scholarly journals Descartes on the Errors of the Senses

2016 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 73-108
Author(s):  
Sarah Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Size And Shape ◽  
New Science ◽  
Natural Tendency ◽  
Innate Ideas ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Sceptical Argument

AbstractDescartes first invokes the errors of the senses in the Meditations to generate doubt; he suggests that because the senses sometimes deceive, we have reason not to trust them. This use of sensory error to fuel a sceptical argument fits a traditional interpretation of the Meditations as a work concerned with finding a form of certainty that is proof against any sceptical doubt. If we focus instead on Descartes's aim of using the Meditations to lay foundations for his new science, his appeals to sensory error take on a different aspect. Descartes's new science is based on ideas innate in the intellect, ideas that are validated by the benevolence of our creator. Appeals to sensory error are useful to him in undermining our naïve faith in the senses and guiding us to an appreciation of innate ideas. However, the errors of the senses pose problems in the context of Descartes's appeals to God's goodness to validate innate ideas and natural propensities to belief. A natural tendency to sensory error is hard to reconcile with the benevolence of our creator. This paper explores Descartes's responses to the problems of theodicy posed by various forms of sensory error. It argues that natural judgements involved in our visual perception of distance, size and shape pose a problem of error that resists his usual solutions.

Young Children's Knowledge about Visual Perception: Projective Size and Shape

1986 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradford H. Pillow ◽  
John H. Flavell
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Size And Shape

scholarly journals Why Hume Cannot Be A Realist

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-161
Author(s):  
Jani Hakkarainen
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
Secondary Qualities ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Realist Interpretation ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Decisive Objection ◽  
Sceptical Argument

In this paper, I argue that there is a sceptical argument against the senses advanced by Hume that forms a decisive objection to the Metaphysically Realist interpretations of his philosophy – such as the different naturalist and New Humean readings. Hume presents this argument, apparently starting with the primary/secondary qualities distinction, both in A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1, Part 4, Section 4 (Of the modern philosophy) (1739) and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Section 12 (Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy), paragraphs 15 to 16 (1748). The argument concludes with the contradiction between consistent reasoning (causal, in particular) and believing in the existence of Real (distinct and continued) entities. The problem with the Realist readings of Hume is that they attribute both to Hume. So their Hume is a self-reflectively inconsistent philosopher. I show that the various ways to avoid this problem do not work. Accordingly, this paper suggests a non-Realist interpretation of Hume's philosophy: Hume the philosopher suspends his judgment on Metaphysical Realism. As such, his philosophical attitude is neutral on the divide between materialism and idealism.

scholarly journals NON-VISUAL PERCEPTION OF LANDSCAPE – USE OF HEARING AND OTHER SENSES IN THE PERCEPTION OF SELECTED SPACES IN THE CITY OF POZNAŃ

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-79
Author(s):  
Magdalena Szczepańska ◽  
Agnieszka Wilkaniec ◽  
Daria Łabędzka ◽  
Joanna Micińska
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
Landscape Use ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Questionnaire Method ◽  
The City

Perception of landscape is associated with the perception of space first of all by the sense of sight. Visual perception is supplemented by sensations collected by the other senses. The aim of the conducted investigations was to identify landscapes in the city of Poznań perceived both positively and negatively, using the senses of hearing, smell and touch. The questionnaire method was applied in this study. It was determined that for most respondents a decisive role in the perception of landscape, apart from sight, was played by the sense of smell and hearing.

scholarly journals Corpi annidati

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-158
Author(s):  
Sarah Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Spatial Cognition ◽  
Sense Of Place ◽  
Body Schema ◽  
Personal Space ◽  
Haptic System ◽  
The Senses

We are bodies start from other bodies. Yet, we rarely consider how our bodies extend into our surroundings. Discusses our body schema, peripersonal and extra personal space. Considers buildings as extensions of our bodies and minds and develops the con-cept of nested bodies that engage the senses, spatial cognition and a sense of place, audi-tory system and acoustic architecture, the haptic system and texture, tasting, smelling and the imagination, visual perception and chronobiology, atmospheric space.

scholarly journals Natural, Artifactual, and Evolutionary Perspective

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Igor Juricevic ◽  
John M. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Real World ◽  
Ground Plane ◽  
Spatial Layout ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Size And Shape ◽  
Spatial Range ◽  
The World

Looking out at the world around us, we readily perceive our 3-D surroundings. The sizes of objects in our environment, such as tiles on a piazza, distant buildings on a ground plane, tools on a tabletop, or foreground and background people in a large crowd, are perceived highly accurately, at least within a certain spatial range. So too is the layout of these objects, that is, their distances from us and from each other and their relative dimensions. The process of the visual perception of a real-world 3-D scene occurs so easily and naturally that we hardly notice how we pick up information about it by vision. Here we will describe the features on which vision relies to gain impressions of size and shape, and the approximations it accepts in assessing the 3-D spatial layout of the environment.

scholarly journals Floating in Space: DisEmbodied Experiences of Being Held Tightly by the Vast Emptiness in Turrell’s 'Perfectly Clear'

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi P. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
Physical Body ◽  
Art Installation ◽  
Solid Ground ◽  
Field Of Vision ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Museum Of Contemporary Art ◽  
As If

