Ordinary realism is probably the world most of us inhabit without ever noticing it. Things simply appear to be there. Trees, houses, tables, people, colours, sounds, and spaces seem to exist independently of us, waiting to be perceived. Experience feels less like a construction than a direct encounter with reality itself.
The World as It Appears
From this perspective, perception is largely understood as a window onto an external world. We open our eyes and see what is there. We hear sounds because sounds exist. We touch objects because objects possess the properties we experience. The world presents itself as something already organised, and perception simply reveals it.
This way of experiencing reality is remarkably successful. It allows us to navigate everyday life with confidence, communicate with others, build cities, perform science, and coordinate our actions. It is not an illusion that needs to be overcome. It is a highly effective way of inhabiting a shared world.
An Invisible Perspective
Precisely because ordinary realism works so well, it rarely appears as a perspective at all. It feels like common sense. Most of the time we do not experience ourselves as interpreting reality; we experience ourselves as simply encountering it.
Only when perception becomes unreliable, when different observers disagree, when optical illusions occur, or when philosophy and cognitive science begin asking uncomfortable questions does the possibility arise that experience may involve more than passive observation.
Questions Begin to Appear
Many perspectives explored in Wide Open Windows begin exactly here. Phenomenology asks how the world appears before it is explained. Constructivism investigates how meaning is actively organised. Embodied cognition examines the role of the body in shaping experience. Enactivism explores how perception emerges through interaction. Predictive processing proposes that perception is an ongoing process of prediction rather than passive reception.
None of these perspectives simply replaces ordinary realism. Each reveals aspects of experience that usually remain unnoticed while everyday life proceeds effortlessly.
A Necessary Beginning
Ordinary realism is therefore not presented here as something naïve or mistaken. It is the starting point from which most inquiry begins. Without it, there would be no stable world in which questions could even arise.
The dioramic approach does not ask whether ordinary realism is true or false. Instead it asks how this remarkably coherent world comes into being, why it feels so self-evident, and what becomes visible when we learn to look at it as one possible configuration of experience among many.
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