Direct Realism: A Study of Perception (1983)

or their surfaces can be translated without remainder into descriptions of ob- jects that are neither material objects or surfaces of any material object. All of these claims have historically conspired to discredit Direct Realism. But Direct Realism can accommodate all of the premises of the three argu- ments without admitting any of their conclusions. Inferential perceptual knowl- edge assumes a kind of knowledge that is not inferential. Without this assump- tion, we are given a vicious infinite regress. But this is compatible with the fact that any case of non-inferential knowledge has a material objeCt as its object. The fact ofinfallible perceptual awareness fails to discredit DireCt Realism for similar reasons. Infallibility is a characteristic, not of the objects which we perceive, but rather of the acts by which we perceive them. And this permits an object of such awareness to be either material or something other than material. It does not fol- low from the fact of infallibility that the objects of awareness must be other than material objects. And, finally, the fact of translatability shows at most that we either can or must simultaneously perceive material objects and entities which are not material objects. It does not show that the perception of the one is the same as the perception of the other. The entire argument rests, as we shall learn, on an illicit assimilation of the notions of sameness and equivalence.