Naïve realism

Short description: Idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are

This page is about the view in philosophy of perception. For the psychological theory, see Naïve realism (psychology). For the metaphysical view, see Philosophical realism. For the view in philosophy of science, see Scientific realism.

Naïve realism argues we perceive the world directly

In philosophy of perception and epistemology, naïve realism (also known as direct realism, manifest realism or perceptual realism[1]) is the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are.[2] When referred to as direct realism, naïve realism is often contrasted with indirect realism.[3]

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 a metaphysical realist, holding that these objects continue to obey the laws of physics and retain all of their properties regardless of whether or not there is anyone to observe them.[4] They are composed of matter, occupy space, and have properties, such as size, shape, texture, smell, taste and colour, that are usually perceived 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 the primary/secondary quality distinction in ascribing properties to external objects.[2]

In addition to indirect realism, naïve realism can also be contrasted with some forms of idealism, which claim that no world exists apart from mind-dependent ideas, and some forms of philosophical skepticism, which say that we cannot trust our senses or prove that we are not radically deceived in our beliefs;[5] that our conscious experience is not of the real world but of an internal representation of the world.

## Contents

* 1 Overview
* 2 History
* 3 Scientific realism and naïve perceptual realism
* 4 Influence in psychology
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 Further reading
* 8 External links

## Overview

The naïve realist is generally committed to the following views:[6]

* Metaphysical realism: There exists a world of material objects, which exist independently of being perceived, and which have properties such as shape, size, color, mass, and so on independently of being perceived
* Empiricism: Some statements about these objects can be known to be true through sensory experience
* Naïve realism: By means of our senses, we perceive the world directly, and pretty much as it is, meaning that our claims to have knowledge of it are justified

Among contemporary analytic philosophers who defended direct realism one might refer to, for example, Hilary Putnam,[7] John McDowell,[8][9] Michael R. Ayers,[10][11] Galen Strawson,[12] John R. Searle,[13] and John L. Pollock.[14]

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".[15] 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: the argument 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 philosopher J. L. Austin in a book titled Sense and Sensibilia.[16]

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."[17]

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.[15]

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."[18]

## History

For a history of direct realist theories, see Direct and indirect realism § History.

## Scientific realism and naïve perceptual realism

Many philosophers claim that it is incompatible to accept naïve realism in the philosophy of perception and scientific realism in the philosophy of science. Scientific realism states that the universe contains just those properties that feature in a scientific description of it, which would mean that secondary qualities like color are not real per se, and that all that exists are certain wavelengths which are reflected by physical objects because of their microscopic surface texture.[19]

John Locke notably held that the world only contains the primary qualities that feature in a corpuscularian scientific account of the world, and that secondary qualities are in some sense subjective and depend for their existence upon the presence of some perceiver who can observe the objects.[4]

## Influence in psychology

Naïve realism in philosophy has also inspired work on visual perception in psychology. The leading direct realist theorist in psychology was J. J. Gibson. Other psychologists were heavily influenced by this approach, including William Mace, Claire Michaels,[20] Edward S. Reed,[21] Robert Shaw, and Michael Turvey. More recently, Carol Fowler has promoted a direct realist approach to speech perception.

## See also

* Critical perceptual realism
* Disjunctivism
* Empirical realism
* Naïve physics
* Qualia
* Phenomenology (psychology) and Phenomenology
* Plato's allegory of the cave

