O presente trabalho defende, na filosofia platônica, a hipótese das Formas tem como escopo explicar os sensíveis e a sensibilidade, e não rechaçá-los, como fora pregado pela tradição. No Teeteto , Sócrates chega a analisar exaustivamente a possibilidade de a sensação ser encarada como conhecimento; no Fédon , no argumento da reminiscência, o mestre admite que para haver aprendizado/recordação é necessário que haja duas experiências cognitivas correlatas e mutuamente necessárias: a percepção sensível ( aísthesis ) que suscita a anamnese e (...) o contato, anterior ao nascimento, da alma com as Formas, pois só há recordação do que o indivíduo antes soubera. O estudo implica que haja uma filosofia da percepção em Platão. (shrink)

The aim of the present work is to show the roots of the conception of perception as an active process, tracing the history of its development from Plato to modern philosophy. The contributors inquire into what activity is taken to mean in different theories, challenging traditional historical accounts of perception that stress the passivity of percipients in coming to know the external world. Special attention is paid to the psychological and physiological mechanisms of perception, rational and non-rational (...) perception and the role of awareness in the perceptual process. Perception has often been conceived as a process in which the passive aspects - such as the reception of sensory stimuli - were stressed and the active ones overlooked. However, during recent decades research in cognitive science and philosophy of mind has emphasized the activity of the subject in the process of sense perception, often associating this activity to the notions of attention and intentionality. Although it is recognized that there are ancient roots to the view that perception is fundamentally active, the history remains largely unexplored. The book is directed to all those interested in contemporary debates in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology who would like to become acquainted with the historical background of active perception, but for historical reliability the aim is to make no compromises. (shrink)

Representation and content in some (actual) theories of perception -- Representation in perception and cognition : task analysis, psychological functions, and rule instantiation -- Perception as unconscious inference -- Representation and constraints : the inverse problem and the structure of visual space -- On perceptual constancy -- Getting objects for free (or not) : the philosophy and psychology of object perception -- Color perception and neural encoding : does metameric matching entail a loss of information? (...) -- Objectivity and subjectivity revisited : color as a psychobiological property -- Sense data and the mind body problem -- The reality of qualia -- The sensory core and the medieval foundations of early modern perceptual theory -- Postscript (2008) on Ibn al-Haytham's (Alhacen's) theory of vision -- Attention in early scientific psychology -- Psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science : reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology -- What can the mind tell us about the brain? : psychology, neurophysiology, and constraint -- Introspective evidence in psychology. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is hailed as one of the key philosophers of the twentieth century. _Phenomenology of Perception_ is his most famous and influential work, and an essential text for anyone seeking to understand phenomenology. In this _GuideBook_ Komarine Romdenh-Romluc introduces and assesses: Merleau-Ponty’s life and the background to his philosophy the key themes and arguments of _Phenomenology of Perception_ the continuing importance of Merleau-Ponty’s work to philosophy. _Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception_ is an ideal starting point for anyone coming to (...) his great work for the first time. It is essential reading for students of Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology and related subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences. (shrink)

Introduction: Three key principles -- Sense datum theories -- Adverbial theories -- Belief acquisition theories -- Intentional theories -- Disjunctive theories -- Perception and causation -- Perception and the sciences of the mind -- Perception and other sense modalities.

Richard Sorabji here presents a selection of his previously-published papers on four topics in ancient philosophy: two on the mind-body relation, nine on sense perception, and one each on moral conscience and on the will. The substantial introduction updates and interconnects the papers and fills out the picture by reference to other writings by himself and others, and to further thoughts. The picture of the four main topics shows that each continued to develop throughout the 1200 year course of (...) Ancient Greek Philosophy up to 600 CE. (shrink)

