In the second chapter of Individuals, Strawson imagines a being whose experience is entirely auditory. He then argues, as Evans puts it, ‘that the concepts of an objective world, crucially the idea of existence unperceived, would not have any application in the experience of such a being unless that experience provides him with at least some analogue of space. Such an analogue can be provided in a purely auditory experience if each experience of a particular auditory phenomenon is accompanied by the experience of a master-sound – a constant sound whose variations in pitch enable the subject to give substance to the idea that he is moving.’ This being might then suppose that there are sounds, that his experiences are experiences of sounds, and that if he were experiencing the master-sound at a different pitch, the other sounds he would then experience exist ‘there’ unperceived by him. The master-sound’s pitches are analogues of places at which sounds might exist unperceived, and so objectively.
Existence Unperceived
W.D. Hart
- Philosophical Subjects: Essays Presented to P.F. Strawson edited by Zak van Straaten
Oxford, 302 pp, £12.50, November 1980, ISBN 0 19 824603 X
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