Experiences of derealization A naive realist account
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21591891 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Craig French (0000-0001-8843-5225, University of Nottingham, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-26 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-19 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophical Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0951-5089 • E-ISSN: 1465-394X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09515089.2025.2606142 |
| OpenAlex | W4417494192 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
A major symptom of “Derealization/Depersonalization Disorder” is derealization. People who experience derealization report a sense of unreality when it comes to their surroundings, yet they still perceive those surroundings. How can this possibly be accommodated by a naive realist theory of experience – a theory on which the real external world is central to explaining the phenomenology of perception? I develop this question into a new problem for naive realism: the problem of derealization. But I argue that the naive realist can respond to this by offering an account of perceptual experiences of derealization. On the account I propose, such experiences are constituted by perceptual relations to external objects, but involve existentially degraded relations. This involves perceiving an object in such a way that one’s perception makes the object available to one without its existence. Perception can become degraded in this way, I suggest, when it is structured by background feelings of unreality
Derealization · Metatheory · Critical Realism in Sociology · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Philosophy and Theoretical Science
| Highly cited | No |
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