Que nous apprend le mouvement dansé sur la nature humaine? Quelle signification la danse permet-elle de donner à la relation entre le corps et l'esprit? Les animaux non humains peuvent-ils danser? Un spectacle de danse n'est-il qu'un divertissement agréable ou la contemplation perplexe d'un monde mystérieux et ineffable? La danse permet-elle d'affiner notre perception de certaines propriétés expressives, notamment musicales? A quelles conditions telle oeuvre, Le Lac des cygnes ou Annonciation d'Angelin Preljocaj, est-elle correctement interprétée par les danseurs et (...) bien identifiée par les spectateurs? Quel est le statut des partitions chorégraphiques dans cette identité de l'œuvre dansée? Voici quelques-uns des problèmes auxquels se confrontent les spécialistes internationaux de la philosophie de la danse qui ont participé à cet ouvrage. En posant avec clarté certaines questions de philosophie de l'esprit, d'ontologie, et d'épistémologie, ils témoignent à la fois de l'intérêt réel de la danse comme objet philosophique et du rôle unique que peut jouer la philosophie dans une meilleure compréhension de cet art. (shrink)

Table des Matières: -/- Introduction; -/- Chapitre Premier: La conception de la philosophie chez Thomas Reid; -/- Chapitre 2: Le Rôle épistémologique du sens commun; -/- Chapitre 3: La justification des principes du sens commun; -/- Chapitre 4: La perception sensible; -/- Chapitre 5: La perception sensible (suite); -/- Chapitre 6: Les facultés intellectuelles autres que la perception sensible; -/- Chapitre 7: Les facultés actives; -/- Chapitre 8: Le "common sense" chez Reid et quelques conceptions antérieures (...) de la raison naturelle; -/- Conclusion. (shrink)

Aesthetics is about ways of experiencing the world. But then if we apply the remarkably elaborate and sophisticated conceptual apparatus of philosophy of perception to questions in aesthetics, we can make real progress.

On se demande dans cet article ce qu’est devenue la philosophie de la religion chez le Tillich américain, où il en est fort peu mention. On rappelle alors l’histoire de cette discipline. Elle devient indépendante de la théologie au cours des dix-huitième et dix-neuvième siècles, où elle finit par s’identifier à la «religion naturelle». Elle devient ainsi la cible des virulentes critiques de la théologie néo-orthodoxe inspirée par Karl Barth. Dans sa Théologie systématique, Tillich entend surmonter ce conflit par (...) sa «méthode de corrélation». Les deux grands problèmes de la philosophie de la religion sont par là pris en compte. Le problème plus théorique des catégories du religieux est repris dans la corrélation de la substance et de la forme , tandis que celui, plus existentiel, de la présence et de la perception de l’ultime est traité avec la corrélation de la question et de la réponse. (shrink)

This paper presents the main topics, arguments, and positions in the philosophy of AI at present (excluding ethics). Apart from the basic concepts of intelligence and computation, the main topics of artificial cognition are perception, action, meaning, rational choice, free will, consciousness, and normativity. Through a better understanding of these topics, the philosophy of AI contributes to our understanding of the nature, prospects, and value of AI. Furthermore, these topics can be understood more deeply through the discussion of AI; (...) so we suggest that “AI Philosophy” provides a new method for philosophy. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que penser? Qu'est-ce que la pensée? À quelles conditions un être est-il conscient? Une douleur, une expérience olfactive, une perception visuelle, une intention, une croyance et un remords ont-ils une nature mentale commune? Si oui, la science peut-elle la découvrir? Le concept d'intentionnalité a été introduit en philosophie afin de clarifier le contenu de ces questions. Il désigne la capacité de viser mentalement des objets et de se représenter mentalement des états de choses. Ce livre analyse les (...) problèmes soulevés par l'introduction du concept d'intentionnalité dans la philosophie contemporaine. Il montre d'abord comment la philosophie du langage du XXe siècle a tenté de résoudre les énigmes logiques et ontologiques engendrées par la définition de l'intentionnalité. Il montre ensuite que la question centrale de la philosophie de l'esprit du XXe siècle a été de savoir si l'intentionnalité est la caractéristique distinctive des phénomènes mentaux : de tous les phénomènes mentaux et d'eux seuls. Remerciements Introduction Chapitre premier. L'ordre mental cartésien Chapitre 2. L'héritage ontologique de Brentano Chapitre 3. La logique et le défi des objets inexistants Chapitre 4. La référence directe Chapitre 5. L'intensionnalité est-elle un critère de l'intentionnalité? Chapitre 6. Les variétés de l'intentionnalité Chapitre 7. L'intentionnalité est-elle la propriété exclusive des phénomènes mentaux? Chapitre 8. Peut-on naturaliser l'intentionnalité? Chapitre 9. À quoi sert l'intentionnalité? Chapitre 10. Tous les phénomènes mentaux possèdent-ilsl'intentionnalité? Conclusion Bibliographie Index. (shrink)

