John Christmann 9/27/2012 Argument against Nave Empiricism

The position of nave realism entails that for any human observer, when those observers view, for instance, a painting, that painting causes a sense impression to become present in the observers minds eye. That sense impression is exactly the same for every human observer with properly functioning sense organs, according to this particular realism (empiricism). The simplest argument against this version of nave realism (empiricism) is the fact that when two observers view an object or event, they are not necessarily going to experience the same thing. For instance, a cell biologist with twenty years of experience viewing cells through a microscope will actually have a different experience when viewing said cells through a microscope than a first year biology student would. The first year biology student might see some shape and sort of colored blob, whereas the experienced biologist will probably see intricate cellular structure and will probably be able to point out each microstructure that forms the cell as a whole. Another example is a painting of a landscape which has a hidden human face embedded within the picture itself (its disguised as trees and birds or as the shadowing on the side of a barn). A viewer who has viewed the picture at length will be able to discern the hidden face whereas a first time viewer will probably only see the landscape and miss the hidden face entirely (however, given enough time and inspection, the other viewer will probably see the face). These two examples seem to be sufficient counterexamples to the nave empiricist position that two observers with fully functional sense organs will necessarily see the same thing when viewing an object or event.