tiny range of distances and speeds in the area of the world that is relevant to our survival. Or the world that is relevant to the survival of a human being 10,000 years ago, as cultural changes have started occurring very quickly and our genes have not kept up. We’ve developed many new threats to each other in our culture but we certainly haven’t genetically evolved to defend ourselves from them. Not in terms of evolving nuclear resistant body armour, anyway.

Most of our perceptions are produced entirely by our brains with no new input from our sensory organs. When you use your vision most of the image is generated from prestored neurological information, very little of it comes from the information the brain receives from the optic nerve after light reaches the eyes. If we weren’t like that then we wouldn’t be able to experience a smooth stream of images. Constructing a mental image purely from information received from the optic nerve is much more complex for the brain than just using the optic nerve information as a guide and constructing most of the image from preformed information. If the brain only ever produced mental images purely from the info it gets from the optic nerve you would get delays between images. Tasks like hitting a tennis ball or avoiding a car crash while driving would become impossible. The situation is the same for the other senses, more or less.

Usually the brain produces remarkably accurate images considering most of the content is produced from its internally held information. But sometimes it gets it wrong. Sometimes the brain will decide there is something in the visual or auditory field which there isn’t, so it produces a sensory experience that is particularly different from reality. This is called a hallucination.

The area of perception that I am particularly interested in is the perception of morality. I think I am the human being who perceives this area more accurately than anyone else. See my Sexocracy thread. I would appreciate it if you would contribute to my thread in exchange for this contribution to yours. It would be nice to have someone who knows the difference between charity and loans and doesn’t believe there should be mass forced birth control in Africa.

4

In our minds the relationship literally is between objects and informations derived of them or made up in the imagination [neurons emit signals which contain info which the mind reads]. The latter is not relevant unless it pertains to the world ~ except in artistic and poetic terms.

We can only know those informations, we cannot know information about the world aside from that which derives from objects in the brain [chemicals and electrical signals].

Subjectivity is perceptual or in the imagination ~ at least the conscious epicentre of the mind that considers and may change informations. Perception relates to info from those two sources, directly from objects [signals] or thought [which also relates to objects]. Both may be falsified subjectively if the informations don’t correlate properly, but I don’t think that means they cannot ~ otherwise there would be no knowledge about the world and that clearly isn’t the case.

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In a sense the only thing we know is REAL is experience. These days, I think, when people mull over something like ‘indirect experience’ they get an image in their minds of Ding an Sich ‘out there’ being perceived through a medium - usually air - being filtered through the senses and somehow reconstructed and constructed inside the brain.

But where did we get this model. Through experience. Every portion of it is derived empirically - some perhaps falsely hallucinated.

If this experiencing that led to this model was not REAL, then the model is not real, being derived from something not real.

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If somebody states that the thing-in-and-of-itself exists, and that we can’t see it, that is firstly self contradictory, because they say it’s unknowable, then also say it exists, or that they know it exists. This also implies that we are separate from reality. This is crap. We aren’t separate from reality. Perspectives are real. They don’t need to be literal or direct before they can be real. We can be both inaccurate and real.

You seem to understand this, in your own way, but many don’t, for some reason.

7

Being seperate from reality is the only way reality exists (if you believe in reality). If it is not observed by intelligence it cannot exist. You don’t want to look at something and be something at the same time. There is no point to it. A rock is a rock but in order for it to be real, you would have to be the rock.

Respectfully,

tminus

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Sounds like someone is getting tired of all the solipsistic hubbub.

It is true that what we identify as “the real” or “reality” is always a deduction of the mind. But due to that, a common fallacious conclusion is drawn to claim that because it is merely deduced, it isn’t real, but merely “in the mind”. Such a fallacy is largely founded on the idea that any deduction must be not only fallible, but in fact, false. And that such a notion is supportable by the number of times a person has been found to be or tricked into being in error. If he can be tricked, then he must not have any means to know that he isn’t being tricked at any one moment and therefore must always have doubt and additionally must always be in error.

The promotion of doubt and discomfort throughout the Western world serves a purpose. And it isn’t to serve the Western world.