This volume offers a collective critical engagement with the thought of Charles Travis, a leading contemporary philosopher of language and mind, and a scholar of the history of analytical philosophy. Twelve philosophers explore themes in his work, in sections focused on language, thought, and perception; and Travis responds.

00 Drawing on the phenomenological tradition in the philosophy of science and philosophy of nature, Patrick Heelan concludes that perception is a cognitive, ...

This paper begins by examining the claim that the practice of medicine is essentially a moral endeavor. According to this view, all clinical practice has moral content, and each clinical situation has a moral dimension. I suggest that in order to recognize this moral dimension, clinicians must engage in an interpretive process, and that they must be able to interpret clinical data in ethical terms. However, clinicians often lack the ‘moral perception’ required to appreciate this moral dimension. I will (...) argue that physicians lack moral perception when the clinical data they are given do not offer sufficient opportunity for interpretation. This paper draws on the work of Merleau-Ponty to suggest that this loss of interpretation is, paradoxically, the result of the way that patients experience illness. This thesis may be productive, first, because it suggests opportunities to explore the process of moral perception. This thesis also suggests ways for ethicists and educators to enhance clinicians' perception of the ethical dimensions of clinical practice. Finally, the concept of moral perception, when grounded in the patient's experience of illness, creates a fruitful area of inquiry that warrants inclusion in what may someday be the philosophy of medicine's canon. (shrink)

Perception has been for philosophers in the last few decades an area of compelling interest and intense investigation. In large part, the catalyst for this activity has come from contemporary cognitive science and neuroscience, which has been progressing at an accelerating pace, throwing up new information about the brain and new conceptions of how sensory information is processed and used. These new conceptions offer philosophers opportunities for reconceptualizing the senses—what they tell us, how we use them, and the nature (...) of the knowledge they give us. Today, the philosophy of perception resonates with ideas that had not even been articulated in the 1970s and 1980s. This Handbook is a survey by leading philosophical thinkers of contemporary issues and new thinking in philosophy of perception. It includes sections on the history of the subject, introductions to contemporary issues in the epistemology, ontology, and aesthetics of perception, treatments of the individual sense modalities and of the things we perceive by means of them, and a consideration of how perceptual information is integrated and consolidated. New analytic tools and applications to other areas of philosophy are discussed in depth. Each of the forty-five entries is written by a leading expert, some collaborating with younger figures; each seeks to introduce the reader to a broad range of issues. All contain new ideas on the topic covered; together they are a portrait of the vigour and innovative zeal of a young field. The book is accessible to anybody who has an intellectual interest in issues concerning perception. (shrink)

In order to understand Hegel’s form of philosophical reflection in general, we must read his ‘speculative’ sentences about spirit and nature, rationality and reason, the mind and its embodiment as general remarks about conceptual topics in topographical overviews about our ways of talking about ourselves in the world. The resulting attitude to traditional metaphysics gets ambivalent in view of the insight that Aristotle’s prima philosophia is knowledge of human knowledge, developed in meta-scientific reflections on notions like ‘nature’ and ‘essence’, ‘reality’ (...) and ‘truth’, about ‘powers’ and ‘faculties’ – and does not lead by itself to an object-level theory about spiritual things like the soul. We therefore cannot just replace critical metaphysics of the human mind by empirical investigation of human behaviour as empiricist approaches to human cognition in naturalized epistemologies do and neuro-physiological explanations propose. Making transcendental forms and material presuppositions of conceptually informed perception and experience explicit needs some understanding of figurative forms of speech in our logical reflections and leads to other forms of knowledge than empirical observation and theory formation. (shrink)

An introduction to contemporary debates in philosophy of perception.

