Nothing is more foreign to perception therefore than the idea of a universe which would produce in us representations which are distinct from it by means of a causal action. To speak Kantian language, the realism of naïve consciousness is an empirical realism—the assurance of an external experience in which there is no doubt about escaping ‘states of consciousness’ and acceding to solid objects—and not a transcendental realism which, as a philosophical thesis, would posit these objects as the ungraspable causes of ‘representations’ which alone are given.
IOW, what you see is what you get. Why do these philosophers have to make things sound so complicated? 🙂
Indeed! The difficult thing in philosophy is often finding the right moment at which to state the obvious.
Well, doesn’t Hegel say, almost proto-Wittgenstenian, we say ‘This’ house here, and when we turn, ‘This’ tree. What is ‘This’? Seems like a concept that isn’t changing and through which we get the tree or house…. right?
Maybe. Is that from the “Sense Certainty” chapter of Phenomenology? I have little knowledge of Hegel.