Sensory Subjectivism

The sensory subjectivists present man with a false dichotomy: either sensory qualities are “in the object” or they are “in the mind” (and therefore subjective). They reject the first option (perhaps by pointing to the fact that there are different forms of sense perception) and then proceed with the second, leaving empirical observation with only an illusory world created in mans own mind:

Since the objects we perceive have a nature independent of us, it must be possible to distinguish between form and object; between the aspects of the perceived world that derive from our form of perception (such as colors, sounds, smells) and the aspects that belong to metaphysical reality itself, apart from us. What then is the status of the formal aspects? If they are not “in the object,” it is often asked, does it follow that they are merely “in the mind” and therefore are subjective and unreal? If so, many philosophers have concluded, the senses must be condemned as deceivers—because the world of colored, sounding, odoriferous objects they reveal is utterly unlike actual reality. This is the problem, a commonplace in introductory philosophy classes, of the so-called “two tables”: the table of daily life, which is brown, rectangular, solid, and motionless; and the table of science, which, it is said, is largely empty space, inhabited by some colorless, racing particles and/or charges, rays, waves, or whatnot.¹