Naive realism is a widely debated topic in the philosophy of the mind. In this article I will review the theses of naive realism through the works of one of the most influential philosophers who supported and developed them, Michael Martin. Once the reasons why naive realism should be supported are discussed, I will propose an empirical argument to show that naive realism and the most basic scientific knowledge of perceptive processes are contradictory

Bucci, Andrea

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BRAINFACTOR RIVISTA CRITICA DI NEUROSCIENZE | REG. TRIB. MILANO N. 538 18/9/2008 | ISSN 2035-7109 | DIR. RES. MARCO MOZZONI | GEN 2018Naive Realism And The ScientificNarration Of PerceptionAndrea BucciSummaryNaive realism is a widely debated topic in the philosophy of the mind. In this article I will review thetheses  of  naive  realism  through  the  works  of  one  of  the  most  influential  philosophers  whosupported and developed them, Michael Martin.  Once the reasons why naive realism should besupported are discussed, I will propose an empirical argument to show that naive realism and themost basic scientific knowledge of perceptive processes are contradictory.IntroductionNaive realism is a philosophical position at the center of the debate on perception in philosophy ofthe  mind.  Thanks  to  the  importance  of  studies  on  perception,  naive  realism has  attracted  theinterests not only of philosophers of the mind but also of students of semantics, epistemology andof those who deal with determining the nature of phenomenal consciousness. For naive realism, themetaphysical structure of conscious perceptual experience cannot help but involve material objectsindependent of the mind.The  philosophical  position  that  currently  opposes  this  way  of  seeing  things  is  calledrepresentationalism. Those who hold the representationalism view believe that perception has thecharacteristic of being an intentional activity.  The perceiving subject is intentionally  linked to arepresentational content. When we perceive we see the world being in a certain way. As an example,we perceive that “A is red”.If we see an object X as Y, this is our view of the world around us. Such content can be real or not. Ifreal, we are dealing with a genuine perception. Otherwise, it is an illusion or a hallucination. Usuallythose  who  embrace  representationalism  contend  that  naive  realism  supporters  fail  to  explainphenomena such as hallucinations and illusions.In  this  article  I  will  review the  theses  of  naive  realism through  the  works  of  one of  the  mostinfluential  philosophers  who  supported  and  developed  them,  Michael  Martin.  Once  we  haveunderstood the reasons why Martin  believes that  naive  realism should be supported,  I  will  putforward  an  empirical  argument  to  demonstrate  how  naive  realism  contradicts  the  most  basicscientific knowledge of perceptual processes.The naive realism of Michael MartinIn The Transparency of Experience, Martin addresses the problem of how naive realism can accountfor  illusive  and  hallucinatory  experiences.  Martin  points  out  that  illusions,  hallucinations  andperceptions can be considered totally different experiences. There is nothing strange in saying that____________Page 1 / 5 | Copyright © BRAINFACTOR 2018BRAINFACTOR RIVISTA CRITICA DI NEUROSCIENZE | REG. TRIB. MILANO N. 538 18/9/2008 | ISSN 2035-7109 | DIR. RES. MARCO MOZZONI | GEN 2018perceiving means being in relation with objects of the world that surrounds us independent of themind whereas,  in  cases of  hallucination and illusion,  our  experience is  something substantiallydifferent. Not even the fact that both illusions and hallucinations lead us to believe that we areexperiencing events in the world around us should make us conclude that they must have somethingsubstantial  in  common  with  perceptions.  In  other  words,  it  is  not  enough  that  illusions,hallucinations and perceptions are subjectively indistinguishable to conclude that they should havesome ingredients in common.After The Transparency of Experience, the heart of naive realism was spelled out by Martin in thearticle The limits of self-awareness:«The Naïve Realist thinks that some of our sensory episodes are presentations of an experience-independent reality. I am aware of the various elements that make up at North London street scene.The same objects and aspects of these objects which I can expect to be when I pursue the question,rather than writing my paper?» [1]In  this  second  article,  Martin  carries  forward  and  elaborates  the  arguments  previously  seen,considering the case of illusions no longer problematic. Martin argues that the broadest way toaccount for any perceptive experience is to consider everything in that experience which cannot bedistinguished  from  careful  reflection  of  veridical  perceptions.  In  other  words,  characterizinghallucinations negatively is for Martin the only way to account for hallucinations and perceptions asperceptual experiences.If  hallucinations  had  their  specific  mental  properties,  they  could  be  identified  through  carefulreflection, but this does not happen. We may have the necessary conditions to determine if it is ahallucination only if we have the ability to discriminate mental properties of hallucinations whenthey are present and to identify their absence when they are not.Martin argues that there is a limit which awareness cannot go beyond. Precisely, this limit is theimpossibility to distinguish between hallucinations and veridical perceptions. The existence of thislimit is difficult to contest. But if this limit exists for Martin, then representationalism must be false.Martin writes:«If one cannot tell what it really takes for experience to be one way rather than another, why shouldwe think that one can still always tell that some mental presentation or other must be responsiblefor things to seem the way that they are? So the epistemological commitments of Common Kindview seem to be in tension with the reasons for accepting them.» [2]In On Being Alienated Martin seeks further to shelter naive realism from skeptical Cartesian andHumean arguments. These arguments are taken as exemplary cases which give rise to the debateover  naive  realism  and  how  to  account  for  hallucinatory  experiences  with  respect  to  veridicalperception. To the skeptical Cartesian question, “How do I know that what I’m perceiving is realityand not  a  mere  dream or  the  work  of  an  evil  genius?”  