Nada Vendo no Escuro, Nada Ouvindo no Silêncio

Abstract

Can we see in the absence of light, and hear in the absence of sound? In his book Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows (2008), Roy Sorensen defends a view according to which we can see darkness in the absence of light and hear silence in the absence of sound. In this paper, I defend the view that we see nothing in darkness, hear nothing in silence, and that experiencing the absence of light and sound is an affective, and not perceptual, matter.