Unconscious Thought in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis explores concepts throughout the history of philosophy that suggest the possibility of unconscious thought and lay the foundation for ideas of unconscious thought in modern philosophy and psychoanalysis. The focus is on the workings of unconscious thought, and the role that unconscious thought plays in thinking, language, perception, and human identity. The focus is on the metaphysical and philosophical concepts of unconscious thought, as opposed to the empirical or scientific phenomenon (...) of 'the unconscious.' The book argues that the metaphysical concepts still played an important role in the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. The book looks at the relation between unconscious thought and conscious thought, different kinds of thinking, and the relation between thinking and perceiving. Chapters focus on the philosophies of Plotinus, the Peripatetics and Scholastics, Immanuel Kant, Schelling and Hegel, and Freud and Lacan, among others. (shrink)

This article argues that heuristics play a key role in philosophy, in generating both our verdicts on proposed counterexamples to philosophical theories and philosophical paradoxes. Heuristics are efficient ways of answering questions, quick and easy to use, but imperfectly reliable. They have been studied by psychologists and cognitive scientists such as Gigerenzer and Kahneman, but their relevance to philosophical methodology has not been properly recognized. Several heuristics are discussed at length. The persistence heuristic can be summarized in the slogan (...) ‘Small changes don’t matter’. Without it, updating would present an intractable problem for both natural and artificial intelligence. But our reliance on the persistence heuristic also makes us vulnerable to paradoxes of vagueness. Disquotational heuristics of various kinds are considered. They play central roles in our ascriptions of truth, falsity, and belief, but they also generate semantic paradoxes such as the Liar and Frege puzzles about coreference. The use of an additive heuristic for combining reasons is also discussed. Our reliance on fallible heuristics in philosophy does not make philosophical knowledge impossible, just as our reliance on fallible heuristics in perception does not make perceptual knowledge impossible. Nevertheless, it should motivate us to take a more critical attitude to our data. By identifying and analyzing the heuristics on which we rely, we may be able to work out where they make us most vulnerable to error. (shrink)

Lambert Wiesing's The Philosophy of Perception challenges current theories of perception. Instead of attempting to understand how a subject perceives the world, Wiesing starts by taking perception to be real. He then asks what this reality means for a subject. In his original approach, the question of how human perception is possible is displaced by questions about what perception obliges us to be and do. He argues that perception requires us to be embodied, (...) to be visible, and to continually participate in the public and physical world we perceive. Only in looking at images, he proposes, can we achieve something like a break in participation, a temporary respite from this, one of perception's relentless demands. Wiesing's methods chart a markedly new path in contemporary perception theory. In addition to identifying common ground among diverse philosophical positions, he identifies how his own, phenomenological approach differs from those of many other philosophers, past and present. As part of the argument, he provides a succinct but comprehensive survey of the philosophy of images His original critical exposition presents scholars of phenomenology, perception and aesthetics with a new, important understanding of the old phenomenon, the human being in the world. (shrink)

This paper focuses on whether static images can depict motion. It is natural to say that pictures depicting objects caught in the middle of a dynamic action—such as Henri Cartier-Bresson’s (1932) Behind the Gare St. Lazare—are pictures of movement, but, given that pictures themselves do not move, can we make sense of such an idea? Drawing on results from experimental psychology and cognitive sciences, I show that we can. Psychological studies on implicit motion and representational momentum indicate that motion is (...) really perceived in some static images: our visual system is built in order to detect motion, even where it is only implied, and to anticipate the probable outcomes of others’ actions—even when the ‘others’ are only the subject matters of pictures’. I argue that, consequently, a range of popular depiction theories—perceptualist theories of depiction—can accommodate depicted motion. (shrink)

A collection of some of Sellars' lectures and articles from 1951 to 1962.

How does the philosophical debate between naive realism and intentionalism relate to the psychological debate between ecological theories and constructivist theories? The participants in each debate take themselves to be doing something distinctive, but I show that characterizing the distinction is difficult: the theories in both debates use inference to the best explanation to draw contingent conclusions about the constitutive nature of perception. I argue that both debates concern the metaphysics of perception, and that philosophers of perception (...) are wrong to think that constructivist and ecological theories are engaged in a distinct and non-metaphysical task. (shrink)

This book reconsiders the major current topics in the philosophy of perception using olfaction as the paradigm sense. The author reveals how many of the most basic concepts of philosophy of perception are based on peculiarities of visual perception not found in other modalities, and addresses how different the philosophy of perception would be if based on olfaction. The book addresses several aspects of olfaction, including perceptual qualities, percepts, olfaction and cognitive processes, and (...) consciousness. The first part of the book considers perception with respect to its ability to guide behaviors and to make information available to cognitive processes. The author continues by addressing the differences between conscious and non-conscious olfactory perception, and presents an argument for an important role of attention in conscious processes. The book concludes by discussing the function of conscious brain processes and their link to guiding behaviors in complex situations. (shrink)

An introduction to contemporary debates in philosophy of perception.

