The intuitive case for naïve realism

Abstract

Naïve realism, the view that perceptual experiences are irreducible relations between subjects and external objects, has intuitive appeal, but this intuitive appeal is sometimes thought to be undermined by the possibility of certain kinds of hallucinations. In this paper, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism, and explain why this intuitive case is not undermined by the possibility of such hallucinations. Specifically, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism as arguing that the only way to make sense of the phenomenal character associated with perceptual experiences is by means of a naïve realist ontology. I then explain why this intuitive argument is not undermined by the possibility of hallucinatory experiences that possess the phenomenal character associated with perceptual experiences but, being hallucinations, do not have the ontological nature specified by naïve realism.

Keywords:

• disjunctivism
• hallucinations
• intentionalism
• naïve realism
• phenomenal character
• representationalism

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Brie Gertler, Trenton Merricks, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University; thanks to all who participated on those occasions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Harold Langsam is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Wonder of Consciousness: Understanding the Mind through Philosophical Reflection (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011). His papers have appeared in such journals as Australasian Journal of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Notes

1. In this paper, I consider only hallucinations as potential threats to naïve realism, not illusions. Illusions are experiences in which a perceived object appears differently from the way it is. My own view is that illusions are not counterexamples to naïve realism, for the naïve realist can hold that a subject undergoing an illusion is conscious of the perceived external object. The Argument from Illusion purports to show otherwise, but here, I agree with Moore (1922, 244–246) and Price (1932, 62) that the naïve realist has an adequate response to the Argument from Illusion.

2. For similar arguments, see Pautz’s reasons for thinking that the intuitions in favor of naïve realism are “very dubious” (2010, 296).

3. See McDowell (1982), Langsam (1997, 37–41), and Martin (2002, 392–395, 2004, 38–43). In fact, Martin characterizes disjunctivism as “a theory which seeks to preserve a naïve realist conception of veridical perception in the light of the challenge from the argument from hallucination” (2006, 354).

4. See, for example, Fish (2009, 14). My characterization of the distinction between naïve realism and its rivals basically follows Foster’s distinction between “two rival views of perception”: “the fundamentalist view” and “the decompositional view” (2008, 8).

5. See Shoemaker (1994, 254–255):

  No one thinks that in being aware of a sensation or sensory experience one has yet another sensation or experience that is “of” the first one, and constitutes its appearing to one in a particular way. No one thinks that one is aware of beliefs and thoughts by having sensations or quasi-sense-experiences of them.

6. Huemer (2007, 32–36) holds that beliefs about experiences are based on appearances of experiences, but he does not say whether these appearances are contained in the experiences themselves, or whether they are contained in distinct mental states that function as experiences of the experiences.

7. See Byrne (2001, 200–201). The “what it is like” terminology is most closely associated with Nagel (1974). Insofar as we are concerned in this paper only with perceptual experiences and hallucinations, we are concerned only with experiences that have a certain kind of phenomenal character. I will ignore this qualification in what follows.

8. See Martin (2004, 42), who “suggest[s] that we should think of Naïve Realism as the best articulation of how our experiences strike us as being to introspective reflection on them”. Note that I am not claiming that all people engage in reflection upon the phenomenal character of their experiences; rather, I am claiming only that those who do so will find naïve realism appealing.

9. Compare Hobson (2013, 555): “The phenomenology of visual experience is dominated by physical objects and their intrinsic aspects in an unmediated way”. See also Logue’s discussion of the suggestion that “phenomenal F-ness has F-ness as a constituent in some sense” (2012a, 230). Note that redness is only a part of phenomenal redness. Redness is a property of (the surface of) an external object, whereas phenomenal redness is a property of a subject: it is a matter of what it is like for the subject of an experience to be aware of redness.

10. See, for example, Evans (1982) and McDowell (1986).

11. Some naïve realists seem to hold that naïve realism is incompatible with any view that holds that “perceptual experiences are representational states”; see, for example, Genone (2014, 341–342). But I submit that Genone only shows that naïve realism is incompatible with the view that “the representational content of perception is what accounts for why two experiences that differ with respect to veridicality can be exactly alike from the standpoint of the perceiving subject” (344–345); in other words, what Genone shows, for all intents and purposes, is that, not surprisingly, naïve realism is incompatible with nondisjunctivist versions of intentionalism. For the reasons I stated in the main text, the naïve realist should allow for the possibility that the relation that is of concern to the naïve realist, the relation that enables instantiated properties of external objects to figure in the phenomenal character of perceptual experience, is, at least in part, a representation relation. On the other end of the spectrum, Siegel (2010) and Logue (2014) have recently argued that all naïve realists should accept the view that experience has representational content. I will not take a position on that issue here.

12. Unlike most naïve realists, McDowell holds that experience is representational. See McDowell (1994, 2013). Perhaps he is able to combine these two views because he takes consciousness to be, or to involve, a kind of representation. Although some hold that McDowell is merely an “epistemological” disjunctivist and therefore not a naïve realist (see, e.g. Snowdon 2005), I agree with Haddock and Macpherson (2008, 11–12) that McDowell is also a “metaphysical” disjunctivist and therefore a naïve realist; see Langsam (2014).

