Descartes’s Secular Semantics

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Alan Hausman ◽  
David Hausman
Keyword(s):  
Sense Organs ◽  
External Objects ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Mind

… if we bear well in mind the scope of our senses and what it is exactly that reaches our faculty of thinking by way of them, we must admit that in no case are the ideas of things presented to us by the senses just as we form them in our thinking. So much so that there is nothing in our ideas which is not innate to the mind or the faculty of thinking, with the sole exception of those circumstances which relate to experience, such as the fact that we judge that this or that idea which we now have immediately before our mind refers to a certain thing situated outside us. We make such a judgment not because these things transmit the ideas to our mind through the sense organs, but because they transmit something which, at exactly that moment, gives the mind occasion to form these ideas by means of the faculty innate to it. Nothing reaches our mind from external objects through the sense organs except certain corporeal motions… in accordance with my own principles. But neither the motions themselves nor the figures arising from them are conceived by us exactly as they occur in the sense organs, as I have explained at length in my Optics. Hence it follows that the very ideas of the motions themselves and of the figures are innate in us. The ideas of pains, colors, sounds and the like must be all the more innate if, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions, our mind is to be capable of representing them to itself, for there is no similarity between these ideas and the corporeal motions.

scholarly journals The teachings of Alexei Chernyakov about the soul and mind: reflections and comments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleg Gushchin
Keyword(s):  
General Feeling ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Continuous Dynamic ◽  
Common Feeling ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Mind

Chernyakov in his famous monograph reveals the concept of the soul through the opposite — the concept of the mind. But the point is not only in the explication of the concept through the opposite meaning. Following the logic of Chernyakov, the soul and mind at a certain stage fall into a kind of dynamic unity as the highest participation in the divine gaze. Being, according to Aristotle, a common feeling, the soul is through continuous “flipping” of private feelings, and so that in the formula: “I feel and understand what I feel,” the second term is exfoliated, i.e. the terminological limitation has been removed. As a result, the pure movement “feel the feeling of feeling” is released as a continuity of sensual evidence. The soul lives in the gaps of the mind and sees its infinity in them. Chernyakov draws attention to the fact that any distinction is simultaneously and latently the moment of binding distinctions. But the moments of discrimination / binding in soul and mind are given in different ways. Awakening (discriminating), the soul simultaneously connects the different so as to survey the all-encompassing expanse of itself and all that exists in the unity of self-movement. The soul, like the mind, is a form without matter, but in a different way from the mind. The soul also moves towards the object, but does not deviate from it to meet with itself, as the mind does, but passes through the object at the moment when it is already (still) decomposed or is in a de-objectified form. An object, being the energy of the mind, is "weathered" in relation to the soul, leaving a kind of living sensory imprint, the soul revives when it connects sensory imprints of objects, meeting itself in them. Chernyakov, referring to Aristotle, believes that the general feeling really contains in some way all the objects of the senses (but without matter). We explain to ourselves that these objects are in a de-objectified form. Unimpeded by overcoming (opening) the gap of the mind, the soul “sees” (binds) a multitude of sensory forms, in each of which a free gaze as such is released. This is not a gaze fixed on something unchanging. And it is also not a perception, which, as part of a speculative form, adds a new “perceive something” to “I perceive something”. Now the act: “I perceive something” is opened and partially discarded, leaving only an independent, continuous dynamic attachment in the remainder: “perceives” + “perceives” + “perceives”, etc.

scholarly journals The Employment of Metaphor and Simile in Selected Siswati Poetry

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Jozi Joseph Thwala
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Connotative Meaning ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Mind

The focus of this research work on selected descriptive of images refers to the analytic survey of metaphor and simile. They are selected, defined, explained and interpreted. Their significances in bringing about poetic diction, licence, meaning, message and themes are highlighted. They are fundamental figures of speech that implicitly and explicitly display the emotive value, connotative meaning, literariness and language skills. The poetic images reflect and represent real life situations through poetic skills and meanings. The literary criticism, comparative and textual analysis is evident when the objects are looked at from animate to inanimate and inanimate to animate. They serve as basic methodologies that are backing the theories and strategies on selected figures of speech. Imagery is the use of words that brings picture of the mind of the receiver or recipient and appeal to the senses. It is, however, manifested in various forms for resemblances, contrasts and comparisons. Artistic language through images revealed poetic views, assertion and facts.

scholarly journals The Efference Copy Signal as a Key Mechanism for Consciousness

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Vallortigara
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Input ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Efference Copy ◽  
Sense Organs ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Evaluative Response ◽  
Sensory Structures ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Carbon Copy

Animals need to distinguish sensory input caused by their own movement from sensory input which is due to stimuli in the outside world. This can be done by an efference copy mechanism, a carbon copy of the movement-command that is routed to sensory structures. Here I tried to link the mechanism of the efference copy with the idea of the philosopher Thomas Reid that the senses would have a double province, to make us feel, and to make us perceive, and that, as argued by psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, the former would identify with the signals from bodily sense organs with an internalized evaluative response, i.e., with phenomenal consciousness. I discussed a possible departure from the classical implementation of the efference copy mechanism that can effectively provide the senses with such a double province, and possibly allow us some progress in understanding the nature of consciousness.

