Naive Realism under Pressure

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Eva Schmidt
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 527893220

The project “Naive Realism under Pressure” focuses on three challenges for purist naive realism. According to naive realism, sensory perception is fundamentally a relation of awareness or acquaintance between the perceiver and the mind-independent world. Purist versions of the view are further committed to No Content, i.e., the claim that perceptual experiences do not have representational content or accuracy conditions, and to selectionism, i.e. the claim that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is fully determined by the external items with which one is presented. The challenges for purist naive realism arise (A) from perceptual response variability – the differing ways in which the perceptual system responds to identical stimuli; (B) from the specific epistemic significance of perceptual experiences as providers of reasons for belief; and (C) from the fact that any plausible account of experience has to appeal to perceptual capacities.In a nutshell, challenge (A) is that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience partly reflects the fact that the perceptual system responds in variable ways to identical external conditions. Such response variability undermines the selectionist claim that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is fully determined by the external items with which one is presented. According to challenge (B), the purist naive realist conception of perceptual experiences as bare relations to worldly particulars cannot account for the role of perceptual experience as a source of perceptual knowledge and justification. We can do justice to the epistemic significance of perception only if we allow for perceptual content, which can enter inference-like relations. Challenge (C) starts from the observation that all perceptual experience involves capacities to discriminate and single out the perceived particulars. But arguably such capacities, since they are repeatable, commit us to the existence of content-bearing perceptual experiences. The project will explore each of these sources of pressure for purist naive realism, and investigate how naive realists might respond or adjust their views to withstand the pressure. In a final stage of the project (work package D), we will investigate whether naive realists can abandon purism and move towards a more ecumenical view. Such a naive realism might allow for content or internal neurocomputational features of the perceiver to contribute to her perceptual experience; however, to preserve its unique selling points, it will have to be ensured that it does not blend into a version of naive realism’s main competitor, representationalism.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel
• International Co-Applicants: Dr. Ori Beck; Dr. Assaf Weksler