Introduction: Three key principles -- Sense datum theories -- Adverbial theories -- Belief acquisition theories -- Intentional theories -- Disjunctive theories -- Perception and causation -- Perception and the sciences of the mind -- Perception and other sense modalities.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is hailed as one of the key philosophers of the twentieth century. _Phenomenology of Perception_ is his most famous and influential work, and an essential text for anyone seeking to understand phenomenology. In this _GuideBook_ Komarine Romdenh-Romluc introduces and assesses: Merleau-Ponty’s life and the background to his philosophy the key themes and arguments of _Phenomenology of Perception_ the continuing importance of Merleau-Ponty’s work to philosophy. _Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception_ is an ideal starting point for anyone (...) coming to his great work for the first time. It is essential reading for students of Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology and related subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences. (shrink)

Representation and content in some (actual) theories of perception -- Representation in perception and cognition : task analysis, psychological functions, and rule instantiation -- Perception as unconscious inference -- Representation and constraints : the inverse problem and the structure of visual space -- On perceptual constancy -- Getting objects for free (or not) : the philosophy and psychology of object perception -- Color perception and neural encoding : does metameric matching entail a loss of (...) information? -- Objectivity and subjectivity revisited : color as a psychobiological property -- Sense data and the mind body problem -- The reality of qualia -- The sensory core and the medieval foundations of early modern perceptual theory -- Postscript (2008) on Ibn al-Haytham's (Alhacen's) theory of vision -- Attention in early scientific psychology -- Psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science : reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology -- What can the mind tell us about the brain? : psychology, neurophysiology, and constraint -- Introspective evidence in psychology. (shrink)

What is the connection between causation and responsibility? Is there a best way to theorize philosophically about causation? Which factors determine and influence what we judge to be the cause of something? Bringing together interdisciplinary research from experimental philosophy, traditional philosophy and psychology, this collection showcases the most recent developments and approaches to questions about causation. Chapters discuss the diverse theoretical ramifications of empirical findings in experimental philosophy of causation, providing a comprehensive survey of key issues such (...) as the perception and learning of causal relations, omission, normative considerations, mechanism, voluntariness and legal theories of causation. With novel contributions from both experts and rising stars, Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Causation demonstrates the value of empirical work and opens new domains of inquiry at the cutting edge of the field. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that there is a causal condition on perception, and that this condition is a conceptual truth about perception. A highly influential argument for this claim is based on intuitive responses to Gricean style thought experiments. Do the folk share the intuitions of philosophers? Roberts et al. (2016) presented participants with two kinds of cases: Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a mirror and a pillar) and Non-Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a clock (...) and brain stimulation). They found that a substantial minority agreed that seeing occurs in the Non-Blocker cases, and that in the Blocker cases significantly less agreed that seeing occurs. They thus hypothesized that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition than with a causal condition. This paper continues this line of enquiry with two new experiments. The paper investigates the generality and robustness of Roberts et al.’s findings by expanding the sense modalities tested from only vision to audition and olfaction as well. The paper also uses Gricean style thought experiments as a case study for investigating the “reflection defense” against the negative project in experimental philosophy. Our results replicate and extend Roberts et al.’s study and support their hypothesis that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition. They also provide an empirical reason to doubt the reflection defense. (shrink)

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was once the most famous philosopher in the world, but his reputation waned in the latter half of the 20th century. Barry Allen here makes the case for Bergson as a great philosopher, one whose thought has much to contribute to contemporary philosophical questions. Living in Time presents chapters on each of Bergson's four major works, explaining his theories of time, perception, memory, and panpsychic consciousness, his innovative concept of virtual existence, his objection to Darwin, his (...) controversy with Einstein, his philosophy of creative evolution, and his social philosophy of closed and open society. In particular Allen focusses on Bergson's powerful ideas on time. Classical arguments for determinism fallaciously apply spatial concepts to consciousness; once we take time seriously, which means acknowledging its reality as duration and its difference from space, Bergson showed that the arguments for determinism become insupportable. Bergson's ideas on time and evolution offer a comparison with Nietzsche, which Allen develops, exposing both philosophical concurrence and systematic difference. The book's conclusion discusses the question of Bergson and naturalism and summarizes the ontology of the virtual that emerges as a core part of Bergson's thought. (shrink)

Sentences such as 'Chocolate tastes good' have been widely discussed as sentences that give rise to faultless disagreement. As such, they actually belong to the more general class of impersonal perception reports, which include 'The violin sounds / looks strange' as well sentences that are about an agent-centered situation such as 'It feels / seems like it is going to rain'. I maintain the view that faultless disagreement is due to first person-based genericity, which, roughly, consists in attributing a (...) property to anyone the speaker (or described agent) identifies with (which generally requires a first-person experience) (Moltmann 2010). Unlike my previous analysis (and similar analyses), this paper no longer makes use of experiencers or judges as implicit arguments of taste predicates, but argues that impersonal perception verbs (taste, look, feel, seem), have a logophoric character. More precisely, such verbs describe perceptual occurrences whose experiencer is identical to the agent of the utterance situation, described attitudinal situation, or the situations a generic operator may range over. Perceptual occurrences are sharply distinguished ontologically from perceptual experiences as well as perceptual objects, entities we refer to as ‘the taste of chocolate’, ‘the sound of the violin’, ‘the look of the violin’. Sentences about perceptual objects ('the taste of chocolate is good', 'the sound of the violin is great', 'the look of the violin is beautiful') also give rise to faultless disagreement, but the source of that is a first-person-based attribution of an evaluative predicate to an (objective) perceptual object. (shrink)

