The Folly Of Naive Realism

Many people, it appears, are naive realists unless at some point they begin to think critically and only accept as true things which are rationally demonstrable.  What is naive realism?  It is the belief--by its very nature an assumed belief--that the external world [1] really is as it appears to be.  For instance, a naive realist named Susan will think that because she perceives a tree in front of her the tree must exist (i.e. it is not an illusion).  This is why it is called naive.  It is not a rational, provable belief in any way.

A great example of someone supportive of this ideology is G.E. Moore, who mistakenly thought he could prove the external world simply by holding up his two hands.  Many people, if asked, might offer similar "proofs" of the reliability of their senses.  But, unfortunately, both naive realists and skeptics so often fail to understand the most basic truths about the external world and perceptions of external objects.

It is true that logic cuts deeply and fatally into naive realism, exposing the leap between perceiving an external object and the external object actually existing as perceived [2].  My senses are utterly unreliable in the sense that they cannot verify if my sensory perceptions connect with the actual material world, although there is no proof that my senses are unreliable in the sense of totally deceiving me about the appearance of the external world.  Any being with my limitations that pretends to know anything about a particular external object beyond the fact that it is being immediately perceived is an irrational thinker.  I despise this fact, but it remains a fact despite my discontentment.  I cannot know if the iPad I am writing this post with is a part of the actual external world.  And I do not pretend to know what I cannot verify.

Still, there are at least a handful of truths about the external world that I know for sure.  First of all, there is some sort of external world made of physical matter, and I know this for sure [3], although whether or not it would exist apart from my mind, if my consciousness ceased to exist, is unknown [4].  I cannot experience physical sensations without actually having a physical body, so the fact that I do experience physical sensations means that I really do have a body (though I do not know its actual appearance).  Likewise, I know for sure that I do encounter some sort of physical stimuli beyond my body--again, because of my sense of touch.  I really am contacting something.

I cannot know if a stimuli in the external world
has the exact appearance I perceive, but I know
both that there is an external world and that I
have specific perceptions of objects within it.

Secondly, I have specific perceptions of specific external objects.  I cannot perceive something that I am not perceiving, so the fact that I have specific perceptions of the external world cannot be illusory (even if they do not conform to the way the external world actually is).  Thirdly, logic governs the entirety of whatever external world exists.  Nothing can not be what it is, and thus, even if there is an unbridgeable distance between me perceiving specific objects and knowing if those objects exist, I know that nothing in the external world is logically impossible.

Though naive realism is nonsense as an epistemological thesis, denial of the external world is also nonsense and is objectively false, meaning that total skepticism about the external world is also an incorrect position, for in proving that an external world exists I also disprove total skepticism about the external world.  The stupidity of beings similar to myself who actually believe that there is no external world is incredibly thorough, but this fact does not liberate me from skepticism about the accuracy of my sense perceptions.  Naive realism is a metaphysical framework held by persons who either assume in ignorance or are aware of their limitations and yet choose to believe in the unknown anyway.  I have long refused to be either kind of person.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/defining-external-world.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-reliability-of-senses.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-external-world.html

[4].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-relationship-between-idealism-and.html