Everything that we experience comes to us as a result of us sensing it. The sensory perceptions we have are our experience. In studying knowledge and the external world, philosophy attempts to deal with experience and its relation to knowledge. By understanding how we experience the world, we can hope to come closer to understanding knowledge itself.

Three models have been put forward to help understand how we experience the world: naïve realism, idealism and representative realism. These are illustrated in the diagram below.

Naïve realism states that we experience the world directly, that we see it exactly as it is. For example, if I see a bird flying overhead I know that I have seen a bird and not just the appearance of a bird to my sense organs.

Naïve realism can be argued to provide an answer to sceptics, by being able to respond that if you can sense it, it is as you sense it, thus there is no room for doubt. In addition, by allowing for existence in an absolute sense it allows for objective truth and thus knowledge. In fact, naïve realism does not allow for subjectivity at all. This is also a criticism of naïve realism, that by saying we sense the objective truth directly it does not allow for illusions of the senses (e.g. the position of a fish underwater as seen from the bank of a river) or for two people seeing the same thing differently.

An alternative model is idealism. Idealism states that we see only our impression of the world and that this impression is the mental image of the individual caused by the senses. As the individual only experiences what is in their head, then the concept of an objective, 'real' world is not included by the theory. This provides an excellent response to scepticism: as the theory does not accept the existence of the real world, then it cannot be doubted. The theory also allows for illusions and people sensing the same object differently.

However, by not allowing for objective truths idealism does not allow for knowledge. Also, by concentrating on the individual's perception and denying the existence of everything, it can lead to solipsism. The concept of solipsism explains a state where an individual believes that only their mind exists, and all of the rest of the world they perceive does not exist. Solipsism is a criticism because it is an extremist viewpoint; imagining that you are the only mind in the whole of creation is not a stable view for a social, tribal animal like a human. This has lead some philosophers to liken it more to mental illness than a philosophical position.

Thus, we have seen that both naïve realism and idealism have their problems. How then does representative realism answer these issues? Representative realism is a combination of the two theories: it states that we see an impression of the world, but that that impression is caused by the real world.

For example, I believe that I see a bird. As a representative realist I believe that I do not see the bird directly, but rather that my mind has concocted an image from the information my senses provided to it. Further to this I also believe that my senses detected the bird because it really exists: the birds existence in the objective world allows light to reflect from it, which causes part of my sensory perception.

Thus, the combined theory allows for both objective and subjective truths. This avoids denying existence, but allows for illusions and differences of perception between people.

However, there is one major criticism of representative realism. As the theory accepts that we do not see the objective world directly, but see an appearance, how can we assume that the appearance is caused by the real world? If we cannot observe the objective truth directly, how can we know it exists? In this sense representative realism denies naïve realism, but does not disprove idealism.

We might argue that many people and machines may see the same object in the same way and that therefore theories about light being reflected from an actual object are born out in practice. However, this can be countered by Descartes malign genius argument, that we are all just the victims of a mass illusion, and this is not disproved by representative realism.

Having looked at the three theories we can therefore conclude that representative realism does provide a meaningful and useful advancement in our understanding of experience and the world in response to naïve realism and idealism. However, whilst allowing for the existence of an objective real world, the theory does not prove that this causes what we sense, or even that it exists at all. Therefore, representative cannot be said to provide an adequate response to the problems encountered by naïve realism and idealism because it does not solve the problem of whether an objective world exists.

Tutor: Oliver McAdoo MA

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