Philosophy:Disjunctivism
Disjunctivism is a position in the philosophy of perception that rejects the existence of sense data in certain cases.[1] The disjunction is between appearance and the reality behind the appearance "making itself perceptually manifest to someone."[2]
Disjunctivism claims, against the argument from hallucination, that veridical perceptions and hallucinations are not members of a common class of mental states or events. The argument from hallucination claims that since hallucinations can be indistnguishable from veridical perceptions, the two states belong to a common class of mental states. According to disjunctivism, the only thing common to veridical perceptions and hallucinations is that in both cases, the subject cannot tell, via introspection, whether he is having a veridical perception or not; but they resist the inference from the indistinguishability of the states to the metaphysical claim that the two states belong to the same class of mental states.
A motivating factor for disjunctivism, is that it allows the theorist to hold on to the claim that in cases of veridical perception, a subject's experience actually presents the external, mind-independent object of that perception. Disjunctivism enables the theorist to claim that despite the indistinguishability, in a hallucination there is no external object to be related to, nor are there sense-data to be a part of the perception. Most disjunctivists are also naive realists (also commonly known as direct realism), although John McDowell, a prominent disjunctivist, is not a naive realist.[3]
Disjunctivism was first introduced to the contemporary literature by Michael Hinton, and has been most prominently associated with John McDowell and Paul Snowdon.[4][5][6] It has also been defended at length by Duncan Pritchard.[1] Other prominent disjunctivists include Bill Brewer,[7] Mike Martin, John Campbell[8] and Naomi Eilan.[9] Matthew Soteriou has also discussed disjunctivism extensively.[10] Disjunctivists often hold that an important virtue of their view is that it captures the common sense idea that perception involves a relation to objects in the world.[11]
Disjunctivism can be contrasted to the Triggered Hallucination Theory of perception, which holds that veridical perception and hallucination are the same thing, but differ only in aetiology.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "The Disjunctive Theory of Perception". https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-disjunctive/. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
- ↑ Timothy Chappell (2005). The Inescapable Self: An Introduction to Western Philosophy Since Descartes. Sterling. pp. 64. ISBN 9780297847359. https://books.google.com/books?id=WXEpBevTEqYC. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
- ↑ McDowell, John (2011). Perception as a capacity for knowledge (1st ed.). Marquette University Press. ISBN 9780874621792.
- ↑ J. M. Hinton, Experiences: An Inquiry Into Some Ambiguities, (1973).
- ↑ J. McDowell, "Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge", Proceedings of the British Academy 68 (1982), pp. 455-479.
- ↑ P. Snowdon, "Perception, Vision and Causation", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 81 (1981), pp.175–92. Snowdon, Paul (2024). Stephan Blatti. ed. Essays on Perceptual Experience (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199658299.
- ↑ Brewer, Bill (2006). "Perception and its objects". Philosophical Studies 132 (1): 87–97. doi:10.1007/s11098-006-9051-2. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/32336/1/WRAP_Brewer_Perception.pdf.
- ↑ Campbell, John (2002). Reference and Consciousness (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199243815.
- ↑ Eilan, Naomi (2017). "Perceptual Objectivity and Consciousness: A relational Response to Burge's Challenge". Topoi 36 (2): 287–298. doi:10.1007/s11245-015-9325-4. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/87500/1/WRAP-Perceptual-response-relational-Eilan-2017.pdf.
- ↑ Soteriou, Matthew (2016). Disjunctivism (1st ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9780415686228.
- ↑ M.G.F Martin, "On Being Alienated" in T. Gendler and J. Hawthorne (eds), Perceptual Experience (2006).
External links
- "Disjunctivism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/disjunct.
- Zalta, Edward N., ed. "The Disjunctive Theory of Perception". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-disjunctive/.
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