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    Positing sense-data to explain misrepresentation generate... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→In cases of illusion, there must be something experienced that has the features the perceiver takes themselves to be experiencing, and these experiential objects are called sense-data.

    Positing sense-data to explain misrepresentation generates a regress: we would need further intermediaries to explain how sense-data themselves are perceived.

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    Reasons For

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    • 1.If sense-data are mental intermediaries between perception and world, explaining how we perceive them requires the same representational apparatus, triggering infinite regress.
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    • 2.Any theory positing representational layers must explain perception of each layer without assuming what it's trying to explain, making the view internally incoherent.
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    • 3.Direct realism avoids this regress by treating perception as non-representational contact with external objects, offering theoretical parsimony.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.Sense-data perception needn't be representational; they could be intrinsic properties of experience that are simply given without requiring further explanation.
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    • 2.The regress assumes each level requires identical explanatory machinery; but perception of sense-data might operate through different, non-representational mechanisms than object-perception.
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    • 3.Stopping the regress by stipulating perception of sense-data as primitive is no worse than direct realism's stipulation that we directly perceive external objects.
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    Related

    Any theory positing representational layers must explain perception of each laye...Direct realism avoids this regress by treating perception as non-representationa...If sense-data are mental intermediaries between perception and world, explaining...In cases of illusion, there must be something experienced that has the features ...
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    Sense-data perception needn't be representational; they could be intrinsic prope...Stopping the regress by stipulating perception of sense-data as primitive is no ...The regress assumes each level requires identical explanatory machinery; but per...

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