Is Perception Reality? A Realist's Confession

[Royce]

Confession of a Realist

I know that I shouldn’t and I hate myself for it, but when I look at grass and tree leaves in the spring and summer I see green. I really do! I can’t help it! Its not my fault. I really do see and experience green. I guess I’m just made that way. Oh, I know that I’m not really seeing green and that the grass and leaves aren’t really green what with photons, energy levels, reflectivity and all that stuff, and its all just electro-chemical models in the neurons in my in my brain; but, I can’t help myself. I see green, all different shades and kinds of green. Its beautiful.
Not only that, while I making this shameful confession, when I look at the sky on a beautiful clear sunny day I see blue. I know, I know, its not really blue. It’s just so pretty that I can’t help myself. I’m just weak. Now here comes the worst. When I look at a red rose, I see a red rose. I experience redness and its beauty touches me, my heart and soul.
Oh, my God! When I touch a rock, I feel and know that it is hard (sorry I couldn’t find a color for hard), furniture too! Again, and I hate to keep repeating myself, I can’t help it. Rocks and furniture legs are hard and I experience their hardness. Especially and 2 o’clock in the morning when I’m staggering to or from the bathroom and stub my poor abused toe on some piece of furniture that my wife keeps moving, Damn-it its hard and it hurts. At 2 o’clock in the morning I don’t tell myself that it is not really hard but just a bunch of crystals, molecules, atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, strings or mathematical fields of force and energy. It hurts and its hard and I cuss it out for all I’m worth.
Well that’s all I have time for now. I’m late for my RA (Realist Anonymous meeting).

 

[hypnagogue]

You've just stated that you experience certain perceptions, which is not terribly informative with regards to the topic of realism. What exactly are you being a realist about? How does your experience support your realism?

In general, where the distinctive objects of a subject-matter are a, b, c, … , and the distinctive properties are …is F, …is G, …is H and so on, realism about that subject matter will typically take the form of a claim like the following:

Generic Realism:
a, b, and c and so on exist, and the fact that they exist and have properties such as F-ness, G-ness, and H-ness is (apart from mundane empirical dependencies of the sort sometimes encountered in everyday life) independent of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/

 

[Royce]

You've just stated that you experience certain perceptions, which is not terribly informative with regards to the topic of realism. What exactly are you being a realist about? How does your experience support your realism?

No, I didn't. I said; " I really do see and experience green."

Nowhere in my brain or mind is there a flag that waves and warns that this is a perception only. I say and think that I see green, the color green, and I experience the sensation of seeing green. Yes, it is simplistic; but the only indication that I have that instead of actually seeing color or seeing something that is intrinsically green, blue or red etc, is somebody else's word for it, and he/they aren't here experiencing what I am experiencing.

Can you or anyone else prove to me that I am not seeing what really is, but perceiving a model of reality. How could you or anyone else know what I am doing and what is going on inside my head or mind. I say that I am seeing a red rose because I am looking at a red rose and because it is a red rose in reality.

I also know that the word "perceive" is a $10 word with a degree that says the same thing and describes the same sensation (experience) as the 2 bit word "see". Where do we actually do the seeing? Surely it isn't our eyes as they only focus and absorb light, photons, and selectively convert them to electric impulses sent to our brains. There according to your cognitive scientist models are built symbolically and the millions of pieces of information are stored and correlated into a perception more or less complete that is then compared to earlier experiences of similar perceptions so that eventually we become cognitive of what it is that we are seeing.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I became bored and looked somewhere else at something else and saw something else that was also real.
I thought that you would be one of the first to respond as this is somewhat of a continuation of our old "value" discussion. Where is your sense of humor? I thought it was funny especially here.