Abstract
Chapter 4 combines nontheistic idealism with the externalist account of bridging laws proposed in Chapter 3 to yield an attractive theory of perception on which we stand in literal and direct epistemic contact with reality. In perception, the external world literally overlaps with and is a part of our minds, affording us the same access to distal objects of perception that we have to our own thoughts and bodily sensations. On this “naïve idealist” view, the acquaintance we have with the world in perception is akin to introspective acquaintance. The difference lies in whether the mental item we’re acquainted with is merely a part of my mind, or whether it is additionally a part of the phenomenal tapestry of reality. In addition to fleshing out an idealist account of veridical perception, this chapter offers accounts of hallucination and illusion. The latter diverges markedly from Berkeley’s purely cognitive account and shows that idealists have the resources to give a more common-sense explanation of illusions.