scholarly journals Knowledge and Sensory Knowledge in Hume’s Treatise

2021 ◽  
pp. 195-230
Author(s):  
Graham Clay
Keyword(s):  
Sense Perception ◽  
Close Inspection

I argue that the Hume of the Treatise maintains an account of knowledge according to which (i) every instance of knowledge must be an immediately present perception (i.e., an impression or an idea); (ii) an object of this perception must be a token of a knowable relation; (iii) this token knowable relation must have parts of the instance of knowledge as relata (i.e., the same perception that has it as an object); and any perception that satisfies (i)–(iii) is an instance of knowledge. I then apply this account to the case of sense perception. I argue that Hume holds that relations of impressions can be intuited, are knowable, and are necessary. For Hume, these relations constitute sensory knowledge. While Hume is rightly labeled an empiricist for many reasons, a close inspection of his account of knowledge reveals yet another way in which he deserves the label.

Are We Mad? Intensity and the Problems of Modern Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-215
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
The Relationship

In this essay Deleuze's concept of intensity is placed into the context of the problem of accounting for the relationship between sense perception and our conceptual categories. By developing the manner in which Kant responds to Hume's critique of metaphysics, this essay shows how Deleuze develops a Humean line of thought whereby the heterogeneous as heterogeneous is embraced rather than, as is done in Kant, being largely held in relationship to an already prior unity.

Patients’ practices for taking the initiative in decision-making in outpatient psychiatric consultations

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuya Kushida ◽  
Takeshi Hiramoto ◽  
Yuriko Yamakawa
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Treatment Decision ◽  
Close Inspection ◽  
Important Resource ◽  
Treatment Decision Making ◽  
The Way

In spite of increasing advocacy for patients’ participation in psychiatric decision-making, there has been little research on how patients actually participate in decision-making in psychiatric consultations. This study explores how patients take the initiative in decision-making over treatment in outpatient psychiatric consultations in Japan. Using the methodology of conversation analysis, we analyze 85 video-recorded ongoing consultations and find that patients select between two practices for taking the initiative in decision-making: making explicit requests for a treatment and displaying interest in a treatment without explicitly requesting it. A close inspection of transcribed interaction reveals that patients make explicit requests under the circumstances where they believe the candidate treatment is appropriate for their condition, whereas they merely display interest in a treatment when they are not certain about its appropriateness. By fitting practices to take the initiative in decision-making with the way they describe their current condition, patients are optimally managing their desire for particular treatments and the validity of their initiative actions. In conclusion, we argue that the orderly use of the two practices is one important resource for patients’ participation in treatment decision-making.

Space, Color, Sense Perception and the Epistemology of Logic

The Monist ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dallas Willard ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sense Perception ◽  
Color Sense ◽  
Epistemology Of Logic

The Dramatic Context and Meaning of Hamlet's “To Be or Not To Be” Soliloquy

PMLA ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Newell
Keyword(s):  
Close Inspection ◽  
Before And After

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,Looking before and after, gave us notThat capability and god-like reasonTo fust in us unused.HamletDiscussions of Hamlet's “To be or not to be” soliloquy are almost as varied and divergent as interpretations of the play itself.1 Different understandings of the play and different formulations of Hamlet's character naturally affect interpretations of the soliloquy, but interpretations which fail to consider the dramatic context of the speech are surely faulty in critical procedure. Unfortunately, most discussions of the passage overlook or minimize the relevance of the surrounding action to it, an error that may then lead to problems of coherent or thorough analysis of meaning. The fault of ignoring the dramatic context, for example, may be seen in G. Wilson Knight's approach to the speech in “Hamlet Reconsidered”:The soliloquy (iii.i.56–88) at first seems reasonably clear, but difficulties multiply on close inspection. Commentators differ as to whether Hamlet'sTo be, or not to be; that is the question

Reassessment of Maximum Growth Rates for C3 and C4 Crops

1978 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Monteith
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rate ◽  
Growth Rates ◽  
Growing Season ◽  
Maximum Growth ◽  
Maximum Growth Rate ◽  
Crop Growth ◽  
Close Inspection ◽  
Similar Difference ◽  
Photosynthetic Efficiencies

