Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Causation', 'Interview with Baggini and Stangroom' and 'Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy'

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2 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 1. Perception
How can one discriminate yellow from red, but not the colours in between? [Williamson]
     Full Idea: If one takes a spectrum of colours from yellow to red, it might be that given a series of colour samples along that spectrum, each sample is indiscriminable by the naked eye from the next one, though samples at either end are blatantly different.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.151)
     A reaction: This seems like a nice variant of the Sorites paradox (Idea 6008). One could demonstrate it with just three samples, where A and C seemed different from each other, but other comparisons didn't.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / a. Sense-data theory
Visual sense data are an inner picture show which represents the world [Blackburn]
     Full Idea: In the case of vision, sense data are a kind of inner picture show which itself only indirectly represents aspects of the external world.
     From: Simon Blackburn (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [1994], p.347)
     A reaction: I'm unsure whether this is correct. Russell says the 'roughness' of the table is the sense datum. If it is even a possibility that there are unsensed sense-data, then they cannot be an aspect of the mind, as Blackburn is suggesting they are.