@HWalters of course it does. Your screen is the distal stimulus.

A distal stimulus has no mimimum size. As long as it reflects enough light for our eyes to detect, our brain CAN create a precept. Precepts are not limited to objects. Any visual sensation is a precept.

Darkness itself is a precept

@ZaneScheepers I'm going to be frank again

Arguing with a definition has no point, is not interesting, and conveys no insight

The reason you need to understand what terms mean is in order to communicate

You do this over and over again; producing the longest, most frustrating, and least insightful discussions

A word, in principle, can mean whatever we want it to mean. Meaning in this sense is absolutely arbitrary.

In common language, it's important to establish what it does in fact, and does not in fact, mean, according to a conventional agreement; especially when it comes to jargon

It's important for one reason and one reason only... so that people can stop wasting their time blabbering about different things using the same word, and start actually talking about things... so they can communicate

If you want to invent your own languages, go for it. But if you want to understand what everyone's talking about when they say "distal stimulus", get over yourself

I'm done

Wow! Play by my rules or I won't play with you? If that's your attitude, I have no interest in playing with you. You claim the "the square" has no distal stimulus and when I point out the obvious flaw, you throw a tantrum!

@ZaneScheepers You're severely missing the point. It's not my rules; it's just not your rules either.

There's a conventional definition; it works a certain way. You are applying your rules to disagree with it. The irony is that you think I'm arguing against you using the same criteria. That doubly misses the point.

What I'm giving you is a guided definition in the terms of "word games". You know those tests like, "This is a foo. This is also a foo. That is not a foo."

Arguing against someone trying to supply you with a definition does not make for great discussion.

If you disagree with the definition, you're just using the word differently. Claiming that my definition is wrong is meaningless, but this is what you're doing. Reread my rant; you missed the part about conventions, and the point of this.

If your point is to try to convey to me what the conventional definition is, simply arguing against what I provide is not the way to do that. You're just insulting me by doing so. The proper criteria is to establish that the convention, which is what we're really after, doesn't entail that

@ZaneScheepers One more point; the conventional definition of distal stimulus helps define what to me is one of the most interesting of visual phenomenon... illusions. An illusion can be defined as a percept without a distal stimulus. But if a distal stimulus is anything you happen to be looking at, regardless of a percept, so long as it causes the percept, then how can you be sure that if I look at a blank wall, it reminds me of pachyderms, ...

...and that causes me to see a giant elephant leaping towards me that isn't there, that we can define that as a hallucination? The wall did in this case cause the percept, right?

I don't mind you disagreeing with a definition. But if I'm trying to give one to you, don't argue against it by fiat. I'm not going through this trouble for nothing.

We have good discussions when we're in synch. But this is a thorn. I would like to have good discussions with you.

At the very least, I ask you to grant me the modicum degree of respect to where if I give a definition of a word, I at least am using the word that way

To be honest, I don't even know what you got upset about. Is your screen not a distal stimulus? Is darkness not a precept? Must a distal stimulus be a visible object? All of the above.

Mainly, it's because I went out of the way to point to the neon spread illusion to help you understand what distal stimulus was not, to help understand what it was

This is the way the term is used

Think of it this way. I see a cup.

So I have a percept in my mind. That's a subjective thing, and it's a mind model... those are good things to realize.

But in some form, it's also a "micro-theory". The theory suggests that there's a specific object in front of me within the real world.

It's a pre-rational theory, not a rational one

Agreed

So there's a thing that the pre-rational theory suggests exists... if that thing really does exist (nevermind that it's not "really like that"; that's a good insight too, but not too relevant here... I can define this later), then that thing is a distal stimulus

E.g., if there's something I can reach out and touch, that correlates to the percept in the same way the micro-theory suggests, that's a distal stimulus

So when you watch a movie for example, nothing is really moving. There's no "distal stimulus" associated with the motion; it's an illusion

So a distal stimulus is the theoretical object which causes the precept?

Yes

And since we're subjective beasts, it could be argued that we need to be careful about objective things

But ability to interact with it in a way in which the theory suggests we can is one measure of objectivity

So a distal stimulus must be similar to the percept?

Kind of

"Similar to" can suggest multiple things

It must be something that correlates to the percept; that's possibly a better phrasing

These words I'm reading aren't distal stimulus?

I would say they are; those are what i called pseudo-objects

Like color is a pseudo-property

Basically qualia are just representations

And brightness?