I stand floating in space, my eyes seeing only a vast expanse in the nothingness in which my body is suspended. Even as I feel my feet firmly planted on solid ground, a rush of strobing lights encompasses my field of vision, creating a sense of being un-stuck, a loss of physical placement that feels perfectly clear, perfectly safe, as if being held tightly by nothing at all. In January 2018, I stepped through the entrance into James Turrell’s Perfectly Clear, an immersive art installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA. Using personal narrative and scholarly accounts, this article examines experiences disembodiment and touch within Turrell’s Perfectly Clear. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theories of the embodied subject as an active co-creator of their situated reality, Brian Massumi’s writings on visual perception and the co-functioning of the senses, and James Elkins’ theory of sight as a transactional act of metamorphosis, I examine Perfectly Clear as a form of what I describe as disembodiment-embodiment, allowing the audience-participant to experience a sense of intimate embrace that challenges commonly held preconceptions of touch, sight, and the feeling of ones’ physical body in space.

scholarly journals Auditory-Visual Interactions in the Blind with Artificial Vision: Are Multisensory Perceptions Restored After Decades of Blindness?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noelle R. B. Stiles ◽  
Vivek R. Patel ◽  
James D. Weiland
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Interaction Strength ◽  
Retinal Prosthesis ◽  
Artificial Vision ◽  
Retinal Prostheses ◽  
Natural Vision ◽  
Visual Interactions ◽  
The Senses

AbstractIn the sighted, auditory and visual perception typically interact strongly and influence each other significantly. Blindness acquired in adulthood alters these multisensory pathways. During blindness, it has been shown that the senses functionally reorganize, enabling visual cortex to be recruited for auditory processing. It is yet unknown whether this reorganization is permanent, or whether auditory-visual interactions can be re-established in cases of partial visual recovery.Retinal prostheses restore visual perception to the late blind and provide an opportunity to determine if these auditory-visual connections and interactions are still viable after years of plasticity and neglect. We tested Argus II retinal prosthesis patients (N = 7) for an auditory-visual illusion, the ventriloquist effect, in which the perceived location of an auditory stimulus is modified by the presence of a visual stimulus. Prosthetically-restored visual perception significantly modified patients’ auditory perceptions, comparable to results with sighted control participants (N = 10). Furthermore, the auditory-visual interaction strength in retinal prosthesis patients exhibited a significant partial anti-correlation with patient age, as well as a significant partial correlation with duration of prosthesis use.These results indicate that auditory-visual interactions can be restored after decades of blindness, and that auditory-visual processing pathways and regions can be re-engaged. Furthermore, they indicate the resilience of multimodal interactions to plasticity during blindness, and that this plasticity can either be partially reversed or at least does not prevent auditory-visual interactions. Finally, this study provides hope for the restoration of sensory perception, complete with multisensory integration, even after years of visual deprivation.SignificanceRetinal prostheses restore visual perception to the blind by means of an implanted retinal stimulator wirelessly connected to a camera mounted on glasses. Individuals with prosthetic vision can locate and identify simple objects, and identify the direction of visual motion. A key question is whether this prosthetic vision will interact with the other senses, such as audition, in the same way that natural vision does. We found that artificial vision, like natural vision, can alter auditory localization. This suggests that the brain processes prosthetic vision similarly to natural vision despite altered visual processing in the retina. In addition, it implies that reorganization of the senses during blindness may be reversible, allowing for the rehabilitation of crossmodal interactions after visual restoration.

scholarly journals Perception verbs and the conceptualization of the senses: The case of Avatime

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Saskia van Putten
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Perception Verbs ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Detailed Picture ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractLanguages differ in their number of basic verbs that describe perceptual experience. Some languages have only two such verbs: one for visual perception and another for non-visual perception. How do speakers of these languages conceptualize sensory perception? To shed light on this question, this paper investigates the perception verbs mɔ̀ ‘see’ and nu ‘hear/feel/taste/smell’ in Avatime (Kwa, Niger-Congo). These verbs are studied together with the constructions in which they occur, using both translated data and spontaneous discourse. Both perception meanings and meanings outside the domain of perception are taken into account. The detailed picture that emerges shows some previously undocumented patterns of perception encoding and enriches our understanding of the conceptualization of the senses more generally.

McRae on Innate Ideas: A Rejoinder

Dialogue ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-30
Author(s):  
Murray Miles
Keyword(s):  
Innate Ideas ◽  
The Senses

It will come as no surprise that I have a different interpretation of the four passages in which, McRae claims, Descartes “definitely includes extension and its modes in what is given through the senses”. In the first, Descartes includes extension, etc., among his ideas of corporeal bodies. This is not to say that he includes them among his adventitious ideas, though. All adventitious ideas are ideas of external bodies. But the converse is not true. Not all ideas of corporeal bodies are ipso facto adventitious ideas, for, as I see it, the idea of the true and immutable nature of body is non-sensible and innate. McRae slides from “all adventitious ideas seem to be ideas of external bodies” to “all ideas of external bodies (including extension) are adventitious”.

Scepticism and the Senses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Right ◽  
Sceptical Argument ◽  
Philosophical Scepticism

This chapter considers some lessons that can be learned from philosophical scepticism and some strategies to be pursued in understanding human knowledge in the right way. It examines the conception of perceptual experience and what is needed for a more accurate—and hence more trouble-free—account of what we can and do in fact perceive. It also discusses René Descartes’s sceptical argument and his notion of perceptual knowledge before concluding with an explanation of what it calls propositional perception to account for knowledge of the world. It argues that we can perceive particular objects without believing or knowing anything about them. It is only with such ‘propositional’ objects of perception that direct perceptual knowledge of the world is possible, since knowledge is knowledge of what is so.

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