From 1979 to 1999, a heated dispute over the science or pseudoscience of extraordinary power or extrasensory perception took place in China. During these two decades, many so-called “grandmasters” of ESP and Qigong emerged, and millions of people across the country studied with them; this was known as “Qigong Fever” or “ESP Fever.” The supporters of ESP argued that ESP existed, people could cultivate ESP through specific Qigong training, and ESP was a science; whereas the opponents of ESP denied (...) all of these. Both sides of the dispute had many supporters. With the onset of Qigong Fever in China, some Qigong and ESP masters developed their Qigong organizations into Chinese-style religions. Qigong Fever ended when the religions were banned by the Chinese government. The rise of Qigong Fever demonstrated that basic questions about the boundaries between science and pseudoscience were not easy to answer. Different theoretical and practical consequences resulted from different answers to these questions. (shrink)

A major theme in rap lyrics is that the only way to survive is to use your head, be aware, know what’s going on around you. That simple idea packs a lot of background. The most obvious ideas about knowledge turn out if you look at them close up to be pretty questionable. For example: How do we get knowledge about the world? A natural and ancient answer to this question is that much if not all of our knowledge comes (...) from our senses. So for example the nose gives us knowledge of what things smell like, and if all goes well, also indicates whether the thing we’re smelling is healthy, tasty, or noxious. Likewise, the eyes tell us the color and shape of things, and thereby give us information about whether those things are useful, dangerous, and so on. Like everybody else, rappers know all this. Or do they? Maybe some rappers know that this isn’t really so. I’m not talking about Extra-Sensory Perception, channeling, auras, or about what. (shrink)

.In this paper, I address Descartes’ claims that sensory perceptions function to aid and preserve the subject in interacting with the world, and focus specifically on the ‘valence’, or agreeable/disagreeable quality, that characterizes many sensations. I show how Descartes considers this aspect of sensation to be a significant factor in the ecological role of sensory perception and I then turn to a kind of case that seems to pose a problem for this view: that of aesthetic pleasure. (...) I consider Descartes’ remarks on a particular kind of aesthetic pleasure – that found in musical consonance – and argue that his discussion of this phenomenon reveals that he distinguishes between two distinct kinds of valence – evaluative sensory valence and aesthetic valence – only one of which functions to report directly on ecological evaluation. Further, I suggest that the best way to understand the distinction between these is by appealing to Descartes’ three grades of sensory perception. (shrink)

The paper aims to show that Philoponus’ theory of sense-perception does not fit in with the spiritualist claim that the sensory process does not involve an extra material change in the sense-organ. Both the specific sense-organs and the primary sense-organ contract or expand in the perceptual process. On the other hand, the literalist claim needs to be modified as well since only the tactile sense-organ takes on the relevant qualities. Contraction or expansion in the sense-organ is triggered, (...) not by physical changes in the medium, but by the formal activities arising from the perceptible objects: colours make the visual sense-organ contract or expand. At the level of sense-organs, the physiological process underlying sense-perception has three stages. The change in specific sense-organ will be transmitted to the primary sense-organ of the particular sense , and then reaches the common sense-organ, the pneuma. The primary sense-organs are spatially distinguishable parts of the common sense-organ which is otherwise homogeneous, not allowing for qualitative differences. The homogeneity of the pneuma establishes the unity of sense-perception at the level of physiological processes. (shrink)

The book illustrates how the human ability to adapt to the environment and interact with it can explain our linguistic representation of the world as constrained by our bodies and sensory perception. The different chapters discuss philosophical, scientific, and linguistic perspectives on embodiment and body perception, highlighting the core mechanisms humans employ to acquire knowledge of reality. These processes are based on sensory experience and interaction through communication.