The basic entity in phenomenology is the phenomenon. Knowing the phenomenon is another issue. The phenomenon has been described as the real natural object or the appearance directly perceived in phenomenology and analytic philosophy of perception. Within both traditions, philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Russell and Wittgenstein have considered that perceptual experience demonstrates what a phenomenon is on the line between the mind and the external world. Therefore, conceptualizing the phenomenon is based on the perceptual evidence. However, if (...) the belief that perception is “theory-laden” is true, then perception can also be “philosophy-laden”. These philosophers have not noticed whether perceptual knowledge is independent of philosophies. If perceptual knowledge is not independent of philosophies, a philosopher’s background language can influence what he or she claims to know about the phenomenon. For Husserl, experience is direct evidence of what exists. The textual evidence shows that Sartre’s denial of the distinction between appearance and reality lies behind his claim to know the phenomenon, however. By examining Husserl's Ideas and Sartre's Being and Nothingness I conclude that these philosophers’ philosophical languages influence their experience of the phenomenon and perceptual knowledge. Philosophical traditions affect the thoughts of perception. (shrink)

Lambert Wiesing's The Philosophy of Perception challenges current theories of perception. Instead of attempting to understand how a subject perceives the world, Wiesing starts by taking perception to be real. He then asks what this reality means for a subject. In his original approach, the question of how human perception is possible is displaced by questions about what perception obliges us to be and do. He argues that perception requires us to be embodied, to (...) be visible, and to continually participate in the public and physical world we perceive. Only in looking at images, he proposes, can we achieve something like a break in participation, a temporary respite from this, one of perception's relentless demands. Wiesing's methods chart a markedly new path in contemporary perception theory. In addition to identifying common ground among diverse philosophical positions, he identifies how his own, phenomenological approach differs from those of many other philosophers, past and present. As part of the argument, he provides a succinct but comprehensive survey of the philosophy of images His original critical exposition presents scholars of phenomenology, perception and aesthetics with a new, important understanding of the old phenomenon, the human being in the world. (shrink)

The main idea of this book is that perceiving is a way of acting. Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us. It is something we do. Think of a blind person taptapping his or her way around a cluttered space, perceiving that space by touch, not all at once, but through time, by skillful probing and movement. This is, or at least ought to be, our paradigm of what perceiving is. The world makes itself available (...) to the perceiver through physical movement and interaction. In this book I argue that all perception is touch-like in this way: perceptual experience acquires content thanks to our possession of bodily skills. What we perceive is determined by what we do (or what we know how to do); it is determined by what we are ready to do. In ways I try to make precise, we enact our perceptual experience; we act it out. (shrink)

One of the difficulties in understanding the meaning of perception in Merleau-Ponty’s work comes from the ambiguous tone of his descriptions. Therefore, to understand it thoroughly one should question the origin of this tone and inquire about the relationship between perception and language and, more particularly, between philosophy and literature. This is what is at stake in his last courses at the Collège de France, where Merleau-Ponty envisages perception as being associated with literature and as having a (...) special kinship to the notion of “poetic vision,” which appears in Rimbaud’s first ‘Letter from the Seer’.L’une des difficultés qui se posent pour comprendre le sens de la perception chez Merleau-Ponty vient du ton ambigu de ses descriptions. C’est ainsi que pour comprendre ce qu’il entend par perception, il faudrait questionner l’origine de ce ton et interroger le rapport que la perception entretient avec le langage, et plus particulièrement celui que la philosophie entretient avec la littérature. Voilà justement l’une des questions abordées dans ses derniers cours au Collège de France, où il comprend la perception comme associée à la littérature et ayant une proximité particulière avec la notion de «vision poétique» qui apparaît dans la première «Lettre du voyant» de Rimbaud. (shrink)

This book provides an up-to-date and accessible overview of the hottest and most influential contemporary debates in philosophy of perception, written especially for this volume by many of the most important philosophers of the field. The book addresses the following key questions: Can perception be unconscious? What is the relation between perception and attention? What properties can we perceive? Are perceptual states representations? How is vision different from the other sense modalities? How do these sense modalities interact (...) with one another? Contributors are Ned Block, Berit Brogaard, Alex Byrne, Robert Kentridge, John Kulvicki, Heather Logue, Mohan Matthen, Bence Nanay, Matt Nudds, Casey O’Callaghan, Adam Pautz, Ian Phillips, Susanna Siegel and Wayne Wu. (shrink)

