Naïve Realism, Cognitive Science and Philosophical Method

• Applicant: Dr. David Zapero
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 566024028

Much recent debate in the philosophy of perception has focused on a view, naïve realism, whose answers to questions about the nature of perception draw on our pre-theoretical or ‘naïve’ conception of perceptual experience. The controversies surrounding this view, and particularly the unresolved disagreements, can, to a great extent, be traced back to methodological disagreements – disagreements about how to approach questions about the nature of perception. The disagreements concern, in particular, the role that the empirical study of perception – cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience – can play in answering those questions. Strikingly, though, these methodological disagreements have not been examined in any detail. There has been no detailed examination of the methodological outlook undergirding naïve realism and its relation to the study of perception in cognitive science. This is the gap that the present project aims to close. It seeks examine (1) the methodological commitments of naïve realism and (2) its relation to cognitive science. The guiding hypothesis is that naïve realism is not only reconcilable with cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, but can in various ways provide insight into the significance of findings in those fields – including, notably, the findings concerning various sorts of agnosia, unconscious perception, and the perception-cognition border.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants