The Crisis of Perception

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ott
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Empirical Theory ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Brain

This chapter sets out the predicament in which Descartes finds himself at the start of his career. The crisis of perception is a result of the collapse of two positions. First is the naïve or innocent view, which held sway since the time of Aristotle. On this view, bodies really do have the qualities they appear to; what is more, it is by perceiving the qualities proper to each sense (as color is proper to sight, for instance) that we perceive the size, shape, and motion of bodies. The innocent view was paired with an empirical theory known as ‘the Baconian synthesis.’ This view posits species that progress from the eye inward to the ventricles of the brain, where they are assimilated in the ‘common’ sense and assembled into a complete sensory experience of the objects of perception. The demise of both views opens the field for Descartes’s own theory.

The Dioptrique

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ott
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Brain Image ◽  
Brain Motion ◽  
Natural Geometry ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Brain

Descartes’s treatment of perception in the Optics, though published before the Meditations, contains a distinct account of sensory experience. The end of the chapter suggests some reasons for this oddity, but that the two accounts are distinct is difficult to deny. Descartes in the present work topples the brain image from its throne. In its place, we have two mechanisms, one purely causal, the other inferential. Where the proper sensibles are concerned, the ordination of nature suffices to explain why a given sensation is triggered on the occasion of a given brain motion. The same is true with regard to the common sensibles. But on top of this purely causal story, Descartes re-introduces his doctrine of natural geometry.

scholarly journals From Perception to Subject: The Bergsonian Reversal

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-123
Author(s):  
Messay Kebede
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Sensorimotor Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Perceived Reality ◽  
The Common ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Independent Existence

In lieu of an abstract, here is the opening paragraph to the essay:What singles out philosophical analyses of perception is the challenge to common sense, that is, to the spontaneous, instinctive belief that an external world exists and that it is similar to the perception we have of it. Even those theories that refrain from questioning the independent existence of the world concede that the resemblance of whatever is out there to the perceived reality is anything but assured. Henri Bergson proposes a theory of perception that not only restores the common belief in the existence of an external world, but also goes a long way in narrowing the alleged disparity between perception and the objective world. With few exceptions, Bergson’s theory of perception has been either ignored or misunderstood. Through a close reading of the first chapter of Matter and Memory, the paper argues, in addition to correcting misreadings, that the strength and originality of Bergson’s theory lie in the reversal of the method of explaining perception from the premise of a given subject, a premise shared by all idealist and realist theories as well as phenomenology. This de-subjectification proposes an approach deriving perception from the interactions of objects while countering the materialist theory of the brain as an organ of representation. The paper contends that the Bergsonian elucidation of the brain as an organ of simulation both anticipates the findings of the sensorimotor theory and overcomes its limitation by showing how simulation inserts indetermination into materiality, thereby actualizing consciousness.

Advantages of Complementary Stereo Images as Viewed with the Low-Temperature Field-Emission SEM

1992 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 1314-1315
Author(s):  
William P. Wergin ◽  
Eric F. Erbe
Keyword(s):  
Fold Increase ◽  
Horizontal Displacement ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Stereo Image ◽  
Stereo Pair ◽  
Sem Micrograph ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Pair Analysis

The eye-brain complex allows those of us with normal vision to perceive and evaluate our surroundings in three-dimensions (3-D). The principle factor that makes this possible is parallax - the horizontal displacement of objects that results from the independent views that the left and right eyes detect and simultaneously transmit to the brain for superimposition. The common SEM micrograph is a 2-D representation of a 3-D specimen. Depriving the brain of the 3-D view can lead to erroneous conclusions about the relative sizes, positions and convergence of structures within a specimen. In addition, Walter has suggested that the stereo image contains information equivalent to a two-fold increase in magnification over that found in a 2-D image. Because of these factors, stereo pair analysis should be routinely employed when studying specimens.Imaging complementary faces of a fractured specimen is a second method by which the topography of a specimen can be more accurately evaluated.

