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Single Idea 8417

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

Full Idea

Since awareness of defeasibility issues is an essential prerequisite for any genuine perceptual knowledge of even straightforward physical objects, any realist theory of perception must be indirect or representative, rather than direct.

Gist of Idea

Direct realism is false, because defeasibility questions are essential to perceptual knowledge

Source

David Galloway (lectures [2007]), quoted by PG - lecture notes

A Reaction

[a very compressed summary] A very interesting claim. The issue might be over what direct realism is actually claiming. If it claims full-blown knowledge, then the criticism seems good. But it might survive if it claimed rather less.

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

21337 A knowing being possesses a further reality, the 'presence' of the thing known [Aquinas]
22130 Scotus defended direct 'intuitive cognition', against the abstractive view [Duns Scotus, by Dumont]
3943 If existence is perceived directly, by which sense; if indirectly, how is it inferred from direct perception? [Berkeley]
23662 The existence of ideas is no more obvious than the existence of external objects [Reid]
14866 It always remains possible that the world just is the way it appears [Nietzsche]
21537 I assume we perceive the actual objects, and not their 'presentations' [Russell]
5377 'Acquaintance' is direct awareness, without inferences or judgements [Russell]
22160 Our relationship to a hammer strengthens when we use [Heidegger]
5678 Scientific direct realism says we know some properties of objects directly [Dancy,J]
5681 Maybe we are forced from direct into indirect realism by the need to explain perceptual error [Dancy,J]
6549 I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan]
6355 Direct realism says justification is partly a function of pure perceptual states, not of beliefs [Pollock/Cruz]
6643 'Ecological' approaches say we don't infer information, but pick it up directly from reality [Lowe]
19526 Surely I am acquainted with physical objects, not with appearances? [Williamson]
16374 There is a continuum from acquaintance to description in knowledge, depending on the link [Recanati]
8417 Direct realism is false, because defeasibility questions are essential to perceptual knowledge [Galloway]