Perception: (Problems of Philosophy)

Questions about perception remain some of the most difficult and insoluble in both epistemology and in the philosophy of mind. This controversial but accessible introduction to the area explores the philosophical importance of those questions by re-examining what had until recent times been the most popular theory of perception - the sense-datum theory. Howard Robinson surveys the history of the arguments for and against the theory from Descartes to Husserl. He discusses the empiricist conception of sense-contents and examines the traditional arguments for sense-data and objections to the theory, particularly Wittgenstein's attack on privacy and the current physicalist approaches to perception. He constructs and defends a strengthened version of the causal argument for sense-data, and argues that appeals to intentionality and adverbialism are unsuccessful. He also shows that representative realism and, more particularly, phenomenalism can circumvent most of the traditional objections to the theory, and contends that we should return to the theory sense-data in order to understand perception.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. The Classical Empiricist Conception of the Content of Perceptual Experience 2. The Traditional Arguments for the Empiricist Conception of Sense-Contents: the Argument from Illusion 3. Further Arguments against Naive Realism 4. Sense-Data and the Anti-Private-Language-Argument 5. Contemporary Physicalist Theories of Perception 6. The Revised - and Successful - Causal Argument for Sense-Data 7. The Intentional and Adverbial Theories 8. The Nature of Sense-Data 9. Sense-data and the Physical World

Review :
'Robinson presents ..[his].. argument, in both its constructive and critical aspects, with great skill. It is very valuable to have a defence of sense data by someone who is well acquainted with and has thought deeply about, recent criticisms and alternatives ... anyone interested in the philosophy of perception should read this book and consider it.' - Times Literary Supplement 'Howard Robinson's book brings boldly forward the challenges that have been mounting against one of the most - if not the most entrenched of received opinions, namely, the discountenancing of any notion of an internal sensory experience. An incisive and near-comprehensive survey of the opposing arguments from a phenomenalist position' 'It presents a battery of considerations which should provoke theorists who are dismissive of sense-datum theory to review the details of their position, and it helpfully brings together neglected material from the literature.' - Philosophical Quarterly