In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. The Parc de La Villette represents the (...) last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Bernard Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Jacques Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Peter Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, Absolute Otherness (tout autre) and the Impossibile were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others). Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

The diverse essays in this volume speak to the relevance of phenomenological and psychological questioning regarding perceptions of the human. This designation, human, can be used beyond the mere identification of a species to underwrite exclusion, denigration, dehumanization and demonization, and to set up a pervasive opposition in Othering all deemed inhuman, nonhuman, or posthuman. As alerted to by Merleau-Ponty, one crucial key for a deeper understanding of these issues is consideration of the nature and scope of perception. (...) class='Hi'>Perception defines the world of the perceiver, and perceptual capacities are constituted in engagement with the world – there is co-determination. Moreover, the distinct phenomenology of perception in the spectatorial mode in contrast to the reciprocal mode, deepens the intersubjective and ethical dimensions of such investigations. -/- Questions motivating the essays include: Can objectification and an inhuman gaze serve positive ends? If so, under what constraints and conditions? How is an inhuman gaze achieved and at what cost? How might the emerging insights of the role of perception into our interdependencies and essential sociality from various domains challenge not only theoretical frameworks, but also the practices and institutions of science, medicine, psychiatry and justice? What can we learn from atypical social cognition, psychopathology and animal cognition? Could distortions within the gazer’s emotional responsiveness and habituated aspects of social interaction play a role in the emergence of an inhuman gaze? -/- Perception and the Inhuman Gaze will interest scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and social cognition. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction -/- Part I. The Gaze in Classical Phenomenology: Perspectives on Objectification -/- 1. Defending the Objective Gaze as a Self-transcending Capacity of Human Subjects -/- Dermot Moran -/- 2. Two Orders of Bodily Objectification: The Look and the Touch -/- Sara Heinämaa -/- 3. On Eliminativism’s Transient Gaze -/- Timothy Mooney -/- 4. Not wholly human. Reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty with Jacques Lacan. -/- Dorothée Legrand -/- 5. Disclosure and the Gendered Gaze in Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics -/- Christinia Landry -/- Part II. Vision, Perception and Gazes -/- 6. Inside the gaze -/- Shaun Gallagher -/- 7. Perception and its Objects. -/- Maurita Harney -/- 8. Technological Gaze: Understanding How Technologies Transform Perception -/- Richard Lewis -/- 9. The Inhuman Gaze and Perceptual Gestalts: The Making and Unmaking of Others and Worlds -/- Anya Daly -/- Part III. Psychiatry, Psychopathology and Inhuman Gazes -/- 10. Values and Values-based Practice in Psychopathology: Combining Analytic and Phenomenological Approaches -/- G Stanghellini and K.W.M. (Bill) Fulford -/- 11. The Inhuman and Human Gaze in Psychiatry, Psychopathology and Schizophrenia. -/- Matthew Broome -/- 12. Overcoming the Gaze: Psychopathology, Affect, and Narrative. -/- Anna Bortolan -/- 13. From excess to exhaustion : The rise of burnout in a post-modern achievement society. -/- Philippe Wuyts -/- 14. Blackout Rages: The Inhibition of Episodic Memory in Extreme Berserker Episodes -/- John Protevi -/- Part IV. Beyond the Human: Divine, Posthuman and Animal Gazes -/- 15. Wondering at the Inhuman Gaze -/- Sean. D. Kelly -/- 16. What Counts as Human/ Inhuman Right Now? -/- Rosi Braidotti -/- 17. Beyond Human and Animal: Metamorphosis in Merleau-Ponty -/- Dylan Trigg -/- Part V. Sociality and Boundaries of the Human -/- 18. Voice and gaze considered together in ‘languaging’. -/- Fred Cummins -/- 19. Ethics Beyond the Human: Disability and The Inhuman -/- Jonathan Mitchell -/- 20. Social Invisibility and Emotional Blindness -/- James Jardine -/- 21. What are you looking at? Dissonance as a window on the autonomy of participatory sense-making frames. -/- Mark James. (shrink)

[A]ny theory of practical rationality must explain— or explain away—the following: Rational: In many cases, what it is rational (in some sense) for one to do or intend to do depends on what one desires. [...] I argue that in order to capture the rational significance of desire, we need to consider both its content and its force, on analogy to the rational significance of both the force and content of beliefs and perceptual experiences. This will open up a new (...) and more elegant way of explaining Rational, while also allowing us to understand how our desires provide us with a basic form of normative experience. Thus, in the end, this will provide the basis for a novel defense of the ancient thesis that desire, in some sense, presents its object under the “guise of the good.”. (shrink)

