Online research in philosophy

This paper deals with the problem of the External World, taking its point of departure in Peter Zinkernagel's Conditions for Description. In the first section I try to give an outline of the theses contained in that book. In the second I raise a main objection against it, pointing out that Zinkernagel, in one respect, has not sufficiently sharpened the argumentation between phenomenalism and realism. In the third section I turn realism and phenomenalism sharply against each other, presenting the latter in a radical, yet consistent form; the section is an attempt to show how phenomenalism can be rejected.

According to the received view, the philosophy of C.I. Lewis is a form of phenomenalism. The first part of this paper is an argument designed to show that Lewis does not support one of the necessary conditions for ontological phenomenalism; namely, the sense-datum theory. The secondpart is an argument designed to show that Lewis’ theory is incompatible with linguistic phenomenalism, a view according to which there is an equivalence of meaning between physical object statements and sense-data statements. The argument is not merely that terminating judgments are not sense-data statements, but that they cannot be equivalent to objective statements.