Same

There is a sense in which these things are objective, but it's a very complicated sense, and it still has to do with particulars of us as much as it has to do with particulars of the environment

Color's a great example; there's a lot of very specific human biological traits that come into play regarding color... going all the way into complicated processes within the brain

But there's a type of "implied" property of most objects to where they can be assigned colors

It's nothing you can define with photons alone, and chemistry alone; but the fact that objects "have" colors (that is, that an object remains a particular color through time) "generates" a type of objectivity; an objective fact about the object

One question. Are raindrops the distal stimulus for a rainbow or is the sun the distal stimulus as raindrops reflect light.

However you thought of the laser light... that's how you should think of this

It might even be assigned to illusion category

I have an issue with defining color as a property of an object.

Well, it's not quite defined that way

Strictly I don't think definition works anyway... these are referential things

For convenience it's ok to speak of a black pen.

But if I take a red pen, it has red ink in it

If I write with it, it will write in red.

Here's a proposed test... you give me a black pen, a blue pen, and a red pen. Then I go into a room.

But an object merely absorbs and reflects different wavelengths of light.

I take out a sheet of paper

I pick one of these pens, and draw a circle on the paper. I then take the paper outside of the room and show you.

I ask you to guess which pen made the mark.

Assuming you and I have normal color vision, it's clear that you can make this guess with near perfect accuracy... something about the color I think the pen is gets put onto the page

...and you can, from that information alone, figure out which pen I used

The pen containing the ink which reflects 700nm wavelength light, resulting in the perception of the visual sensation I call red.

That is the sense in which the pen's color is objective

It's convenient. Neither the pen, nor the ink is red

Well, strictly, it's an entire spectrum that the pen reflects... the combination of colors within that spectrum as viewed by your eyes produces color

Well, that's just a sentence. But it should have a meaning, right?

"Neither the pen, nor the ink is red" needs to mean something. What would that mean?

At least, that might mean that this sentence is false: "The pen, and its ink, is red"

Now that sentence also should have a meaning, right? What would it mean?

I propose this meaning: "There exists a property of the pen corresponding to the qualia red in a particular way"... and which way?

It means that the pen itself has no color.

"The pen, under 'normal' lighting conditions, produces a percept recognized as red by most humans"

So my three-pen test directly tests this particular meaning

The percept is red

But it does no good to simply make claims about things. You have to mean something by it.

Let's start there... how do you know the percept is red?

We have this word "red" that we use. What percepts does it apply to?

When I was little, I was taught that this particular visual sensation is called red

That's debateable.

How did your teacher know which sensation you were experiencing?

It differentiates between a red ball and a blue ball

That's irrelevant.

As long as we agree on the name of the sensation

Certainly, the teacher thought that the thing he called a red ball was red

But we're not really doing that... at least not necessarily

We don't know what sensations other people have

Your red and my red might be different, but we can both agree on which ball is red

All we know is that there's this thing called a "red ball" that's different than a "blue ball", that other people can recognize both the difference and identity of

Exactly

But the redness is subjective

Exactly; it's subjective

Pens are objective. The pens we see are percepts

Imagine the balls are hollow, and come apart. You might want to hide some candy in the red ball. You know you can come back later, open the red ball, and get candy out of it.

There's some sort of constancy about the ball we're calling the red ball, that allows you to even be able to pull off such a feat

I claim first off that it doesn't quite matter what the mechanics of such a property is (whether the ball is "really red"), and second, that such properties are fundamentally not subjective (that there's no point debating what the ball is "really like", because all you can have in your mind are subjective concepts about the ball, not balls)

But there's an assignable property to the ball if there is something like this constancy about the ball that correlates to the percept

I'm not denying that

So it's okay to say that the ball is red, so long as we know what that means

Yes

But it's not entirely arbitrary to even be able to make such assignments; something has to be the case about the ball

Maybe instead of a "red ball" and a "blue ball", we have a "red ball with blue stripes" and a "blue ball with red stripes"

Those two things need to be recognizable, or else they are not useful to distinguish the balls (and are in fact equivalent if that's the case)

Rather not. Is a zebra black, with white stripes, or white, with black stripes?

That's kind of the point. If that question has an answer, it would have to mean something.

Ok, so does a tree make light visible, or does light, make a tree visible?

