If anyone is interested in this topic, especially with respect to the sense of hearing, I recommend Oliver Sacks’ recent bestseller, “Musicophilia.” Sacks provides for an excellent appreciation of the deep way that our perceptual abilities are related to and shaped by the neurobiology of our brains.
The “problem” in the phrase the “problem of perception” is not concerned with whether or not illusions or hallucinations exist, nor with the underlying neurological or environmental events forming the bases of such experiences, but rather, how to provide or articulate a coherent account of our perception of the external world in light of the fact that illusory and hallucinatory states do, in fact, occur.
So suppose, for whatever reason, environmental or some altercation in the sensory system, you perceive a wall, which is in reality a white wall, but that it appears to you as a yellow wall. In fact I recently had such an experience. As the rose-red sun was setting over the distant mountains, the slanting sun rays fell on the side of a white house causing the side to appear completely yellow. Now in such a case I am immediately or directly aware of something yellow. Moreover, the yellow has the same feel as if I were perceiving any yellow object. With reference to my previous quote from Hobbs, even “mere” apparitions of a dream while sleeping, or mirror reflections while awake, even though they be “creatures of fancy” they are nevertheless something, no matter how fleeting or ethereal, they are. So it is with the yellow appearance of the white wall, the appearance is nevertheless something.
Early in the 20th century, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, in his classic, “The Problems of Philosophy,” named this something as follows: “Let us give the name of ‘sense-data’ to the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colors, sounds, smells, hardness, roughness, and so on. We shall give the name ‘sensation’ to the experience of being immediately aware of such things. Thus, whenever we see a color we have a sensation, but the color itself is a sense-datum, not a sensation.”
The objects of our immediate perceptual awareness have been the bearers of many other names throughout history, such as, simply, appearances, phenomena, sensa, percepts, representations, ideas, qualia, and impressions. But whatever the name, a fundamental categorical and ontological distinction was drawn between the reference and sense of the terms “appearance” and “reality,” and likewise between the external world as consciously perceived, and the external world as it is independently of human consciousness. For if the immediate object of awareness in those perceptual situations where the terms “illusion” or “hallucination” may apply, is a sense datum, it follows that in any act of awareness, illusory or not, the immediate object is a sense datum. This is because the sensory quality of the perceptions are the same in every act of awareness.
For almost four centuries, very astute thinkers of the West were enthralled by a picture that entailed that our only access to an independent, physical reality was at most indirect and unknowable. Here is George Santayana, discussing this situation in his text, “The Life of Reason,”: “This notion of an independent and permanent world is an ideal term used to mark and as it were to justify the cohesion in space and the recurrence in time of recognizable groups of sensations. This recurrence and coherence force the intellect…to frame the idea of such a reality….”
Reality as an idea? Reality as something that we can never be acquainted with? Can this be so? A truth which distinguished philosophers from ordinary humanity? Thomas Reid called such a result a “metaphysical lunacy.” What possessed so many for so long to reason the world away? This turn in the history of ideas has never ceased to astonish me. Next week we will look further into the madness and intelligence of the minds and brains that followed the twists and turns of the developing intellectual landscape.
We will see, hopefully, that the only way to give a coherent account of perception, as well as do justice to common sense intuitions is to examine carefully the tradition that makes a clear distinction between “perception” and “sensation.” Dugald Stewart in “The Problem of Perception” notes the essence if this tradition: “It is necessary to attend to the distinct meanings of the words Sensation and Perception. The former expresses merely the change in the state of mind which is produced by an impression on an organ of sense; (of which we can conceive the mind to be conscious, without any knowledge of external objects;) the later expresses the knowledge we obtain, by means of our senses, of the qualities matter.”
Puzzle
1.A carousel came to town. Jazmin, who was good at math, was riding the carousel. She noted that one-third of the children were riding ahead of her, and three-fourths behind her. So what was the minimum number of children on the carousel?
Answer to last week’s puzzle
1. A total of 41 vines are possible under the given conditions. This is seen by planting them at the intersections of diagonally slanted lines, drawn from right to left, and left to right over the entire square.
