Research Seminars, Colloquia and Reading Groups
CSCRC seminar: Roberta Locatelli (University of Paris) 'Do hallucinations threaten naïve realism?'
Abstract:
Hallucinations are often taken to be evidence against naïve realism. Hallucinations threaten naïve realism in two different ways.
The first way concerns its motivations: the simple existence of hallucinations seems to undermine what is often presented as a core argument for naïve realism, the phenomenological argument. The idea is that there can be no phenomenal argument for naïve realism as the very phenomenological datum which needs to be accounted for is not that experience seems to present us with mind-independent objects, but rather the fact that the very same phenomenology can be present when one hallucinates.
The second problem that hallucinations pose for naïve realism concerns the purported incompatibility of naïve realism with a naturalistic understanding of perception.
Even though the two problems are presented respectively as the classical argument from hallucination and a causally modified version of it, I will suggest that the two concerns must be distinguished and handled separately and that a naïve realist should adopt a twofold strategy against the arguments from hallucination.