Perception and its Objects

Abstract

Ayer has always given the problem of perception a central place in his thinking. Reasonably so; for a philosopher’s views on this question are a key both to his theory of knowledge in general and to his metaphysics. The movement of Ayer’s own thought has been from phenomenalism to what he describes in his latest treatment of the topic as ‘a sophisticated form of realism’.¹The epithet is doubly apt. No adequate account of the matter can be simple; and Ayer’s account, while distinguished by his accustomed lucidity and economy of style, is notably and subtly responsive to all the complexities inherent in the subject itself and to all the pressures of more or less persuasive argument which have marked the course of its treatment by philosophers. Yet the form of realism he defends has another kind of sophistication about which it is possible to have reservations and doubts; and, though I am conscious of being far from clear on the matter myself, I shall try to make some of my own doubts and reservations as clear as I can. I shall take as my text chapters 4 and 5 of The Central Questions of Philosophy; and I shall also consider a different kind of realism — that advocated by J. L. Mackie in his book on Locke.² There are points of contact as well as of contrast between Ayer’s and Mackie’s views.