## References

1. ↑ Bowman, Brady (2011). "A Conceptualist Reply to Hanna’s Kantian Non-Conceptualism". International Journal of Philosophical Studies 19 (3): 417–446. https://philosophy.la.psu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/06/BowmanPreprintConceptualistReply.pdf.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The Problem of Perception". https://plato.stanford.edu/archIves/sum2005/entries/perception-problem/.
3. ↑ "The Contents of Perception". https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-contents/.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Naïve Realism, Theory of Knowledge.com.
5. ↑ Lehar, Steve. Representationalism
6. ↑ Naïve Realism – University of Reading.
7. ↑ 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 Philosophy 91(9):445–518.
8. ↑ John McDowell, Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994, p. 26.
9. ↑ Roger F. Gibson, "McDowell's Direct Realism and Platonic Naturalism", Philosophical Issues Vol. 7, Perception (1996), pp. 275–281.
10. ↑ Ayers, M.R., Knowing and Seeing. Oxford University Press 2019
11. ↑ Miguens, Sofia; Osorio-Kupferblum, Naomi (2021). "The Thing Before Us". Grazer Philosophische Studien 98 (4): 584–599. doi:10.1163/18756735-00000150.
12. ↑ Galen Strawson, "Real Direct Realism", a lecture recorded 2014 at Marc Sanders Foundation, Vimeo.
13. ↑ John R. Searle, Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 15.
14. ↑ John L. Pollock, Joseph Cruz Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, Rowman and Littlefield
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 John R. Searle, 'Seeing Things as They Are; A Theory of Perception', Oxford University Press. 2015. p.111-114
16. ↑ Austin, J. L. Sense and Sensibilia, Oxford: Clarendon. 1962.
17. ↑ "Sardonic comment". http://putnamphil.blogspot.com/2015/05/naive-realism-and-color-realism-in-1976.html.
18. ↑ Blackburn, Simon (2008). Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Second edition, revised), Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199541430
19. ↑ Michaels, Claire & Carello, Claudia. (1981). Direct Perception . Prentice-Hall.
20. ↑ "Untitled Document". http://ione.psy.uconn.edu:16080/~corr/Pages/MichaelsProfile.htm.
21. ↑ "Oxford University Press: Encountering the World: Edward S. Reed". http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/Cognitive/?view=usa&ci=9780195073010.

## Further reading

* Ahlstrom, Sydney E. "The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology," Church History, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep., 1955), pp. 257–272 in JSTOR
* Cuneo, Terence, and René van Woudenberg, eds. The Cambridge companion to Thomas Reid (2004)
* Gibson, J.J. (1972). A Theory of Direct Visual Perception. In J. Royce, W. Rozenboom (Eds.). The Psychology of Knowing. New York: Gordon & Breach.
* Graham, Gordon. "Scottish Philosophy in the 19th Century" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009) online
* Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture (2006) excerpt and text search
* S. A. Grave, "Common Sense", in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (Collier Macmillan, 1967).
* Peter J. King, One Hundred Philosophers (2004: New York, Barron's Educational Books), ISBN 0-7641-2791-8.
* 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
* David Edwards; Steven Wilcox (1982). "Some Gibsonian perspectives on the ways that psychologists use physics". Acta Psychologica 52 (1–2): 147–163. doi:10.1016/0001-6918(82)90032-4. http://www.math.uga.edu/~davide/Modern_Physics_and_Gibsonian_Psychology.pdf.
* Fowler, C. A. (1986). "An event approach to the study of speech perception from a direct-realist perspective". Journal of Phonetics 14: 3–28. doi:10.1016/S0095-4470(19)30607-2.
* James J. Gibson. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987. ISBN 0-89859-959-8
* Claire F. Michaels and Claudia Carello. Direct Perception. Prentice-Hall. ISBN 978-0-13214-791-0. 1981. Download this book at https://web.archive.org/web/20070621155304/http://ione.psy.uconn.edu/~psy254/MC.pdf
* Edward S. Reed. Encountering the World. Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-507301-0
* Sophia Rosenfeld. Common Sense: A Political History (Harvard University Press; 2011) 346 pages; traces the paradoxical history of common sense as a political ideal since 1688
* 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. PMID 3591430.
* Nicholas Wolterstorff. Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-521-53930-7
* Nelson, Quee. (2007). The Slightest Philosophy Dog's Ear Publishing. ISBN 978-1-59858-378-6
* J L. Austin. (1962). Sense and Sensibilia. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195003079
* John R., Searle. (2015). Seeing Things as They Are; A Theory of Perception. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-938515-7

## External links

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (April 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

|

* James Feiser, "A Bibliography of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy"
* Naïve Realism and the Argument from Illusion
* Representationalism
* Naïve Realism in Contemporary Philosophy
* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Epistemological Problems of Perception
* Physics and Commonsense: Reassessing the connection in the light of quantum theory
* Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods
* Nature Journal: Physicists bid farewell to reality?
* Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness
* Virtual Realism
* The reality of virtual reality
* IEEE Symposium on Research Frontiers in Virtual Reality: Understanding Synthetic Experience Must Begin with the Analysis of Ordinary Perceptual Experience
* Realism, article form the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
* Sense Data, article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
* Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, book defending direct realism.
* Pierre Le Morvan, "Arguments against direct realism and how to counter them", American Philosophical Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2004): 221–234. (pdf)
* Steven Lehar, "Gestalt Isomorphism" (2003), paper criticizing direct realism.
* A Direct Realist Account of Perceptual Awareness, dissertation on direct realism.
* Epistemological debate on PSYCHE-D mailing list
* A Cartoon Epistemology