Martin  replies  that  this  can  simply  beanswered that “I know because I’m really perceiving something”. In other words, to raise a doubtthere must be sufficient reasons for this doubt to make sense. If I perceive objects in the worldaround me daily and if there are no internal motivations to my experience to make me suspect it is____________Page 2 / 5 | Copyright © BRAINFACTOR 2018BRAINFACTOR RIVISTA CRITICA DI NEUROSCIENZE | REG. TRIB. MILANO N. 538 18/9/2008 | ISSN 2035-7109 | DIR. RES. MARCO MOZZONI | GEN 2018not genuine, then it makes no sense to raise a doubt like the Cartesian about the veracity of suchexperiences.Martin affirms:«Before the sceptical challenge is raised, it seems as if there is a simple answer to the question,how do you know that there is a white picket fence there? After all, you can simply see that there isone there, and that you can see that one is there is something that you also have access to.» [3]As  for  Humean  skepticism,  Martin  believes  that  it  is  reflected,  in  our  day,  by  the  famous“hallucination argument” and its assumption that hallucinations and veridical perceptions are. ForMartin it can be denied that hallucinations and perceptions must be of the same kind. In fact, it canbe argued that on the one hand perceiving means entering in contact with objects of the worldaround us.On the other hand, hallucinations are something that deceives us in two different ways. Not onlydoes seem in the hallucination that there are objects in the environment that surrounds us, which infact are not there, but we even believe we are interacting with those objects, which is equally false.Given  this  double  deception  it  is  illegitimate  to  think,  according  to  Martin,  that  because  inhallucinatory cases we are deceived about what we are seeing, then we should think we are also incases of veridical perception.In  What’s  in  a  look?  Martin  focuses  his  attention  on  propositions  that  indicate  the  vision  ofsomething like “that dog is brown”, “that cat looks sleepy” or other propositions of this kind. Someof these propositions do nothing but bring our visual experience back while others have a subjectivenature for how they are used. For Martin in our talk of appearances and sensory states, as when wesay that “an object X seems Y”, we make a comparison between objects in which we decide whetheran object has a visible quality exactly as it is possessed by another object.When we talk  about  visual  propositions,  according to  Martin,  we do nothing but  talk  about  thevisible qualities possessed by objects and from the semantic point of view there is not much else toanalyze. Representational theory like the other theories advanced over the years are all consistentwith this analysis of the propositions about visible qualities. But that means there’s nothing in ourway to report visible qualities that can be used to decide which of the multiple options is the best toaccount for the metaphysics of perception.In fact, Martin writes:«The minimal semantics I  have offered is quite consistent with a representational or intentionaltheory of sense experience and equally with a sense-datum approach. Nor have I said anything thatcompromises naive realism. The aim here has not been to favour one such account over any other,but rather to indicate reasons for why we should not look for evidence in favour of one of theseviews over the any of the others in the ways in which we talk of appearances.» [4]The results achieved by Martin in the course of his defense of naive realism in the four articlesbriefly examined can be summarized as follows: (1) There is nothing in our way of talking aboutwhat we see that can make us conclude in favor of one or the other philosophical position on thestructure of perceptual experience. (2) There is nothing in our way of perceiving reality that should____________Page 3 / 5 | Copyright © BRAINFACTOR 2018BRAINFACTOR RIVISTA CRITICA DI NEUROSCIENZE | REG. TRIB. MILANO N. 538 18/9/2008 | ISSN 2035-7109 | DIR. RES. MARCO MOZZONI | GEN 2018make us think that what we perceive are not material objects of the environment that surrounds us,independent of our mind. (3) Hallucinations can be characterized in such a way as to deny that theymust be of the same kind as the usual perceptive experiences. It can therefore be affirmed that (4)perceiving means entering into contact with objects of the world that surrounds us independent ofthe mind of the perceiving subject. The naive realism is therefore a philosophical position on themetaphysical nature of perception if not correct, at least sustainable.The naive realism and the scientific vision of sensory perceptionThe global function of the eye is to correctly project the light coming from the objects of the worldaround us on the retina. The light enters from the cornea that focuses the pattern of light along withthe other lenses of the eye on the retina. The variable dilatation of the pupil helps to regulate theamount of incoming light and the shape of eye lenses, excluding the cornea, varies as the distanceof the objects being observed varies.The retina transforms the pattern of light into nerve signals conducted by the optic nerve. It allowsus to discriminate the wavelengths and therefore colors. It consists of three sections of nerve cells,one occupied by cell bodies and the other by synapses formed by axons and dendrites of the samecells. The most numerous cells, the rods, are used for night vision and are ultra-sensitive to the lightpresent,  being  able  to  discriminate  even  a  single  photon.  