The Value of Perception

This paper argues that naive realism—the view that veridical perceptions are essentially relational—should be understood as a transcendental project rather than an ordinary theory to be tested by cost-benefit analysis. Drawing on Strawson's account of reactive attitudes, the author proposes that naive realism occupies a special foundational role in explaining how perceptual experience is possible. This transcendental status would make naive realism, in a certain sense, immune to falsification by empirical evidence or competing theories. The paper develops a modest version of this transcendental naive realism.

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Abstract

This paper develops a form of transcendental naive realism. According to naive realism, veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational. According to transcendental naive realism, the naive 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, naive 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 naive realism is that it promises to make the naive realist theory of perception, in some sense, immune to falsification. This paper develops a modest form of transcendental naive 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 naive realism is immune to falsification.