The micro-theory of the tree percept suggests a tree is there

Tree percept suggests we 'see' the tree

Only if it's there

Well a tree

...and not just there, but that the seeing is a result of it being there

Not 'the actual tree'

And photons facilitate this

But if I look outside my window, I see trees. Those trees are there, and that's why I see them.

It's not wrong to say that I see actual trees

That I see the trees that are there

So, there is a 'real' tree, where we see 'a tree', but the tree we see is not the real tree. It's a precept.

Conveniently speaking

The percept is "about" the tree

This is where we differ

Suppose I just claim, "there is a tree there". One could say that the tree that is there is not a sentence; or that a statement is not a tree.

I'm not sure how useful such claims would be. Of course sentences aren't trees, but the sentence is making a claim about the tree.

The real thing of interest is whether that tree is there.

Just as be can both agree that a rainbow it 'there', when in fact, we both see different rainbows

We agree no doubt that the percept doesn't always correlate to a tree

The rainbow is not 'there', it's in our mind

That having a percept of a tree doesn't imply there's a real tree there

Obviously. I can dream of a tree or see a tree in a movie

Rainbows are worth quibbling though... the percept of a rainbow simply suggest some color spread in the sky; though it looks vaguely object-like, it does seem a bit ethereal

Surely then we can agree that the percept sometimes does correlate to a tree

Yes I agree. Rainbows are the key to unlocking indirect realism

To me most of that stuff is just language games

Yes. A tree can be real.

Not just, a tree can be real... but, the percept we have of a tree can correlate to a real tree

But we can never see the 'real' tree

For example, I can use this percept to infer properties of a tree, such as that it has a hanging limb above my car and maybe I want to trim that off before it falls onto it

What is a "real tree" in the first place?

That's why it's such an amazing evolutionary advantage

The answer to that is not entirely objective

"Tree" is a category we made up... we, as subjective creatures. What does it mean for there to be a real tree?

Vision allows us to interact with reality

Our brain creates visual representations of objects

Maybe that thing isn't a tree. Maybe it's a kitten. Maybe it's a gradle.

Our visual representation of reality includes a visual representation of us

Those are intended to sound non-sensible for a reason; to emphasize that even statements such as "that tree is really not a tree, it's a kitten" have truth-values that depend on how we use language and interact with objects

The "real tree" is a real tree in the same sense that that red ball is red

How our brain interprets precepts is a different matter altogether

Yes. Re

There's some sort of "constancy" about the world, described by our perceptions of objects and categorization of "trees", and that constancy correlates in a particular way to some thing in reality

It's not just that "the tree is real"; it's that "there's a thing in reality we can refer to using our concept of trees"

It's indistinguishable

A tree in a mirror looks like a real tree.

But I can't walk through a mirror and cut off a limb

Exactly

So there's something about the reflection that doesn't correlate to the concept

Comprehension makes the difference

Well, let's play with science a bit

Currently we think everything is made of molecules, which are made of quarks

Which are made of strings

Suppose this is discovered to be wrong. Molecules are in fact emergent things, made of something even more fundamental, and they don't always behave molecule-like

Sure... but let's throw caution to the wind... imagine something completely overturning all current physical theories

Now... with this new realization... what changes about the tree?

Is that thing I think is a tree now no longer a tree?

Which tree?

The one with the limb hanging over my car

That I think I need to trim the limb down so it doesn't cause problems

Given we have a new scientific paradigm, is that now suddenly no longer a tree?

The actual tree, or my understanding of what a tree is?

The actual tree... after all, the tree is merely something in reality corresponding to a concept of tree-ness that I have

The tree, as opposed to the kitten or the gradle

Suppose we find out trees feel pain?

What I'm trying to emphasize here is that it really doesn't matter what fundamentally the thing "is" out there

What matters is that whatever that thing is, it correlates to the concept in a particular way

A "tree-like" way... that's not to say that it has mental properties, but rather that it follows a sort of collection of "tree-like" correspondant properties

Dammit. Battery low. Gotta recharge

It has limbs, they can be cut with chain saws, they can snap, it grows, maybe it sheds in the winter, etc

It will give me time to think about everything you said

That it's made of molecules is theoretical, but doesn't really affect the "tree-ness"; the thing coming out of my faucet is and will forevermore be "water"; what it "is" fundamentally is a separate issue (one of "what water is")

Thanks.