VII—Naive Realism and Diaphaneity

Abstract

Naïve Realists think that the ordinary mind-independent objects that we perceive are constitutive of the character of experience. Some understand this in terms of the idea that experience is diaphanous: that the conscious character of a perceptual experience is entirely constituted by its objects. My main goal here is to argue that Naïve Realists should reject this, but I'll also highlight some suggestions as to how Naïve Realism might be developed in a non-diaphanous direction. I.

Daubert’s Naïve Realist Challenge to Husserl

“…We can gain some clarity here by turning to the present. Some naïve realists have recognized and attempted to make sense of the boundedness of perceptual experience (Soteriou 2013;French 2018). Matthew Soteriou recommends thinking of its boudnedness analogously to Kant's forms of sensory intuition, to the extent that the former, like the latter (on Kant's view), are to be explained by appeal to our subjective constitution.…”

Preteriception: memory as past-perception

“…I am aware that this is supposed to emulate the counterpart thesis in the philosophy of perception, to the effect that phenomenology is also constituted, and thus determined (not merely caused), by the object of perception, but it is this aspect of the original direct realist thesis in perception that some theorists are not ready to accept and argue that direct realists should not insist on holding it (e.g. French 2018).…”

Must naive realists be relationalists?

“…Heather Logue, for example, writes that naive realism holds that "at least some perceptual experiences fundamentally consist in the subject bearing the perceptual relation to something" (2014, p. 225). Craig French writes that naive realists hold that "perceptual experiences have a relational nature such that, in a perceptual experience, a perceiving subject stands in a perceptual relation to mind-independent objects" (French 2018). Some even go so far as to identify the two positions.…”

“…The standard view, promoted by critics and proponents, is that a naive realist takes a perceptual experience to be a kind of episode or event that is fundamentally both presentational and relational (Campbell 2002;Martin 2006;Nudds 2009;Nanay 2014;French 2018). To claim that i perceptual experiences are fundamentally presentational is to claim at least that perceptual experiences are by their very nature constituted, at least in part, by mind-independent objects and their manifest properties.…”