Against visual realism
I establish two things in this thesis. First, I argue that visual realism - the beliefs in a world populated by mind-independent, visible things - is false. Second, I show that the only viable form of visual idealism is one that recognises visual awareness to be essentially conceptual in nature, and regards seeing as a kind of thinking. As visual realism is a widely held and defended view, much of the thesis is devoted to exposing its falsehood. It do this by introducing a novel argument - the Argument from After-Images - which draws the conclusion that visual realism is false from the empirical fact that after-images are mind-dependent. It takes five of the six chapters that make up the work to establish that no visual realist can afford to reject any one of the premises of that argument. Along the way, the three main traditions in realistic thought about visual perception are examined: adverbialism (the belief that visual awareness can be non-relational in nature); representationalism (the belief that to be visually aware of anything is to have a mental state which represents the world as being a certain way); and indirect realism (the view that visual awareness of the external world is mediated by visual
Gibbons, J.
Against visual realism. I establish two things in this thesis. First, I argue that visual realism - the beliefs in a world populated by mind-independent, visible things - is false. Second, I show that the only viable form of visual idealism is one that recognises visual awareness to be essentially conceptual in nature, and regards seeing as a kind of thinking. As visual realism is a widely held and defended view, much of the thesis is devoted to exposing its falsehood. It do this by introducing a novel argument - the Argument from After-Images - which draws the conclusion that visual realism is false from the empirical fact that after-images are mind-dependent. It takes five of the six chapters that make up the work to establish that no visual realist can afford to reject any one of the premises of that argument. Along the way, the three main traditions in realistic thought about visual perception are examined: adverbialism (the belief that visual awareness can be non-relational in nature); representationalism (the belief that to be visually aware of anything is to have a mental state which represents the world as being a certain way); and indirect realism (the view that visual awareness of the external world is mediated by visual
visual realism establish two_thing thesis first argue visual realism belief world populate mind_independent visible thing false second show viable form visual idealism recognise visual awareness essentially conceptual nature regard see kind thinking visual realism widely_hold view much devote expose introduce novel argument argument after images draws conclusion visual realism false empirical_fact after images mind dependent take make work establish visual realist afford reject premise_argument along_way three_main tradition realistic think visual_perception examine belief visual awareness non relational nature representationalism belief visually aware anything mental_state represent_world certain way indirect realism view visual awareness external_world mediate visual