Frances writes:
"The basic thorn of contention for me
and challenge to resolve turns on the antirealist position that
virtually every object sensed is a subjective mental making of
the normal human mind."
I take the very "realistic" position of assuming there are indeed "material"
objects "out there" (as well as other minds, and the notions of those other
minds). When my sensors "encounter" one of those material objects, I think of
the object as the thing that is "being sensed". Thus I "sense" my coffee mug
over there.
So I'm afraid Frances has it backwards. I don't think of those material
objects as "subjective mental makings" of my mind. Just the opposite. My mug is
a
material object there even if no one in this household is "sensing" it at a
given moment.
Frances further writes:
"The posited suggestion that entities of sense usually found or held to be
objective
physical constructs, such as atoms and facts and sets and signs
and classes and relations are to be
deemed only as subjective psychical constructs and never as
objective physical constructs, goes too far."
With that line Frances is asserting she "senses" such things as relations and
facts. I counter-assert: No she does not. Nor do I, or anyone else. I "sense"
through my "sensors" such things as these: through my eyes, light reflected
off a material object; through my ears, air/sound waves impinging on my
ear-drums; through the tactile nerve endings in my fingers, the feelings of
hardness,
smoothness etc of the mug. At no time whatever do my sensors pick up any
sense data occasioned by a relation, class, or fact. They are notional
abstractions created by our minds.
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