My paper is divided into three parts. The first examines the different versions of phenomenology that Husserl used during the Freiburg period, including genetic phenomenology, which is considered, in Experience and Judgment, as the basis for his genealogy of logic. I also examine the doxa-episteme opposition, which is one of the central topics of this book, and I claim that Brentano's epistemic asymmetry between internal and external perception can be considered as a special case of this opposition, which Husserl (...) seeks to overcome. The second part consists in an account of the genesis of the concept of primary content, such as it was first introduced in his Habilitationsschrift in order to replace Brentano's notion of physical phenomenon, to Ideas I where Husserl seems to have abandoned this notion, and replaced it with that of hyle which he conceived in a way similar to that of traditional atomism. The third part shows that the lectures and the working manuscripts of the Freiburg period, including Experience and Judgment, dispel the impression left by Ideas I by providing an original analysis of the dimension of sensory experience. Our starting point is an analysis of the cases of misperception that serve as arguments against Brentano's theory of external perception and whose function here is to uncover several distinctions relating to the modes of consciousness which are directly related to primary contents and to the qualitative dimension of experience. I conclude on the subject of passive syntheses and argue that they refer to a multiplicity of relations that structure phenomenal experience. (shrink)

Our emotional states affect how we perceive the world. If I am stressed, annoyed, or irritated, I might experience the sound of children laughing and screaming as they play around the house in a negative manner — it is unpleasant, loud, piercing, and so on. Yet, if I’m in a relaxed, happy, loving mood, the very same sounds might be experienced as pleasant, playful, warm, and so on. The sounds being made by the children are the same in both cases, (...) but how they are experienced differs. The auditory experience is affected by the emotional state that I am in. I perceive the sounds differently depending on how I’m feeling. Although this might at first seem to be a trivial observation, it certainly is not. We take for granted that our perceptual experiences give rise to justified beliefs and knowledge. Thus, if my perceptual experience of an object can differ based on my emotional state, and I take my perceptual experience to justify my beliefs and even lead to knowledge, then we might have a problem. If emotions — which are not fixed and in large part uncontrolled — affect our ability to accurately perceive the world, then they may undermine the justified beliefs and knowledge gained on the basis of our perceptual experience of the world. My goal here is to explore this potential problem. -/- I consider how we might understand the effect that emotions have on the justification of our perceptual beliefs about the world, beliefs that we acquire from a variety of sensory modalities — audition, gustation olfaction, and so on. I take the problem to be associated with one of two forms of perceptual influence: penetration or multisensory integration. In any given perceptual moment there are multiple sensory modalities and mental states at play, each affecting the overall experience. Whether we understand the influence of emotion on perception as a form of non-perceptual penetration or a form of non-visual sensory perception of the inner body — interoception — the potential epistemological difficulties remain: how can we be said to acquire justified beliefs and knowledge on the basis of such influenced perceptual experience. As has been the norm, only the five exteroceptive senses of vision, audition, olfaction, taste and touch are typically discussed in the context of sensory perception. However, as I argue, there is strong reason to accept the claim that emotional experience is a form of interoception, and that interoception ought to be considered when discussing sensory perception. In this way, then, I propose that clarifying the role played by interoception in sense perception across modalities is necessary if we are to make progress on the epistemological problems at hand. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion about the reality of sensory perceptions has been hijacked by two tendencies. First, talk about perception has been largely centered on vision. Second, the realism question is traditionally approached by attaching objects or material structures to matching contents of sensory perceptions. These tendencies have resulted in an argumentative impasse between realists and anti-realists, discussing the reliability of means by which the supposed causal information transfer from object to perceiver takes place. Concerning the nature of (...) class='Hi'>sensory experiences and their capacity to provide access to reality, this article challenges the standard categories through which most arguments in this debate have been framed to date. Drawing on the underexplored case of olfaction, I first show how the details of the perception process determine the modalities of sensory experiences. I specifically examine the role of measurement and analyze its influence on the characterization of perceptions in olfaction. My aim is to argue for an understanding of perception through a process view, rather than one pertaining to objects and properties of objects. (shrink)

This article describes the conception of sensory perception during the early modern period. It discusses David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature where he contrasted the ancient metaphysics of substantial forms and occult qualities with the metaphysics of the Moderns. The article argues that Hume was fundamentally correct and that the doctrine of secondary qualities is indeed a distinctively modern doctrine that captures something of the very essence of the new philosophical age.

