Spacetime and perception: a special relativistic defense of naïve realism.
In this paper, I advance a special-relativistic formulation of naïve realism and use it to respond to the time-lag objection, the claim that naïve realism cannot account for the perception of distant objects that ceased to exist. On the view proposed, an object constitutes a perceptual episode when...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 207; no. 5; pp. 1 - 19 |
|---|---|
| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
May2026
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=193141563&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 193141563 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2026 vid: 207 iid: 5 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 193141563 10.1007/s11229-026-05516-x ppf: 1 ppct: 18 formats: tig: atl: Spacetime and perception: a special relativistic defense of naïve realism. aug: au: da Silva, Gesiel Borges affil: https://ror.org/02ymw8z06 Department of Philosophy, University of Missouri, 214 Middlebush Hall, 65211, Columbia, MO, USA https://ror.org/04wffgt70 Department of Philosophy and Centre for Logic, Epistemology, and the History of Science, UNICAMP, Rua Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Cidade Universitária, 10587, Campinas, SP, Brazil su: Special relativity (Physics) Light cones Visual perception Realism Time Perception (Philosophy) sug: subj: Special relativity (Physics) Light cones Visual perception Realism Time Perception (Philosophy) keyword: Naïve realism Philosophy of perception Sensory experience Simultaneity Special relativity Time-lag objection ab: In this paper, I advance a special-relativistic formulation of naïve realism and use it to respond to the time-lag objection, the claim that naïve realism cannot account for the perception of distant objects that ceased to exist. On the view proposed, an object constitutes a perceptual episode when the world-line that carries its manifest properties intersects the observer's past light cone, an invariant condition across all inertial frames. Because simultaneity is frame-dependent while this light cone relation is not, the case of distant objects that ceased to exist never yields a single frame in which both premises of the objection are true: in the subject's frame, constitution holds but simultaneity fails; in the star's frame, simultaneity fails; in a suitable third frame, simultaneity can be forced only at the cost of causal disconnection. Therefore, the time-lag objection poses no threat to naïve realism. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|