Seeing Qualia and Positing the World
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement September 1, 1991 DOI: 10.1017/s1358246100007736 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that philosophy should deal without presupposition with the general nature of the world and whether we can know it, and that these questions are bound up with the nature of perception. Proposes that the question of perception can be better defined to distinguish it from the related scientific question, and that this is not merely a matter of conceptual analysis. |
Abstract
It is the business of philosophy to deal without presupposition with the question of the general nature of the world and with the question of how or indeed whether we can know that nature. These are questions to which answers are given in the realism of ordinary belief, as it can be called, the phenomenalism of Berkeley, the pragmatism and the scientism of Quine, and the varieties of scepticism. The ontological and the epistemological questions are bound up with another, that of the nature of perception—the question of what it is, in general, that happens when we perceive. What is called naive realism is an answer, as are representation theories, and phenomenalism again. If the question might be better defined, so as to distinguish it from the related scientific question, it is no matter of mere conceptual analysis. Let us start with this question of the nature of perception.