Abstract

In this paper, I present a new realist idealist account of perception, on which perception is not essentially representational. Perception, rather, involves an overlapping of two phenomenal unities: the perceiving subject, and the phenomenal tapestry of reality. This renders it intelligible that we can stand in precisely the same relation to distal objects of perception as we do to our own pains. The resulting view captures much that naïve realists take to be central to perception. But, I argue, such a view is only intelligible if distal objects are themselves fundamentally mental. Idealism is thus uniquely posed to intelligibly capture the benefits of naïve realism.