Abstract
A fundamental issue in philosophy of perception is to understand the nature of experience and the relation of the experience with objects or states of affairs that is experienced. A prominent philosophical issue here is posed by the possibility of hallucinatory experiences, which are subjectively indistinguishable from veridical perception for the experiencer. The philosophical views in this matter can be grouped into three major positions on the basis of the nature of the subjective experience and relation of the subjective experience with the object. These are the sense-data theories—which consider that the objects of perception are mental entities; the representative theories—according to which perception is a representation of the objects in the external world; and the naïve realist theories—which proclaim that the external objects are constitutive of the very perceptual experience and not a representation of it. Naïve realism claims it is the defence of common-sense notion regarding experience i.e. how experience seems to the experiencer upon introspective reflection on it. This position has a growing number of proponents in philosophy especially in the last two decades. But it also entails radical departure of established philosophical views regarding the nature of experience, the phenomenal character of experience, and the experiencer–object relation. In this paper, we critically examine naïve realism from two crucial aspects pertaining to it—the question of introspection being basis of naïve realist thesis, and the notion of primacy of perception over non-veridical forms of experiences. We find that there are significant problems which weaken the naïve realist thesis.
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Notes
Similarly, the sense-data theorist can maintain the indistinguishability is explained by the presence of the same kind of object.
Whereas the sense-data theory believes what is common is the object of perception, the representational view thinks perception and hallucination share a common content.
Siegel also provides another interesting example. She asks us to consider a virtual reality depiction of Escher’s staircase. Escher’s staircase is an impossible staircase which can be pictorially represented; however, it can never be actually made in the real world. Siegel says it is possible for us to have an (illusory or hallucinatory) perceptual experience of Escher’s staircase; however, it is not possible to have a (veridical) perception of such staircase simply because such staircase cannot exist in reality. Thus again, we have a case where mere indistinguishability with veridical perception is not sufficient to characterise non-veridical experiences or perceptual experiences in general.
It should be noted, however, that this hypothesis does not prove the implausible naïve realist claim discussed earlier that hallucinations lack phenomenal character to be true. However, it still shows that hallucinatory phenomenology is dependent on phenomenology derived from actual perception. In contrast to the naïve claim, the present claim may be considered to be a weaker version of the primacy of perception claim. Now the question arises: Do we need to accept even this weaker version of the primacy claim?
For instance, consider a typical perceptual scene of seeing an apple in the dinner table. Even when one veridically perceives parts of the apples and the table which is not in our direct view, like any other three-dimensional opaque object parts of the table or the apples are occluded from us. However, despite this while perceiving we have a sense of the presence of the apples as whole or the table as whole. We don’t perceive them as half-apples or half-tables. This is because the brain uses its acquired beliefs in creating a perceptual scene. It “knows” how apples are, or how tables are, and thus generate an experience of a whole table and whole apples even with partial sensory information presented to it at that particular moment.
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Ghosh, S. Introspection and Primacy of Perception: A Critical Reflection on Naïve Realism. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 36, 247–263 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-019-00172-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-019-00172-8