The  cones  on  the  other  hand  areresponsible for the discrimination of details and colors. The area of the retina most densely packedwith cones is the fovea which is also the area with the most discriminative power.The nerve signal that starts from the cells of the retina after being excited by the light travels up tothe visual areas of the cerebral cortex where the signal coming from the retina is processed andprocessed. Now, what is processed by the retina is not the observed object that belongs to theenvironment that surrounds us but the light reflected by the object. Even if the light brought with itall the necessary information on the object, light and object would remain two distinct things.The important point here is not exactly what we see. The point is that we can neither say that we aredirectly seeing either the objects of the world around us nor the pattern of light reflected by them.This leads us to deny point (4) of Martin’s arguments and, if it  turns out that hallucinations arephenomena of the visual cortical areas of the central nervous system, that point (3) is also verydoubtful. If the scientific narrative of perception is correct, then naive realism must be set aside andthe relative metaphysics of perceptual processes must be rethought.ConclusionsThe functioning of the visual apparatus as summarized above tells us that it is incorrect to assumethat what we experience on a daily basis are directly the material objects of the environment aroundus. This contradicts the fundamental assumption of naive realism. Martin’s arguments, althoughvalid from a metaphysical point of view, clash irretrievably with what seems to be the scientificstudies concerning human vision.Andrea Bucci____________Page 4 / 5 | Copyright © BRAINFACTOR 2018BRAINFACTOR RIVISTA CRITICA DI NEUROSCIENZE | REG. TRIB. MILANO N. 538 18/9/2008 | ISSN 2035-7109 | DIR. RES. MARCO MOZZONI | GEN 2018Footnotes1. Martin, M.G.F. The limits of self-awareness in Philosophical Studies, vol. 120, 2004, p.38Ivi, pp. 84-852. Martin, M.G.F. On being alienated. In Perceptual Experience, ed. T. S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne,Oxford: Clarendon Press 2006, p.4043. Martin, M.G.F. What’s in a look?. In Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the World. Oxford UniversityPress 2010, p.223Bibliography1. Byrne,  A.  and  H.  Logue..  Either/or.  In  Disjunctivism:  Perception,  Action,  Knowledge,  eds  A.Haddock and F. Macpherson, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008, pp.57-94. Crane, T. (ed.)..The Contents of Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.2. Crane,  T.  Is  there  a  perceptual  relation? In  Perceptual  Experience,  ed.  T.  S.  Gendler  and J.Hawthorne,  Oxford:  Clarendon  Press,  2006,  pp.126-146.  Haddock,  A.  and  F.  Macpherson.Introduction.  In  Disjunctivism:  Perception,  Action,  Knowledge,  ed.  A.  Haddock  and  F.Macpherson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.1-24.3. Harman, G. The intrinsic quality of experience. Philosophical Perspectives vol.4, 1990, pp.31-52.Martin, M.G.F. The transparency of experience. Mind and Language vol. 17, 2002, pp.376–425.4. Martin,  M.G.F. The limits of self-awareness. Philosophical  Studies vol.  120, 2004 pp.37–89.Martin, M.G.F. On being alienated. In Perceptual Experience, ed. T. S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006, pp.354-410.5. Martin, M.G.F. What’s in a look?. In Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the World, Oxford UniversityPress, 2010, pp.160-225.6. McDowell, J. Criteria, defeasibility, and knowledge. Proceedings of the British Academy vol. 68,1982, pp.455–79.7. McDowell, J. Mind and World. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1994.8. McDowell, J. Avoiding the myth of the given. In John McDowell: Experience, Norm and Nature,ed.  J.  Lindgaard,  Oxford:  Blackwells,  2008,  pp1-14.  Pautz,  A.  Intentionalism and perceptualpresence. Philosophical Perspectives vol. 21, 2007, pp.495-541.9. Peacocke,  C.  Externalist  explanation.  Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society  vol.  93,  1993,pp.203–230. Siegel, S. The epistemic conception of hallucination. In Disjunctivism: Perception,Action, Knowledge, ed. A. Haddock and F. Macpherson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008,pp. 205-224.10. Smith,  A.D.  The  Problem  of  Perception.  Cambridge,  Mass.  Harvard  University  Press,  2002.Strawson, P. Perception and its objects. In Perceptual Knowledge, ed. J. Dancy, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1979, pp.92-112.11. Sturgeon,  S.  Disjunctivism about  visual  experience.  In  Disjunctivism,  ed. A. Haddock and F.Macpherson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.112-143. Travis, C. The silence of thesenses. Mind vol. 113, 2004, pp. 57–94.12. Tye,  M.  Visual  qualia  and  visual  content.  In  The  Contents  of  Experience,  ed.  T.  Crane,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp.158-176.____________Page 5 / 5 | Copyright © BRAINFACTOR 2018

Naive realism and the scientific narration of perception

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Naive realism and the scientific narration of perception

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