Jim Cross wrote: ↑Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:40 pmActually you don't know what you are talking about.Actually, materialists are by definition naïve realists.
You may be confusing scientific realism with naïve realism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFv ... al_realismMany philosophers claim that it is incompatible to accept naïve realism in the philosophy of perception and scientific realism in the philosophy of science.
Modern people have very flattened thinking. So when I say "perception", you assume it must be those 'things' you perceive on your desk, in the park, etc. That is because our entire inner world is ignored as a place of perceptions. It used to be materialists who mostly did this, but actually even many here who hold to idealism also ignore that inner world. I tried to point this to you before - the concept of "triangle" which you can form inwardly and perceive is no less of a "perception" than a triangular object you may perceive on your desk. Once we discover this inner world of perception, we will actually sense depth being added to our Thinking in a concrete way. We will see how naive realism can apply to our perceptions of feelings and concepts just like it can apply to our perceptions of rocks, trees, etc. in the outer world.
Jim wrote:When you get down to it, idealists are probably the most naïve of realists since what they are perceiving is consciousness itself so it must definitionally be real. There is no reason in idealism for perceptions to ever be wrong or incorrect since they are consciousness perceiving itself. No optical illusions would be possible.
What I am about to say applies to materialist and idealists alike - most people simply assume the only way to approach the phenomenal world is with abstract representational concepts. So, keeping in mind what I said before about perceiving inner concepts, what does this imply when any "truth claim" is made by such people? It means they are naively holding their own abstract concepts which they perceive about what is "true" to be the full extent of what is really true. Idealists do this all the time as well, and we see plenty of it right here on this forum. Again, this will not make sense to anyone who has not yet realized they do, in fact, perceive concepts like they perceive colors in the world.
What they perceive in both, and actually in any percept whether outer or inner, is the ideal content of that percept. Naive realism is not about thinking something is real when it is actually an "illusion" - it is about confusing what is perceived for the totality of the phenomenon at issue. It is about confusing partially perceived ideal content of any given perceptions for the totality of ideal content to be perceived. But, as we have mentioned many times on this forum, there is one instance where the percept and its total ideal content do arrive united in our experience, and that is in the perception of our own concepts such as "triangle". If one wants to avoid the pitfall of naive realism, materialist and idealist alike, they must fully understand what this unity of noumenon-phenomenon in our own Thinking activity means.
Jim wrote:As for Hoffman, are you saying color, for example, has no role in the desktop or its icons?
To return to the metaphor of the desktop interface on a PC, even though visible characteristics of the file icons (their shape, color, etc.) do not reflect their objective properties (the computer files themselves are not inherently shaped or colored), the interface nevertheless allows us to interact successfully with the computer because of the coherence between the “perceptual” and “action” mappings.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.37 ... 015-0890-8
What I am saying is that the ideal content of color, and all qualia, is what Hoffman holds to be real. No one holds the perception of "red", as a perception without any meaning, to be real by itself (such a perception does not exist). As I said above, we are always only perceiving meaning in the 'things' around us or within us. That meaning is the qualia and what Hoffman, and I would say any consistent idealist, must hold to be real.