Negative disjunctivism, phenomenology and the argument from hallucination

• Main Author: Chiu, Yu Hui
• Other Authors: Winnie Sung
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/73531
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper discusses the motivations and challenges of negative disjunctivism. Negative disjunctivism, as explicated by Martin, cannot be the answer to the problem of perception because it cannot resolve the argument from hallucination. I argue that negative disjunctivism is inconceivable because it is unable to provide us with a consistent phenomenological account of our perceptual experiences. Firstly, he faced the problems with the existence of subjective indistinguishability hallucinations by affirming that hallucinations have no phenomenological content. Secondly, Martin has not given sufficient details on the term ‘indistinguishability’ and hence he failed to give an account of how phenomenology varies across different individuals of different cognitive abilities, through different experiences. Thirdly, Martin’s focus on perfect, causally-matching hallucinations has led to the absence of a clear explanation on other types of hallucinations such as the hallucinations of impossible events. Lastly, Martin’s lack of a clear definition for phenomenal character resulted in a weak account in distinguishing between the phenomenology of veridical from non-veridical perception.