PHILOSOPHY - Epistemology: Paradoxes of Perception #2 (Argument from Hallucination) [HD]

Common sense takes for granted that we can typically just see physical objects without further hindrance. In this Wireless Philosophy video, Eugen Fischer (University of East Anglia) presents the ‘argument from hallucination’ that questions common sense: Together with parallel arguments, it appears to show that we are cut off from any physical objects around us by a veil of immaterial perceptions.

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Help us caption & translate this video!

[Amy-zbph]

I have a friend who has schizophrenia. She went to the psychiatrist and he asked her, "Do you hear voices that aren't there?" So she asked him, "If I hear them, then how do I know they're not there?" It totally blew the psychiatrist's mind.

[AntiCitizenX]

I actually watched this video twice, just to be sure I wasn't missing anything. There wasn't really any clear "metaphysics" in it, nor was there any clear statement of specific paradoxes. You also took 7 minutes to basically say what was tantamount to "hallucinations feel a lot like the real thing." Uh, yeah, no kidding. Does anyone even dispute this? Then you finally finished with the idea that sense data is really all any of us are aware of at the end of the day, and not the "real" external world of physical stuff.

Again, NO KIDDING. Who on Earth disputes this?

If this is supposed to be for beginners, then that's fine. But you're losing them immediately because you're taking really roundabout paths to establish very basic ideas in needlessly complicated ways with zero context. If it's *not* supposed to be for beginners, then you're working very hard just to establish ideas that quite literally everyone with basic education already understands. I therefore have no idea who this video is supposed to be intended for or what I'm supposed to get out of this discussion.

I also noticed that this is a "part 2" video, which presumes that we've all seen part 1. I actually had to work to find it, because it was apparently published 7 months ago and is long-since lost in the void of 50 other vids published since then. So even if I did watch it, I've long-since forgotten what it was about or what we're building up to.

I'm sorry, but I really tried to find something positive in this video. All I can say is that you have a remarkable talent for trivializing the momentous and complicating the obvious. Philosophy is really great stuff, but hardly anyone ever realizes it because we have to wade through so much crap just to get basic ideas explained neatly and clearly. It's inexcusable and accomplishes nothing other than to drive people away from the subject out of sheer boredom.

[Nightcoffee]

I personally, clinically experience private sense data. The clinical comparison leaves me (possibly me alone I admit) a bit troubled. To me, the experiences of hearing someone speak and hearing an internal voice do feel distinct. I've never looked around the room for a voice in my mind and have never upped my medication in response to speaking to someone (except my doctor but that's a special case). I do apologize. this comment feels like nit-picking, and you made an approachable comparison. I guess this comment is more for myself.

[MrVladanbajic]

THE WAY THAT THE TOLTECTS ''SEE'' DIRECTLY PHYSICAL OBJECTS COULD BE A NICE WAY TO ''UNDERSTAND'' PERCEPTION ( SEE ''THE FIRE FROM WITHIN, CARLOS CASTANEDA)

[youdontgettoknow]

I'm no psychiatrist, so take this with a whole canister of salt, but...what if schizophrenia is simply a diminished or absent ability to check or question the pareidolia we all occasionally experience?

[blindDodo]

But just because we can be "wrong" sometimes, it doesn't follow that we can't ever directly perceive things.
For example, it's certainly possible to misunderstand (ie misinterpret) what somebody says to us, but it doesn't follow that we never truly understand utterances.
See McDowell/Wittgenstein on (so-called) private sensations (Philosophical Investigations ~§250), or Sartre on other minds (Being and Nothingness ~350)

[youdontgettoknow]

Since we don't truly perceive objects, but only sense data, we are in fact all brains in jars. The brain-in-a-jar question ought to be, not "Am I a brain a jar?" but "Do my sense perceptions have some kind of necessary relation to an external reality?"

[zazzles]

so you can never tell the difference between perception and reality?

[vinayseth]

This was an interesting argument. But I failed to understand how it was a paradox.

[louieatkins-turkish]

What in the world, subtle or large, would this understanding affect?

[korona]

A halucinated dagger doesn't look the same when you try to cut something with it. If Macbeth had used a hallucinated dagger to kill King Duncan the play would have been a lot less dramatic. So even from a purely sensory level the experience of a hallucinated dagger won't be the same.

[ljupcod]

how do we know that all this isn't sense datum

[barbthornell]

Why wouldn't a hallucination be the same as a particularly vivid dream, which almost everyone has had and knows how real they can seem?

[StefanTravis]

It's rather misleading to talk about "seeing sense data", as sense data doesn't exist outside of its own perception. This is a peculiarity of the english language, whereby "lightning flashes" as though lightning were an object that performs an action, then ceases to exist.

[parjohansson]

Wait a minute now... Am I experiencing déja vù?

[upublic]

i apreciate this channel a lot, but this particular video.... i donno, it's just so badly done; it also feels unfinished and/or unrequested