The Legacy of Reid's Common Sense in Analytic Epistemology

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Mark Boespflug
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The Common

The common sense that heavily informs the epistemology of Thomas Reid has been recently hailed as instructive with regard to some of the most fundamental issues in epistemology by a burgeoning segment of analytic epistemologists. These admirers of Reid may be called dogmatists. I highlight three ways in which Reid's approach has been a model to be imitated in the estimation of dogmatists. First, common sense propositions are taken to be the benchmarks of epistemology inasmuch as they constitute paradigm cases of knowledge. Second, dogmatists follow Reid in taking common sense propositions to provide boundaries for philosophical theorizing. Inasmuch as philosophical theorizing leads one to deny a common sense proposition, such theorizing is stepping outside of the bounds of what it can or should do. Third, dogmatists follow Reid in focusing heavily on the problem of skepticism and by responding to it by refusing to answer the demand for a meta-justification that the skeptic wants.

Thomas Reid on Causation and Scientific Explanation

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Barrantes ◽  
Juan M. Durán
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Common

We argue that there is no tension between Reid's description of science and his claim that science is based on the principles of common sense. For Reid, science is rooted in common sense since it is based on the (common sense) idea that fixed laws govern nature. This, however, does not contradict his view that the scientific notions of causation and explanation are fundamentally different from their common sense counterparts. After discussing these points, we dispute with Cobb's ( Cobb 2010 ) and Benbaji's ( Benbaji 2003 ) interpretations of Reid's views on causation and explanation. Finally, we present Reid's views from the perspective of the contemporary debate on scientific explanation.

Motives of espionage against ones own country in the light of idiographic studies

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Michalak
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Common

Motives of espionage against ones own country in the light of idiographic studies The money is perceived as the common denominator among people who have spied against their own country. This assumption is common sense and appears to be self-evident truth. But do we have any hard evidences to prove the validity of such a statement? What method could be applied to determine it? This article is a review of the motives behind one's resorting to spying activity which is a complex and multifarious process. I decided to present only the phenomenon of spying for another country. The studies on the motives behind taking up spying activity are idiographic in character. One of the basic methodological problems to be faced by the researchers of this problem is an inaccessibility of a control group.

Some thoughts on lexemes, the dome, and inner speech

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Benzon
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
External World ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
The Common

Sydney Lamb’s model focuses our attention on the physicality of language, of the signs themselves as objects in the external world and the neural systems the support them. By means of the metaphor of a cognitive dome, he demonstrates that there is no firm line between linguistic and cognitive structure. In this context, I offer physically grounded accounts of Jakobson’s metalingual and emotive functions. Drawing on Vygotsky’s account of language development, I point out that inner speech, corresponding to the common sense notion of thought, originates in a circuit that goes through the external world and is then internalized.

Causality Then and Now

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Karen Harding
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Mechanical Model ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Way

Ate appearances deceiving? Do objects behave the way they do becauseGod wills it? Ate objects impetmanent and do they only exist becausethey ate continuously created by God? According to a1 Ghazlli, theanswers to all of these questions ate yes. Objects that appear to bepermanent are not. Those relationships commonly tefemed to as causalare a result of God’s habits rather than because one event inevitably leadsto another. God creates everything in the universe continuously; if Heceased to create it, it would no longer exist.These ideas seem oddly naive and unscientific to people living in thetwentieth century. They seem at odds with the common conception of thephysical world. Common sense says that the universe is made of tealobjects that persist in time. Furthermore, the behavior of these objects isreasonable, logical, and predictable. The belief that the univetse is understandablevia logic and reason harkens back to Newton’s mechanical viewof the universe and has provided one of the basic underpinnings ofscience for centuries. Although most people believe that the world is accutatelydescribed by this sort of mechanical model, the appropriatenessof such a model has been called into question by recent scientificadvances, and in particular, by quantum theory. This theory implies thatthe physical world is actually very different from what a mechanicalmodel would predit.Quantum theory seeks to explain the nature of physical entities andthe way that they interact. It atose in the early part of the twentieth centuryin response to new scientific data that could not be incorporated successfullyinto the ptevailing mechanical view of the universe. Due largely ...

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