아우구스티누스의 철학적 여정은 아카데미학파로 대표되는 고대의 회의주의에 대한 논박으로 시작하고 발전한다. 아카데미학파는 스토아주의가 자연적 영역에 대한 감관지각의 관계를 통해서 앎의 통일성을 소유했다고 주장하는 것에 문제를 제기하고, 이 통일성이 하나의 환영이라는 것을 입증하는 데 역량을 집중하여 다양한 논의를 양산했다. 아카데미학파는 감관지각의 불완전성을 논의함으로써 인간이 사물의 본성에 대한 앎을 가질 수 없다고 주장했다. 또한 이를 바탕으로 진리를 발견할 수는 없지만 진리를 추구할 수는 있다는 상대주의적 입장으로 나아간다. 아우구스티누스는 아카데미학파의 주장에 반박하고자 『콘트라 아카데미코스』를 중심으로 여러 저작에서 아카데미학파의 감관지각 이론에 대해 비판하면서 자신의 감관지각 (...) 이론을 정립한다. 아우구스티누스는 『콘트라 아카데미코스』에서 감관지각에 대한 아카데미학파의 회의적 질문, 즉“어떻게 이 세계가 존재한다는 것을 아는가. 만약 감관들이 오류를 범할 수 있다면?”, “만약 당신이 잠들어 있을 때에도 당신이 보는 것이 이 세계인가?”라는 명제를 소개한다. 그리고 이에 대해 아우구스티누스는 자기에게 외현하는 것은 그 자체로는 참이지만, 그것을 보이는 그대로 존재한다고 여겨 함부로 동의할 때에만 오류라고 답한다. 또한 그는 유사 세상이라는 사실이 곧 감관지각이 거짓이라는 사실을 입증해 주는 것은 아니며, 아무리 꿈속이라고 할지라도 그것을 인식하는 감관의 활동은 정상적일 수 있다는 논의를 편다. (shrink)

In Transcendence and Sensoriness , scholars of theology, philosophy, art, music, and architecture, discuss questions of transcendence, the human senses, and the arts through case studies considered in a broad theological framework of religious aesthetics of the arts.

Malebranche holds that sensory experience represents the world from the body’s point of view. I argue that Malebranche gives a systematic analysis of this bodily perspective in terms of the claim that the five familiar external senses and bodily awareness represent nothing but relations to the body.

The reward system of science is the priority rule. The first scientist making a new discovery is rewarded with prestige, while second runners get little or nothing. Michael Strevens, following Philip Kitcher, defends this reward system, arguing that it incentivizes an efficient division of cognitive labor. I argue that this assessment depends on strong implicit assumptions about the replicability of findings. I question these assumptions on the basis of metascientific evidence and argue that the priority rule systematically discourages replication. My (...) analysis leads us to qualify Kitcher and Strevens’s contention that a priority-based reward system is normatively desirable for science. (shrink)

The supposed communication of one mind with another at a distance, without any means known to physical or psychological science, is a generally accepted definition of telepathy. Thus when persons sensorially isolated from each other experience congruence and coincidence of thoughts, emotions or actions they are considered as being in telepathic communication. Clairvoyance surmises the apprehension of particular objects and stimuli also without the employment of any of the agencies of the five senses. Although telepathy and clairvoyance have been thus (...) recognized as distinct conjectures, either or both comprise features of Extra Sensory Perception. Both are conceived of as transcending the anatomical structures and physiological functionings that comprise the five senses. They therefore constitute a mysterious, additional sense which as yet cannot be ascribed to material bases or causes. However, the operations, if not the exact natures, of these recondite abilities have been, it is claimed, experimentally and precisely ascertained. (shrink)

