Consequences for Philosophy of Perception

2020 ◽  
pp. 206-233
Author(s):  
Maura Tumulty

If experiences are alienable, it is impossible for philosophers of perception to embrace a particular form of naïve realism. Naïve realism is the appealing view that in perception we are perceptually related to objects and properties in the world. But anyone acknowledging alien experiences of the bias-driven kind will find a full embrace of naïve realism challenging. The strongest form of naïve realism, austere relationalism, rejects any explanatory role for representations. But with respect to the kinds of experiences from which we might most often feel alienation, austere relationalists are forced into an untenable position. In order to account for ways racist and sexist bias could affect perception, we should therefore adopt a hybrid of naïve realism and representationalism.

Author(s):  
Joshua Gert

Neopragmatism is an anti-metaphysical approach to philosophical problems. It addresses such problems by taking the focus off of metaphysics, and turning it onto language. That is, the neopragmatist seeks philosophically uncontentious explanations of the sort of talk that often gives rise to the sense that there is a deep philosophical puzzle to solve. In the domain of perception, reflection on apt ways of describing perceptual experiences have led to various metaphysically committing theories, including (i) sense data theory, (ii) representationalism, and (iii) naïve realism. This chapter uses neopragmatist techniques to undermine the case for the last of these. The attack is two-pronged. First, some of the metaphysical commitments of naïve realism are criticized. Second, neopragmatism is used to explain some of the ideas that were thought to lend naïve realism support. These include the idea that perceptual experience has a peculiar sort of openness or presentational character, and the related idea that such experience gives insight into the mind-independent character of the world. Beyond forming the basis for criticizing other views, neopragmatism also suggests a positive view of perception. This is a form of adverbialism that relies on the idea that our sensory states are information-bearing, but not, in any robust sense, representational.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
David V. Ciavatta

AbstractThis paper investigates Hegel’s thesis that we are, in our practical relation to the world, inherently committed to certain aspects of idealistic metaphysics. For Hegel, our practical attitude is fundamentally at odds with a naïve realism that would take the world to consist ultimately of self-contained, self-sufficient individuals whose relations to one another are fundamentally external to their identities. Hegel contends that our practical attitude is premised upon an overcoming of this mutual externality, and especially the externality which is supposed to hold between individual agent and world. It is shown that his argument hinges on conceiving of external things as inadequately individuated, as compared to living agents, and that it is precisely this ontological deficiency that conditions and motivates our action. Hegel’s discussions of morality and property ownership are appealed to in order to illustrate how we might better understand the nature and practical role of this purported deficiency.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 521-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig W. Blatz ◽  
Brett Mercier

Past research finds that people hold moderate views on political issues while believing others are extreme. This false polarization has been demonstrated across a variety of different attitude dimensions and is explained by naive realism, the belief that one holds an unbiased view of reality. We argue that because people believe they see the world objectively, they should be very certain about their opinions, more certain than others expect. In three studies, we tested this false moderation of attitude certainty hypothesis and attempted to replicate past research on false polarization of attitude stance and perceived ideology of others. All three studies revealed a false moderation effect on judgements of certainty. Additionally, we replicate the finding that people false polarize others’ ideology but do not find evidence for false polarization of specific stance.


2020 ◽  
pp. 014616722092104
Author(s):  
Jazmin L. Brown-Iannuzzi ◽  
Kristjen B. Lundberg ◽  
Aaron C. Kay ◽  
B. Keith Payne

In the United States, both economic inequality and political conflict are on the rise. We investigated whether subjective socioeconomic status (SSS) may help explain why these dual patterns emerge. We hypothesized that higher SSS may increase naïve realism—the belief that one perceives the world as it is, rather than as interpreted through one’s own knowledge and beliefs—regarding political issues. Using a representative sample of the American electorate, we found that higher SSS predicted more political naïve realism toward those from a different political party (Study 1). The remaining experiments examined the causal relationship between SSS and political naïve realism (Studies 2–5). We extended these findings by investigating whether SSS influenced participants’ willingness to exclude those with contrary views from a vote (Studies 4 and 5). Together, these studies demonstrate that SSS enhances political naïve realism and can lead to the exclusion of others with contrary opinions.


1991 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 129-151
Author(s):  
Ted Honderich

It is the business of philosophy to deal without presupposition with the question of the general nature of the world and with the question of how or indeed whether we can know that nature. These are questions to which answers are given in the realism of ordinary belief, as it can be called, the phenomenalism of Berkeley, the pragmatism and the scientism of Quine, and the varieties of scepticism. The ontological and the epistemological questions are bound up with another, that of the nature of perception—the question of what it is, in general, that happens when we perceive. What is called naive realism is an answer, as are representation theories, and phenomenalism again. If the question might be better defined, so as to distinguish it from the related scientific question, it is no matter of mere conceptual analysis. Let us start with this question of the nature of perception.


Author(s):  
Carlo Raineri

AbstractNaïve Realism claims that veridical perceptual experiences essentially consist in genuine relations between perceivers and mind-independent objects and their features. The contemporary debate in the philosophy of perception has devoted little attention to assessing one of the main motivations to endorse Naïve Realism–namely, that it is the only view which articulates our ‘intuitive’ conception of perception. In this paper, I first clarify in which sense Naïve Realism is supposed to be ‘naïve’. In this respect, I argue that it is put forward as the only view which can take our introspective knowledge of perception at face value, and I identify the two (alleged) key features of such introspective knowledge. Second, I challenge the claim that one of these features-namely, that it seems as one could not be in the same perceptual state unless the putative objects of perception existed and were perceived–is introspectively evident. Consequently, I argue that a view of perceptual experience–such as Intentionalism–which denies that this feature is true of perception can still take introspection at face value. This undermines the claim that Naïve Realism is the only account which accommodates our intuitions on the nature of perception.


2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvey S. Smallman ◽  
Maia B. Cook ◽  
Daniel I. Manes ◽  
Michael B. Cowen
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