Talk:Naïve realism

Philosophers for 'Direct realism'
My two cents is the addition of a Philosophy section with some references to contemporary writers; please feel free to improve or expand it.

Like other contributors I think the title 'Naïve realism' is bad, especially when parts of the current article seem to be written with the dubious assumption that belief in naive realism would be naive (in a negative sense).

For example, the science section selectively refers to quantum physics, in which it is trivially true that our "naïve" common sense notions are insufficient for describing quantum phenomena. The lack of supervenience between quantum phenomena and human experience is then used for concluding that "..naïve realism is not a physical theory." Although direct or naive realism is based on a theory of perception it is not a failure to account for physical things which are unavailable for perception; direct realism does not claim that only percieved things exist. The science section simply misunderstands the topic, and the same goes for the section on virtual reality.

Kopare (talk) 00:37, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

"Stupid Representationalism"
Would that be allowed as a title for an article on representational realism? What about "Childlike Idealism"? "Naive" realism is an outdated smack against a longstanding and, today, dominant position in philosophy. It's called direct realism. Here is the proof, from philpapers.org, that 85%(!) of professional epistemologists "accept or lean toward non-skeptical realism." http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Target+faculty&areas0=11&areas_max=1&grain=coarse There is overlapping consensus on this issue, yet the Wikipedia article characterizes this position as "naive" and an "error." Please, wikipedistes, fix this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.197.78.165 (talk) 20:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * It's called direct realism. There is already an article entitled direct realism, and already a merger proposal, as noted both on this talk page and in the article itself. If you would like to comment on this merger (I personally lean towards it, but it looks like you know a bit more about philosophy than me), please do. Hadrian89 (talk) 14:53, 22 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Like the majority of the naïve population, 128.197.78.165 is clearly naive on this issue. He is completely misinterpreting the results of this philosophy papers survey and concluding the opposite of what the real data says.  The much better question on this issue is the one: “Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?” where only 15 percent of the respondents are disjunctivists.  The survey is a terrible survey, so you can make many claims about what the respondents really meant on this issue, but it can be argued that most of the other camps are representational camps.  And most of these respondents in the other camps, indeed, would also “accept or lean toward non-skeptical realism”.


 * We are using a more modern and capable survey system at canonizer.com to better measure for scientific consensus with the Consciousness Survey Project. So far, the early results, with people like Lehar, Smythies, Hameroff, Chalmers… already contributing indicate that 128.197.78.165 could also be very wrong about representationalism being ‘outdated’.  My hypothesis is that we are in the middle of a very significant scientific revolution taking place in this field, where the experts are truly abandoning now clearly falsified theories, including naive realism, and coalescing around what the supporting experts recently unanimously decided to call Representational Qualia Theory.


 * Of course, this survey is only as comprehensive as the number of people that participate, so regardless of what you think is currently the best working theory, everyone could greatly benefit from your ‘canonizeing’ if you will, (non anonymously, of course) your view with the rest of the people, both expert and not.


 * After attending conferences in this field, interviewing and surveying as many experts as I can in this field for several years now as part of this consciousness survey project, it is my opinion that, the ‘naive realism’ camp should not be done away with, and if anything the “direct realism” article should be merged into the naive realism article. “Neutral point of view” should not give as much credit to the naïve population, as it does to the expert scientific consensus. Brent.Allsop (talk) 22:00, 22 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The term 'naive' in "naive realism" has nothing to do with 'stupid' or 'childlike' as 128.197.78.165 suggests. That is an understandable reaction given that many people primarily experience colloquial or pejorative uses of 'naive', which do allude to those things. This type of misunderstanding is unfortunate. However naive realism is a philosophical term and the word 'naive' has the more technical meaning of "not previously exposed to something" see definition. In this context it means "not previously exposed to philosophical enquiry into the epistemological validity of the knowledge claims being made". I.e. it is a naturally occurring, assumed and unquestioned epistemological position that we all hold prior to philosophical enquiry.


 * This has a direct bearing on the issue of the proposed merger with the direct realism article. Direct realism is the name of a philosophical position that formalises the same epistemological position as naive realism, however it is held consciously and is not an assumed and unquestioned position. Hence the two are similar in their beliefs, but very different in how those beliefs are held. This impacts significantly on their distribution, for instance, hardly anyone subscribes to direct realism nowadays because it is so thoroughly disproved so people don't consciously affirm it. However nearly everyone unconsciously subscribes to naive realism, because it is a deeply engrained, unconscious and endemic habit. It takes a great deal of careful and sustained introspective insight to overcome it.