13. The example is supposed to show that the move from property instantiation to property being instantiated is not only rational, but is also natural and intuitive. Therefore, I believe it is accessible to the naïve.

14. Fish (2009, chapters. 4–5) argues that hallucinations do not have phenomenal character, and therefore it is not possible for a hallucination to have the same phenomenal character as a (nonhallucinatory) perceptual experience. Logue (2012b) endorses Fish’s position. I will not address Fish’s position here; for purposes of this paper, I will assume it is false. Similarly, I will not address Martin’s (2006) position that hallucinations have phenomenal character, but that it is impossible for a hallucination to have the same phenomenal character as a perceptual experience. I wish to show that a naïve realist can endorse the commonsense view that a hallucination can be introspectively indistinguishable from a perceptual experience for the very reason that it can have the same phenomenal character as a perceptual experience. Note that in endorsing the view that a hallucination can have the same phenomenal character as a perceptual experience, I am not rejecting disjunctivism, for what I take to be definitive of disjunctivism is that perceptual experiences and hallucinations have different ontological natures. Disjunctivism is needed to defend naïve realism, and what is needed to defend naïve realism is the view that perceptual experiences and hallucinations have different ontological natures, not the view that they have different phenomenal characters.

15. See Pautz’s second reason for thinking that the intuitions in favor of naïve realism are “very dubious” (2010, 296; the reason itself is discussed on 297).

16. See Foster (2000, 181–185); his conclusion here is that

  if the sensory core of a phenomenal experience were as the adverbialist claims – the mere sensing in a certain manner, without any sensory object – there would be no way of understanding how it comes to seem to us that we are presentational percipients of an external reality. (185)

17. See Strawson (1979), Harman (1990, 39), and Martin (2002, 378–384). Foster argues that the sense-data theorist can make sense of the phenomenal character of experience by holding that an experience consists of an awareness of a sense-datum “blend[ed]” with a conceptual interpretation of the sense-datum as an external object (2000, 154; see generally 151–157, 161–162). My problem with Foster’s response is that he provides no understanding of how conceptually interpreting a sense-datum as an external object can make it seem for the subject as if he is aware of an external object. I am aware of a dot on a map and I interpret it as a mountain, but in being aware of the dot, it does not seem to me as if I am aware of a mountain.

18. Intentionalists typically argue for their view by appeal to the “transparency” of experience, and these arguments, if successful, are naturally construed as showing that intentionalism can make sense of the phenomenal character of experience. See, for example, Harman (1990) and Tye (2000, chapter 3). I do not think these arguments are successful; in arguing below against the view that intentionalism can account for the phenomenal character of experience, I am in effect arguing against the view that the transparency of experience supports intentionalism, for to talk of the transparency of experience is just another way of describing the phenomenal character of experience. See also Kennedy (2009), who argues that the “transparency phenomenon” (575) supports naïve realism, not intentionalism. Kennedy’s argument for naïve realism is substantially different from my own, and I shall not address its details here.

19. Here, I follow Pautz (2010, 291–293), who claims that intentionalism is committed to this view that the experiential subject is aware of abstract objects. Pautz therefore concludes that intentionalism is “pretheoretically …  very counterintuitive”, and that “the general naïve intuition provides some reason, albeit defeasible reason, to reject common factor intentionalism” (2010, 293). Nevertheless, Pautz is an intentionalist, because he holds that the arguments in favor of intentionalism outweigh the arguments against it. I will not address the arguments in favor of intentionalism here. Perhaps another way to understand the ontological commitments of intentionalism is to say that according to intentionalism, an experiencing subject is aware, not of abstract properties, but of intentional objects (Harman 1990; Smith 2002). The difficulty here is in understanding what intentional objects are supposed to be. If intentional objects are not actually existing objects, then it is not clear that the “intentional object” view is any different from a nonrelational view of experience.

20. I take it as uncontroversial that experiences do not represent particular objects by means of singular terms such as proper names.

21. For an example of the latter view, see Tye (2000, 64): “Experiences represent features by causally correlating with, or tracking, those features under optimal conditions”.

22. This is basically the problem with Schellenberg’s view. Schellenberg purports to “explain the phenomenology of hallucinations” (2010a, 13) by holding that “the phenomenology of experience can be identified with employing concepts in a sensory mode” (2010b, 44). She holds that “a hallucinating subject does not stand in an awareness relation to anything despite enjoying a phenomenology that purports to be of mind-independent objects and property-instances” (2010a, 14). Schellenberg fails to explain how a subject that is not aware of anything can seem to be aware of mind-independent objects and property-instances. In other words, she fails to provide an account of the ontological nature of hallucinatory experiences that makes sense of their phenomenal character. For further argument that Schellenberg’s view cannot make sense of the phenomenal character of experience, see Genone (2014, 348, fn. 14).

23. Allen (2015) holds that hallucinations are states of sensory imagination, but as he does not specify the ontological nature of states of imagination, it is not clear how and whether his account is supposed to be able to make sense of the phenomenal character of hallucinations.