SUMMARYFigures for maximum crop growth rates, reviewed by Gifford (1974), suggest that the productivity of C3 and C4 species is almost indistinguishable. However, close inspection of these figures at source and correspondence with several authors revealed a number of errors. When all unreliable figures were discarded, the maximum growth rate for C3 stands fell in the range 34–39 g m−2 d−1 compared with 50–54 g m−2 d−1 for C4 stands. Maximum growth rates averaged over the whole growing season showed a similar difference: 13 g m−2 d−1 for C3 and 22 g m−2 d−1 for C4. These figures correspond to photosynthetic efficiencies of approximately 1·4 and 2·0%.

Uninstantiability

Semiotica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (208) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
John Deely
Keyword(s):  
Concept Formation ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Animal Knowledge ◽  
Triadic Relation ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
Internal Sense ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Modern Sense ◽  
Stimulation Of

AbstractJohn Poinsot (1589–1644), aka Joannes a Sancto Thoma, was the first of St Thomas’ followers among the Latins to demonstrate that the origins of animal knowledge in sensation is already – from the first – a matter of the action of signs. This action, “semiosis,” results in the formation of an irreducibly triadic relation apart from which there is no awareness at all on the part of animals. At the level of internal sense, and then again at the level of intellect (the two having in common dependency upon concept-formation in order to interpret the data provided by sensation), Poinsot shows how the concept serves to make objects known only by serving as the foundation for relations which, exactly as those in sensation, exhibit an irreducibly triadic character, with only this difference: that, whereas the triadic relations of sensation are directly founded upon or “provenate from” species impressa (stimulation of sense powers in bodily interaction with the surroundings) determining the external sense powers, the triadic relations of perceptual and intellectual awareness have as their immediate foundations or “sources of provenation” species expressae (“ideas” or concepts) actively formed by the cognitive powers of memory, imagination, estimation, and intellect. Being relations, all of these triadic relations exhibit no direct instantiation as signate matter, and it is this which makes them only indirectly knowable to sense powers. Intellect, by contrast, in being able to know relations precisely in their difference from related objects and things, manifests the species-specific distinctness of human animals in being able to construct and to know and to communicate about objects – beginning with relations – which admit of no direct sensory instantiation. The purpose of this paper is to show how the ability of the human mind to consider objects which admit of no direct instantiation in sense perception is what distinguishes the human being as “semiotic animal” from what the Latins identified as “brute animals,” not because brutes (the “alloanimals,” to use a term from late modern anthropology) are not “rational” in the modern sense of being able creatively to work through problems (indeed they are rational in this sense!), but because human animals are not confined to the consideration of objects as perceptually instantiable.

The Lever, or How to Act at a Distance: A Backdrop to Theophrastus’ De sensibus

Rhizomata ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-187
Author(s):  
André Laks
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Sense Organ ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Extreme Caution ◽  
Alexander Of Aphrodisias ◽  
Physiological Alteration ◽  
Material Process ◽  
Theoretical Frame

AbstractIt is well known that when it comes to perception in the De anima, Aristotle uses affection-related vocabulary with extreme caution. This has given rise to a debate between interpreters who hold that in Aristotle’s account, the act of sense-perception nevertheless involves the physiological alteration of the sense organ (Richard Sorabji), and those think, with Myles Burnyeat, that for Aristotle, perception does not involve any material process, so that an Aristotelian physics of sense-perception is a “physics of forms alone”. The present article suggests that the dematerialisation of Aristotle’s theory of perception, which has a long story from Alexander of Aphrodisias to Brentano, may be in fact traced back to Theophrastus’ exegesis of Aristotle’s relevant passages in the De anima in his Physics, as we can reconstruct it on the basis of Priscian’s Metaphrasis in Theophrastum and Simplicius’ commentary of Aristotle’s De Anima. The reconstruction also provides a scholastic-theoretical frame to Theophrastus’ critical exposition of ancient theories about sense perception in his De sensibus, whether or not the discussion originally belonged to Theophrastus’ Physics.

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