 * Note: I cannot point to authoritative sources that explicitly confirm these points that I have made, however I have studied and worked with this topic since 2005 and seen these points inferred, assumed or obliquely alluded to many times. Furthermore, they make sense. However I didn't add them to the article because I could not back them up with specific references and didn't want to open myself to claims of inserting personal opinion. In the early days of this article there was a lot of controversy at times so I played it safe!


 * BTW it is good to see this article evolve and find its niche on Wikipedia! In mid 2008 I found it to be a couple of paragraphs of nonsense that inferred that naive realism was obviously true. So I re-wrote it and in the early period had to safeguarded it from several attempts to delete it, dilute it or distort it (the topic can trigger cognitive defence mechanisms and negative sentiment from staunch naive realists who feel threatened that their unconscious beliefs are being made conscious and questioned). So I brought the article to the attention of the Philosophy WikiProject, who took it under their wing. I am glad to see that it has now stabilised and is steadily maturing :) Anandavala (talk) 07:32, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Merge with direct realism article?
The merger was suggested by Srnec on 13th November 2008, in six months I have been the only one to comment on it here and there has been no discussion of it on the direct realism talk page. It is clearly not a hot topic however it is also clear that some kind of merger is required because naive realism and direct realism are synonyms.

There is some overlap between the issues discussed in each article however the naive realism article is far more in-depth. For example, the Philosophy WikiProject has rated the direct realism article as Start-Class and the naive realism article as B-Class.

I would suggest that the sections from the direct realism article that are not already covered by the naive realism article should be integrated into this article and the direct realism article be redirected here. The reason for this is because the term naive realism is more commonly used than the term direct realism, especially in contemporary debates such as quantum mechanics. As a test of this here are some google results "naive realism" (57,400 results), "direct realism" (21,800 results), "naive realism" quantum (4,720 results), "direct realism" (1,750 results).

What do other's think? Anandavala (talk) 09:14, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that the two articles should be merged, and it seems that naive realism is the more common term, so direct realism should indeed redirect here. However, I believe that for the moment the content of the direct realism article should replace the content of the naive realism article, for the reasons discussed in the section below. I also think that the Philosophy WikiProject would not have rated this article 'B' if they realised that the bulk of the material was quotations. Hadrian89 (talk) 11:07, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * FWIW, I think the whole idea of merging "Naive Realism" with "Direct Realism" is wrongheaded. I take "naive realism" to mean something like "Any relatively unsophisticated epistemological view according to which items that seem to be external to ostensible perceivers really are external to such ostensible perceivers and generally have many of the properties they seem to have--although they have many more as well."  Such a position is consistent not only with direct realism (which, incidentally, may be quite sophisticated), but also with a number of varieties of indirect realism.  That is, although I don't want to deny that there is considerable overlap, direct realism need not be naive and naive realism need not be direct.  Anyhow, very poor idea.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mctougis (talk • contribs) 16:35, 18 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm having second thoughts about the merger given the contributions on Talk:Direct Realism; based on the sources shown there, it seems that naive realism is either a subset of direct realism or a different position that shares a few basic characteristics, but not a synonym; if the former, they should be merged, if the latter, then the two should remain separate articles.  Expert attention is perhaps needed.


 * I propose that they are NOT merged because they are related but different. The similarities and differences should also be discussed in the articles.


 * Naive realism is a philosophical term and the word 'naive' has the technical meaning of "not previously exposed to something" see definition. In this context it means "not previously exposed to philosophical enquiry into the epistemological validity of the knowledge claims being made". I.e. it is a naturally occurring, assumed and unquestioned epistemological position that we all hold prior to philosophical enquiry.


 * Direct realism is the name of a philosophical position that formalises the same epistemological position as naive realism, however it is held consciously and is not an assumed and unquestioned position. Hence the two are similar in their beliefs, but very different in how those beliefs are held.


