Synthesis philosophica, Vol. 40 No. 2, 2025.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21464/sp40207
The Argument from Hallucination
Ksenija Puškarić
orcid.org/0009-0008-5378-2751
; Seton Hall University, 400 S Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ, U.S.A.
Abstract
In this paper, I defend the argument from hallucination based on conceivability of Philosophers’ hallucinations that involve no phenomenal difference with genuine perception. Essentially, this is a thought-experiment-based argument that defends the thesis that subjective indistinguishability of these two states implies the sameness of their objects. I address counterexamples and disjunctivist-style objections to this inference and expand the discussion toward conditions involved in conceiving philosopher’s hallucinations. By sufficiently narrowing the “gap” between subjective indistinguishability and the sameness of objects thesis I counter Putnam’s phenomenal-sorites-based objection and other related problems. Closer analysis of the conditions involved in the thought experiment shows that some commonly raised objections to the inference from the subjective indistinguishability thesis to the sameness of objects lose their plausibility.
Keywords
perception; hallucination; disjunctivism; sense datum; thought experiment; phenomenal sorites
Hrčak ID:
338870
URI
Publication date:
20.11.2025.
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