The Heart beyond Hearts

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 186-189
Author(s):  
Swami Tyagananda
Keyword(s):  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Vision Of God ◽  
The Mind

AbstractMany religious traditions ascribe to the term "heart" a meaning that goes beyond the physical and the emotional levels. In Hinduism, the discovery of the spiritual heart is generally seen as a precursor to higher experiences that transcend the mind and the senses, and culminate in the vision of God. This essay briefly describes the Hindu view of the spiritual heart, where the heart is located, and how it is experienced.

The Intersections of Creativity, Technology, and the Mind

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Audri Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Computer Vision ◽  
Motion Capture ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Creativity Studies ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Immersive Technologies

This chapter examines the relationships between technology, the human mind, and creativity. The chapter cannot possibly cover the whole spectrum of the aforementioned; nonetheless, it covers highlights that especially apply to new immersive technologies. The nature of creativity, creativity studies, the tools, languages, and technology used to promote creativity are discussed. The part that the mind and the senses—particularly vision—play in immersive media technology, as well as robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, and motion capture are also discussed. The immersive transmedia project Robot Prayers is offered as a case study of the application of creativity and technology working hand in hand.

Our Lady of Art

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-142
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Ferraro
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Sexual Intimacy ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Expressive Culture ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Washington Square

Chapter 5 examines Willa Cather’s neglected story, “Coming, Aphrodite” in light of her fascination with the bodily presentation that Camille Paglia would later call “sexual personae”—for which Cather develops her own Marian interpretive sensibility, half Roman Catholic and half Pagan, as a deliberate counterforce to the Puritan heritage deflating U.S. artistic and expressive culture. In her twenties, Cather was a prodigious journalist fascinated by the radiant figurae of statuary, painting, drama, poetry, and fiction both home and abroad—which she interrogated in explicitly religious terms, with a particular affinity for both Marian-Catholic dissent from the Puritan denial of the senses and its alternative of graced intercession. Cather learns to invite readers to the redemptive power of forbidden love: sex for its own sake, adultery whether intermittent or sustained or only imagined, same-sex beatings of the heart and meetings of the mind. Then, in “Coming, Aphrodite!,” in a way more literal that her readers could possibly have expected, Cather stages the male gaze of an avant-garde, sexually disciplined and romantically impervious, young painter in Washington Square, Don Hedger, who finds himself in thrall—through a closet peephole!—to the artful exhibitionism in body and song of an equally ambitious, alternatively brilliant ingénue, Eden Bower. Their pas de deux produces a profound, profoundly mutual, yet never-to-be domesticated, sexual intimacy, non-reproductive but dually procreative—all of it conducted under signs of Roman Latinate and Indo-Latino Catholicism, including a story within the story entitled “The Forty Lovers of the Princess.”

Perception

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.G.F. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Sense Data ◽  
Intermediary Objects ◽  
External Objects ◽  
The World ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Proper Account

Sense perception is the use of our senses to acquire information about the world around us and to become acquainted with objects, events, and their features. Traditionally, there are taken to be five senses: sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste. Philosophical debate about perception is ancient. Much debate focuses on the contrast between appearance and reality. We can misperceive objects and be misled about their nature, as well as perceive them to be the way that they are: you could misperceive the shape of the page before you, for example. Also, on occasion, it may seem to us as if we are perceiving, when we do not perceive at all, but only suffer hallucinations. Illusions and hallucinations present problems for a theory of knowledge: if our senses can mislead us, how are we to know that things are as they appear, unless we already know that our senses are presenting things as they are? But the concern in the study of perception is primarily to explain how we can both perceive and misperceive how things are in the world around us. Some philosophers have answered this by supposing that our perception of material objects is mediated by an awareness of mind-dependent entities or qualities: typically called sense-data, ideas or impressions. These intermediaries allegedly act as surrogates or representatives for external objects: when they represent aright, we perceive; when they mislead, we misperceive. An alternative is to suppose that perceiving is analogous to belief or judgment: just as judgment or belief can be true or false, so states of being appeared to may be correct or incorrect. This approach seeks to avoid intermediary objects between the perceiver and the external objects of perception, while still taking proper account of the possibility of illusion and hallucination. Both responses contrast with that of philosophers who deny that illusions and hallucinations have anything to tell us about the nature of perceiving proper, and hold to a form of naïve, or direct, realism. The account of perception one favours has a bearing on one’s views of other aspects of the mind and world: the nature and existence of secondary qualities, such as colours and tastes; the possibility of giving an account of the mind as part of a purely physical, natural world; how one should answer scepticism concerning our knowledge of the external world.

An Empirical Account of Mind

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 66-78
Author(s):  
D.M. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Theory ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Mind

What could an empirical theory of the Mind be? Surely one which demonstrated that questions about the existence of minds were empirical questions – to be decided by observation, by the senses. This in turn would require an explanation of the meaning of statements about minds or mental states in terms referring to observable events, states and objects.

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