“How is an objective representation of the world possible in perception?”, the speaker — Andrei Kochenkov, student, Russian State University of Humanities (RSUH)

Address info: The seminar will be held online (via Yandex.Telemost). To receive the conference link, send an e-mail to: mindphilosophy.seminar@gmail.com.

Scientific purpose: to study and discuss modern approaches towards the research of perception and its correlation with conscience.

Participants: Professors, PhD students and researchers, students and academic staff of RUDN University, Institute of Philosophy of RAS, MSU, RSUH, HSE, St. Petersburg State University, PSU and als.

Abstract

“Is perception capable of providing us with reliable knowledge about the outside world that shall not be be reduced to subjective images, and how? Our ordinary intuition on perception is that we are directly confronted with the surrounding things and their properties. However, many philosophers considered this view naive. Following the ancient Sceptics, many philosophical approaches insisted that in perception we are not dealing with external reality, but only with its subjective representations. Perception has traditionally been viewed as something subjective and indirect. Nevertheless, in the 20th century, philosophical theories of perception have changed significantly. Modern philosophers, unlike their predecessors, increasingly claim that we perceive the external world itself, and not its subjective correlates. But how is this possible?

In the suggested report, I will trace the evolution of views on the objectivity of perception from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, starting with the theory of sensory data and ending with modern versions of direct realism. I will examine three successive families of philosophical approaches — sense data theories, conceptualist theories, and theories of direct realism, and show how modern arguments for the objectivity of perception have developed in the context of twentieth-century philosophy”.