da Silva, Gesiel Borges (2026) Spacetime and perception: a special relativistic defense of naïve realism. [Preprint]
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Abstract
In this paper, I advance a special-relativistic formulation of naïve realism and use it to respond to the time-lag objection, the claim that naïve realism cannot account for the perception of distant objects that ceased to exist. On the view proposed, an object constitutes a perceptual episode when the world-line that carries its manifest properties intersects the observer’s past light cone, an invariant condition across all inertial frames. Because simultaneity is frame-dependent while this light cone relation is not, the case of distant objects that ceased to exist never yields a single frame in which both premises of the objection are true: in the subject’s frame, constitution holds but simultaneity fails; in the star’s frame, simultaneity fails; in a suitable third frame, simultaneity can be forced only at the cost of causal disconnection. Therefore, the time-lag objection poses no threat to naïve realism.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | naïve realism, special relativity, time-lag objection, simultaneity, sensory experience, philosophy of perception | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Perception Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory |
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| Depositing User: | Gesiel Borges da Silva | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 26 Mar 2026 22:49 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 26 Mar 2026 22:49 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 28737 | ||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | 10.1007/s11229-026-05516-x | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Perception Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory |
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| Date: | March 2026 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/28737 |
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