According to the naïve realist, the objects of perception are not representations of external objects, but are in fact those external objects themselves. The naïve realist is typically also ametaphysical realist, holding that these objects continue to obey the laws ofphysics and retain all of their properties regardless of whether or not there is anyone to observe them.[3] They are composed ofmatter, occupyspace, and have properties, such as size, shape, texture, smell, taste and colour, that are usuallyperceived correctly. The indirect realist, by contrast, holds that the objects of perception are simply representations of reality based on sensory inputs, and thus adheres to theprimary/secondary quality distinction in ascribing properties to external objects.[1]
In addition to indirect realism, naïve realism can also be contrasted with some forms ofidealism, which claim that no world exists apart from mind-dependent ideas, and some forms ofphilosophical skepticism, which say that we cannot trust our senses or prove that we are notradically deceived in our beliefs;[4] that our conscious experience is not of the real world but of an internal representation of the world.
The naïve realist is generally committed to the following views:[5]
Metaphysical realism: There exists a world ofmaterial objects, which exist independently of being perceived, and which have properties such as shape, size, color, mass, and so on independently of being perceived
Naïve realism: By means of our senses, we perceive the world directly, and pretty much as it is, meaning that our claims to haveknowledge of it are justified
Searle, for instance, disputes the popular assumption that "we can only directly perceive our own subjective experiences, but never objects and states of affairs in the world themselves".[12] According to Searle, it has influenced many thinkers to reject direct realism. But Searle contends that the rejection of direct realism is based on a bad argument: theargument from illusion, which in turn relies on vague assumptions on the nature or existence of "sense data". Various sense data theories were deconstructed in 1962 by the British philosopherJ. L. Austin in a book titledSense and Sensibilia.[13]
Talk of sense data has largely been replaced today by talk of representational perception in a broader sense, and scientific realists typically take perception to be representational and therefore assume that indirect realism is true. But the assumption is philosophical, and arguably little prevents scientific realists from assuming direct realism to be true. In a blog post on"Naive realism and color realism", Hilary Putnam sums up with the following words: "Being an apple is not a natural kind in physics, but it is in biology, recall. Being complex and of no interest to fundamental physics isn't a failure to be "real". I think green is as real as applehood."[14]
The direct realist claims that the experience of a sunset, for instance, is the real sunset that we directly experience. The indirect realist claims that our relation to reality is indirect, so the experience of a sunset is a subjective representation of what really is radiation as described by physics. But the direct realist does not deny that the sunset is radiation; the experience has a hierarchical structure, and the radiation is part of what amounts to the direct experience.[12]
Simon Blackburn has argued that whatever positions they may take in books, articles or lectures, naive realism is the view of "philosophers when they are off-duty."[15]
Many philosophers claim that it is incompatible to accept naïve realism in thephilosophy of perception andscientific realism in thephilosophy of science. Scientific realism states that theuniverse contains just those properties that feature in ascientific description of it, which would mean thatsecondary qualities like color are not realper se, and that all that exists are certain wavelengths which are reflected by physical objects because of their microscopic surface texture.[16]
John Locke notably held that the world only contains theprimary qualities that feature in acorpuscularian scientific account of the world, and that secondary qualities are in some sensesubjective and depend for their existence upon the presence of some perceiver who can observe the objects.[3]
^Putnam, Hilary. Sep. 1994. "The Dewey Lectures 1994: Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind."The Journal of Philosophy91(9):445–518.
^John McDowell,Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994, p. 26.
^Roger F. Gibson, "McDowell's Direct Realism and Platonic Naturalism",Philosophical Issues Vol. 7,Perception (1996), pp. 275–281.
^Galen Strawson,"Real Direct Realism", a lecture recorded 2014 at Marc Sanders Foundation, Vimeo.
^John R. Searle,Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 15.
^John L. Pollock, Joseph CruzContemporary Theories of Knowledge, Rowman and Littlefield
^abJohn R. Searle, 'Seeing Things as They Are; A Theory of Perception', Oxford University Press. 2015. p.111-114
^Austin, J. L.Sense and Sensibilia, Oxford: Clarendon. 1962.
S. A. Grave, "Common Sense", inThe Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed.Paul Edwards (Collier Macmillan, 1967).
Peter J. King,One Hundred Philosophers (2004: New York, Barron's Educational Books),ISBN0-7641-2791-8.
Selections from the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense, ed. by G.A. Johnston (1915)online, essays by Thomas Reid,Adam Ferguson, James Beattie, and Dugald Stewart
Shaw, R. E./Turvey, M. T./Mace, W. M. (1982): Ecological psychology. The consequence of a commitment to realism. In: W. Weimer & D. Palermo (Eds.), Cognition and the symbolic processes. Vol. 2, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., pp. 159–226.
Turvey, M. T., & Carello, C. (1986). "The ecological approach to perceiving-acting a pictorial essay".Acta Psychologica.63 (1–3):133–155.doi:10.1016/0001-6918(86)90060-0.PMID3591430.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Nicholas Wolterstorff.Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. Cambridge University Press, 2006.ISBN0-521-53930-7
