Perceptual Recognition and the Limits of Naïve Realism

Vaggelis Spathis

University of Patras

Perceptual object recognition requires the ability to discriminate and identify objects as unified individuals. This process depends on the ventral (“what”) pathway, extending from V1 through V2 and V4 to temporal and frontal regions. Recent findings in vision science and neuropsychology highlight a critical role for the perirhinal cortex (PRC) in discriminating complex objects under conditions of high feature ambiguity, where specific object identity is required.

A crucial line of empirical support comes from studies of damage to the perirhinal cortex (PRC), which reveal specific deficits in feature conjunction and configural processing. Patients with PRC lesions show marked impairments in discriminating complex objects whose identification depends on integrating multiple overlapping features, even under simultaneous presentation and minimal memory demands. As a result, subjects cannot form more refined, high-level object representations required for discrimination under ambiguity. This suggests that there are neural mechanisms whose function is to construct integrated and structured object representations at the level of perception itself, thereby contributing to the organization and structure of perceptual content. Therefore, the discrimination of complex objects presupposes a form of perceptual representational structure.

Taking into account the foregoing findings, this paper motivates and develops an empirically grounded challenge to naïve realism about perception. According to naïve realism, perception consists in a direct non-representational (perceptual) relation to mind-independent objects. I argue that this view cannot adequately account for high-level perceptual object discrimination of unified individuals which, at some point, is crucial for perceptual object recognition.

In line with that, I formulate a dilemma for naïve realism: either perceptual discrimination, and to this extent object recognition, of objects as unified individuals involves structured perceptual representations depending on and, consequently, requiring internal feature-conjunction processes, or it does not, in which case naïve realism cannot explain the empirical findings concerning perceptual impairment following PRC damage. Either way, the view faces a serious explanatory limitation.

The upshot is that perception cannot be understood as a mere direct relation to objects but must involve structured representational organization and content that contributes to object individuation, discrimination and recognition.

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