| Privacy of
sensedata. I must
bore you by a repetition of what I said last time. We said
that peo one reason for introducing
the idea of the sense datum was that people, as we say,
somet⌊i⌋mes see different things, colours
e.g. when the looking at the same
object. Cases in which we say “he sees dark red
objects whereas I see light red”. This
We then are inclined to talk about an object other than
the physical object which the person sees who is said to see
the phys. obj.. It is further clear that we only gather from
the other persons behaviour
(e.g. what he tells us) what that
obj 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
eye as well without however knowing that it is he has it
before his minds eye. The
‘sense datum’ ˇhere is the way
the physical object appears to him. In other cases no
phys 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 shouldnt
“And remember that we admit that the other may have pain without showing it!” So wh 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 usefull applications of the idea of the other persons 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 prop that he has toothache seems to make sense appart 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 thes 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 doesnt allow you to make the substitutions of someone else for you and of red for green. “The sensedatum 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 & cr⌊y⌋ing out do we say to ourselves: “there are of course two cases …”? Or if I see you here before me do I distingu⌊i⌋sh?? 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 priv. experience’? or ‘… by a part. priv. exp. of lying’? or ‘by a part. priv. exp. 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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