The Role of Material Impressions in Reid's Theory of Vision: A Critique of Gideon Yaffe's “Reid on the Perception of the Visible Figure”

Journal of Scottish Philosophy 1 (2):117-133 (2003)
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Abstract

Reid maintained that the perceptions that we obtain from the senses of smell, taste, hearing, and touch are ‘suggested’ by corresponding sensations. However, he made an exception for the sense of vision. According to Reid, our perceptions of the real figure, position, and magnitude of bodies are suggested by their visible appearances, which are not sensations but objects of perception in their own right. These visible appearances have figure, position, and magnitude, as well as ‘colour,’ and the standard view among Reid scholars has been that Reid maintained that our perceptions of visible figure, position, and magnitude are also not suggested by any sensation. They are instead suggested by the material impression on the retina. Gideon Yaffe challenges the standard interpretation. According to Yaffe, Reid believed that our perceptions of visible figure are suggested by corresponding sensations, by sensations of colour. We defend the standard interpretation of Reid. According to Reid, there is no “local sign” in our sensations of colour. The same colour sensation can be associated with different positions on the visual field, and different colour sensations can be associated to the same position on the visual field. According to Reid, we only have evidence for a correlation between the image on the retina and the perception of visible figure.

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Author Profiles

Lorne Falkenstein
University of Western Ontario
Giovanni B. Grandi
University of British Columbia

Citations of this work

Contemporary Arguments for a Geometry of Visual Experience.Phillip John Meadows - 2009 - European Journal of Philosophy 19 (3):408-430.
The extension of color sensations: Reid, Stewart, and Fearn.Giovanni B. Grandi - 2011 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1):50-79.
Was Reid a Direct Realist?Jake Quilty-Dunn - 2013 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (2):302 - 323.
Perception as a Multi-Stage Process: A Reidian Account.Marina Folescu - 2021 - Journal of Scottish Philosophy 19 (1):57-74.

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