Here, I outline the idea of a unified hypothesis of sensory perception, developed from the theoretical vibrational mechanism of olfaction, which can be applied across all sensory modalities. I propose that all sensory perception is based upon the detection of mechanical forces at a cellular level, and the subsequent mechanotransduction of the signal via the nervous system. Thus, I argue that the sensory modalities found in the animal kingdom may all be viewed as being (...) mechanoreceptory, rather than being discrete neurophysiological systems which evolved independently of each other. I go on to argue that this idea could potentially explain language evolution, with birdsong being an example of a more simple form of non-Saussurean language that employs ‘frequency-mimicking’ to produce a vocal signal which describes acoustic, chemical and electromagnetic vibrational frequencies detected within in the environment. I also give examples of how this hypothesis could potentially explain phenomena such as vocal mimicry in animals, as well as the human perception of musicality and the occurrence of synaesthesia; a condition found in humans, where the stimulation of one sensory modality results in the stimulation of another. For example, auditory stimuli are detected and are heard as an acoustic signal, as well as being perceived as colour by the visual system. (shrink)

Sensory substitution devices provide through an unusual sensory modality (the substituting modality, e.g., audition) access to features of the world that are normally accessed through another sensory modality (the substituted modality, e.g., vision). In this article, we address the question of which sensory modality the acquired perception belongs to. We have recourse to the four traditional criteria that have been used to define sensory modalities: sensory organ, stimuli, properties, and qualitative experience (Grice, 1962), (...) to which we have added the criteria of behavioral equivalence (Morgan, 1977), dedication (Keeley, 2002), and sensorimotor equivalence (O’Regan & Noe¨, 2001). We discuss which of them are fulfilled by perception through sensory substitution devices and whether this favors the view that perception belongs to the substituting or to the substituted modality. Though the application of a number of criteria might be taken to point to the conclusion that perception with a sensory substitution device belongs to the substituted modality, we argue that the evidence leads to an alternative view on sensory substitution. According to this view, the experience after sensory substitution is a transformation, extension, or augmentation of our perceptual capacities, rather than being something equivalent or reducible to an already existing sensory modality. We develop this view by comparing sensory substitution devices to other ‘‘mind-enhancing tools’’ such as pen and paper, sketchpads, or calculators. An analysis of sensory substitution in terms of mind-enhancing tools unveils it as a thoroughly transforming perceptual experience and as giving rise to a novel form of perceptual interaction with the environment. (shrink)

In The Architecture of Reason, Robert Audi claims that good reasoning always has some foundation in experience. It is not clear, however, precisely what kind of experience is supposed to ground practical reasoning. It is also not clear whether inference is necessary for a belief to be justified, even when the source of the belief is experience without inference. Finally, it is not clear why beliefs based on some kinds of experience would not need to be justified by inference when (...) beliefs based on other experiential sources (such as extra-sensory perception) do not share this epistemically privileged status. (shrink)

The findings from an extended series of psychological tests for extra-sensory perception, particularly with respect to psychological attitudes, are presented here. Those who believed in ESP consistently made higher scores than the non-believers. Appendices describe statistical procedures and major hypotheses employed. A careful, conservative study. --L. S. F.

Hermann von Helmholtz allows for not only physiological facts and psychological inferences, but also perspectival reasoning, to influence perceptual experience and knowledge gained from perception. But Helmholtz also defends a version of the view according to which there can be a kind of “perspectival truth” revealed in scientific research and investigation. Helmholtz argues that the relationships between subjective and objective, real and actual, actual and illusory, must be analyzed scientifically, within experience. There is no standpoint outside experience from which (...) we can reason, no extra-sensory knowledge of the constitution of the “ideal subject” or of the properties of “real objects.” In the tradition of psychophysics inherited by Helmholtz, we can arrive at a kind of perspectival analysis of perceptual experience, which embeds an account of that experience within the context of the history and situation of the perceiving subject. That analysis is relative to the perceiving subject, but the perspectival explanations Helmholtz constructs are not thereby relativist: in fact, for Helmholtz, the more squarely the perceiving subject is placed in a scientific, perspectival context, the more facts we are able to learn about her experience and the objects with which she interacts. (shrink)