The phenomenon of pain presents problems and puzzles for philosophers who want to understand its nature. Though pain might seem simple, there has been disagreement since Aristotle about whether pain is an emotion, sensation, perception, or disturbed state of the body. Despite advances in psychology, neuroscience, and medicine, pain is still poorly understood and multiple theories of pain abound. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in (...) this exciting and interdisciplinary subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into nine clear parts: Modelling pain in philosophy Modelling pain in neuroscience Modelling pain in psychology Pain in philosophy of mind Pain in epistemology Pain in philosophy of religion Pain in ethics Pain in medicine Pain in law. As well as fundamental topics in the philosophy of pain such as the nature, role, and value of pain, many other important topics are covered including the neurological pathways involved in pain processing, biopsychosocial and cognitive behavioural models of pain; chronic pain; pain and non-human animals; pain and knowledge; controlled substances for pain; pain and placebo effects; and pain and physician assisted suicide. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and ethics. It will also be very useful to researchers of pain from any field, especially those in psychology, medicine, and health studies. (shrink)

This book offers a provocative, clear and rigorously argued account of the nature of perception and its role in the production of knowledge. Walter Hopp argues that perceptual experiences do not have conceptual content, and that what makes them play a distinctive epistemic role is not the features which they share with beliefs, but something that in fact sets them radically apart. He explains that the reason-giving relation between experiences and beliefs is what Edmund Husserl called 'fulfilment' - in (...) which we find something to be as we think it to be. His book covers a wide range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and traditional phenomenology. It is essential reading for contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and phenomenologists alike. (shrink)

When I am looking at an apple, I perceptually attribute certain properties to certain entities. Two questions arise: what are these entities (what is it that I perceptually represent as having properties) and what are these properties (what properties I perceive this entity as having)? This paper is about the former, less widely explored, question: what does our perceptual system attribute properties to? In other words, what are these ‘sensory individuals’. There have been important debates in philosophy of (...) class='Hi'>perception about what sensory individuals would be the most plausible candidates for which sense modalities. The aim of this paper is to ask a related question about picture perception: what is the sensory individual of picture perception? When we look at a picture and see an apple depicted in it, what kind of entity do we see? What do we perceptually attribute properties to? I argue that the most straightforward candidates (ordinary objects, sui generis sensory individuals, no sensory individuals) are all problematic and that the most plausible candidate for the sensory individuals of picture perception are spatiotemporal regions. (shrink)

This book draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to develop new and promising solutions to contemporary debates about perception. In providing an extension and defense of Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual content and of the relation between perception and the world, it demonstrates the enduring value of Merleau-Ponty’s insights for philosophy of perception today. -/- The author focuses on two main topics: the contents and the nature of perception. In the first half of this book, the author tackles (...) debates about the content of perception, namely, what sorts of properties or features of the world reveal themselves to us in perception and in what modes. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s description of perceptual “sense,” the author argues that perception has a unique kind of content, which cannot be adequately described in terms of sensations or concepts. He then shows how this account of perceptual sense can clarify debates about the richness of perceptual content, including whether we can perceive moral properties. In the second half, he turns to the nature of perception. Here he argues that Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual intentionality makes available a powerful combination of the core insights of two main contemporary approaches to this question: realism and intentionalism. The author shows how this combination can be developed, defends it from objections, and explains how it is equipped to deal with problems posed by the existence of illusions and hallucinations. -/- Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on phenomenology and the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

This book is about the interweaving between cognitive penetrability and the epistemic role of the two stages of perception, namely early and late vision, in justifying perceptual beliefs. It examines the impact of the epistemic role of perception in defining cognitive penetrability and the relation between the epistemic role of perceptual stages and the kinds of cognitive effects on perceptual processing. The book presents the argument that early vision is cognitively impenetrable because neither is it affected directly by (...) cognition, nor does cognition affect its epistemic role. It also argues that late vision, even though it is cognitively penetrated and, thus, affected by concepts, is still a perceptual state that does not involve any discursive inferences and does not belong to the space of reasons. Finally, an account is given as to how cognitive states with symbolic content could affect perceptual states with iconic, analog content, during late vision. (shrink)

Philosophical questions surrounding skill and expertise can be traced back as far as Ancient Greece, China, and India. In the twentieth century skilled action was an important factor in the work of phenomenologists such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and analytic philosophers including Gilbert Ryle. However, as a subject in its own right it has, until now, remained largely in the background. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise is an outstanding reference source and the first major collection (...) of its kind, reflecting the explosion of interest in the topic recent years. Comprising thirty-nine chapters written by leading international contributors, the Handbook is organised into six clear parts: Skill in the History of Philosophy Skill in Epistemology Skill, intelligence, and agency Skill in Perception, Imagination, and Emotion Skill, Language, and, Social Cognition Skill and Expertise in Normative Philosophy. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, epistemology and ethics, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as social psychology and cognitive science. It is also relevant to those who are interested in conceptual issues underlying skill and expertise in fields such as sport, the performing arts, and medicine. (shrink)

