Wittgenstein on Sensation and Perception

This book offers two novel claims about Wittgenstein's views and methods on perception as explored in the Philosophical Investigations. The first is an interpretive claim about Wittgenstein: that his views on sensation and perception, including his critique of private language, have their roots in his reflections on sense-datum theories and on what Hymers calls the misleading metaphor of phenomenal space. The second is a major philosophical claim: that Wittgenstein's critique of the misleading metaphor of phenomenal space is of ongoing relevance to current debates concerning first-person authority and the problem of perception because we are still tempted to draw inferences about the phenomenal that only apply to the physical. Many contemporary discussions of these topics are thus premised on the very confusions Wittgenstein sought to dispel. This book will appeal to Wittgenstein scholars who are interested in the Philosophical Investigations and to philosophers of perception who may think that Wittgenstein's views are mistaken, irrelevant, or already adequately appreciated.

Michael Hymers is Munro Professor of Metaphysics at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. He is the author of Philosophy and Its Epistemic Neuroses (2000) and Wittgenstein and the Practice of Philosophy (2010), and a past editor of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

Preface 1. Sense-Data and the Misleading Metaphor of Phenomenal Space 2. Wittgenstein, Phenomenology, and Sense-Data 3. Phenomenology, Grammar and Private Language 4. The Grammar of First-Person Authority 5. The Contemporary Debate about First-Person Authority 6. Back to Sense-Data? 7. Sensory Qualia