Experience and Naive Realism

Experience and Naïve Realism

Is there anything in sense experience that indicates the falsity of naive realism? For example, is there anything in sense experience that informs us that objects are not objectively colored? Or is it a matter of science and conceptual reflection? Do we know that naïve realism is false just by being subjects of experience, or is experience itself coy on the question? This is not an easy question, so let’s start with something simple and self-evident. Pain: is there anything about the experience of pain that tips us off that pain resides in us not in objects—that it is subjective not objective? Surely, there is: we feel pain in the body; we don’t perceive it in objects. My hand hurts not the rock that lands on it. Pain seems to me to be in me not in the external world independently of me. I am under no illusion about its location. I don’t need science or philosophy to convince me that naïve realism about pain is incorrect; it feels incorrect. You would have to be very naïve indeed to believe that pins have pain in them; pins merely have the power to produce pain in me. If our experience of color were like our experience of pain, we would never be naïve realists about color—and similarly for sounds, tastes, smells, and feels. Suppose colors were like pain: you experience them as in your body—you see your body change color depending on what’s in the environment. Your eyes are stimulated in such a way by a wavelength of light emitted by certain roses that your foot (say) turns red: those roses have the power to produce a certain color effect in or on your body. You don’t see the roses as red; they merely cause a part of your body to be seen as red. The redness is perceived in your body not in the roses, though you may describe roses with the word “red”, meaning that they have a red-producing power in relation to your body. No way would you be a naïve realist about red (sic) roses—you would have no inclination to ascribe redness to roses. Redness would be like pain—manifestly over here not out there. Am I right? You’re damn right I’m right. But this is not the situation with our experience of color: we do experience color as in the objects. Why we do is an interesting question, but it is indubitably so. We really are under the illusion that objects are objectively colored (assuming that naïve realism is false of color). Grass is not green though it sure as hell looks green. Doesn’t that settle the question? Phenomenology endorses naïve realism; it doesn’t contradict it. It is therefore eminently understandable that we are prone to accept naïve realism, even if we ultimately reject it on theoretical grounds. Naïve realism is the common sense of sense perception; it is what experience directly tells us, rightly or wrongly.

So, is there nothing in naïve experience that invites rejection of naïve realism? Is it impossible to scrutinize sense experience and see that naïve realism is false? I have tried the experiment: diligently I have attended to my experience and strained to discover a clue to the falsity of naïve realism. But I have come up with nothing (try it yourself). Experience seems stubbornly wedded to a false theory of perception. Strange, but true—why not make color perception like pain perception? Are all animals under the same illusion? Do we all hallucinate colors from dawn to dusk? Do we never see colors correctly? Our senses really ought to tip us off about the truth-value of naïve realism, but they refuse to—they insist on asserting a false theory. We can’t even surgically fix our eyes and brain to rectify the error; no one has ever perceived the color of roses in their body (or in their mind). No one perceives color as they perceive pain. However, this doesn’t mean that experience contains no other type of clue; there might be other facts about ordinary sense experience that tip us off about the truth of the matter. And I think there are—there are things that even a wee child will notice about its experience that give the game away. I will call the thing in question “variability-without-penalty” (VWP for short). Your senses can vary in the qualities they present without you running into trouble. Here we encounter the inverted spectrum, warm and cool water, taste variations, and the like: all these allow for subjective variations that are consistent with equality of bodily well-being. The same volume of water can be felt as varying in temperature without there being any difference in the condition of the body (your skin is not physically affected). It is not so with objective qualities: variations of shape do affect the well-being of the body, because shape is an objective feature of the environment that can cause damage to the body. We are all familiar with the subjective variations of water temperature that have no bearing on potential harm to the body. The reason for this is that the corresponding subjective qualities reside in us not the objective world; it doesn’t vary when we vary. Food tastes appetizing or unappetizing depending on our degree of satiation, so no one thinks that the appetizing quality of food is inherent in food; we don’t think the food must have changed when we lose interest in eating more of it. We don’t need sophisticated science or philosophy to inform us that food is not appetizing in itself but only relative to our needs and desires. Maybe we experience food as intrinsically tasty, but we know from elementary experience that this quality comes and goes according to us not the food in itself. But the same is not true of the chemical composition of food or its mass and volume. Ordinary daily experience gives us the information we need to accept that total naïve realism is mistaken. We are not fooled by the phenomenology of eating—or seeing, hearing, and touching. Experience tempts us into the naïve realist error, but it also provides the wherewithal to withstand the temptation. This is why people are so ready to accept that sensory qualities are in us not the world—they came to this conclusion long ago just by being sensing creatures. Experience itself is in error, but the experiencer is not; he knows better than to trust the immediate deliverances of sense perception uncritically. We are all natural-born critics of our own experience. We know quite well that it would be pretty stupid to sign on to naïve realism in its most naïve form. Just consider your experience of stepping into a swimming pool and gradually getting used to the water temperature; it didn’t change, you did–obviously. Similarly for your eyes adjusting to brightness when you wake up in the morning. Experience can be quite candid about advertising its subjective origins, despite its surface dishonesty—it’s like a liar who gives you the wink. Experience admits its own error.

There is another source of error correction: intersensory confirmation. You can check that your eyes are giving you the right shape of an object by touching it, but you can’t do the same with color. This, too, is completely familiar to even the most untutored of perceivers. It tells us that perceived shape is inherent in objects but perceived color is not. Likewise, we don’t put food under the microscope in order to determine whether it is appetizing or not, or stroke it. Sense-specificity is the mark of subjectivity. How could color be intrinsic to objects if it was only perceptible by one sense? Thus, we cut down the number and range of objective properties of things; we reject the multiplicity of properties recommended by our sense experience. Again, this is intellectually primitive stuff not university-level learning. It is quite wrong to think that science alone has taught us the falsity of naïve realism, or even that reflective common sense has; the lesson is present in the simplest of perceptual facts, available to any two-year old or chimpanzee (or shellfish). I like to think that the octopus has never been a benighted naïve realist: it knows that felt temperature depends (partly) on it not the surrounding water and that its tentacles can correct visual misattributions of shape and size. The wonder is that the senses insist on attributing subjective qualities to objective things, as if we will be fooled. The fact is that we live with what we know to be an illusion—the entire way we sense external objects. We know we are erroneous beings, error-prone in our most primitive means of knowledge acquisition. We know we live in a kind of deceptive sensory prison that we can’t escape—the prison of sensation. Pain doesn’t deceive us about its location, but our senses are constantly telling us lies about where the qualities it presents to us exist. We are essentially brains in a vat, victims of an evil demon, living in a dream world—prisoners of our own misleading sensorium (our lying eyes). We can’t find a way to sidestep it and confront reality as it actually is. But we know we are in a sensory prison; we are not deceived about that. Our jailors at least have the decency to inform us of our imprisoned state.[1]

[1] I think this position explains the peculiar ambivalence we feel about naïve realism, and our natural oscillation on the question. For we are, on the one hand, smitten with it by our senses (our windows on the world) and yet, on the other, wise to its blandishments. At every moment our senses relentlessly drum it in, but at the same time elementary experience contradicts it. We know it to be false, but our everyday consciousness is firmly committed to it. Our knowledge that it is false, attested by the simplest of experiences, can make no dent in our sensory constitution; it keeps on insisting that the world is replete with qualities we know it doesn’t possess. This is the uncomfortable and irremediable truth.