ABSTRACT

Suppose that, while you are dreamlessly asleep, the sizes of and distances between all objects in the world are uniformly multiplied. Would you be able to detect this global inflation? Intuitively, no. But would your experience of size remain accurate? Intuitively, yes. On these grounds, some have concluded that our experiences do not represent size and instead represent modes of presentation of size. We are, in this sense, ‘cut off’ from the sizes of things in the external world. Here, I argue for a more modest conclusion: undetectable inflation reveals that our experiences represent only relative size. Call this view austere phenomenal relativism––or austere relativism, for short. I develop a framework to contrast austere relativism with its competitors, give an extended argument for the view, and then defuse a potential dilemma concerning the units in which our experiences represent size.

摘要

假设，当您无梦地睡着时，世界上所有物体的大小和距离都成倍增加。你能检测到这种全球通货膨胀吗？直觉上，没有。但是您对尺寸的体验会保持准确吗？直觉上，是的。基于这些理由，一些人得出结论，我们的经验并不代表大小，而是代表大小的呈现方式。从这个意义上说，我们与外部世界事物的大小“隔绝”了。在这里，我主张一个更温和的结论：无法检测的通货膨胀表明我们的经验仅代表相对规模。称这种观点为严肃的现象相对主义——或严肃的相对主义，简称。我开发了一个框架来对比严格的相对主义与它的竞争对手，为这种观点提供一个扩展的论证，然后化解关于我们的经验代表规模的单位的潜在困境。