Starting Afresh Disjunctively: Perceptual Engagement with the World

Abstract

Abstract It is claimed that a non-objectifying explanatory approach to perception shows how the disjunctive insight works together with conceptualist direct realism to give the best explanation of perception. This emphasizes the role of the disjunctive insight as an integral component within a conceptualist approach that emphasizes non-objectifying explanation. Taking an explanatory approach highlights the sui generis nature of perceptual content: determinate and object and property involving, or genuinely singular, and conceptual. It shows that perception is a mode of engagement because perceptual content is determinate and such content involves its objects and properties, and that disengaged states such as dreams or hallucinations are peripheral and limiting conditions of the central condition. Developing this explanation addresses three principal concerns regarding disjunctive, direct realism. Firstly a new argument from the fact that perceptual content cannot be retained in its original determinate detail shows that the fabric of perceptual consciousness is relational. Secondly to explain how it is that the mind-independent individuals we perceive have the properties that we perceive — even though the scientific picture might be taken as suggesting otherwise — broadly interpretivist and Wittgensteinian resources are deployed and argued to be tenable alongside scientific explanations of sub-personal perceptual processes. Finally, the explanatory approach taken in this chapter also addresses the fundamental worry that disjunctive approaches simply side-step the fundamental sceptical challenge that perceptual experiences might be indistinguishable from veridical experiences.