Professor Mark Eli Kalderon

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Veridical Hallucination and Perceptual Presentation

In Matter and Memory, Bergson argues that "for realism as for idealism, perceptions are ‘veridical hallucinations,’ states of the subject, projected outside himself; and the two doctrines differ merely in this: that in the one these states constitute reality, in the other they are sent forth to unite with it”. I shall argue for a variant of Bergson’s claim, that perceptions, as conceived by contemporary representationalists, are veridical hallucinations. I will thus be developing, in my own way, a theme from Putnam’s Dewey Lectures.