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Psychology
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

The Value of Perception

Profile image of Keith AllenKeith Allen

2019, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

https://doi.org/10.1111/PHPR.12574
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24 pages

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Abstract

This paper develops a form of transcendental na€ ıve realism. According to na€ ıve realism, veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational. According to transcendental na€ ıve realism, the na€ ıve realist theory of perception is not just one theory of perception amongst others, to be established as an inference to the best explanation and assessed on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that weighs performance along a number of different dimensions: for instance, fidelity to appearances, simplicity, systematicity, fit with scientific theories, and so on. Rather, na€ ıve realism enjoys a special status in debates in the philosophy of perception because it represents part of the transcendental project of explaining how it is possible that perceptual experience has the distinctive characteristics it does. One of the potentially most interesting prospects of adopting a transcendental attitude towards na€ ıve realism is that it promises to make the na€ ıve realist theory of perception, in some sense, immune to falsification. This paper develops a modest form of transcendental na€ ıve realism modelled loosely on the account of the reactive attitudes provided by Strawson in 'Freedom and Resentment', and suggests one way of understanding the claim that na€ ıve realism is immune to falsification. 1. Transcendental Na€ ıve Realism According to the version of the na€ ıve realist theory of perception that I will take as representative, veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational: veridical perceptual experiences are constituted at least in part by the mind-independent objects and properties in our environment that they are experiences of. Because on this view veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational, a particular perceptual experience could not have occurred if the subject had not been perceptually related to precisely those elements of their environment. 1 In this respect, na€ ıve realist theories of perception differ from common kind theories of perception, like sense-datum or representationalist theories, which allow that how things are with the subject is constitutively independent, at least on a particular occasion, of how things are in their environment. According to common kind theories, it is possible for the subject to have fundamentally the same kind of experience whether or not the environment This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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