Psych

Appearance and reality - seminar 1

1. What does Russell mean by the term 'sense-data'? (hint: find the passage that starts “It will help us in considering these questions to have a few simple terms ...”)

a. The things that are immediately know to us, or our senses, touch, sight, smell, hear, taste. Pure appearance.

i. Example of the train lines

b. Sensation is what gets back to the truth, sensation and interpretation is what get us back to the reality

ii. Our sensation of the train lines tell us that they don’t actually join

2. Find and mark the following passage in the text (e.g. highlight/underline/star): “... the painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the colour which common sense says they really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.” What point do you think Russell is trying to make with this example?

c. When painting the painter has to represent the thing he’s painting as how it appears so other will understand it and so the painting has dimension, he however common sense still tells him that the section of the table that appears white is just the light reflection of that section and is not in reality white, he knows this because if he moves it will change. He however must pick a single view and pain that.

3. Set out your own example, akin to Russell's example of seeing a table, of something you perceive (e.g. something you feel/hear/see/sense) giving rise to differing 'appearances'.

d. Recording on a tape, you can hear someone in the room but they are not in the room anywhere and so it appears that this person can speak to you without them being present, however common sense tells you that it is probably a recording of their voice. Shows that, senses don’t work independently from each other.

e. Sense data is that

4. Russell says that Berkeley is an “idealist”. What does he mean? (note: you should be able to work this out just...