The main idea of this book is that perceiving is a way of acting. Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us. It is something we do. Think of a blind person taptapping his or her way around a cluttered space, perceiving that space by touch, not all at once, but through time, by skillful probing and movement. This is, or at least ought to be, our paradigm of what perceiving is. The world makes itself available (...) to the perceiver through physical movement and interaction. In this book I argue that all perception is touch-like in this way: perceptual experience acquires content thanks to our possession of bodily skills. What we perceive is determined by what we do (or what we know how to do); it is determined by what we are ready to do. In ways I try to make precise, we enact our perceptual experience; we act it out. (shrink)

This chapter considers how Liberal Naturalism interacts with the main problems and theories in the philosophy of perception. After briefly summarising the traditional philosophical problems of perception and outlining the standard philosophical theories of perceptual experience, it discusses whether a Liberal Naturalist outlook should incline one towards or away from any of these standard theories. Particular attention is paid to the work of John McDowell and Hilary Putnam, two of the most prominent Liberal Naturalists, whose work was (...) also very influential in the philosophy of perception. There is also a section focusing on colour, an especially important topic not only for debates about perceptual experience but also for debates concerning how our ‘manifest image’ of the natural world relates to our best theories in the physical sciences. (shrink)

This book deals with some Peripatetic philosophers of the Hellenistic age who were direct and indirect pupils of Aristotle. The main focus of the book is Aristotle's school in the Hellenistic period, a subject not particularly explored by the scholars. Three main issues are addressed in the chapters of the book: the problem of knowledge, the question of time, and the doctrine of the soul. More specifically the topics addressed are: the problem of sense-perception and the method of multiple (...) explanations in the field of meteorology in Aristotle, Theophrastus and Epicurus, the epistemology of Strato, the notion of time in Eudemus and Strato, the conception of sleep in Clearchus, the doctrine of divination in Cratippus. Finally, the Appendix examines the probable influence of the physics of Strato on the medicine of Asclepiades of Bithynia. These themes are investigated by comparing the positions of the Peripatetics with Aristotle's philosophy, but above all by contextualising the doctrines of the Peripatetics within the broader framework of Hellenistic philosophies. (shrink)

Charles Travis has developed a distinction between “the historical” and “the conceptual”, which underlies his influential contributions to the philosophy of language and perception. The distinction is based on the observation that there are, for any thought, indefinitely many different circumstances that would render it true. The generality of thoughts and concepts contrasts with the particularity of the sensible world. I challenge the assumption that what exhibits such generality cannot belong to the sensible world. I also defend a (...) version of the claim that perception involves the exercise of conceptual capacities. (shrink)

Champions of virtue ethics frequently appeal to moral perception: the notion that virtuous people can “see” what to do. According to a traditional account of virtue, the cultivation of proper feeling through imitation and habituation issues in a sensitivity to reasons to act. Thus, we learn to see what to do by coming to feel the demands of courage, kindness, and the like. But virtue ethics also claims superiority over other theories that adopt a perceptual moral epistemology, such as (...) intuitionism – which John McDowell criticizes for illicitly “borrow[ing] the epistemological credentials” of perception. In this paper, I suggest that the most promising way for virtue ethics to use perceptual metaphors innocuously is by adopting a skill model of virtue, on which the virtues are modeled on forms of practical know-how. Yet I contend that this model is double-edged for virtue ethics. The skill model belies some central ambitions and dogmas of the traditional view, especially its most idealized claims about virtue and the virtuous. While this may be a cost that its champions are unprepared to pay, I suggest that virtue ethics would do well to embrace a more realistic moral psychology and a correspondingly less sublime conception of virtue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logics and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception by Dorothea E. OlkowskiElodie BoublilOLKOWSKI, Dorothea E. Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logics and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. 180 pp. Cloth, $63.00; paper, $28.00[End Page 152]Dorothea E. Olkowski's latest book carefully examines "the relationship between the creation of ideas and their actualization in relation to semiology, (...) logic and the cosmos in the philosophies of Deleuze, Bergson, and Merleau-Ponty." However, this work is neither an extensive or historical account of Deleuze's, Bergson's, and Merleau-Ponty's philosophies, nor an attempt to homogenize their views on space, time, or perception. Instead, it subtly compares their differences and similarities to move beyond metaphysical dualism, and fruitfully rethinks the relations between formal logic and ontology. Indeed, the author aims to draw a "theory of form," based on the logic of sensation, ultimately designed "to take the place of a theory of the real, of material physical forces."Chapter 1 retraces the history of postmodernist claims and their philosophical legacy. Olkowski explains that postmodernism is not first and foremost a political worldview or a debunking of objectivity in natural sciences. Instead, "it begins as a formal system or series of formal systems." Olkowski explores how Deleuze draws on the knowledge of modern science and logic (Bolzano, Cavaillès) and on Bergson's critical analysis of it to elaborate his logic of sensation. Bergson's conception of affectivity impacted Deleuze's and Merleau-Ponty's theories of corporeality and sensation, and their understanding of perception. Bergson's concept of "body image" specifically influenced Deleuze's elaboration of the concept of "movement-image," through which he tried to overcome the dichotomy set up by mind–body dualism.Chapter 2 focuses on Deleuze and Guattari's critique of logic as an attempt to find a third way between idealism and materialism and to overcome the disconnection between formal logic and lived experience. It reviews their critique of Euclidean geometry, their objections to formal logic as set out by Frege and Russell, and their assessment of phenomenology in order to eventually show Deleuze's affinity with Peirce's pragmatist approach. Then, the author aims to determine if Deleuze's attempt could be compatible with the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Bergson's understanding of quality and multiplicity.Chapter 3 focuses on Bergson. Recalling the controversy with Russell, Einstein, and Langevin, Olkowski refers to Merleau-Ponty's defense of Bergson's concept of intuition to prove the accuracy of his reflection on creative forces and pure duration. As she explains, "[T]he intent here is to clarify the relations between these different aspects of Bergson's thought and draw out how Deleuze makes use of these structures derived from Bergson's philosophy." This leads her to explore, more specifically, how Deleuze reworks the concept of "multiplicity" along the lines of Bergson's analysis of the élan vital.In chapter 4 the author focuses on Deleuze's work on cinema to deepen the philosophical correlation between Bergson's concepts, Deleuze's analysis, and the influences of Merleau-Ponty and Pierce. It aims to rethink the relation between movement and time, notably through the notions of time-image and movement-image. Olkowski notably showcases Deleuze's concept of destiny, "which is the pure power of time that [End Page 153] overflows all possible reaction. It defeats, immobilizes, and petrifies figures in their own affectivity; it sends them to their fate, destroying conventions along the way. For Merleau-Ponty, as for Bergson, acts are still possible in a network of temporal relations so that motion and time are destiny but differently than for Deleuze."Chapter 5 addresses the Phenomenology of Perception and how Merleau-Ponty provides an opportunity to rethink perception. In this book and his Courses on Nature, Merleau-Ponty "does not dismiss either position—that of objective science or that of the natural attitude—but argues that although each contains an element of truth, it is perception and only perception that allows us to bridge the gap between physical reality and behavior/comportment." Deleuze will depart from... (shrink)

