The Nature of Sense Data
The idea that our perceptions are based on sense data is supported by a number of arguments. The first is popularly known as the Argument From Illusion. From a subjective experience of perceiving something, it is theoretically impossible to distinguish perceiving something which exists independently of oneself from an hallucination or mirage. Thus, we do not have any direct access to the outside world that would allow us to reliably distinguish it from an illusion that caused identical experiences. Since (the argument claims) we must have direct access to some specific experiential entity in order to have the percepts that we do, and since this entity is not identical to the real object itself, there must be some sort of internal mental entity somehow correlated to the real world, about which we afterwards have perceptions, make judgments, etc. This entity is a sense-datum.
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Famous quotes containing the words nature, sense and/or data:
“For Nature is the noblest engineer, yet uses a grinding economy, working up all that is wasted to-day into to-morrow’s creation;Mnot a superfluous grain of sand, for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Life is crazy. Now, maybe you knew this all along. But before I had children, I actually held on to the illusion that there was some sense of order to the universe.... I am now convinced that we are all living in a Chagall painting—a world where brides and grooms and cows and chickens and angels and sneakers are all mixed up together, sometimes floating in the air, sometimes upside down and everywhere.”
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—Grace Baruch (20th century)