Editing Direct and indirect realism (section)

==History==
[[Aristotle]] was the first to provide a description of direct realism. In ''[[On the Soul]]'' he describes how a see-er is informed of the [[substance theory|object itself]] by way of the [[hylomorphism|hylomorphic form]] carried over the intervening material continuum with which the eye is impressed.<ref name="Bernecker2008">{{cite book |first=S. |last=Bernecker |year=2008 |title=The Metaphysics of Memory |series=Philosophical Studies Series |publisher=Springer |isbn=9781402082191 |lccn=2008921236 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hNk4jvxjVhUC&pg=PA62 |page=62 |quote=The distinction between direct and indirect realism about perception has an interesting history. There was a time when perception was understood to be of things themselves, not of our ideas of things. This is what we find in Aristotle and Aquinas, who maintain that the mind or understanding grasps the form of the material object without the matter. What we perceive directly, on this view, are material objects. This changed in the seventeenth century with Descartes and Locke. who can be read as saying that the primary objects of perception are not things external to the mind but sense-data. Sense-data are the messengers that stand between us and physical objects such as tables and chairs. While indirect realism was the standard view of early modern philosophers, nowadays direct realism is, once again, in fashion. |access-date=2016-03-23 |archive-date=2019-12-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191220140338/https://books.google.com/books?id=hNk4jvxjVhUC&pg=PA62 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In [[medieval philosophy]], [[direct realism]] was defended by [[Thomas Aquinas]].<ref name="Bernecker2008"/>

Indirect realism was popular with several [[early modern philosophy|early modern philosophers]], including [[René Descartes]],<ref name=Yolton>John W. Yolton, ''Realism and Appearances: An Essay in Ontology'', Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 136.</ref> [[John Locke]],<ref name=Yolton/> [[G. W. Leibniz]],<ref>A. B. Dickerson, ''Kant on Representation and Objectivity'', Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 85.</ref> and [[David Hume]].<ref name=SEP-PP>[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/ The Problem of Perception (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191209221900/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/ |date=2019-12-09 }}: "Paraphrasing David Hume (1739...; see also Locke 1690, Berkeley 1710, Russell 1912): nothing is ever directly present to the mind in perception except perceptual appearances."</ref>

Locke categorized [[primary/secondary quality distinction|qualities]] as follows:<ref>A. D. Smith, "On Primary and Secondary Qualities", ''Philosophical Review'' (1990), 221–54.</ref> 

* Primary qualities are qualities which are "explanatorily basic" – which is to say, they can be referred to as the explanation for other qualities or phenomena without requiring explanation themselves – and they are distinct in that our sensory experience of them resembles them in reality.  (For example, one perceives an object as spherical precisely because of the way the atoms of the sphere are arranged.)  Primary qualities cannot be removed by either thought or physical action, and include mass, movement, and, controversially, solidity (although later proponents of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities usually discount solidity).
* Secondary qualities are qualities that one's experience does not directly resemble; for example, when one sees an object as red, the sensation of seeing redness is not produced by some quality of redness in the object, but by the arrangement of atoms on the surface of the object which reflects and absorbs light in a particular way.  Secondary qualities include colour, smell, sound, and taste.

[[Thomas Reid]], a notable member of the [[Scottish common sense realism]] was a proponent of direct realism.<ref>Patrick Rysiew, ''New Essays on Thomas Reid'', Routledge, 2017, p. 18.</ref> Direct realist views have been attributed to [[Baruch Spinoza]].<ref>Michael Della Rocca (ed.), ''The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza'', Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 288.</ref> 

[[Late modern philosophy|Late modern philosophers]], [[J. G. Fichte]] and [[G. W. F. Hegel]] followed Kant in adopting empirical realism.<ref>Daniel Breazeale and [[Tom Rockmore]] (eds.), ''Fichte, German Idealism, and Early Romanticism'', Rodopi, 2010, p. 20.</ref><ref>[[Tom Rockmore]], ''Before and After Hegel: A Historical Introduction to Hegel's Thought'', Hackett Publishing, 2003, p. xviii: "Hegel follows Kant ... in limiting claims to know to the empirically real. In short, he adopts a view very similar to Kant's empirical realism."</ref> Direct realism was also defended by [[John Cook Wilson]] in his [[Oxford University|Oxford]] lectures (1889–1915).<ref>Michael Beaney (ed.), ''The Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 40.</ref> On the other hand, [[Gottlob Frege]] (in his 1892 paper "[[On Sense and Reference|Über Sinn und Bedeutung]]") subscribed to indirect realism.<ref>Samuel Lebens, ''Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions: A History and Defence of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement'', Routledge, 2017, p. 34.</ref>

In [[contemporary philosophy]], indirect realism has been defended by [[Edmund Husserl]]<ref>Robin D. Rollinger, ''Husserl's Position in the School of Brentano'', ''Phaenomenologica'' 150, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999, p. 224 n. 1.</ref> and [[Bertrand Russell]].<ref name=SEP-PP/> Direct realism has been defended by [[Hilary Putnam]],<ref>Putnam, Hilary. Sep. 1994. "The Dewey Lectures 1994: Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind." ''The Journal of Philosophy'' '''91'''(9):445–518.</ref> [[John McDowell]],<ref>John McDowell, ''Mind and World''. Harvard University Press, <!--November-->1994, p. 26.</ref><ref>Roger F. Gibson, "McDowell's Direct Realism and Platonic Naturalism", ''Philosophical Issues'' Vol. 7, ''Perception'' (1996), pp. 275–281.</ref> [[Galen Strawson]],<ref>Galen Strawson, [https://vimeo.com/91346935 "Real Direct Realism"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170116011632/https://vimeo.com/91346935 |date=2017-01-16 }}, a lecture recorded 2014 at Marc Sanders Foundation, Vimeo.</ref> and [[John R. Searle]].<ref>John R. Searle, ''Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception'', Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 15.</ref>

However, epistemological dualism has come under sustained attack by other contemporary philosophers, such as [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] (the [[private language argument]]) and [[Wilfrid Sellars]] in his seminal essay "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind". Indirect realism is argued to be problematical because of [[Ryle's regress]] and the [[homunculus argument]]. Recently, reliance on the private language argument and the "homunculus objection" has itself come under attack. It can be argued that those who argue for "inner presence", to use [[Antti Revonsuo]]'s term,<ref>Revonsuo, Antti (2006) ''Inner Presence:  Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon,'' Cambridge MA:  MIT Press.</ref> are not proposing  a private "referent", with the application of language to it being "private" and thus unshareable, but a ''private'' use of ''public'' language.  There is no doubt that each of us has a private understanding of public language, a notion that has been experimentally supported;<ref>[[Ragnar Rommetveit|Rommetveit, Ragnar]] (1974) ''On Message Structure:  A Framework for the Study of Language and Communication,'' London:  John Wiley & Sons.</ref> [[George Steiner]] refers to our personal use of language as an "[[idiolect]]", one particular to ourselves in its detail.<ref>Steiner, George (1998), ''After Babel:  Aspects of Language and Translation,'' London & New York:  Oxford University Press.</ref>  The question has to be put how a collective use of language can go on when, not only do we have differing understandings of the words we use, but our sensory registrations differ.<ref>Hardin, C. L. (1988) ''Color for Philosophers,'' Indianapolis IN:  Hackett Pub. Co.</ref>