Peirce, Immediate Perception, and the “New” Unconscious: Neuroscience and Empirical Psychology in Support of a “Well-Known Doctrine”

Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29 (4):457-473 (2015)
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Abstract

ABSTRACT This article defends Charles Peirce's “doctrine of immediate perception.” This realistic view holds that conscious agents, due to the work of unconscious mind, directly perceive the world and often know objects, events, and persons as they truly are, independently of how we might prefer to think of them. The doctrine provides a promising alternative to more recent views insisting that all experience of the world and other persons is ineluctably mediated by language, along with the categories and biases language inevitably imposes. Peirce's view is further explicated in terms of what neuroscientists now call the “new” unconscious and supported by recent work in both neuroscience and empirical psychology, especially experiments involving infants. The article supports the conclusion that, while much experience is mediated by language, direct access to a world that informs and often surprises us persists throughout conscious experience.

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