This edited volume on the philosophy of perception is based on the papers presented at the Wittgenstein Symposium 2017 (Kirchberg, Austria). It covers a wide range of recent topics in the philosophy of perception, from realism and objectivity in perception, intentionality and content, the distinction between perception and cognition, the cognitive penetrability of perception to the epistemology of perception. The volume contains papers by Tyler Burge, Howard Robinson, Olivier Massin, Michael Schmitz, Michael Tye, Marcello (...) Fiocco, Guillaume Frechette, Sofia Miguens, Uriah Kriegel, Pierre Jacob, Mark Kalderon, Berit Brogaard, Athanassios Raftopoulos, Ophelia Deroy, Charles Travis, Johannes Roessler, Philipp Berghofer, Harald Wiltsche, Frederique de Vignemont, Romana Schuler, Ulrich Arnswald, David Stern and Hans Sluga. (shrink)

This article shows that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is traversed by a tension between an interpretation of history and existence in terms of crisis and the recognition of an insurmountable vertigo, the Heraclitean model of an eternal return of the singular and the partial, without possible synthesis. Our thesis is that the model of the crisis is marked by a classical positivism which makes it the secret ally of a conservative and anti-democratic politics. It is also an impasse in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy since (...) it supposes a reference to an overlooking point of view that the whole of Merleau-Pontian reflection has shown to be impossible. The phenomenology of perception and ontology of the perceived world show that we have access only to a mystified consciousness and that even the world itself is undecided. The Heraclitean path must win against the interpretation in terms of crisis, but the persistence of the second path in Merleau-Ponty’swork is also explained by the extremely difficult character of the first path. The theory of chronic vertigo takes us closer to nihilism, and this is an aspect of Merleau-Pontian philosophy whose radical and highly problematic – perhaps even aporetic – character must not be underestimated. How to decide on practice and politics without absolute reference, without being able to guarantee anything? The use Merleau-Ponty makes of crucial references to Machiavelli and Marx at the heart of his political philosophy is very revealing this regard: in the first movement, this is a matter of “disarming” these philosophies, making them instruments for the disruption of action. But Merleau-Ponty’s final goal is not to return to the philosophy of contemplation, abstract ontology, but to build a new practical model: that of symbolic action, which integrates vertigo rather than surpassing it and constitutes a praxis inseparable from the enterprise of knowledge and artistic creation. We could say that it is saved by its openness to sense, but this means that it cannot rely on any positive established meaning and must find its wellspring in a ‘wild’ ability to be unceasingly decentered, to take nothing for granted, to approach our values and beliefs as foreign. This raises the question of the possibilityof the incarnation of such a model in an effective political institution. (shrink)

En lisant l’œuvre de Lévy-Bruhl à travers le problème de la causalité mentale, on voit que le concept de participation, emprunté à la philosophie de Malebranche, lui permet de dépasser l’opposition entre deux conceptions : — d’une part, la « causalité naturelle », empruntée à Tylor et à l’associationnisme britannique, qui explique les opérations magiques par des erreurs intellectuelles ; — d’autre part, la « causalité sociale », élaborée par Durkheim et la sociologie française, qui explique les phénomènes moraux (...) et religieux par l’intervention de la « société » comme sujet collectif. Le concept de participation désigne un mode de causalité qui opère au niveau de l’expérience naturelle sans lui ajouter un niveau surnaturel et proprement social : « Cette analyse est comparable à celle de l’imagination chez Bergson et éclaire la réception ambivalente de Lévy-Bruhl dans la phénoménologie et dans le structuralisme. ». (shrink)

In recent years, the rich tradition of various philosophical theories of perception has been increasingly studied by scholars of the history of philosophy of ...

