ABSTRACT
The point I want to make is very simple-indeed obvious-and follows straightforwardly from the discussion of perception and the senses in Chapter 4. The world and everything in it comes to us through perception; that is, through our senses. Our senses bring us things that are rough or smooth, hard or soft, light or dark, bright or pale, sweet or sour, loud or soft, and so on and so on, through any number of such pairs, and all the infinite variations between the terms in each (and of course this is only the vaguest gesture at the possibilities of discernment and discrimination). That is to say, our senses bring us a material world synthesized in their unity; a world of material characteristics encountered in sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. I am going to invoke the rather grand term materialism as a name for the description of this encounter.
