Privacy of
sense data. I must
bore you by a repetition of what I said last time. We said
that one reason for introducing
the idea of the sense datum was that people, as we say,
sometimes see different things, colours
e.g. looking at the same
object. Cases in which we say “he sees dark red
objects whereas I see light red”. We then are inclined to talk about an object other than
the physical object which the person sees who is said to see
the physical object. It is further clear that we only gather from
the other person's behaviour
(e.g. what he tells us) what that
object looks like & so it lies near to say
that he has this object before his mind's eye
& that we don't see it. Though we can
also say that we might have it before our mind's
eye as well without however knowing that he has it
before his mind's eye. The
‘sense datum’ is here is the way
the physical object appears to him. In other cases no
physical object enters. Now I must draw your attention to one particular difficulty about the use of the ‘sense datum’. We said that there were cases in which we should say that the person sees green what I see red. Now the question suggests itself: if this can be so at all, why shouldn't “And remember that we admit that the other may have pain without showing it! So if this is conceivable, why not that he never shows that he has pain; & why not that everybody has pain constantly without showing it; or that even things have pain?!” What strikes us is that there seem to be a few useful applications of the idea of the other person's having pain without showing it & a vast number of useless applications, applications which look as though they were no applications at all. And these latter applications seem to have their justification in this that we can imagine the other person to have what we have & in this way the proposition that he has toothache seems to make sense apart from any expression at all. “Surely”, we say, “We || I can imagine him to have pain or to see, etc..” Or “As I can see myself so I can imagine him to do the same”. In other words I We arrive at the conclusion that imagining him to have pain (etc.) does not fix the sense of the sentence “he has pain”. “He may all along mean something different by ‘green’ than I mean.” Evidence (Verification). But there is this consideration: “Surely I mean something particular, a particular impression & therefore he may have an other impression; surely I know what that would be like!” “Surely I know what it is like to have the impression I call ‘green’!” But what is it like? You are inclined to look at a green object & to say “it's like this!”. And these words though they don't explain anything to anybody else seem to be at any rate an explanation you give yourself. But are they?! Will this explanation justify your future use of the word ‘green’? In fact seeing green doesn't allow you to make the substitutions of someone else for you and of red for green. “The sense datum is private” is a rule “But surely I distinguish between having toothache & expressing it, & merely expressing it; & I distinguish between these two in myself.” “Surely this is not merely a matter of using different expressions, but there are two distinct experiences!” “You talk as though the case of having pain & that of not having pain were only distinguished by the way in which I expressed myself!” But do we always distinguish between ‘mere behaviour’ & ‘experience & behaviour’? If we see someone falling into flames & crying out do we say to ourselves: “there are of course two cases …”? Or if I see you here before me do I distinguish?? Do you? You Can we say that ‘saying that I lie is justified by a particular experience of lying’. Shall we say ‘… by a particular private experience’? or ‘… by a particular private experience of lying’? or ‘by a particular private experience characterized in such & such ways’? “But what, in your opinion is the difference between the mere expression & the expression & the experience?” |
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