Natural analytical thinking in even the most simple minded creature allows the creature to deduce reality via its combined senses and memory of senses. Confuse its ability to deduce and its ability to know reality has been crippled. In effect, it has been blinded even though still capable of seeing, just not being able to tell what it is that it is seeing. Once the ability to deduce gets crippled, its cognitive reasoning has been weakened, the subject becomes suggestible and is far more easily persuaded into accepting any of many possibilities including the possibility that there is in fact, no such thing as reality at all. It can then be easily convinced that the good guys are the bad guys and vsvrsa and drawn into emotionalism concerning almost any issue.

It is all the result and fruit of an insidious art spelled out, among other places, in the Kabbalah and is used as one of the “black arts” to confuse and manipulate societies and individuals.

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People argue that our senses aren’t 100% accurate… the error of this argument is separating the process of sensation from reality. Everything we experience is due to a physical process, or, at the very least, a REAL process.

If our sensations are 100% grounded in reality, then the variable is INTERPRETATION of sensation, not sensation itself.

What you see with your eyes is a REAL image, you don’t conceptualize it 100% accurately because in order for you to be aware of more than just that image, you’d have to have an unlimited perspective…

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How do you prove that the image is real. The smell is real. The cold is real. We can share experiencesthat seem similar but words are only real to the one who understands the language. Your statement only proves senses are forms of perception and communication. Not reality.

Respectfully

~tminusmat

11

Who exactly is concerning themselves with what we can Know (as opposed to just know)? Surely not someone concluding that we can’t Know this or that… they don’t strike me as that concerned with Knowing this or that…

The whole point of positing a noumenal realm, devoid of content, is to have conceptually a notion of the way the world is apart from how our actual perception of it is. This is important because we often come to learn that how we previously saw something was incorrect. Is such a view possible after we drink Berkeley’s cool-aid and believe that to be perceived just is to be?—and that’s all there is to it! I doubt it. My finger does not break when I put it in a glass of water… despite your “direct experience”. And just ask yourself how long a person with that kind of operating software would last in the real world. …Think about on-coming traffic, for godsakes.

This question is incoherent. The key for handling the notion of a noumenal realm is not to inadvertently apply categories drawn from experience to it. Dan~ was right, before… Kant is guilty of this by implying that the noumenal realm is somehow the “cause” of our experience. If it’s a mess-up at all, it’s not a big one. ‘Cause’ is fairly empty, too.

I am a river.

12

Apparently the book to explain all this is called Evidence of the Senses, by David Kelley.

I know what I see is real, because I see it. Not that my interpretation of what I see is 100% accurate, but that the physical process sending the information to my brain is grounded in reality, as well as the way that information got to my retina.

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Perception itself is a process of mediation through a sense. The only relevant sense of reality and knowing about things is what can be gained through perception/the senses.

But we still have issues because our Reality is built not only from present sensation but from memory, belief, etc. How can one be sure of the fidelity of his own memory? Even of short term memory?

Not if you’re dreaming and you don’t know it. As far as you know, you’re awake.

That’s the truth.

14

I see you are having a hard time with explaining yourself.

So, here it is.

The two element Metaphysics.

A thing is composed of 2 elements, not like you think of element, Aristotle tried to explain it, but the two most basic. The shape, form, boundary of a thing, and the material in the boundary. Think of reality as fluid, with boundaries between the different materials.

Every environmental acquisition system of a living organism can only abstract 1 of these 2 elements. For example, when we see, we abstract form, the material does not end up in our head. Or when we eat, the material ends up in us, but not the form of what we ate.

Thus, knowing is always of 1 of a things 2 elements, thus we never know the thing in itself.

This two element metaphysics is a craft based system.

From the two-element metaphysics every form of language, logic possible can be derived.

It was lost in history, but, it is part of my work.

You have to expand your notion of perception. Perception is the acquisition of an element-not a thing.

Most importantly, you can never say that either of these elements exist. As Plato pointed out, you cannot predicate existence of them. And as Aristotle affirmed, they can never actually be abstracted from each other. You have to start to think in terms of fluid mechanics.

This is also why, neither element can be defined, it must be abstracted. Things are defined in terms of its elements, but an element cannot be defined, it is not a thing.

The whole thing means that grammar, and logic as you have been taught, is in error, and must be rewritten by someone who comprehends the Two Element Metaphysics.

It also means something very distressing for those who think Scripture is non-sense. Man will see what he called wisdom vanish over night when he does learn to comprehend correctly. It is just another evolutionary step.

