THE ALLEGED FALLACY OF THE SENSE-DATUM INFERENCE (original) (raw)

This brings the discussion to a different question -- the question of the preferability of the adverbial theory to the sense-datum theory. And this would require a new set of arguments. What I have set out to do in this paper is to argue that Chisholm has not shown that the sense-datum inference is a deductive fallacy, and this I have done.

Addendum (July 1998): In The Philosophy of Roderick Chisholm (1997), Chisholm, in the autobiographical section, writes that there were two "Copernican revolutions" in his philosophical development. One concerns his view of appearances; the other, the nature of events. He writes: "We here defend the view that appearances are individual things." (p. 35) And in the footnote #16 to this sentence, he writes, "I thus reject the "adverbial theory of appearances"." (p. 40)

Notes

1 R. Chisholm, "The Theory of Appearing" in Philosophical Analysis, ed. Max Black (Prentice-Hall, 1963). Reprinted in R. J. Swartz, ed., Perceiving, Sensing, and Knowing (New York: Doubleday, 1965).

2 Frank Jackson, Perception: A Representative Theory (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

3 Chisholm, "The Theory of Appearing," p. 173.

4 Roderick Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 115-116.

5 Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Prentice-Hall, 1966): p. 95.

6 Chisholm, Perceiving, ch. 4.

7 This was also pointed out by John Austin, Sense and Sensibilia(New York-: Oxford University Press, 1964): pp. 36-37.

8 Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, p. 32.

9 Ibid., p. 32.

10 Jackson, Perception, p. 33.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., p. 40.

13 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (New Jersey-. Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 77.

14 Dretske, Seeing and Knowing (University of Chicago Press, 1969): p. 65.