This book draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to develop new and promising solutions to contemporary debates about perception. In providing an extension and defense of Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual content and of the relation between perception and the world, it demonstrates the enduring value of Merleau-Ponty’s insights for philosophy of perception today. -/- The author focuses on two main topics: the contents and the nature of perception. In the first half of this book, the author tackles debates (...) about the content of perception, namely, what sorts of properties or features of the world reveal themselves to us in perception and in what modes. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s description of perceptual “sense,” the author argues that perception has a unique kind of content, which cannot be adequately described in terms of sensations or concepts. He then shows how this account of perceptual sense can clarify debates about the richness of perceptual content, including whether we can perceive moral properties. In the second half, he turns to the nature of perception. Here he argues that Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual intentionality makes available a powerful combination of the core insights of two main contemporary approaches to this question: realism and intentionalism. The author shows how this combination can be developed, defends it from objections, and explains how it is equipped to deal with problems posed by the existence of illusions and hallucinations. -/- Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on phenomenology and the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

Hegels Philosophie des Geistes erhebt den Anspruch, den Menschen im Ganzen - durch und durch - als "geistig" zu denken. Thomas Oehl aktualisiert diesen Anspruch, indem er ihn an die gegenwartige philosophische Debatte um die sinnliche Wahrnehmung herantragt und damit kritisch in diese eingreift: Bereits in der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung verhalt sich der Mensch aktiv und nicht, wie es in seinem naheliegenden Selbst(miss)verstandnis scheint, passiv. In der Wahrnehmung konstituiert der Mensch Natur und Welt, und ist eben dadurch selbst nicht einfach (...) Teil der Natur oder Welt, sondern "Geist". "Geist" ist so, wie Hegel sagt, das "absolut Erste" der Natur. Wie Oehl weiter zeigt, schliesst dies ein, dass "Geist" sich gerade dort vollendet, wo er den Menschen von seinem Selbstmissverstandnis befreit, Natur zu sein. Damit stellt sich "Geist" als etwas heraus, das mehr ist als bloss der Mensch, da es den Menschen uber seine Selbstverkehrung hinausfuhrt. So wird ein neuer Zugang zu Hegels Philosophie des absoluten Geistes gewonnen, die eben dieses Geschehen als von Gott bewirkte Befreiung des Menschen von seiner Selbstverkehrung begreift, wie es in Kunst, Religion und Philosophie Gestalt gewinnt. Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde mit dem Promotionsforderpreis der Munchener Universitatsgesellschaft 2020 ausgezeichnet. (shrink)

Les tomes 1 et 2 qui rassemblent une trentaine d'articles le premier, rdition d'un livre qui avait inaugur la Collection d'Esthtique en 1967 sont l'oeuvre d'un philosophe qui a dcouvert dans l'esthtique une voie privilgie vers une philosophie de la nature. Mikel Dufrenne y explore des thmes qui hantent la rflexion contemporaine sur l'art: l'art comme [non-]langage, l'oeuvre comme objet ou vnement, l'criture et le style, le jeu, la perception sauvage, le retour vers l'originaire. Chemin faisant, il rencontre (...) les appareils conceptuels en vogue: structuralisme, smiologie, psychanalyse, marxisme; il en use, mais avec rserve, sans se laisser sduire ou terroriser; et c'est en solitaire qu'il poursuit sa route, sans moyens, sans pouvoir. Mais il ne s'y sent pas seul: une esthtique non dogmatique dbouche sur le politique, et il veut tre l'cho de tous ceux qui en appellent un art autre, libr et librateur, joyeux, et qui rvent que la pratique de cet art contribue faire la vie autre dans un monde autre. Mikel Dufrenne n'est pas un philosophe triste. Si vous prfrez Thanatos Eros, ne le lisez pas! (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of Chinese business managers’ moral philosophies on the perception of corrupt payments such as bribery, kickbacks and gift giving. Business managers from Mainland China were selected as target respondents. As hypothesized the survey results generally indicate that moral relativism is a significant predictor of Chinese business managers’ favorable perception of bribery and kickbacks. In examining the attitude toward gift giving, the survey showed that an individual’s attitude toward gift giving was neither affected by (...) their moral relativism nor by their moral idealism, which implies that gift giving is widely accepted as legal practice in business in Chinese cultural society. (shrink)

