More sense data stuff...

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I didn’t see anyone question this in the sense data thread, and its been bugging (pun intended) me as of late…

This is the argument

  1. What I am seeing is a square table
  2. From this angle the table appears to be a rhomboid
    C) I cannot both be seeing a square and a rhomboid table therefore what I am seeing is a rhomboid-table-sense-datum.

This is it’s symbolic form
Let S= What I am seeing is a square table
Let R= From this angle the table appears to be a rhomboid
Let D = I am seeing is a rhomboid-table-sense-datum.

  1. S
  2. R
  3. ~(S&R)
    .: D

Logically you should run the argument like this:

  1. S
  2. R
    .: S&R

Next example…

  1. What I am seeing is a stick insect
  2. It appears to be a stick
    C) I cannot both be seeing a stick-insect and a stick therefore what I am seeing is a stick( or a stick-shaped-sense-datum )

Let I= What I am seeing is a stick insect
Let S= It appears to be a stick
Let D= what I am seeing is a stick( or a stick-shaped-sense-datum )

  1. I
  2. S
  3. ~(I&S)
    .: D

Again, the only way to make sense of this is like:

  1. I
  2. S
    .: I&S

In other words…

  1. What I am seeing is a stick insect
  2. It appears to be a stick
    .: What I am seeing is a stick insect AND it appears to be a stick

Neither of these original arguments are sound. They both introduce new conclusions that I am not forced to hold even if the premises were true, and there is that matter of the blatent contradiction in both of them. So, by RAA I can conclude that both of the original arguments were in fact bogus.

2

One thing that I guess I should clarify is that:

  1. I
  2. S
  3. ~(I&S) .: D
  4. I&S (Assume RAA [conjunction 1,2])
  5. ~(I&S)&(I&S) (conjunction 4,5)
    and there’s my contradiction…

although, I would hope that anyone that could follow my post would be able to see that intuitively…

3

they aren’t even arguments…

-Imp

4

Troy,

I think what Imp is saying is that, your compass doesn’t point north. :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue:

5

Imp,

Lets see, we’ve got numbered premises… and the use of the word “therefore” (probably the most blatent argument indicator) sniff sniff sniff… smells like an argument to me.

I think they make zero sense… but they were an attempt to force us to a conclusion nevertheless.

6

where are the middle terms?

no arguments

-Imp

7

Yeah, you’re right. Still no reason for me to be convinced by them…

I still think it was more fun my way though.

8

Just been informed of this posts.

The argument itself is logically meaningless because

The table actually being square
and the table appearing to be rhomboid

are not contradictary, despite common belief. The term seems/appears is used from a logical standpoint to insulate us from contradicting the two.

But it is impotant to notice that saying “that sheet appears to be a ghost” is fine, wheras “that sheet is the appearence of a ghost” makes logically no sense.

The proposed logic would run something like this

  1. The table is square
  2. The table appears rhomboid
    .: It cannot both be square and rhomboid simultaniously so therefore the object of perception cannot be the table itself but something other, let’s call that thing a sense-data.

Of course this is just exemplifying the logical issue regarding the term “appears” but still it illustrates nicely the meaninglessness of the argument.

9

The argument is meaningless not because the logical connections between sense data and interpretation are not there, but because your conclusion doesn’t follow from your first two premises.

The if we only take the first two premises into consideration, we could conclude:
The table is square AND The table appears rhomboid (by conjunction)

This doesn’t seem to be a contradiction.

I guess I’m still not clear on what your argument is (so I’m just going to go off on my own tangent).

One should note that when we view a table, we are not viewing just one object, but two. One through one eye and one through another. Our brain imediately makes calculations and finds the object’s shape.

We do not merely associate the square table we see with past squares that we’ve seen, but we do a rough trig calculation upon first seeing it. So, it seems that our use of the word “square” is refering to sense data.

Now I will give you that the way the word functions depends on the form of life that we are a part of.

Forgive me if I’m wrong (I’ve only read 2 of your posts), but It seems that you might have OD’ed on the Tractatus but didn’t quite make it to the Investigations.

Note that in the Investigations he will say that a square just is how the language functions within our linguistic community and form of life. In other words, we cannot explain what a square is by ostentative definitions, but we have to look and see for ourselves.

(Now that I think about it, perhaps this was the direction you are moving… regardless, I’m confused)

By the way, (just a technical hint) your ‘conclusion’ is still a premise and conclusion combined into one as I tried to make explicit in my first post.

10

Your confusion is due to the fact that I am not arguing for sense-data but introducing a conceptual argument against it regaridng the use of the word “APPEARS”.

And as for your square thing rememember the green book and the man with pieces of coloured paper.

The reference to squareness is an onotological thing I dont care how we epistomologically establish it.