This is Philosophy. In keeping with the mission of the series, This is Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind will be both accessible to the average student and technology oriented, integrating with supplemental online material. Also, while the proposed book will cover all of the topics one would expect in a traditional philosophy of mind course, it will be up to date and cover recent advances that are sadly missing from many competitor volumes. My proposed volume will not (...) be limited to what has become a very oldfashioned approach to teaching philosophy of mind, which is to focus solely on the mindbody problem via Cartesian substance dualism and the twentieth-century reactions to it (behaviorism, identity theory, functionalism, and eliminativism). In recent decades philosophers of mind have made exciting progress toward, for example, explanations of consciousness, and explications of the nature of perception and emotion. It is increasingly clear that the progress made is now part of canonical philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy. The papers, many of them previously inaccessible to non-specialist readers, deal with such fundamental issues as the relationship between style and content in the exploration of ethical issues; the nature of ethical attention and ethical knowledge and their relationship to written forms and styles; and the role of the emotions in deliberation and self-knowledge. Nussbaum investigates and defends a conception of ethical (...) understanding which involves emotional as well as intellectual activity, and which gives a certain type of priority to the perception of particular people and situations rather than to abstract rules. She argues that this ethical conception cannot be completely and appropriately stated without turning to forms of writing usually considered literary rather than philosophical. It is consequently necessary to broaden our conception of moral philosophy in order to include these forms. Featuring two new essays and revised versions of several previously published essays, this collection attempts to articulate the relationship, within such a broader ethical inquiry, between literary and more abstractly theoretical elements. (shrink)

One method Margaret Cavendish uses is something like inference to the best explanation, and so this may be what she mean by “regular sense and reason.” As Hobbes wrote in Leviathan: the cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling. Before examining how Cavendish appeals to ordinary perceptual phenomena to argue that pressure model of (...) class='Hi'>perception (PMP) is unacceptable, it will be helpful to sketch Cavendish’s own alternative theory of sense perception and how it fits into her broader natural-philosophical system. Cavendish’s texts thus support ascribing a third distinction to her, between two senses of “rational perception.” Cavendish’s alternative account of perception does agree with PMP in one respect, which is that sense perceptions are constituted by motions. The very existence of sense perceptions indicates that Hobbes’s PMP is an unacceptable theory, Cavendish argues. (shrink)

Despite the large interest in the human ability to perceive space present in neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology, as well as philosophy of mind, the issues regarding egocentric space representation received relatively less attention. In this paper I take up a unique phenomenon related to this faculty: the “spatial purport” of perceptual experiences. The notion was proposed by Rick Grush to describe the subjective, qualitative aspects of egocentric representations of spatial properties and relations. Although Grush offered an explanation of (...) the mechanism giving rise to appearance of spatial purport, his model had considerable shortcomings. In the paper I thoroughly analyze both the notion of spatial purport and Grush’s explanation of the mechanism at its core in order to develop his theory using the insights provided by the predictive processing theory of mind, and more particularly by the active inference framework. The extended account I offer, named Predictive and Hierarchical Skill Theory, explains phenomena that escaped Grush’s model and furthers the research on egocentric space representation from the perspective of both neuroscience and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

