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The Illusions of Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Robert M. Anderson Jr.
Robert M. Anderson Jr.*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University Medical School, Stanford
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Abstract

On reading the grain argument as advanced by Meehl and Sellars, I find that there is not one but two grain arguments. According to one argument, mental events cannot be the same as neural events because mental events have a continuity that neural events do not have. The other argues for the same conclusion from the simplicity of experienced quality. I answer these arguments by claiming that these properties of experience are illusory. I detail a dual threshold theory of visual experience and show that given this model the mind-brain identity theory predicts the existence of these illusions.

Type
Contributed Papers: Session IV
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1974 , 1974 , pp. 549 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland

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