representative realism

Representative realism, also known as the causal theory, is a philosophical stance that suggests we perceive the world indirectly. It posits that our minds do not directly apprehend external objects but rather mental images or representations of them. This theory, with roots in 17th-century Cartesianism and later empiricism and idealism, questions the validity of human knowledge because it relies on demonstrating that these mental representations accurately reflect the external world.12

Representative realism holds that physical objects are perceived through sense-data, which are caused by the stimulation of our sense organs and nervous system. For example, light reflecting off an object, traveling through space, and striking the retina leads to the experience of a visual sense-datum. The challenge for this view is that since we only directly perceive sense-data, we can never be certain if these representations accurately correspond to the actual external objects.2