Les articles de ce recueil, réunis par des membres du Centre de Recherche en Poétique, Histoire Littéraire et Linguistique (EA 3003) de l'Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, explorent les notions de perception, perspective et perspicacité dans plusieurs champs de recherche (linguistique, littérature, histoire des idées, philosophie et arts) et à diverses époques, du Moyen Age à la modernité. De l'univers sonore médiéval à l'esthétique de Debussy, de la linguistique populaire à l'étude linguistique des relations entre (...) perception, cognition et syntaxe, de Prévost à Proust en passant par Mark Twain ou Virginia Woolf, de la peinture américaine de Thomas Cole aux oeuvres vidéographiques contemporaines, cet ouvrage, tel un kaléidoscope, offre une myriade de perspectives sur la façon dont de simples locuteurs, des écrivains, des artistes ou des philosophes s'efforcent d'appréhender le monde. Les auteurs mettent en évidence les multiples stratégies rhétoriques, narratives ou esthétiques, entre autres, destinées à combler les failles d'une vision trop empirique ou à briser ou brouiller de façon perverse les écrans qui font obstacle à notre perception. Celle-ci survient parfois au terme d'une longue initiation, ou elle ne survient pas, tant il paraît difficile de jeter un regard surplombant sur un monde labile et opaque. La perception n'en demeure pas moins un catalyseur de la création, et aussi de la réception, voire de la re-création par un lecteur / spectateur perspicace qui aime être surpris de voir plus loin que son horizon d'attente. (shrink)

Le XIXe siècle signe la découverte intellectuelle du bouddhisme par les Occidentaux, ouvrant alors de nouvelles perspectives. Cette nouvelle religion ne ressemble pas aux religions occidentales, elle désoriente et intrigue, mais remet aussi en question nos propres conceptions métaphysiques et religieuses. Ainsi, le bouddhisme est devenu un objet intellectuel dont les philosophes se sont emparés, et qui a tout à la fois influencé leur pensée, et atteint sous leur plume le statut de mythe. Ce ou ces mythes sont aussi des (...) déformations du bouddhisme, et révèlent à quel point le christianisme a eu un impact sur la perception de celui-ci, qui restera pendant longtemps relié au néant, au pessimisme et au nihilisme, associations qui occultent sa véritable teneur. (shrink)

Philosophical theories of perception are generally admitted to be responses to certain problems or puzzles allied to the ancient dichotomy between Appearance and Reality. For they have been mainly provoked by the incompatibility of the common–sense assumption that an external, physical world exists and is revealed to the senses with the well–known facts of perceptual variation and error. If only what is real were perceived just as if only what is right were done it is possible that many of (...) those questions would never have been asked which lead to moral philosophy and a metaphysics of the external world. But sense perceptions of the same object vary so that it appears to have contradictory qualities and are sometimes completely deceptive. Nor do illusory differ internally from veridical perceptions. Moreover, perceptual variation and error can be unmasked only by such procedures as looking more carefully, listening harder, trying to touch, asking others, in short by more sense experience. So the senses are, as it were, both accused and judge in these disputes and why should a venal judge be trusted more than the criminal he tries? Such “correction” of one experience by another of the same kind seems no more reliable than the original “error.” Philosophers have found all this very puzzling. (shrink)

" --Maurice A. Finocchiaro,Isis "The best and most original aspect of the book is its overall conception.

