著者

Imoto Seiichi

出版者

北海道大学哲学会 = The Philosophical Society of Hokkaido University

雑誌

哲学 (ISSN:02872560)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, pp.29-44, 2004-07-18

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John R. Searle (1998) upholds what he calls "external realism" that there is a real world that exists independently of us, a world of mountains, trees, oceans, molecules, and soon. Some research findings in cognitive science, however, are compelling us to re-examine such a framework. In this essay I insist, from a cognitive science perspective, t hat the so-called external world we perceive as it is, is not independent of us, it is dependent on us in such a manner that those entities such as mountains and oceans are the end results of our perceptual processes, and as such they are in our phenomenal or mental space. It is a world as causes for our perceptual processes that is considered to be independent of us, though we have no direct, empirical access to the world as such.