Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

Naïve Realism has become increasingly popular as a theory about veridical perceptions. At the heart of this view is the idea that conscious perceptions are relational events, in which mind-independent aspects of the environment are actual constituents of the experience. Despite its growing popularity, several aspects of the naïve realist proposal regarding the nature of veridical perception and its phenomenal character remain unclear. Naïve Realists sometimes disagree on some of their central claims or have yet to fully articulate their commitments on key aspects of the view. In this paper, I aim to contribute to identifying the most representative version of Naïve Realism, which may serve as a point of reference for future discussions: Standard Naïve Realism. To this end, I consider how leading proponents of Naïve Realism typically frame their view on crucial issues, such as the scope of the naïve realist claims regarding visual consciousness, and the idea that the phenomenal character of veridical perceptions is determined by aspects of the mind-independent environment. I conclude by addressing a challenge to the version of Naïve Realism discussed in the paper.

When Sophie sees a red apple before her for what it is, she undergoes a distinctive kind of mental event: a visual experience. Visual experiences have a phenomenal character, or, equivalently, they are phenomenally conscious mental events—there is something it is like for a subject to undergo them. What is the nature of these phenomenally conscious events and their character?

Sense-Data theorists, such as Russell (1912) and Robinson (1994), hold that perception is a matter of a subject standing in a relation to non-physical entities: sense-data. In contrast, Intentionalists (or Representationalists) maintain that perceptions represent the mind-independent environment as being a certain way (e.g., Crane 2001; Siegel 2010). In recent years, a different approach has gained traction in the philosophy of perception as a response to…

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