This article, which seeks to connect philosophy, polite culture, and the Enlightenment, shows how Malebranche’s Cartesian science presented a full-frontal attack on the worldly notion of a good taste aligned with reason. It did this by arguing that the aesthetic tastes that people experience were the result of mechanically-transmitted sensations that, like all physical sensations, were inaccurate, erroneous and relativistic. The mechanics of this process is explored in detail to show how Malebranche was challenging honnête thinking. The article suggests that (...) Malebranche’s demystifying approach was at once a hallmark of the Enlightenment, and that his views would ironically come to inform much Enlightenment thought about taste in ways he would have despised. (shrink)

Pain is commonly explained in terms of the perceptual activity of a distinct sensory modality, the function of which is to enable us to perceive actual or potential damage to the body. However, the characterization of pain experience in terms of a distinct sensory modality with such content is problematic. I argue that pain is better explained as occupying a different role in relation to perception: to indicate when the stimuli that are sensed in perceiving anything by (...) means of a sensory modality exceed a significant level of intensity. Viewing the system underlying pain experience as an integral and functionally integrated feature of all the senses provides a new perspective on the diverse forms of pain, what it is like to experience pain and the contrasting natures of pain and pleasure. (shrink)

Christopher Gauker argues that no concept can be extracted from perceptual experience and that imagistic thought cannot draw boundaries between one kind and another. Here, it is argued, on the contrary, that images have extension and are consequently Fregean concepts. Hume’s theory of abstraction as indifference is offered as an account of extra-sensory concepts. Finally, it is argued that modern theories of sensory data processing run parallel to Kant’s idea of synthesis as a pre-condition for perception.

According to the additive view of sensory imagination, mental imagery often involves two elements. There is an image-like element, which gives the experiences qualitative phenomenal character akin to that of perception. There is also a non-image element, consisting of something like suppositions about the image's object. This accounts for extra- sensory features of imagined objects and situations: for example, it determines whether an image of a grey horse is an image of Desert Orchid, or of some (...) other grey horse. The view promises to give a simple and intuitive explanation of some puzzling features of imagination, and, further, to illuminate imagination 's relation to modal knowledge. I contend that the additive view does not fulfil these two promises. The explanation of how images come to be determinate is redundant: the content constituting the indeterminate mental images on which the view relies is sufficient to deliver determinate images too, so the extra resources offered by the view are not required.. (shrink)

One key difference between perceptual experience and thought is the distinctly sensory way perception presents things to us. Some philosophers nevertheless suggest this sensory phenomenal character does not exhaust the way things are made manifest to us in perceptual experience. Edmund Husserl maintains that there is also a significant non‐sensory side to perception's phenomenal character. We may experience, for instance, an object's facing surface in a sensory mode and, as part of the same perceptual (...) experience, also that object's out‐of‐view surface in a non‐sensory mode. To the extent that perceptual experience makes things available to us in a non‐sensory mode, Husserl calls it inadequate. Here, I reconstruct four arguments for the conclusion that perceptual experience is inadequately found in various of Husserl's writings and critically evaluated them. My aim is both to showcase the variety and sophistication of Husserl's reasons for thinking perceptual experience is inadequate and to problematize that idea. (shrink)

In recent years, cognitive neuroscientists have began to explore the process of how sensory information gains access to awareness. To further probe this process, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used while testing subjects with a paradigm known as the “attentional blink.” In this paradigm, visually presented information sporadically fails to reach awareness. It was found that the magnitude and time course of activation within the anterior cingulate , medial prefrontal cortex , and frontopolar cortex predicted whether or not (...) information was consciously perceived during the critical period for the attentional blink. These results are discussed in light of a neural framework for conscious processing. (shrink)

