Against Direct Realism

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Philosophy Now
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Against Direct Realism

Post by Philosophy Now »

Paul Griffiths argues that modern metaphysics is taking a wrong turn.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/146/Against_Direct_Realism
owl of Minerva
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Re: Against Direct Realism

Post by owl of Minerva »

"Direct realism brings together the directness claim and the realism claim to defend our intuitions of direct perceptual access to an independent world. However, the debate within cognitive science brings to the fore the tension between the two claims which first emerged in the days of Berkeley and Locke. In the terms of twenty-first century cognitive science, you can have the directness claim, or the realism claim, but not both together. This presents direct realists with a dilemma."
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If brain processing in cognitive science is just a matter of mass and charge with no real understanding of the role electromagnetism, light quanta, may play, then cognitive science with its physicalist view could be making assumptions with limited knowledge.

Seeing a film involves a screen and a projector to transmit light. The film is already made, still we engage with it emotionally and cognitively, although we cannot alter what we see. If Berkley is right life is similar, the show, maybe because of how long it takes light to reach us, may come to us fully fledged, with a beginning, middle, and an end and just require a screen: space, and a viewer. It would not mean that we have no choice, unlike a film we can engage with it and alter outcomes.

As direct realism, linguistic and analytic philosophy lost sway, so in time, if the theories in physics find consensus; if light equals energy, information, content, form and structure; the potential of everything, then physicalism and the views of cognitive science will be retired as were those of its predecessors.
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