Rejection of Naïve Realism

Rejection of Naïve Realism

Naive realism is the way the majority of people are aware of their

world, and is based on the assumption that what they are seeing and

experiencing is real; that they understand their world through

knowledge gained from these experiences.

However, certain arguments reject that this world is as familiar as it

seems, presenting a need for revision of the naive realist's concept

of reality. We discard the idea that the senses offer a reliable

window on the world and come to state that our perception is simply a

veil that cloaks reality. What we consider to be objective, can be

held to be, in fact, highly subjective - a slurred version of reality

seen through human bias and constructs, the human mind projecting

itself onto what is perceived.

For our purposes, knowledge can be defined as a true and justifiable

belief. This creates a question for naïve realists; whether our senses

are reliable enough to provide us with ample justification to call

whatever beliefs we have knowledge.

Taking the old example of the completely unobserved tree falling in a

forest: does it make a sound?

For humans, sound is a concept. If the sound vibrations made by the

tree are unheard, you could say it doesn't mean they aren't present.

However, because an observer does not experience them, to say there is

still a sound is like saying pain can exist unfelt. Concepts may exist

in our minds whether we experience what is conceptualised or not, but

it makes no sense at all to describe what is external- sound waves,

excited water particles, the atoms that make up what we refer to as

smooth surfaces- as what is internal, in the mind. These things are

only sonorous, hot, or smooth to a human, who experiences them through

the senses.

Sound waves do not have the qualities of being 'nice' or 'pleasing'-

they are simply a particular kind of wave, e.g. high or low frequency

and so on.

We also normally concede that radio waves exist in most areas, but we