ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Disjunctivism

Disjunctivism is like when you see something and you're not really sure what it is. Maybe it's a dog, or maybe it's just a tree stump. Disjunctivism says that there are two different things that could be happening here. Either you're seeing the dog or you're not, and if you're not, then you're just having some other kind of experience that's not really seeing at all. So either you're really seeing the dog or you're not seeing anything at all. It's like a fork in the road – you can either go one way or the other, but you can't do both at the same time.

The word "disjunctive" means that there are two different possibilities. So when we talk about disjunctivism, we're saying that there are two different kinds of experiences that could be happening when you're seeing something. One is that you're really seeing the thing that's there in front of you, and the other is that you're having some other kind of experience that's not really related to the thing at all.

Disjunctivism is an idea that comes up a lot in philosophy, especially when people are talking about perception – which is just a fancy word for seeing things. Philosophers who like disjunctivism think that it's important to figure out which of the two things is happening when we see something, because that can tell us a lot about our experiences and what they mean.

So, when we're talking about disjunctivism, we're really just saying that there are two different options when we see something – we're either really seeing it, or we're not seeing it at all. It's kind of like flipping a coin – there are only two options, heads or tails, and you have to pick one. For disjunctivism, the two options are seeing the thing in front of you or not seeing it at all.