Erudite Relics of Loc Huu Ho

Definitions

• ad infinitum: for ever, without limit, to infinity
• Calcutta: Largest city in India, located in the eastern part of the country on the Hooghly River.
• phenomenalism: the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space

Notes

• According to this phenomenalism theory, anticipated by Hume and George Berkeley, a physical thing is a kind of construction out of our experiences.
• According to the phenomenalist, to have a visual experience of a real physical thing is to have an experience of a real physical thing is to have an experience which belongs to a certain kind of group of experiences. This kind of set of experiences has a constancy and a rich and complex coherence that is lacking in the set of expereinces of which halluncinations are a part.
• The phenomenalist affirms also that all we can possibly mean in speaking of these things is confined to our experiences.
• Hume’s criterion states that every idea-and thus the idea of an “external” thing-is ultimately derived from sense impressions alone.
• The phenomenalist phase of post-Humean empiricism ended by the 1940s, for by that time it had become evident that statements about physical things could not be translated into propositions about actual and possible sense data.