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Single Idea 6549

[filed under theme 11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 1. Perceptual Realism / b. Direct realism ]

Full Idea

Personally I favour direct realism regarding secondary qualities, and identify greenness with some complex microphysical property exemplified by green physical objects.

Gist of Idea

I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects

Source

William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4)

Book Ref

Lycan,William G.: 'Consciousness' [MIT 1995], p.91


A Reaction

He cites D.M.Armstrong (1981) as his source. Personally I find this a bewildering proposal. Does he think there is greenness in grass AS WELL AS the emission of that wavelength of electro-magnetic radiation? Is greenness zooming through the air?


The 16 ideas with the same theme [we are in direct contact with reality]:

A knowing being possesses a further reality, the 'presence' of the thing known [Aquinas]
Scotus defended direct 'intuitive cognition', against the abstractive view [Duns Scotus, by Dumont]
If existence is perceived directly, by which sense; if indirectly, how is it inferred from direct perception? [Berkeley]
The existence of ideas is no more obvious than the existence of external objects [Reid]
It always remains possible that the world just is the way it appears [Nietzsche]
I assume we perceive the actual objects, and not their 'presentations' [Russell]
'Acquaintance' is direct awareness, without inferences or judgements [Russell]
Our relationship to a hammer strengthens when we use [Heidegger]
Scientific direct realism says we know some properties of objects directly [Dancy,J]
Maybe we are forced from direct into indirect realism by the need to explain perceptual error [Dancy,J]
I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan]
Direct realism says justification is partly a function of pure perceptual states, not of beliefs [Pollock/Cruz]
'Ecological' approaches say we don't infer information, but pick it up directly from reality [Lowe]
Surely I am acquainted with physical objects, not with appearances? [Williamson]
There is a continuum from acquaintance to description in knowledge, depending on the link [Recanati]
Direct realism is false, because defeasibility questions are essential to perceptual knowledge [Galloway]