I – REASONING ABOUT OUR EXPERIENCE

The puzzle I shall discuss in this paper is a puzzle about the object of experience – or perhaps I should say, about the object of visual experience, since that is what I shall exclusively consider.

The puzzle takes the form of a conflict, or antinomy. Roughly, there are two ways we can reflect on our experience. We can reason about our experience, or we can be (as I shall say) open to it – to how things are within our experience. If we follow a certain line of reasoning about our experience, we are led to the conclusion that the object of experience is not part of the world, an external object. However, if we are open to our experience, all we find is the world. So, if we reflect in the right ways, we get pulled first in one direction and then another. This, very simply, is the puzzle. And indeed, it is a simple puzzle.

I shall call the reasoning which enters into the puzzle, the reasoning whose conclusion is one half of the antinomy, ‘the problematic reasoning’. In the first half of the paper I shall set out the problematic reasoning. In the second half I shall complete the puzzle by presenting the other half of the antinomy.

It always helps to think in terms of a specific case. Consider the book lying on the table in front of me.