The Metaphysical Status of Sensory Qualities

If redness is man’s form of perceiving a certain object–a function of man’s senses–can you say that redness is real—is it out there in the world of “things in themselves” apart from man, or is redness only in the mind (and therefore subjective)? If it is the latter, some would have us believe, then the senses are deceivers—the object you are seeing isn’t “really” red, the redness is only an illusion created by your mind, rather than anything in the object itself. Therefore you cannot know anything by empirical observation as any such observation or rational deduction therefrom can give you insight only into a false world of your own creation. So where is red?

The question is invalid—a sensation is an interaction between two entities, namely the object and the sensory apparatus of the subject. Both the physical object and the sense organ are necessary—when these two entities interact the form of perception is red. It is simply nonsense to ask where the form of perception is, just as it is nonsense to ask the same of any other relationship: where is “yesterday,” where is “tomorrow,” where is “to the left of,” where is “above,” where is “grandfather of,” where is “daughter of,” etc.?

The form of perception is the mind’s way of grasping the object in question, therefore it cannot be located in the object apart from the senses or in the senses apart from the object—it pertains rather to an interrelation between both the senses and the object of sensation.

A quality that derives from an interaction between external objects and man’s perceptual apparatus belongs to neither category. Such a quality–e.g., color–is not a dream or hallucination; it is not “in the mind” apart from the object; it is man’s form of grasping the object. Nor is the quality “in the object” apart from man; it is man’s form of grasping the object. By definition, a form of perception cannot be forced into either category. Since it is the product of an interaction (in Plato‘s terms, of a “marriage”) between two entities, object and apparatus, it cannot be identified exclusively with either. Such products introduce a third alternative: they are not object alone or perceiver alone, but object-as-perceived.

In a deeper sense, however, such products are “in the object.” They are so, not as primaries independent of man’s sense organs, but as the inexorable effects of primaries. Consciousness, to repeat, is a faculty of awareness; as such, it does not create its content or even the sensory forms in which it is aware of that content. Those forms in any instance are determined by the perceiver’s physical endowment interacting with external entities in accordance with causal law. The source of sensory form is thus not consciousness, but existential fact independent of consciousness; i.e., the source is the metaphysical nature of reality itself. In this sense, everything we perceive, including those qualities that depend on man’s physical organs, is “out there.”¹