Naive Realism Research Articles

Эпистемологический реализм в контексте идей В. С. Соловьева

<p>Эпистемология рассматривается как сложившийся в эпоху Нового времени особый тип учений о познании, не опирающихся непосредственно на определенный онтологический базис. Отличие эпистемологии от гносеологии видится в том, что последняя всегда обусловлена таким базисом. В свою очередь, эпистемологический реализм понимается как философская платформа, позволяющая осмыслить проблемы познания в согласовании с некоторой онтологической позицией. В целом эпистемологический реализм представлен как обоснование возможности для научного познания приближаться к истине как идеалу знания, выражению сущности познаваемого, что с необходимостью предполагает обращение к онтологической проблематике.</p><p>В статье показано развитие реалистского направления в эпистемологии XIX–XX вв. от наивного реализма к реализму научному. Указывается, что в русской философии реализм нашел и своих критиков, и последователей. Главным образом имеется в виду философия В. С. Соловьева, который в контексте учения о всеединстве дал характеристику эпистемологическому реализму, а также предвосхитил некоторые тенденции его дальнейшего развития. Рассматривается критическая позиция Соловьева по отношению к наивному реализму, который был характерен для теории познания позитивизма. Показана обоснованность этой соловьевской критики.</p><p>Дальнейшее развитие реализма в западной эпистемологии XX в. представлено тремя его версиями: неореализма, критического реализма и научного реализма. Они соотнесены с определенными установками философского учения Вл. Соловьева. Современный научный реализм проанализирован как наиболее убедительная позиция в обосновании возможности научного познания приближаться к истине. В данном отношении показаны определенные созвучия гносеологии Соловьева с научным реализмом.</p>

On the explanatory power of hallucination

Pautz (Perceiving the world , 2010) has argued that the most prominent naive realist account of hallucination—negative epistemic disjunctivism—cannot explain how hallucinations enable us to form beliefs about perceptually presented properties. He takes this as grounds to reject both negative epistemic disjunctivism and naive realism. Our aims are two: First, to show that this objection is dialectically ineffective against naive realism, and second, to draw morals from the failure of this objection for the dispute over the nature of perceptual experience at large.

Naive Realism and the Science of (Some) Illusions

Critics have long complained that naive realism cannot adequately account for perceptual illusion. This complaint has a tendency to ally itself with the aspersion that naive realism is hopelessly out of touch with vision science. Here I offer a partial reply to both complaint and aspersion. I do so by showing how careful reflection on a simple, empirically grounded model of illusion reveals heterodox ways of thinking about familiar illusions which are quite congenial to the naive realist.

Perceiving as Having Subjectively Conditioned Appearances

This paper develops an appearance view of perception (focusing on vision). When we see an object, we see it by having it appear some way to us. We see the object, not the appearance; but we see the object via the appearance. The appearance is subjectively conditioned: aspects of it depend on attributes of the subject. We mentally have the appearance and can reflect on it as an appearance. But in the primary instance, of veridical perception, it is the object that we focus on and experience. I contrast this view with naive realism (sometimes called disjunctivism) (Brewer, Campbell, Noe) and with intentionalist or representationalist views, which I call the physical content view (Dretske, Tye, Crane, Hill, Burge). I agree with these views in rejecting sense-data intermediaries and in affirming direct perception, but I argue that direct perception occurs via appearances, making mine a critical direct realism . The other views attempt to explain the spatial content of perception (shape, size, distance) entirely through the physical properties of objects and their physical relation to the perceiver (viewing position). I argue instead that there are ineliminably subjective aspects of normal spatial perception, which are systematically manifested as a lack of full phenomenal constancy. This systematic underconstancy can’t be accounted for at all by a consistent naive realism; for the physical content view, it requires that most of our ordinary perception is classified as illusory, violating the spirit of that view. Accepting phenomenal underconstancy as pervasive, I suggest that our ability to perceive the mind-independent properties of objects depends on developed conceptual abilities. In the final section, I compare my appearance view with the adverbialism of Chisholm and the critical direct realism of Roy Wood Sellars.

Pluralistic Humanism

I propose we discuss pluralistic humanism as an alternative to both atheism and traditional theism in an effort to establish a democratic faith to which we, despite our differences, can bind ourselves. I draw on the thought of American pragmatists (James, Dewey, Rorty, and Kitcher) to articulate a constructive criticism of new atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens). This criticism primarily focuses on the unacknowledged affinities between religion and scientific atheism – namely, a naive realism and a conversion experience – with the hope of using such common ground as a starting point for not only shared experience but for self-examination. I conclude with the proposal that we take up a Deweyan conception of democracy as a common faith aimed at effecting religious or spiritual experiences despite the traditional oppression of institutional religion.

When the theory of mind would be very useful.

