This is philosophy bytes with me, David.
Edmonds, and me, Nigel Warburton.
Philosophy Bytes is available at www.philosophybytes.com.
Philosophy Bytes is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
Is this a microphone I see before me?
I have thee not, yet I see thee still.
Art thou not fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight?
Or art thou but a microphone of the mind, a false creation?
How do philosophers explain hallucinations?
If a person has an hallucination of, say, seeing a microphone, does he or she have the same mental experience as if looking at a real microphone for an answer?
Philosophy Bytes interviewed Fiona Macpherson of Glasgow University.
At least we think we did.
Fiona Macpherson, welcome to philosophy Bytes.
Hello, Nigel.
It's very nice to be here.
The topic we're going to focus on is hallucination.
Can we clarify what a hallucination is in contrast with, say, an illusion?
Yes, at first we should think about the case of neither hallucination nor illusion, the case where we are seeing the world and seeing the world as it is.
So, for example, I might be looking at a watch sitting on a table, and I might be seeing the watch sitting on the table accurately in just the way that it is.
In cases of illusion, we think that you are seeing perhaps the watch sitting on the table, but you are misperceiving certain of its properties.