I have two main goals in this paper. My first goal is to sketch a new view of color perception. The core of the view can be expressed in the following two theses: (i) the overarching function of color vision is to enable and enhance the manifestation of relevant (species-specific) competences and (ii) color experiences are correct when they result from processing that directly and non-accidentally subserves the manifestation of such competences. My second goal is to show that the (...) view can accommodate and account for a wide variety of color perceptual phenomena, including many problem cases. Importantly, the framework allows us to differentiate between two kinds of good cases of color perception: ideal cases where the demands of the relevant competences converge and non-ideal cases where the demands of the relevant competences diverge and clash. (shrink)

This chapter concerns the cognitive penetration of the visual experience of colour. Alleged cases of cognitively penetrated colour perception are of special import since they concern an uncontroversial type of visual experience. All theorists of perception agree that colour properties figure properly in the content or presentation of visual perception, even though not all parties agree that pine trees or causes or other "high-level" properties can figure properly in visual content or presentation. So an alleged case of (...) this kind does not require controversial commitments regarding the admissible contents of visual perception. The chapter clarifies this theoretical importance , identifying alleged empirical cases of cognitively penetrated colour perception, and then analyzing the implications of such cases for an epistemology of perception. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:522 BOOK REVIEWS Essays in Ancient Philosophy. By MICHAEL FREDE. Minneapolis: Uni· versiy of Minnesota Press, 1987. Pp. xxvii + 382. $32.50. For this impressive volume, Michael Frede has woven together a series of seventeen essays on themes from Plato's analysis of percep· tion to the principles of Stoic grammar. There are six sections of the hook, dealing with Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Skeptics, Ancient Medicine, and Ancient Grammar, (...) respectively. Though most of the essays have appeared in print before, not all of them were readily accessible. Three essays are new to this volume (Chapters 1, 6, and 13) and three appear in English translation for the first time (Chapters 2, 4, and 10). In addition, Frede has prefaced the book with a splendid introduction, ex· plaining with great care his conception of the study of ancient philosophy. Throughout the book the argumentation is thorough and persuasive, the style clear, the conclusions subtle and profound. The experience that Frede brings to bear on various problems discussed in the hook is remarkable. The book may he read as a series of independent essays. There is no need to begin with the section on Plato, or to read the essays in any of the sections in sequence: no special knowledge of previous essays is presupposed by subsequent ones. Nevertheless, to suppose that the sug· gestions made and conclusions drawn in the course of the book are in· sulated from one another would be a serious mistake. To discern any precise connection between the essay on perception in Plato's Theae· tetus and the essay on the principles of Stoic Grammar is admittedly quite difficult. But the essays in the sections on Hellenistic Philosophy work together to flesh out the interrelations of the often complex and diverse views of that period, as well as to demonstrate the influence of earlier philosophers on these views. In this respect the essays in earlier sections provide a context for later essays. Within each section the essays generally exhibit a high degree of unity. This is especially true of the section on Aristotle. According to Frede, logic provides a unify· ing theme for all the essays in the hook. This is generally, but not al· ways, the case. Instead, it is Frede's consistent approach to the study of ancient philosophy that focuses and unifies the essays. His position is that we can understand a philosophical view only if we see how it fits into a [philosophical] history as a whole (p. xx, Introduction). There are, moreover, other histories that are relevant, or even crucial, to understanding certain views in ancient philosophy. Frede presents a clear formulation of his own approach to the study of ancient philos· ophy in the introduction, on which I comment below. The remainder of the comments in this review are intended to reflect, primarily, the interests of readers of this journal. Thus, most of the detailed remarks BOOK REVIEWS 5~3 to follow concern Frede's introduction and the sections on Plato and Aristotle. The other sections, however, are no less significant, and the arguments contained therein are as persuasive as any in the book. Anyone doing research in ancient philosophy must consider how much emphasis to place on its historical and philosophical elements: the methods, arguments, evidences, and contexts that one employs are a logical outcome of the relation one establishes between philosophy and history. Frede attempts to work out this relation in some detail, a task which is rarely undertaken in print; his introduction contains more than a few insights as a result. Many important distinctions are clarified or introduced, among them are distinctions between ancient philosophy and the history of ancient philosophy, between philosophical and historical explanation, between the history of philosophy and histories important to philosophy, and between a historically important philosophical fact and facts important to the history of philosophy. The conclusion yielded by these distinctions is that it is an extraordinarily complex fact that a philosopher held a certain view-a fact which can be legitimately studied in many ways, but not in just any way one chooses. In Frede's view, the study of ancient philosophy requires historical as well as philosophical approaches. For when... (shrink)