 * This difference impacts significantly on their distribution, for instance, hardly anyone subscribes to direct realism nowadays because it is so thoroughly disproved so few people consciously affirm it. However nearly everyone unconsciously subscribes to naive realism, because it is a deeply engrained, unconscious and endemic habit.Anandavala (talk) 07:44, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Objection to calling this 'direct realism'
It is true that this epistemological position has been referred to as 'naive realism' and 'direct realism', but actual adherents of this position reject both these labels. They claim that the position is true and justified, and hence, not naive. But more importantly, they make no claim about the directness or indirectness of perception under this position. (Notice that the level of directness of perception is not mentioned in any of the five defining claims of the positions. Philosopher Quee Nelson has argued that calling this position 'direct realism' is actually a straw man argument (and worse than calling it naive relaism), since this epistemological theory takes no position about how direct or indirect the perception of objects is (see Nelson 2007, pp. 9-12).  From Nelson:

"...calling it "direct" is even worse than calling it "naive". Where to label it "naive" or "vulgar" is merely to indulge in mildly prejudicial adjectives, to label it "direct" is to do something worse and commit a fallacy called the Straw Man.  First of all, it's nearly impossible to divide philosophers according to whether or not they think we perceive tables and chairs "directly" (or "immediately") on the one hand, versus perceiving the "indirectly" (or "mediately") on the other.  Are we supposed to imagine, for example, that "direct" realists deny the obvious intermediary role played by eyballs and/or light in order to see tables and chairs?" (p. 10, emphasis removed)

Surely it is reasonable to have an article that presents this epistemological position from the point of view of people who actually believe it, rather than using names chosen by its enemies to impute a smear or straw man claim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.150.246.79 (talk) 02:59, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Dualism or Monism?
I just noticed that there is a sentence at the end of a quote that I introduced on the 26th of May 2008, which presents a biased point of view and should be balanced or removed. The sentence is...

"Ultimately, therefore, the most convincing argument for epistemological dualism is the fact that its monistic alternatives have all been refuted on sound logical grounds, which leaves epistemological dualism as the only viable alternative." (at the end of the section "Problems with reprensentative realism")

This implies that monism has been soundly refuted - end of story. This is not true; there is still a heated debate with no clear outcome. Candidates such as neutral monism, Russellian monism, type-F monism have not been "refuted on sound logical grounds" and epistemological dualism does not stand out as the only logical conclusion. The issue is still very much an open question.

Either the sentence should be removed because it goes beyond the scope of the article or there should be a brief discussion within the article, comparing dualist and monist theories of epistemology in relation to naive realism.

What do others think? Anandavala (talk) 16:33, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

The sentence has been removed because it is biased and not directly relevant to the subject. If people think the issue of dualist and monist theories of epistemology in relation to naive realism is important to the article a more balanced discussion should be included. (note: I forgot to login before deleting the sentence)Anandavala (talk) 10:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Hilary Putnam
Putnam defends an original kind of naive realism, after giving up his formerly metaphysical and internal realism. It would be worth doing to add something about. --Gazal Cotre (talk) 21:52, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Pure philosophy
There should probably be only one link to the external page explaining naive realism once. It might be better still to get a second, more thorough external link or reference.

The introductory page is fine for those not familiar with naive realism or philosophy in general. A more thorough explanation would consider how such non-naive philosophers as Wittgenstein, Hume and Kant still believe that there is an external world with all the appropriate laws of physics, and objects which have--in some sense--all the properties which we perceive them to have. In fact, all realists believe this in one way or another. It's the way in which they interpret these claims which determines whether they are naive or other. The article should then also explain the difference between realism and idealism.

I don't think, however, that the issues of scientific realism should be removed. Instead, issues of pure philosophical argument should be added. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdanneskjold (talk • contribs) 17:19, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Heaps of copy/paste and direct quotes
This article violates several wikipedia policies. WP:QUOTE and WP::COPYPASTE. The information within the quotes needs to be written in a way that attributes the source and states the facts without actually duplicating the sources themselves. -- ☯ Lightbound ☯   talk   21:11, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Cannot be both a close paraphrase of a copyrighted source, and unencyclopedic
There were two criticisms:

That it is a close paraphrase of a copyrighted source, and that it is unencyclopedic.

But since the copyrighted source is academic and authoritative, these two criticisms cannot both be true.

00:59, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Quality assessment
I've changed the quality class of this article from B to C. I do not think that the article is broad enough to merit B class yet. The article needs more information on the development of the theory - there is very little about any scholars who have made contributions to this area. Moreover, reactions to the theory (support and critiques) are lacking and there is not sufficient coverage of alternative theories. I also think that the extensive lists of external links/further reading could be better woven into the source as inline citations. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 19:06, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

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