The theory of mind is certainly necessary. The dire consequences of a missing theory of mind in autism spectrum disorders are a clear proof for it. So, it might be interesting to examine how it is necessary and useful by looking at some specific (and possible) functions in the mind of a child as well as of an adult, beyond the more general comprehension of one's own and others' mental state. First of all, as the field of the theory of mind is full of different approaches, we want to specify, very schematically, our point of view about this topic. The theory (naive) of mind is based upon the capacity to think about thoughts as such, to represent the representations regardless of the “objective” reality (meta-representative thought). The analysis of the results of the common cognitive test for studying this topic, the famous false belief task, shows that, regarding the representations of others, a correct meta-representation has to desist from reality as well as from one's own representation: “I know X, but I understand that you know Y.” In our opinion, the meta-representative thought is the cognitive process that generates the decentralized thought (vs. the egocentric thought); in other words the ability to adopt the cognitive perspective of someone else. However, the meta-representative thought can be pointed not only towards the external world and to other people, constituting the basis of interpersonal relations, but also towards the internal world, i.e., to one's own representations, thus constituting the basis of consciousness and meta-cognition. Summarizing, one could say that the theory of mind is the basis for the representation of the world of subjectivity (we have exposed these concepts more broadly in Battacchi et al., 1998). When talking about everyday thinking, we must remember that people not always reason according to the formal logic, but often activate cognitive processes that are less rational and affected by important biases (heuristics, analogical thinking, etc…). We can apply this well-known principle also to the meta-representative thought. This is certainly a complex thought that we would be able to use, but that we don't necessarily use in every situation of daily life. Indeed it's easy to notice (and even to demonstrate, as had been done in some cases, Keisar et al., 2003; Bloom and Birch, 2007; Keisar, 2007; Ryskin and Brown-Schmidt, 2014) that in daily life people very often violate the properties of the meta-representative thought, as the ones that we have indicated above. Massaro et al. (2013), for example, investigated the so-called outcome bias and hindsight bias in primary school children and explored the possible predictive function of false belief understanding in reducing these biases. This is why our basic question should sometimes be: “How useful would the theory of mind be?” From this point of view, we believe it could be interesting to address two specific topics: one is what we will call the “naive realism,” the other is “ignorance,” once more of one's own as well as of others. We belief in fact that the theory of mind, as meta-representative thought, can contribute to reduce the bias of naive realism and to increase the meta-cognitive awareness of one's own and others' ignorance and that these functions can have relevant social implications.

What Does Russell’s Argument against Naive Realism Prove?

<p class="RJblockquote">We provide a study of Russell’s argument (in <em>An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth</em>) against naive realism in which we distinguish five different forms of the argument. We agree with McLendon’s (1956) criticism, that Russell’s premiss that naive realism <em>leads to physics</em> (our emphasis) is ambiguous as between “leads historically or psychologically” and “leads logically”. However, physics does logically lead to naive realism, in the sense that it presupposes it. In that case it is physics that is false. There is also the possibility that physics and naive realism are compatible, and that possibility obtains if phenomenalism is true.</p>

What Does Russell’s Argument Against Naive Realism Prove?

We provide a study of Russell’s argument (in An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth) against naive realism in which we distinguish five different forms of the argument. We agree with McLendon’s (1956) criticism, that Russell’s premiss that naive realism leads to physics (our emphasis) is ambiguous as between “leads historically or psychologically” and “leads logically”. However, physics does logically lead to naive realism, in the sense that it presupposes it. In that case it is physics that is false. There is also the possibility that physics and naive realism are compatible, and that possibility obtains if phenomenalism is true.

The Epistemic Contract: Fostering an Appropriate Level of Public Trust in Experts.

Citizens should have an appropriate level of trust in experts—neither too low nor too high. Experts cannot guarantee accuracy in a complex world. But they can attempt to be well calibrated, meaning that they clearly communicate their confidence in their knowledge, and that confidence is lower in domains where their accuracy is likely to be lower. I review research on expert calibration, on the effects of confidence and calibration on perceived credibility, and on the role that “naive realism” plays in biasing our assessments of experts who say what we want to hear.

Colour Physicalism, Naïve Realism, and the Argument from Structure

Colours appear to instantiate a number of structural properties: for instance, they stand in distinctive relations of similarity and difference, and admit of a fundamental distinction into unique and binary. Accounting for these structural properties is often taken to present a serious problem for physicalist theories of colour. This paper argues that a prominent attempt by Byrne and Hilbert (Behav Brain Sci 26:3---21, 2003) to account for the structural properties of the colours, consistent with the claim that colours are types of surface spectral reflectance, is unsuccessful. Instead, it is suggested that a better account of the structural properties of the colours is provided by a form of non-reductive physicalism about colour: a naive realist theory of colour, according to which colours are superficial mind-independent properties.