* v
* t
* e

Epistemology

Epistemologists|

* Thomas Aquinas
* Augustine of Hippo
* William Alston
* Robert Audi
* A. J. Ayer
* George Berkeley
* Laurence BonJour
* René Descartes
* John Dewey
* Fred Dretske
* Edmund Gettier
* Alvin Goldman
* Nelson Goodman
* Paul Grice
* David Hume
* Immanuel Kant
* Søren Kierkegaard
* Saul Kripke
* David Lewis
* John Locke
* G. E. Moore
* Robert Nozick
* Alvin Plantinga
* Plato
* Duncan Pritchard
* Hilary Putnam
* Thomas Reid
* Gilbert Ryle
* Susanna Siegel
* Socrates
* Ernest Sosa
* P. F. Strawson
* Willard Van Orman Quine
* Bertrand Russell
* Baruch Spinoza
* Timothy Williamson
* Ludwig Wittgenstein
* Nicholas Wolterstorff
* Vienna Circle

Theories|

* Coherentism
* Constructivist epistemology
* Contextualism
* Descriptive knowledge
* Determinism
* Empiricism
* Evolutionary epistemology
* Fallibilism
* Feminist epistemology
* Fideism
* Foundationalism
* Genetic epistemology
* Hierarchical epistemology
* Holism
* Infinitism
* Innatism
* Internalism and externalism
* Naïve realism
* Naturalized epistemology
* Phenomenalism
* Positivism
* Procedural knowledge
* Reductionism
* Reliabilism
* Representative realism
* Rationalism
* Skepticism
* Theory of forms
* Transcendental idealism
* Uniformitarianism

Concepts|

* A priori knowledge
* Analysis
* Analytic–synthetic distinction
* Belief
* Causality
* Common sense
* Exploratory thought
* Gettier problem
* Justification
* Knowledge
* Induction
* Objectivity
* Privileged access
* Problem of induction
* Problem of other minds
* Perception
* Proposition
* Regress argument
* Simplicity
* Speculative reason
* Truth
* more...

Related articles|

* Outline of epistemology
* Alethiology
* Faith and rationality
* Formal epistemology
* Meta-epistemology
* Philosophy of perception
* Philosophy of science
* Social epistemology

* Category
* Task Force
* Stubs
* Discussion

* v
* t
* e

Philosophy of mind

Theories|

* Behaviorism (Radical)
* Biological naturalism
* Cognitive psychology
* Computationalism
* Mind–body dualism
* Eliminative materialism
* Emergent materialism
* Emergentism
* Epiphenomenalism
* Functionalism
* Idealism
* Interactionism
* Materialism
* Monism
* Naïve realism
* Neurophenomenology
* Neutral monism
* Occasionalism
* Panpsychism
* Psychoanalysis
* Parallelism
* Phenomenalism
* Phenomenology
* Physicalism
* identity theory
* Property dualism
* Representational
* Solipsism
* Substance dualism

Concepts|

* Abstract object
* Artificial intelligence
* Chinese room
* Cognition
* Cognitive closure
* Concept
* Concept and object
* Consciousness
* Hard problem of consciousness
* Hypostatic abstraction
* Idea
* Identity
* Ingenuity
* Intelligence
* Intentionality
* Introspection
* Intuition
* Language of thought
* Materialism
* Mental event
* Mental image
* Mental property
* Mental representation
* Mind
* Mind–body problem
* Non-physical entity
* New mysterianism
* Pain
* Privileged access
* Problem of other minds
* Propositional attitude
* Qualia
* Tabula rasa
* Understanding
* Zombie
* more...

Related topics|

* Metaphysics
* Philosophy of artificial intelligence / information / perception / self

* Category
* Philosophers category
* Project
* Task Force

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve realism. Read more

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Philosophy:Naïve_realism&oldid=4021484"
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template