Question
Are the internalist and externalist accounts of perception such as vision possible?
Background
Philosophers distinguish internalist accounts, which assume that perceptions of objects, and knowledge or beliefs about them, are aspects of an individual's mind, and externalist accounts, which state that they constitute real aspects of the world external to the individual.
-wiki
Now when it comes to vision I'm not sure such a demarcation is possible and more of an approximation. I consider the following:
- Starting from a quantum level. One can think of the eye as a light detector.
- Now since in quantum mechanics one only has knowledge of observables.
- then using one photon one can only distinguish between two orthogonal states.
- In the emergent classical world where one can (possibly) claim they have done an infinite amount of measurements.
- I am under the impression this is not how the human eye functions and is it is an approximation.
- Also one would probably use a notion of conditional probability (internalist) to determine something externalist.