In his chapter concerning sense perception he shows how the subjective idealism of Hume, Berkeley and Locke has been refuted (i guess it can be held to, but that reduces to an incredible solipsisism)
He next proceeds to commonsense realism and then further to indirect realism, which means that what is direclty apprehendended in percpetion are sense data.
IOW, i directly apprehend shapes of colour, heat, texture etc. in contrast to physical objects such as chairs and tables.
From this he proceeds to show how the sense data is an appearance only and cannot be said to be part of the object. Same for touch. In essence, the existence of a physical object is an unjustified inference.
Could somebody help me out with this? Why would the inference be unjustified? Is it the conclusion that i have a material object in front of me that is unjustified or is it the conclusion that i have a chair in front of me that is unjustified?
Russell, in his early works at least, postulated a difference between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. Supposedly, we become acquainted with the objects to which the sense data belong. For example, i see a shape of red but i become acquainted with the universal book. The universal in this case would justify my inference.
Ok maybe I can help but, I doubt it, someone is going to follow me and refute everything. Gads this place gets you paranoid
Um no on second thought I just went through this on a different level and threads. Not ready to start a new one yet.
Patience, some one will be by to expand your reality and horizon. refreshments are in the back for you to consume while you wait. Um don’t touch the red M&Ms there is a guy here that has a thing about little red round things.
Well, for Berkely and Hume. The fact that B and H wrote is a refutation of Locke in and of itself, not to mention everything that came after him. But that is besides the point.
Both aren’t unjustified, indeed there are arguments to establish an external, objective reality, but it is only to how much stock you put into them. Indeed many do not prescribe to this in theory, only in practice because common vernacular is not capable of speaking of a non-chair in a realistic sense. This is merely reductionism via parsiomony, it explains what we observe with the least entities so necessarily it must be right… WRONG. That is not a justification of proof, merely of suggestion.
The ‘universal book’ in and of itself is a universal concept which this sort of positivism should shun, it is an unnecessary entity and VERY problematic to justify out of clarity (but not out of need). It is reminicent of God in Descartes’ Meditations: introduced because he couldn’t think of another solution. Recourse to the universal cannot be a solution to an issue of pure sense perception as determining our reality.
I could launch into an entire tirade in answer to your question, or I could direct you to a wonderful lecture on this very topic, that should make you MORE than happy in answering your question!
Gordon Clark has dissected empiricism in all its forms, and does a fair job at explaining it and making it understandable! (Also, he has a pretty sly sense of humor if you pick up on it!)
This is of course, all from a Christian perspective! Click on this link, scroll down to the C’s, and find the lectures by Gordon Clark, there is a specific one called, “Empiricism.”
Sense data is an appearance only? Why is this a surprise? What else could it possibly be?
How does Joads expect substance to appear? What might Joads even possibly observe that might cause him to exclaim, “Aha! Substance!”
If Joads is saying that substance cannot possibly appear (and he is saying that), then he hasn’t shown that material (or substance) doesn’t exist. He’s simply defined it out of existence.
FYI, i have two books by G Clark himself lying on the table, “Christian philosophy” and “Thales to dewey”. I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet, i’ve just browsed, but from what i can tell he dismisses sense knowledge altogether.
