Concept

Sense data

Overview

theory in the philosophy of perception

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Sense data is discussed.

(The meaning of the word "external" of course raises problems which will concern us later.) We do not know, except by means of more or less precarious inferences, whether the objects which are at one time sense-data continue to exist at times when they are not data. Sense-data at the times when they are data are all that we directly and primitively know of the external world; hence in epistemology the fact that they…
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
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Thus a problem arises as to the relation of the sense-data to the real table, supposing there is such a thing. The real table, if it exists, we will call a 'physical object'. Thus we have to consider the relation of sense-data to physical objects. The collection of all physical objects is called 'matter'. Thus our two questions may be re-stated as follows: (1) Is there any such thing as matter? (2) If so, what is…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
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It seems to me that the term "sense-data" is often used, and may be correctly used, simply as a synonym for "sensibles"; and everybody, I think, would expect me, in discussing the status of sense-data, to discuss, among other things, the question whether there are any sensibles which are not "given." It is true that the etymology of the term "sense-data" suggests that nothing should be called a sense-datum, but what…
G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies
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The way in which each actual physical organism enters into the make-up of its contemporaries has to conform to this scheme. Thus the sense-data, such as colours, etc., or bodily feelings, introduce the extended physical entities into our experience under perspectives provided by this spatial scheme. The spatial relations by themselves are generic abstractions, and the sense-data are generic abstractions.
Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism, its meaning and effect
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We are brought to a consideration of the notion of "primitive" sense data. It was long customary to treat the attempt to define true knowledge in terms derived from sense data as a confusion of psychology--or the history of the growth of knowledge--with logic, the theory of the character of knowledge as knowledge. As matter of fact, there _is_ confusion, but in the opposite direction.
John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
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Philosophers who discussed Sense data

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Part of Outline of philosophy.

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Richard Kearney

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