Property-Awareness and Representation

Is property-awareness constituted by representation or not? If it were, merely being aware of the qualities of physical objects would involve being in a representational state. This would have considerable implications for a prominent view of the nature of successful perceptual experiences. According to naive realism, any such experience—or more specifically its character—is fundamentally a relation of awareness to concrete items in the environment. Naive realists take their view to be a genuine alternative to representationalism, the view on which the character of such experiences is constituted by representation. But naive realists must admit qualities or property instances as items of awareness if they are to remain wedded to common sense, and the nature of property-awareness may smuggle constitutive representation into the naive realist account of character. I argue that whether property-awareness involves representation, and consequently whether naive realism is distinct from representationalism or not, depends on what qualities are fundamentally. On universalist and nominalist accounts, property-awareness turns out to involve representation. Not so under tropism.

Naive Realist Perspectives on Seeing Blurrily

AbstractNaive realists hold that experience is to be understood in terms of an intimate perceptual relation between a subject and aspects of the world, relative to a certain standpoint. Those aspects of the world themselves shape the contours of consciousness. But blurriness is an aspect of some of our experiences that does not seem to come from the world. I argue that this constitutes a significant challenge to some forms of naive realism. But I also argue that there is a robust form of naive realism which is unfazed by the blurriness of some of our experiences, even when that blurriness is understood as a subjective modification of consciousness.

Left ventricular ejection fraction by real-time three-dimensional echocardiography : The Necker cube for the naive realism of two-dimensional methods.

Despite a staggering technical progress in echocardiography, in daily clinical practice assessment of left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (EF) is still often done in a rather inaccurate two-dimensional (2D) manner. Real-time three-dimensional echocardiography (RT3DE) provides a more representative realistic view of LV volumes, thereby being the Necker cube for the naive realism of 2D methods. The Necker cube (Fig. 1a) is an optical illusion first published by the Swiss crystallographer Louis Albert Necker in 1832 [1]. It provides a counter-attack against naive realism, which states that the way we observe the world is the way the world actually is. The Necker cube contradicts this claim, because we see one or the other of two cubes (Fig. 1b), but really, there is no cube there at all, but only a 2D drawing of 12 lines. We see something which is not really there, thus apparently disproving naive realism. This criticism of naive realism supports representative realism. This view argues that we experience reality indirectly by perceptions that represent the real world. For example, if we see a yellow flower, we do not actually see the flower itself but a representation of it. In this way, differences of perception which occur due to changes in the position of the viewer, light conditions, and so on can be easily explained: it is not the object that is changing, only our perception of it. Fig. 1 a The Necker cube. b Like a 2D echocardiographic image, the Necker cube may give the suggestion of a realistic representation of a 3D structure, but really there is only a 2D picture that can be interpreted in different ways Let us go back to echocardiography. Visual estimation of wall motion (‘eyeballing’) is highly subjective, imprecise and poorly reproducible. Nevertheless, some sense of naive realism seems to provide an unrealistic confidence in the accuracy of our eyes. Calculating LV volumes and EF from 2D images by using algorithms such as the biplane method of disks (modified Simpson’s rule) are considered more accurate and better reproducible. However, because of the geometric assumptions of this 2D method, measurements may be inaccurate if the shape of the left ventricle is abnormal or when the acquisition of the 2D images is suboptimal. In other words, like the yellow flower, 2D echocardiographic images are not necessarily a realistic representation of the true left ventricle, but only a perception that is influenced by subjective interpretation and variability in measurements of only a very small 2D portion of the true 3D volume.

Why Ineffective Psychotherapies Appear to Work

The past 40 years have generated numerous insights regarding errors in human reasoning. Arguably, clinical practice is the domain of applied psychology in which acknowledging and mitigating these errors is most crucial. We address one such set of errors here, namely, the tendency of some psychologists and other mental health professionals to assume that they can rely on informal clinical observations to infer whether treatments are effective. We delineate four broad, underlying cognitive impediments to accurately evaluating improvement in psychotherapy—naive realism, confirmation bias, illusory causation, and the illusion of control. We then describe 26 causes of spurious therapeutic effectiveness (CSTEs), organized into a taxonomy of three overarching categories: (a) the perception of client change in its actual absence, (b) misinterpretations of actual client change stemming from extratherapeutic factors, and (c) misinterpretations of actual client change stemming from nonspecific treatment factors. These inferential errors can lead clinicians, clients, and researchers to misperceive useless or even harmful psychotherapies as effective. We (a) examine how methodological safeguards help to control for different CSTEs, (b) delineate fruitful directions for research on CSTEs, and (c) consider the implications of CSTEs for everyday clinical practice. An enhanced appreciation of the inferential problems posed by CSTEs may narrow the science–practice gap and foster a heightened appreciation of the need for the methodological safeguards afforded by evidence-based practice.

