Why Perception Matters

Abstract

What I would like to do in what follows is to explain how, in my view, realism cannot but engage with perception. But we have to be careful here. I am not saying that reality is nothing other than perceptual experience. That is certainly not how things are: rather, that is precisely the mistake we have to avoid, although this mistake is very often made by the many, and often well-informed, people who dismiss realism as a sort of sensism. The route that leads from aisthesis to realism is more tortuous and goes by way of some matters that are not only central to the history of modern philosophy, but also apt to recur like a persistent disease.