Since last week I haven’t had the opportunity to get a live lecture on the theme, which frankly is quite sad since I think the whole concept of sense-data was quite fascinating. Although it kind of boggles your mind when you try to think of it.
To get a better grip on sense-data I tried to sum up what my peers, as a whole, thought about this concept. I came to the conclusion that they all, in some sense (pun intended), got a pretty firm grip on its definition as well.
Although I feel somewhat enlighten by the way Russel makes you think in different ways, question an objects existence, or if you really ”know” something about it at all, It kind of makes me wonder "why still use a text which is over 100 years old"?. Aren’t there any philosophers left? I want to believe that there still are some critical thinkers out there who can question the very world we inhabit. But in modern society, I don’t find the act of ”questioning things” that normative anymore. Maybe it have gotten taboo?
I tried to find more recent sources of philosophers on this subject but have yet to find any that talks about the concept of sense-data and true knowledge from this milennia. But I believe that there are some interpretations that helped me get another point of view on what the term sense-data really, one of them being from a paper named ”Sense-data” written in 1953 by G.E. Moore. He talks about an imaginative scenario where one would compare two squares and whether they are the same square or not. Moore concludes that depending on what you describe about the square (e.g. the bounding lines of the square, the length of each side etc) you can at least say that the two squares is the same in quality - they are qualitatively identical. But if the sides of the two squares they are not numerically the same, obviously. Although I find this quite apparent, I kind of helps that you at least can talk about the similarities between two objects who somewhat share an attribute. In this case, its shape. I believe this helps me to better understand that sense-data is very dependent on ones subjective observation. It is a relative term.
Moore even goes to lengths to say that no sense-data perceived by someone is the same as for someone else. It is identical to your spatial relation to that object. For example, if you observe the color of an apple hanging from a tree. The shiny red apple you see glimmering is a unique sense-data perceived by you. Anyone else watching the same tree cannot perceive the apple the same way you do, it is dependent on your viewing angle, your height and so on. I would like to quote Moore to explain this further: ”The sense-given field of vision of each of us, at any
moment, constitutes a private space of that person's own;—no two
points in any two of these spaces, can be related to one another in any
of the ways in which two points in any one of them are related.”
References:
G.E. Moore ”Sense-data - Some Main Problems of Philosophy”, 1953, London
http://selfpace.uconn.edu/class/percep/MooreSenseData.pdf
I share the same hope about the existence of critical thinkers nowadays but don't know if the answer is affirmative.
SvaraRaderaWhat "keeps the hope alive" is something also Russell expressed in this statement:
"Philosophy is to be studied … because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good."
Philosophy is definitely more about questions than answers and uncertainty instead of false certainty and this calls me forth as the exact opposite of fanatism, we need it.
I think that we use the text which is over 100 years old because the theory of sense data is a view that was a popular in 20th century, It's just one of the theories and there are a lot of papers related to the theory of knowledge, but it's just one of the branches. There are a lot of others theories - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_knowledge
SvaraRaderaDen här kommentaren har tagits bort av skribenten.
SvaraRaderaRagnar Schön13 november 2013 13:54
SvaraRaderaI think it would have made more sense reading a hundred year old book if we would have had the lecture. We only got two views as of now: Russell and Plato (2400 years ago!). To get a broader understanding of the theory of science we'll need a couple more. Philosophy is, just like most other sciences, ever-evolving. It definitely didn't stop with Russell. For some other views of theory of science you might be interested in Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and/or Feyerabend (epistemological anarchism sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? :D ).
Just as you i thought sense-data was a very interesting term which i also discussed in my reflection. A part of the reason for that was also that sense-data was the concept that was easiest for me to grasp and it seems everybody thought so because, in my opinion, everybody answered that question about it in a very similar way.
SvaraRaderaInteresting thought about critical thinkers today and why we read a book that is so old. I haven't myself thought about that but when you come to think about it I wonder what are the current philosophical problems. I think there must be as many philosophers today as a 100 years ago so I tried to google what philosophical problems today could be and found some good links, eg http://neouto.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/top-ten-philosophical-issues-of-the-21st-century/
Here they say that the main one is global injustice like preserving the environment while allowing the poorer nations of the world to improve their standards of living.