Nothing seeing in the dark, Nothing hearing in silence

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.