![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
In 'Perception and its Objects' (1979), P.F. Strawson is apparently replying to A.J. Ayer* but seems mostly to be working towards a reconciliation of 'Lockean' or 'scientific' realism in perception with what he calls 'common-sense' realism. That is, between the idea that things are really collections of atoms and whatnot, and therefore what we perceive as reality is in some sense illusory, with the common-sense notion that what we perceive with our senses is in fact the real world.
His conclusion, when he comes to it, is one with which I very much agree: namely, that we have a common-sense notion of the relativity of 'reality' anyway, and are thus able to comfortably hold the simultaneous ideas that, for instance, a pen has a colour and is extended in space -- the visual and tactile qualities presented to our senses, e.g. it is blue, solid, oblong, etc. -- and that these qualities are in fact real, and yet in another sense of the word 'real' it is a mass of energy particles or whatever the current story is in physics. Bravo, bravo, a reasonable conclusion after 20 pages of wafting. On the way to it, though, he managed to offend me more than once.
See, a lot of his gesticulations on 'common-sense' realism revolve (as so many seem to) on the purported opinions of the so-called 'ordinary man', the mythical philosophical innocent, pure of any contamination from sinister philosophical theories. This is problematic, in one sense, because there is some question-begging going on in there, when a hypothetical 'non-philosophical observer' gives a very philosophically-laden answer that is supposed to represent 'common sense' but is really more like 'this is what I think'. The much bigger problem, though, is that I'm pretty sure that these purported philosophical innocents do not even exist.
I mean, is there any person, any at all (past infancy) who hasn't had at least some sceptical-philosophical considerations? That is, the main point for Strawson about these 'ordinary people' is that only philosophers, with their theory-addled minds, are troubled by the spectre of scepticism. Bullshit, I say. Perceptual and ontological scepticism is everywhere, personal and popular. Besides which, at least until the last few generations, most people around the world have been raised with some sort religion or other conception of some world 'beyond the physical', and consider such ideas to be perfectly natural. And perhaps they are not really 'natural' (or perhaps they are), but in any case they are certainly ordinary.
It is true, as Strawson says, that the world has an immediate perceptual character that is accessible and 'real' according to common sense, and this intuitive reality is useful for the philosophical points he makes. But to assume, even in passing, that 'ordinary people' never question the immediate, intuitive character of perception is professional arrogance in the extreme.
* A promoter of the worst excesses of logical positivism. Mocking limericks available by request.
His conclusion, when he comes to it, is one with which I very much agree: namely, that we have a common-sense notion of the relativity of 'reality' anyway, and are thus able to comfortably hold the simultaneous ideas that, for instance, a pen has a colour and is extended in space -- the visual and tactile qualities presented to our senses, e.g. it is blue, solid, oblong, etc. -- and that these qualities are in fact real, and yet in another sense of the word 'real' it is a mass of energy particles or whatever the current story is in physics. Bravo, bravo, a reasonable conclusion after 20 pages of wafting. On the way to it, though, he managed to offend me more than once.
See, a lot of his gesticulations on 'common-sense' realism revolve (as so many seem to) on the purported opinions of the so-called 'ordinary man', the mythical philosophical innocent, pure of any contamination from sinister philosophical theories. This is problematic, in one sense, because there is some question-begging going on in there, when a hypothetical 'non-philosophical observer' gives a very philosophically-laden answer that is supposed to represent 'common sense' but is really more like 'this is what I think'. The much bigger problem, though, is that I'm pretty sure that these purported philosophical innocents do not even exist.
I mean, is there any person, any at all (past infancy) who hasn't had at least some sceptical-philosophical considerations? That is, the main point for Strawson about these 'ordinary people' is that only philosophers, with their theory-addled minds, are troubled by the spectre of scepticism. Bullshit, I say. Perceptual and ontological scepticism is everywhere, personal and popular. Besides which, at least until the last few generations, most people around the world have been raised with some sort religion or other conception of some world 'beyond the physical', and consider such ideas to be perfectly natural. And perhaps they are not really 'natural' (or perhaps they are), but in any case they are certainly ordinary.
It is true, as Strawson says, that the world has an immediate perceptual character that is accessible and 'real' according to common sense, and this intuitive reality is useful for the philosophical points he makes. But to assume, even in passing, that 'ordinary people' never question the immediate, intuitive character of perception is professional arrogance in the extreme.
* A promoter of the worst excesses of logical positivism. Mocking limericks available by request.
