This paper aims to reveal the source of the dispute between naive realism and intentionalism. To accomplish this task, it examines Adam Pautz’s challenge to naive realism, according to which a naive intuition about visual phenomenology, which is the only workable case for naive realism, is problematic. It argues that naive realists can address the challenge from Pautz by rejecting his assumption that naive realists and intentionalists agree on the nominal definition of visual phenomenology. The paper then argues that the (...) reason naive realists want to preserve the naive intuition is its irresistibility rather than its reliability. Given this, it concludes that the disagreement between naive realism and intentionalism is rooted in what philosophical projects they tackle. Naive realists are engaged in the philosophical project of delineating a coherent view of the actual world in which the irresistible naive intuition can be true; the intentionalist philosophical project differs from it. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an account of how perceptual evidence might allow us to draw justified conclusions about the existence of composite objects. We call the thesis at issue PERCEPTUAL ADEQUACY, and argue that a specific, naïve realist picture of the phenomenal character of perception provides us with a straightforward way to defend it. The claim that we have empirical evidence for the existence of macroscopic composites cannot be propped up merely by the plausible claim, granted by many, that (...) our perceptual experiences have composites-presenting phenomenology. Rather, a specific account of the nature of the phenomenology is needed so that it can provide the required evidence. We propose a way to accomplish this: one on which in the good cases it would be constituted by the presentation of the truth-makers of the relevant ontological claims. We argue, further, that this potential defence of a feasible empirically-informed approach to metaphysics is preferable to the best alternative, one based on an object-dependent version of intentionalism about perceptual consciousness. (shrink)

This paper makes explicit the basic problem perfect hallucinations pose for perceptual naive realists, more fundamental than the well‐trodden Screening‐off Problem. The deeper problem offers the basis for an overarching classification of the available naive‐ realist‐friendly approaches to perfect hallucinations. In the course of laying out the challenges to the different types of response, the paper makes a case for the superiority of a particular approach to perfect hallucinations, on which they would be understood as a special kind of perceptual (...) anomaly—arising from a secondary mode of perceptual processing. (shrink)