Experiences of derealization: A naive realist account

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.