When the Two-Element Metaphysics becomes understood, a child will be able to fault the Einstein’s of history in a single sentence.

Predication is the inverse function of abstraction. When one can really comprehend that sentence, then one will know that man will inevitably learn what truth is.

One of the ways one can determine the functionality of a mind is how well they can comprehend the two element metaphysics. Early mental development cannot make the abstraction. Those minds are only capable of defining things in terms of things. For example, they say a line is composed of an infinite number of points–never realizing they just spoke gibberish.

This also means that there are two fundamental crafting systems–reasoning systems. One can call the one Logic and the other Analogic.

If a system abstracts form as an element, that system must supply material difference to that form to make something.
If a system abstracts material difference as an element, that system must supply form to that material to make something.

Thus Common grammar, arithmetic, algebra are logics. Form is a given, material difference must be supplied.

Geometry, wood craft, metal craft, chemistry, are analogics.

A formal system, in reasoning, pairs an analogic with a logic.

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Along with that “two element system” of logic and analogic, you might want to consider a third element;
Relevance.

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Then why posit it? Why have it in the model? What does this term refer to?

So, we’ve already said or at least strongly implied that the things in themselves exist, but we cannot know them. We only know about these things via elements which we cannot say exist. It seems like it’s backwards, since those things we acquire which give us a sense of the Ding an Sich, we cannot say exist, but we can still speak about these things in themselves as if they do.

  1. I thought that metaphysics posited things that are. Here it is positing elements which we cannot say are. 2) I have never heard anyone define a line as an infinite number of points. A circle could be said to be made up of an infinite number of points, though here we are talking math and not ‘things’. A line could also be said, in math, to be made up of that. But its a poor definition and not in a naive way, since the naive definitions would want to get at the ‘shape’ of a line, right off.

Geometry seems oddly placed.

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Do animals posit a noumenal realm?

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I see consciousness and unconsciousness the same way. To you, there would be no such thing as experiencing unconsciousness. It simply doesn’t exist if you have no way of finding out what’s going on when you’re there. Opposites don’t work here. But it’s supposed to be that you can’t have one without the other like good/bad and above/below. If there is no experience of unconsciousness for you, what tells you that you are experiencing consciousness now?

19

I am trying to understand what you mean, I can’t figure out if I agree or disagree. I think that an object is something we infer from experience. It is not experience itself. Strictly speaking, I do not experience “the smell of an object” but infer an object in terms of it having a certain smell. If it wold smell differently, it would be a different object because it gives me a different experience. Object, in the physical sense, is an inexact term, as its conditions and precise constitution of atoms constantly changes, is it not? it is because there exists no perfectly objective reality of any object designated in the physical (instead of in the conceptual, universalized) sense that the vagueness remains around “its” reality. If we refer to an object it is not clear whether we are referring to its atomic constitution, or to its use to us, or to how it appears to us. So if reality is to be derived from objects, which is the view many philosophers fight against, then experience is simply secondary to these objects. But it seems that you disagree with this, since you place experience as crucial to verification of what is real. Experience then is the condition for reality and for objects. It is not that reality, via objects, is what verifies the reality of experience. Or is this in fact what you are saying?

A definition including both these statements would be circular; Experience is the mediation between an “I” (experience comprehended as a separate object, a “subject”) and objects (properties of experience comprehended by this “I” as a separate from that experience as well as from its experiencer).

What stands outside of this definition is the ‘lighter media’ of apprehension, light, ‘sound’ (physical waveforms), smell (minuscule objects), whereas the ‘heavier media’ taste and touch would be included as they are included in the physical body.

I think that an exhibition of “knowledge” must continue in more concrete, less abstract terms than objects and their reality – we know of objects via the senses, and these have been very sloppily grouped together.

There is the suggestion of a distinction between knowing directly and knowing indirectly. Instead of playing this out through the example of dreams, we could simply begin to re-categorize the senses in two different types of apprehending - touch and taste as direct experience of the object (physical substance) by the body (physical substance), smelling, hearing and seeing as indirect experience of object (physical substance) via medium (physical substance) to the body (physical substance).

20

Subjective vs objective?
Thing in itself?
Experience vs anything not experienced?
Reification vs ground of knowing?
All are false starts. All are subjectivity claiming rule. None tell us much about anything we know by feeing or feel by knowing.