Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

E pistemology An experience that a subject has about something, but the experienced thing does not exist. In a typical example, a drunkard “sees” snakes. Such an experience is private, that is, available only to the subject. Hallucinations are common in acute fevers, in madness, and in many extreme physical and emotional conditions. One major issue in the analysis of hallucinations is whether what we apparently perceive exists in any sense or is nothing at all. Hallucination is different from illusion , where something material is seen but is presented other than it is. The occurrence of hallucination is used by sense-datum theorists, who call what is presented in hallucination wild sense-data, to reject naive realism and to support the existence of sense-data independent of material things. Hallucinations suggest that what we are aware of directly may have no relation to external things and that what we directly perceive are not material things. A possible objection to this argument allows that hallucination is a type of mental imagery, but rejects the claim that it is a form of perceptual consciousness. “I follow the fairly standard practice of using … ‘hallucination’ for cases where nothing material is seen.” Jackson, Perception ... log in or subscribe to read full text