Do We Perceive Things or Perceptions?
When it comes to seeing objects, we can think about it two ways. 1. We perceive what are called sense-data, that is, perceptions, and then infer things "out there" from mental images "in here." 2. We perceive objects "out there," full stop. No. 1 runs afoul of Occam's Razor as well as the way we experience seeing things. No one in their everyday life thinks they perceive perceptions. They know they perceive things. Children begin to do this almost immediately. That later on we learn that perception (like everything else) has a specific nature involving light, eyes, brains, etc. changes nothing whatsoever. Why would anyone expect a process to have no nature? That would make no sense. Only an impossible god would see without a way to see. No. 1 also introduces serious problems, which have long been pointed out. If all we perceive directly is something inside our heads, how do we know that this stuff corresponds to anything "out there"? Or how