Sense and Sensibilia

Austin's 1962 posthumous lectures dismantling the sense-data theory of perception

Tradition: Mid-twentieth-century Oxford ordinary-language philosophy

Austin's 1962 posthumous Oxford lectures dismantling the sense-data theory of perception

Sense and Sensibilia is J. L. Austin's 1962 posthumous reconstruction (by G. J. Warnock) of his Oxford lectures (delivered 1947-58). The title plays on Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Austin develops an ordinary-language critique of the sense-data theory — the view, central to Russell, Moore, A. J. Ayer, that we directly perceive only "sense-data" and infer external objects — focusing on Ayer's Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940). Austin shows that the sense-data theorist relies on a wholly misleading dichotomy between "perception" and "appearance", flattens the rich vocabulary of ordinary perception. Foundational for late ordinary-language philosophy and the modern philosophy of perception.