In this essay, I will argue that representative realism is far more plausible than direct realism, by defending versions of the argument from illusion and the argument for secondary qualities. One method of attacking direct realism is by looking at perceptual illusions. An example would be the stick in the water. If you half submerge a stick in water, and look at it from one side, it will look bent, even though it hasn’t changed shape. If we were to see the stick directly then the stick in the water would just look like a normal stick, however it looks bent, so we cannot be seeing the stick directly. Another example is the rose under sodium light. Under sodium street lamps, a red rose will look grey, even though it hasn’t changed colour. Therefore we can’t be seeing the rose directly; otherwise it would have looked red. Yet another example is that of the thumb and the moon. If you hold your thumb up to the moon, it will look bigger, even though it obviously isn’t. If we were observing the moon directly, then it wouldn’t look smaller than the thumb. Therefore we can’t be seeing it directly; hence physical objects are not the immediate objects of perception.
Furthermore, another attack of direct realism, and the statement made in the title, is the argument from illusion. This argument states that R1) When I look at a stick in water I see something that’s bent. R2) The bent thing cannot be the stick itself. IC) So it must be a mental image of the stick, a sense datum. C) This means that I must be seeing the stick indirectly, by seeing it as sense datum. In this argument the two reasons are essentially saying that when we perceive the stick in the water, what we see is an object that is bent, however, since the actual stick in the water isn’t bent, then what we’re seeing can’t be the real stick. Therefore if I’m not seeing the stick directly, but rather sense datum, then this shows that physical objects are not the immediate objects of perception.
However, there are a few responses that direct realists give against the criticisms. One response is towards the argument from illusion, is the “looks is” response. This response is simply formed through direct realists saying that there is a difference between the stick looking bent, and actually being bent. A direct realist would say that when I look at look at a stick in water, I see something that looks bent, rather than something that is bent. The property of looking bent is a relational property of the stick, a property it has in relation to being seen by us. Usually when something looks bent, it is in fact bent, but in the case of the illusion, the two properties come apart.
In addition, another side that can be taken is to almost accept the view of both sides. Some direct realists even go as to accept that when you look at the stick, you are seeing something that is bent, and that bent object which is being perceived is sense datum. However, they argue that this only occurs in cases of illusion, that we see physical objects in an indirect way, rather than directly. In cases of veridical perception, we are not seeing the objects indirectly, we seem them directly, without seeing any sense data. Therefore according to this theory, also known as disjunctivism, when I see a stick that looks bent, I am either seeing a sense datum of the stick (in the case of the experience being an illusion) or I am seeing the stick directly (if my experience Is veridical). I may also be unable to tell which situation I am in as well. However, the problem with disjuncitivism is that, it almost stops being direct realism or representative realism for that matter. It is almost “cheating” by taking both sides. Therefore as a view to make a judgment about whether physical objects are the immediate objects of perception, it can’t really come to one judgment since it can take both sides.
In conclusion I think that representative realism is far more plausible than direct realism because in the argument from illusion, it is very true that what we’re seeing can’t be the actual stick, because our perception shows us something that is bent. Therefore it only makes sense to believe that we must be perceiving sense datum. However the direct realists are only able to come up with weak responses, and like in the cases of disjunctivists, the end up supporting neither side, and just taking the side that they think is appropriate in each situation. Therefore physical objects which exists independently of us, are not the immediate objects of perception.