Mind

If I believe I can see something which isn't there, most of us would agree that I am mistaken. But what about other senses? Can I mistakenly believe that I feel pain or cold?

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We often use the verb "to see" in such a way that to say I see a cat is to imply that there's a cat in front of me (and that my eyes are open, etc.) In this way, my beliefs about what I see could be mistaken: I can believe that I see a cat, but I could be wrong if there is no cat there for me to see.

It seems similarly odd to say that I feel pain, but there is no pain there for me to feel. The difference is that pains--unlike cats--are thought to be mind dependent. And many philosophers have thought that while we can be mistaken about the existence of things like cats, trees and tables, we cannot be mistaken about the contents of our own minds. For that reason, I can be wrong that I see a cat, but I cannot be wrong that I feel pain.

Sometimes we use the word "see" in a way that does not imply that there is an object there in front of our eyes. I could describe a dream by saying, "I saw an elephant coming toward me." Since I was dreaming, there was no elephant there for me to see. But it might still feel natural to use perceptual verbs like "see" to describe how things seem to me. According to this use of "see", we cannot be mistaken about what we see any more than we can be mistaken about whether we feel pain.

You can find this distinction between the two notions of "see" in Descartes' second Meditation. He says: "For example, I now see a light, I hear a noise, I feel heat. These things are false since I am asleep. Yet I certainly do seem to see, hear, and feel warmth. This cannot be false. Properly speaking, this is what in me is called 'sensing'. But this, precisely so taken, is nothing other than thinking." Many philosophers have followed Descartes in thinking that the latter use of "seeing" is more fundamental, though some contemporary philosophers now want to resist that idea.

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