ABSTRACT

Drawing on the phenomenology of perception, and some considerations from naïve realism, I identify two key features of the character of perceptual (primarily visual) experience: the apparent irreducibility of perceptual experience in regard to judgment and belief; and its ostensibly direct (or relational) nature in regard to the object that is perceived. While our experience of perceiving must be some part of the explanandum that a theory of perception aims to accommodate or explain away, considerations to do with “phenomenal character” are often thought to be uncompelling, either because of the need to account for the possibility of illusions and hallucinations, or because of a debunking claim about the significance of any account of perceptual properties or character (philosophical illusionism). After setting out a broadly Merleau-Pontyian position about the “world of perception”, I then use that account to seek to undermine contemporary philosophical illusionism.

SPEAKER

Jack Reynolds is Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University. He has written five books: Phenomenology, Naturalism and Science: A Hybrid and Heretical Proposal, (Routledge 2018); Chronopathologies: Time and Politics in Deleuze, Derrida, Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology (Rowman and Littlefield 2012); Analytic Versus Continental: Arguments on the Methods and Value of Philosophy (Acumen 2010, with James Chase); Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity (Ohio 2004); Understanding Existentialism (Acumen 2006).

DETAILS

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