scholarly journals Perceptual Experience and Seeing-as

2015 ◽  
pp. 123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Enrique Kalpokas

According to Rorty, Davidson and Brandom, to have an experience is to be caused by our senses to hold a perceptual belief. This article argues that the phenomenon of seeing-as cannot be explained by such a conception of perceptual experience. First, the notion of experience defended by the aforementioned authors is reconstructed. Second, the main features of what Wittgenstein called “seeing aspects” are briefly presented. Finally, several arguments are developed in order to support the main thesis of the article: seeing-as cannot be explained by the conception of experience defended by Rorty, Davidson and Brandom.

Many different features figure consciously in our perceptual experiences, in the sense that they make a subjective difference to those experiences. These features range from colours and shapes to volumes and backsides, from natural or artefactual kinds to reasons for perceptual belief, and from the existence and externality of objects to the relationality and wakefulness of our perceptual awareness of them. The topic of this collection of essays is the different ways in which features like these can be phenomenally present in perceptual experience. In particular, the focus is on features that are less often discussed, and the perceptual presence of which is less obvious because they are out of view or otherwise easily overlooked, features given in a non-sensory manner, and features that are categorical in the sense that they pertain to all perceptual experiences alike (such as their justificatory power, their wakefulness, or the externality of their objects). The book is divided into four parts, each dealing with a different kind of phenomenal presence. The first addresses the nature of the presence of perceptual constancies and variations, while the second investigates the determinacy and ubiquity of the presence of spatial properties in perception. The third part deals with the presence of hidden or occluded aspects of objects, while the last part of the volume discusses the presence of categorical aspects of perceptual experience. Together, the contributions provide a thorough examination of which features are phenomenally present in perception, and what it is for them to figure in experience in this way.


Author(s):  
Robert Audi

This chapter shows how perception is experiential, relational, and representational: in broad terms, a phenomenally representational, discriminative, non-deviant causal relation to an object. In seeing, we have visual experience; in visual experience that is perceptual and not merely sensory, as in hallucinations, some object is visually represented as having certain properties; and genuinely seeing an object entails that it exists. This view of perception is a version of realism. It is realistic about both the objects of perception and the phenomenal properties we instantiate in perceptual experience. The view leaves open, however, the ultimate ontological status of those objects and properties. The properties, however, must be understood to have a character that enables us both to experience what, phenomenologically, it is like to see and what, externally, the things seen are like physically.


Author(s):  
Carl-Henric Grenholm

The purpose of this article is to examine the contributions that might be given by Lutheran political theology to the discourse on global justice. The article offers a critical examination of three different theories of global justice within political philosophy. Contractarian theories are criticized, and a thesis is that it is plausible to argue that justice can be understood as liberation from oppression. From this perspective the article gives an analysis of an influential theory of justice within Lutheran ethics. According to this theory justice is not an equal distribution but an arrangement where the subordinate respect the authority of those in power. This theory is related to a sharp distinction between law and gospel. The main thesis of the article is that Lutheran political theology should take a different approach if it aims to give a constructive contribution to theories of justice. This means that Lutheran ethics should not be based on Creation and reason alone – it should also be based on Christology and Eschatology.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-407
Author(s):  
Zdenko Š Širka

Abstract This article finds its inspiration in the new interpretations of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, which underline the turn in his later period, and which focus on the conception of aesthetic experience as an experience of transcendence. The main thesis is that the understanding of artworks, as Gadamer describes them in contrast to the Kantian subjectification of aesthetics, can be paralleled with the way Orthodox biblical theology struggles to approach Holy Scripture in the context of Church and Tradition. The aim of this article is to bring new material to the growing reception of Gadamer among Orthodox scholars, and to initiate further discussion on the topic by showing the parallels and areas where this reception could continue.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner

Why did humans develop precise systems for measuring experience, like numbers, clocks, andcalendars? I argue that precise representational systems were constructed by earlier generationsof humans because they recognized that their noisy perceptual systems were not capturingdistinctions that existed in the world. Abstract symbolic systems did not arise from perceptualrepresentations, but instead were constructed to describe and explain perceptual experience. Byanalogy, I argue that when children learn number words, they do not rely on noisy perceptualsystems, but instead acquire these words as units in a broader system of procedures, whosemeanings are ultimately defined by logical relations to one another, not perception.


Author(s):  
Christopher McCarroll

This chapter provides an account of the spatial perspectival characteristics and the self-presence of remembering from-the-outside. The chapter develops the Constructive Encoding approach, according to which the context of encoding may play a role in the construction of observer perspectives. The Constructive Encoding approach recognizes the multiple and multiperspectival sources of information available during perception, and suggests that observer perspectives may be constructed from non-egocentric information available during perceptual experience. This chapter provides a way of understanding the idea that one need not see oneself from-the-outside in order to have a memory that is recalled from-the-outside. This chapter not only provides a better understanding of observer perspectives but also sheds light on the perspectival mind.


Author(s):  
William P. Seeley

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in these often odd and abstract objects and events that we call artworks? My proposal is that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. My suggestion is that there is a lot that we can learn about art from interdisciplinary research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. These kinds of studies can reveal how we recognize artworks, how we differentiate them from other, more quotidian artifacts. In doing so they reveal how artworks function as a unique source of value. Our interactions with artworks draw on a broad base of shared artistic and cultural constitutive of different categories of art. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention, and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. Teasing out how this works can contribute valuable information to our philosophical understanding of art. Attentional Engines explores this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and the neuroscience attention and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts, including questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies.


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