This is an unedited version of a paper written in 2012 accepted for publication in a forthcoming Festschrift for Mark Platts. In it I argue that the Helmholtz/Bayes tradition of free energy neuroscience begun by Geoffrey Hinton and his colleagues, and now being carried forward by Karl Friston and his, can be seen as a fulfilment of the Quine/Davidson program of radical interpretation, and also of Quine’s conception of a naturalized epistemology. -/- This program, in turn, is rooted in Helmholtz’s (...) scientific reconception of Kant’s notion of a concept-led synthesis of affectations by an extra-sensory reality that creates human self-consciousness, a topic previously discussed in my (2012) Psychoanalysis, Representation, and Neuroscience. -/- I also argue that 20th century analytical philosophy went astray when Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein ignored their legacy from Helmholtz and espoused a conception of perception and epistemology that he had already shown to be false. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 755-777, June 2022.

This paper criticizes the predominant, representational-neurophysicalist conception of sensory perception. It introduces the notion of "experience-field" to give a tentative ontological account of the phenomenological data of experience. The general idea is that visual experience, for instance, would be ontologically something like an experience-field extending over and between the central nervous sistem of the subject of the experience and the distal object of vision. I call this position phenomenological macrorealism, in contrast to scientific microrealism. Phenomenal qualities are not (...) subjectively inside the brain, but objectively inside perceptual extraencephalic experience-fields, or, as we say, out there in the world. Some specific consequences of phenomenological macrorealism are presented.Este artigo critica a concepção predominante, representacionista-neurofisicalista sobre a percepção sensorial. Introduz a noção de "campo-experiência" na tentativa de tratamento ontológico dos dados fenomenológicos da experiência. A idéia geral é que a experiência visual, por exemplo, seria ontologicamente algo assim como um campo-experiência de intencionalidade visual, que se estende por sobre e entre o sistema nervoso central do sujeito da experiência e o objeto distai da visão. Chamo esta posição de macrorrealismo fenomenológico, em contraste com o microrrealismo científico. Qualidades da fenomenalidade não estão subjetivamente dentro do cérebro, mas objetivamente dentro de campos-experiência perceptuais extra-encefálicos, ou, como dizemos, lá fora no mundo. Algumas conseqüências específicas do macrorrealismo fenomenológico são apresentadas. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the predominant, representational-neurophysicalist conception of sensory perception. It introduces the notion of "experience-field" to give a tentative ontological account of the phenomenological data of experience. The general idea is that visual experience, for instance, would be ontologically something like an experience-field extending over and between the central nervous sistem of the subject of the experience and the distal object of vision. I call this position phenomenological macrorealism, in contrast to scientific microrealism. Phenomenal qualities are not (...) subjectively inside the brain, but objectively inside perceptual extraencephalic experience-fields, or, as we say, out there in the world. Some specific consequences of phenomenological macrorealism are presented.Este artigo critica a concepção predominante, representacionista-neurofisicalista sobre a percepção sensorial. Introduz a noção de "campo-experiência" na tentativa de tratamento ontológico dos dados fenomenológicos da experiência. A idéia geral é que a experiência visual, por exemplo, seria ontologicamente algo assim como um campo-experiência de intencionalidade visual, que se estende por sobre e entre o sistema nervoso central do sujeito da experiência e o objeto distai da visão. Chamo esta posição de macrorrealismo fenomenológico, em contraste com o microrrealismo científico. Qualidades da fenomenalidade não estão subjetivamente dentro do cérebro, mas objetivamente dentro de campos-experiência perceptuais extra-encefálicos, ou, como dizemos, lá fora no mundo. Algumas conseqüências específicas do macrorrealismo fenomenológico são apresentadas. (shrink)