Perception and Its Objects Bill Brewer

Here is an influential inconsistent triad of claims concerning the nature of perceptual experience and its objects. (1) Physical objects are mind-independent. (2) Physical objects are the direct objects of perception. (3) The direct objects of perception are mind-dependent. Physical objects are such things as stones, tables, trees, people and other animals: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in. For the entities of a given kind to be mind-independent is for them to exist, and be intrinsically as they are, independently of anyone's thought or experience of them. Otherwise they are mind-dependent in some way. 1975b), the core subjective character of a perceptual experience is to be given simply by citing the object presented in that experience. In line with that approach, the direct objects of perception are those objects, if any, which constitute its core subjective character, which identify any given perceptual experience as the specific core modification of consciousness which it is. There may be experiences which cannot be characterized in-2-this way: their subjective character has to be given otherwise than by reference to any particular such object; and, although such experiences may be related in various ways to objects of various other kinds, none of these is their direct object in my technical sense. (1) expresses a commonsense commitment to what might be called physical realism. I take (2) to be the most natural expression of the equally commonsense idea that physical objects are the objects which are presented to us in perception, whose nature is made evident to us by the subjective character of our perceptual experience. We shall see, though, that there is an alternative strategy for retaining the idea that physical objects are the very things which are presented to us in perception, which we see, feel, hear, and so on, without regarding these as direct objects in my sense. Still, the conjunction of (1) and (2) provides the most natural formulation, at least, of empirical realism, the intuitive thesis that the objects which are presented to us in perception, such as stones, tables, trees, people and other animals, nevertheless exist, and are intrinsically as they are, quite independently of our perception of them, and, indeed, of anyone's thought or experience of them. (3) is the conclusion of a philosophical argument: the argument from illusion. Very crudely, in cases of illusion, the direct object of perception has a property which no …