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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction' and 'The Ultimate Constituents of Matter'

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2 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / b. Nature of sense-data
Sense-data are purely physical [Russell]
     Full Idea: Sense-data are purely physical, and all that is mental in connection with them is our awareness of them.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.138)
     A reaction: Once this account of sense-data becomes fully clear, it also becomes apparent what a dualist theory it is. The mind is a cinema, I am the audience, and sense-data are the screen. There has to be a big logical gap between viewer and screen.
If my body literally lost its mind, the object seen when I see a flash would still exist [Russell]
     Full Idea: My meaning may be made plainer by saying that if my body could remain in exactly the same state in which it is, though my mind had ceased to exist, precisely that object which I now see when I see a flash would exist, though I should not see it.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.126)
     A reaction: Zombies, 70 years before Robert Kirk! Sense-data are physical. It is interesting to see a philosopher as committed to empiricism, anti-spiritualism and the priority of science as this, still presenting an essentially dualist picture of perception.