Direct realism down the memory lane: from naïve realism to disjunctivism

Abstract

Naïve realism in its rudimentary form was not a mentalist thesis. It was a prereflective perceptual theory that was rejected because it was not able to accommodate mental phenomena. However, existing scholarly articulation of the theory appears to neglect this fact and has developed various strands of mentalist theories that go by the name, naïve realism. This way of construing naïve realism obliterates scholarly effort from identifying the historical antecedent of naïve realism as an original thesis that has metamorphosed into a complex mentalist thesis. Second, it obfuscates a certain interesting twist in the entire narrative of the development of naïve realism to its current form. And third, it blurs the contribution of naïve realism to contemporary epistemology. Using the analytic method, this paper details the development of naïve realism from a simple non-intellectual theory to a complex mentalist thesis. It is shown that naïve realism which was initially rejected as a prereflective theory of perception is what has transformed into a family of robust mentalist theses that are deployed to address the objections that threaten sense data theories and mediate the dispute between internalism and externalism in contemporary epistemology.

Keywords: naïve realism; direct realism; disjunctivism; phenomenalism; adverbialism