Sense-Experience

The classic Empiricist theory of 'sense-experience' is 'Atomistic'. Namely, it holds that sense-data are the irreducible building blocks of the entire universe, which, by implication, can never mean more than an experiential universe. This Atomism has also been one of its most vulnerable features. Some have argued that any sense-datum is itself the product of a construction, just as contemporary Science recognizes the the existence of sub-atomic worlds. Others have argued that any sense-datum is only an arbitrarily derivative abstraction, e. g. that redness is not irreducibly given, but is only an abstraction from a perceived ball. These criticisms might be said to be insisting that Empiricism is wrong because there is more to a sense-datum than meets the eye. In contrast, the challenge here asserts that there is more to a sense-datum that meets the eye than what the Empiricist is reporting. For example, as one is walking along, one might notice a red ball in its path up ahead. What is most immediately visually noted in the situation is not redness or sphericality, but that something is in the way. In other words, the initial datum of that sensory experience is resistance, not merely potential resistance, insofar as that the ball may prevent the foot from touching the ground, but actual, insofar as vision itself cannot pass through it to see the path underneath the ball. So, the primary visual datum here is not redness or roundness, but opacity. And, since this datum pertains first and foremost to its impenetrability, it is more accurately classified as a motor-, not a sense-, datum. Generalization to touch is easy--the primary datum in feeling is resistance. But if generalization of this analysis to the other senses is less easy, it is only because of its unfamiliarity, not its inaccuracy. It might become more familiar with respect to 'hearing', if the latter is construed as 'listening to', and a sound interferes with what we are trying to listen to, e. g. the sound of a car engine drowning out the words of someone talking to us. Therein, the resistance aspect of a sound-datum is as obvious as that of visual opacity. A further familiar example demonstrates the general point more effectively. When a hand that has been exposed to cold weather is placed in lukewarm water, the sense-datum is 'hot'. To the Empiricist, this is proof that the 'hot' is not in the water but in the perceiver of the datum. But another interpretation can agree that the datum is not in the water, but can further argue that the 'hot' is not atomic, but is, rather, actually 'hotter than the initial coldness of the hand'. In other words, the datum is in the hand. And, what is happening in the hand is an increase in the velocity of its molecules. In other words, the 'sense'-datum is actually a 'motor'-datum--the product of a synkinetic process that is an awareness of the change in local corporeal motions. Generalization to the other 'sense'-organs yields the criticism of Empiricism: 'Sense-data' are all primarily 'motor-data'.