An A–Z of medical philosophy: R is for Realism — is our knowledge real or all in the mind?

Can we really know what the world as it is in itself is like? The theory that our knowledge represents states of affairs in the world as it is in itself is called ‘realism’. The contrary position, that statements only tell us about the models in my mind rather than states of affairs in the world, is called ‘anti-realism’. Science tends to make quite concrete claims (E = mc2, atoms are made of subatomic particles, Fe2+ + 2OH– => Fe(OH)2) and we tend to believe that these claims are capturing the truth about the world itself. Belief that our current knowledge accurately represents the world itself is termed naive realism. But perhaps naive realism is a mistake. After all we have no access to a God’s eye view of the world to cross-check the truth of …

Triple Disjunctivism, Naive Realism, and Anti-representationalism

Abstract Contemporary defenders of non-disjunctivism take a representationalist philosophy of mind for granted; all kinds of conscious intentional states/acts/events are automatically regarded as being representations. The paper presents an alternative anti-representationalist view of the mind. It differs from other present-day anti-representationalisms in arguing that all conscious phenomena contains a this-worldly something called “from-pole”, and it denies that an intentional content and the corresponding intentional object always are distinct entities. The view is set in contrast to both a transcendental ego tradition and a no from-pole tradition. Hereby, the paper defends the common sense-like view that we are persons who directly perceive, act in, and talk about things in a common world.

Hegel, the Trinity, and the ‘I’

The main goal of this paper is to argue the relevance of Hegel’s notion of the Trinity with respect to two aspects of Hegel’s idealism: the overcoming of subjectivism and his conception of the ‘I’. I contend that these two aspects are interconnected and that the Trinity is important to Hegel’s strategy for addressing these questions. I first address the problem of subjectivism by considering Hegel’s thought against the background of modern philosophy. I argue that the recognitive structure of Hegel’s idealism led him to give the Trinity a decisive role in his philosophical account. Next, I discuss the Trinity by analysing the three divine persons. This analysis paves the way for the conclusion, where I argue that the Trinity represents a model for re-thinking the ‘I’ in a way that overcomes a ‘naive realist’ and a ‘subjective’ account of the self. I suggest that Hegel’s absolute idealism can be conceived as an approach to the ‘I’ that considers the role of acts of mutual recognition for the genesis of self-conscious thought, and that the Trinity is the Darstellung of the relational and recognitive structure of the ‘I’.

The Trinity: A Liberal Account

God is revealed in Jesus Christ as threefold, one deity made known in three modes of existence. Complications set in when this statement about God as made known to us (economic Trinity) is turned into a description of God's eternal innermost being (immanent Trinity). This is done by a philosophical approach (naive realism) which claims that things as they appear to us are exactly as things are in themselves. But most philosophers take an alternative view (critical realism), which states that appearances of things are not identical with those things in themselves. On this view, appearances are reliable (unlike illusions, which are false) but they do not convey the whole truth. What they reveal is limited by the cognitive capacity of the recipient. So Christians can properly claim that, as revealed in Jesus, God is Trinitarian; but they cannot properly claim there is no other way of knowing God. This liberal understanding of God as Trinity has positive implications for relations with other faiths.

Kingsley Amis: antimodels and the audience

While it has become commonplace to discount British novelist Kingsley Amis as a naive realist, a mere comedic novelist, even a misogynist and failed moralist, Andrew James argues that Amis was seriously concerned with the role of the artist in society and explored this subject in many of his novels. Throughout the first twenty years of his career, Amis used bad artists as whimsical characters, or antimodels, that helped identify his artistic preferences and fictional techniques. He became convinced that the relationship between an artist and his audience was reciprocal and that both the outer audience and the artist's inner circle must be held accountable for the production of bad literature. During the last twenty years of his career, Amis no longer concerned himself with satirizing bad artists, but instead explored ways of ameliorating them. James shows that the development of antimodels as fully drawn characters and Amis's insistence upon reciprocity in the writer-reader relationship demonstrate that he was more than just a comedic writer, and was aware of himself as an artist with social responsibilities. The first study of Amis to analyze manuscript revisions in all of his novel drafts, Kingsley Amis: Antimodels and the Audience shows the more serious side of a complex writer who has yet to receive the critical recognition he deserves.

Disjunctivism unmotivated

Many naive realists are inclined to accept a negative disjunctivist strategy in order to deal with the challenge presented by the possibility of phenomenologically indistinguishable hallucination. In the first part of this paper I argue that this approach is methodologically inconsistent because it undercuts the phenomenological motivation that underlies the appeal of naive realism. In the second part of the paper I develop an alternative to the negative disjunctivist account along broadly Meinongian lines. In the last section of this paper I consider and evaluate a somewhat similar but rival view of hallucination developed by Mark Johnston.