Idealism and Materialism in Perception

Rose, David; Brown, Dora

doi:10.1068/p7927

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…In reading science texts, you should constantly be aware of implicit references to the ALL SEEING EYE delusion." (Koenderink, 2014, p. 2) In reply, Maniatis (2015), Rose and Brown (2015), Todorović (2020), Rose (in preparation-a) and others have supported ontological Realism 2 -the belief that mind-independent entities exist -as a basic premise for understanding perception.…”

Section: The Metaphysics Of Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Cognitive science is undoubtedly in the Realist camp and phenomenology in the opposite (e.g. Sebold, 2014;Sparrow, 2014;Rose & Brown, 2015). Gibson (1979) too took a Realist approach: for example, as Koenderink (2015, p. 1) pointed out, "Gibson finds 'throwability' in a stone, whereas von Uexküll finds it in visual awareness".…”

Section: The Reality Of Phenomenologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perceiving the weird and the wonderful. The mysterious metaphysics of phenomenology, art and science.

Rose¹

2021

Preprint

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What is it that appears to us: an objective reality or a subjective illusion? A brief history of the continental philosophical approach to this question is given, followed by an introduction to the recent continental movement toward Realism, which accepts there must be mind-independent entities of some kind. Yet if such an objective reality exists this raises the problem of how we can possibly conceptualise what exists and happens there, since by definition it is beyond our concepts — or at least beyond our current ones. Hence it seems mysterious, weird and wonderful. I illustrate how the arts and sciences have independently approached this question, and suggest some commonalities in their conclusions. Finally, I discuss the importance of individual differences in how we perceive and think.

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Section: The Metaphysics Of Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: The Reality Of Phenomenologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceiving the weird and the wonderful. The mysterious metaphysics of phenomenology, art and science.

Rose¹

2021

Preprint

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“…In recent years there has been debate within the perception literature between phenomenologists and scientific realists, for example over the status of illusions. (For reviews see: Maniatis, 2015;Rose & Brown, 2015;Rose, 2018, in preparation-a, in preparation-b;Gomez-Marin, 2020;Todorović, 2020. ) Thus illusions are commonly defined as deviations of our percepts from the veridical representation of objective reality -but this requires there being a singular ground truth about that reality, or 'what is out there', which our percepts should in some way represent or match.…”

Section: The Metaphysics Of Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although it sounds like a perfectly straightforward realist ontology -organisms move and evolve in a physical environment, developing an extended mind with broad teleofunctional 4 content (Wright, 1973;Millikan, 2004;Rose, 2006, ch. 5;2012a) -links are often made between embodiment and 1 The distinction between continental and analytic philosophy is controversial, but I will continue to use it here as a convenient shorthand (see Brown, 2015, andRose, 2021, for further discussion).…”

Section: The Metaphysics Of Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The metaphysics of perception: enactivism, phenomenology and information.

Rose¹

2021

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Enactivism is a major research programme in the philosophy of perception. Yet its metaphysical status is unclear, since it is claimed to avoid both idealism and realism yet still has aspects of both within it. One attempt to solve this conundrum is based on the fusion of enactivism with phenomenology and the mathematical concept of symmetry breaking (Moss Brender, 2013). I suggest this is not entirely successful and propose it needs the addition of a multi-level, non-reductive metaphysics (for example, Informational Structural Realism). The processes we commonly call ‘perception’ are causal transfers of information at certain levels in the hierarchy of meaningful structures that comprise physical reality. Phenomenologists could use the word ‘perception’ metaphorically across all levels, although realists need not do so.

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“…The longer I work in this field, the more I wonder if we are all converging on the same truths. We start from very different fundamental assumptions – about reality, the nature of mind and perception (e.g., Rose, 2006; Rose and Brown, 2015; Zavagno et al., 2015) – so we express ourselves in a variety of specialised terminologies, which can lead to mutual incomprehension. Yet in the end, won’t our apparently conflicting views, on the nature of perception and how it works overall, turn out to be merely different perspectives on the same underlying mechanisms?…”

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confidence: 99%

The Painter in the Head: A New Fallacy?

Rose

2019

Perception

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We are all warned to avoid the 'man in the head' fallacy: the idea that the visual system projects an image of the outside world onto a (virtual) inner screen or stage which our consciousness then inspects-as though each consciousness is a little person, with its own eyes, located inside the head. After all, this is how vision can seem, at least sometimes, when we wonder about it and so introspect. However, this doesn't actually explain how vision works-it just postpones the problem. How does the man in the head's visual perception work-by the same principle? We would have an infinite regress of 'explanations', which will never reach a conclusion. But does it solve anything to replace the man in the head with a PAINTER IN THE HEAD? Recent writers have suggested that all visual experience is a form of hallucination or dream, of 'mental paint', generated within the mind and, as it were, projected onto a phenomenal fielda virtual or functional internal screen 'depicting' an (apparent) outside world. Instead of the image being generated by back-projection, by machinery hidden beyond the screen, it is as though the image is forward-projected by the so-called 'active' mind (in contrast to the 'passive' internal observer in the previous model). They say it is the mind that actually creates 'visual objects'-whether out of the flux of whatever it is that enters the eyes (information? photons? optic flow patterns?), or from its own internal creative imagination or memory stock of ideal forms, templates or Gestalts. Indeed, the early Gestalt demonstrations of figureground segregation were a seed for the 20th-century revival of this model: The decisions as to what is figure and what is background, what is one object and what is another, are made inside the head. (This also follows from the many other examples of ambiguous figures, modal or amodal completion, and so on.) What we experience is not determined by the distal stimulus, by the outside world, but by internal principles and mechanisms. But isn't this too a fallacious explanation? Who decides what to paint, or why, or how? Where do the stored rules and templates come from if not from yet another inner mind's imagination? Isn't there an infinite regress of explanations here also? And isn't this because it is another (more or less explicit) dualism? Presumably, inside the painter there must be yet another homunculus with the abilities of a complete mind-a mind within a mind-and so on (Figure 1). Another argument behind the mental painter or internal generation model is that, if you believe that all we have access to (and indubitable knowledge about) is our inner 'screen', that is, our immediate phenomenal experiences, as some have suggested, then you begin to wonder why you should believe there is anything behind the screen at all-whether any external stimulus (and any back-projection machinery) exists in actuality that creates our experiences. What evidence can you ever have if all you can possibly know is what you have experienced first-hand, in your personal 'inner w...

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Idealism and Materialism in Perception

Cited by 11 publications

References 42 publications

Perceiving the weird and the wonderful. The mysterious metaphysics of phenomenology, art and science.

Perceiving the weird and the wonderful. The mysterious metaphysics of phenomenology, art and science.

The metaphysics of perception: enactivism, phenomenology and information.

The Painter in the Head: A New Fallacy?

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