This edited volume on the philosophy of perception is based on the papers presented at the Wittgenstein Symposium 2017 (Kirchberg, Austria). It covers a wide range of recent topics in the philosophy of perception, from realism and objectivity in perception, intentionality and content, the distinction between perception and cognition, the cognitive penetrability of perception to the epistemology of perception. The volume contains papers by Tyler Burge, Howard Robinson, Olivier Massin, Michael Schmitz, Michael (...) Tye, Marcello Fiocco, Guillaume Frechette, Sofia Miguens, Uriah Kriegel, Pierre Jacob, Mark Kalderon, Berit Brogaard, Athanassios Raftopoulos, Ophelia Deroy, Charles Travis, Johannes Roessler, Philipp Berghofer, Harald Wiltsche, Frederique de Vignemont, Romana Schuler, Ulrich Arnswald, David Stern and Hans Sluga. (shrink)

Richard Sorabji here presents a selection of his previously-published papers on four topics in ancient philosophy: two on the mind-body relation, nine on sense perception, and one each on moral conscience and on the will. The substantial introduction updates and interconnects the papers and fills out the picture by reference to other writings by himself and others, and to further thoughts. The picture of the four main topics shows that each continued to develop throughout the 1200 year course (...) of Ancient Greek Philosophy up to 600 CE. (shrink)

In this paper I home in on an ethical phenomenon that is powerfully elucidated by means of enactive resources but that has, to my knowledge, not yet been explicitly addressed in the literature. The phenomenon in question concerns what I will term the paradox of moral perception, which, to be clear, does not refer to a logical but to a phenomenological-practical paradoxicality. Specifically, I have in mind the seemingly contradictory phenomenon that perceiving persons as moral subjects is at once (...) incredibly easy and incredibly difficult; it is something we do nearly effortlessly and successfully all the time without giving it much thought and it is something that often requires effort and that we fail at all the time. As I will argue, enactivism offers distinctive resources for explaining the paradoxical nature of moral perception. These resources, moreover, bring out two important dimensions of ethical life that are frequently overlooked in contemporary ethical theory: namely the embodied and socio-technical environment-embedded dimensions of moral perception and moral visibility. As I make my argument, I will be connecting enactivism with insights from David Hume’s and Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy as well as insights from the field of Epistemic Injustice. As such, I aim to situate enactivism within the larger theoretical ethical landscape; showing connections with existing ethical theories and identifying some of the ways in which enactivism offers unique contributions to our understanding of ethical life. While doing so, I will furthermore introduce two forms of moral misperception: particular moral misperception and categorial moral misperception. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of consciousness aims to investigate and explain our thinking about phenomenally conscious states. Based on empirical studies, researchers have argued (a) that we lack a folk concept of consciousness, (b) that we do not think entities like Microsoft feel regret, (c) that unfelt pains are widely accepted, and (d) that people do not attribute phenomenally conscious states to duplicated hamsters. In this article, I review these and other intriguing claims about people’s understanding of phenomenal consciousness. In doing (...) so, I also show why experimental philosophy of consciousness is challenging, although perhaps not quite as daunting as studying phenomenal consciousness itself. (shrink)

''The authors' style is clear, making the book accessible to newcomers, and the illustrations are excellent. There can be no doubt that this book will remain the standard work in the subject, and it will appeal to readers of all types.'' -Sir Patrick Moore in the Times Higher Education Supplement ''It will surely be the standard work on the subject for many years to come and we await with interest the outcome of further research into this fascinating subject.'' -Society for (...) the History of AstronomyFor thousands of years, one scientific puzzle has fascinated and perplexed the greatest philosophers, mathematicians, physicists, and psychologists - why do the moon and sun appear so much larger on the horizon than when high up in the sky? Now, two leading psychologists have provided a compelling account of this fascinating illusion. Taking us through the history, the characters involved, the attempts made to explain the illusion, through to modern day studies of visual perception, the book is the most comprehensive account of this puzzle so far. This is a work which will remain, for some time to come, the definitive book on a mystery that has fascinated and tested the greatest minds throughout the ages. Accessibly written, it will appeal to readers of popular science, along with those within the disciplines of psychology, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, from undergraduate upwards. (shrink)

Rhythm is the fundamental pulse that animates poetry, music, and dance across all cultures. And yet the recent explosion of scholarly interest across disciplines in the aural dimensions of aesthetic experience--particularly in sociology, cultural and media theory, and literary studies--has yet to explore this fundamental category. This book furthers the discussion of rhythm beyond the discrete conceptual domains and technical vocabularies of musicology and prosody. With original essays by philosophers, psychologists, musicians, literary theorists, and ethno-musicologists, The Philosophy of Rhythm (...) opens up wider-and plural-perspectives, examining formal affinities between the historically interconnected fields of music, dance, and poetry, while addressing key concepts such as embodiment, movement, pulse, and performance. Volume editors Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison bring together a range of key questions: What is the distinction between rhythm and pulse? What is the relationship between everyday embodied experience, and the specific experience of music, dance, and poetry? Can aesthetics offer an understanding of rhythm that helps inform our responses to visual and other arts, as well as music, dance, and poetry? And, what is the relation between psychological conceptions of entrainment, and the humane concept of rhythm and meter? Overall, The Philosophy of Rhythm appeals across disciplinary boundaries, providing a unique overview of a neglected aspect of aesthetic experience. (shrink)