Le terme « perception » apparaît pour la première fois dans son sens philosophique dans les Académiques de Cicéron, où il traduit le terme technique stoïcien κατάληψις, traduit également par compréhension. La perception n’est pas une « perception sensible » au sens moderne du terme, car elle ne se définit pas comme une impression produite en nous par les choses extérieures, mais comme l’assentiment donné à la phantasia dite compréhensive ou perceptive, c’est‑à‑dire celle qui est conforme à (...) son objet, claire et distincte. Il s’agit pour les stoïciens de l’un des critères de la vérité. Pour contester l’existence de la perception et son rôle-clé dans l’épistémologie stoïcienne, les académiciens ont adopté une stratégie en deux temps : affirmer que l’assentiment porte sur des propositions et non sur des représentations, et contester l’existence d’une représentation perceptive, discernable des représentations fausses. Les stoïciens ont répondu sur ces deux points et ont reconstruit la notion de perception inventée initialement par Zénon dans le cadre de cette polémique, qui a forgé la notion classique de la perception. Le continuisme perceptif des stoïciens et leur conception cinématographique de la perception sensible sont les clés de leur conception de la perception. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty a placé la primauté d'autrui au centre de la structure du sujet, inaugurant une philosophie de l'hospitalité à contre-courant des phénoménologies du conflit (Hegel, Husserl, Sartre, etc.), et en dépassement radical du cogito cartésien et husserlien : la Phénoménologie de la perception institue le pluralisme ontologique tiré de la transcendantalité de l'intersubjectivité. L'étude précise (chapitre 1) que la montée des théories essentialistes a profité de l'analyse de la crise sociale des années 1960. Samuel P. Huntington en (...) a été l'un des leaders, qui animait un débat sur les identités rentré récemment dans l'arène académique. Au fond, on ne peut parler philosophiquement et sérieusement de l'identité et de l'essentialisme qu'en partant de la découverte cartésienne d'un cogito insulaire (chapitre 2), qui hante les Méditations cartésiennes : la réduction eidétique ne dépasse le cogito cartésien qu'en en gardant la caractéristique essentielle, qui est la transcendance (chapitre 3). Radicale et hérétique, la démarche de Merleau-Ponty s'en tient à l'analyse de l'expérience ingénue tirée du dernier Husserl (chapitre 4), pour faire du sujet lui-même un être (en) dehors (de soi). La transcendance de l'intersubjectivité est primordiale (chapitre 5) et éclaire singulièrement le passage de l'analytique du sujet à la politique et à l'histoire (chapitre 6). Repenser le politique à partir d'une telle approche, c'est faire du pluralisme ontologique le concept de déconstruction des constellations historiques (communauté, nationalité, ethnicité, etc.) rigidifiées par les essentialistes (chapitre 7). L'appendice du livre réfléchit sur les relations que cette thèse neuve sur la Lebenswelt peut entretenir au plenum de la sociologie radicale. (shrink)

The philosophical reading of Proust’s Recherche presented here suggests Proust’s aesthetic method as a model for philosophy. The term “aesthetic” refers to the constitutive role of sensation, perception, and sensuality for the practice of philosophising. In Proust’s peculiar descriptions a specific form of “sentient thinking” takes shape. This thinking is characterised by the entanglement of the particular as detailed description and the general as theoretical reflection. With reference to Proust, the philosophical practice of describing is developed into a central (...) element of philosophy as aesthetic practice. (shrink)

This book reconsiders the major current topics in the philosophy of perception using olfaction as the paradigm sense. The author reveals how many of the most basic concepts of philosophy of perception are based on peculiarities of visual perception not found in other modalities, and addresses how different the philosophy of perception would be if based on olfaction. The book addresses several aspects of olfaction, including perceptual qualities, percepts, olfaction and cognitive processes, and consciousness. The first (...) part of the book considers perception with respect to its ability to guide behaviors and to make information available to cognitive processes. The author continues by addressing the differences between conscious and non-conscious olfactory perception, and presents an argument for an important role of attention in conscious processes. The book concludes by discussing the function of conscious brain processes and their link to guiding behaviors in complex situations. (shrink)

Objectivity is one of the most basic and difficult issues in modern and contemporary philosophy. The present paper is devoted to this issue from view- point of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Since perception, particularly sense perception, in view of intentionality, as lowest level of objectivity can act as the base for perceiving the objectivity of other objects, whether real or unreal, it has been discussed in this paper. To do this, objectivity of the sense perception and its role (...) in leading the mind toward essential and ideal objects, and conversely, the role of latter objects in objectivity of the perception itself will be explored. Because the concepts of objectivity and evidence are correlate in Husserl’s philosophy, and since evidence as the self-given manifests itself, from the very beginning, in the lowest level, namely the objects of sense perception, and considering that evidence and objectivity of sense perception concern this lowest level, the critical viewpoint of Husserl’s phenomenology provides a firm and new basis for objectivity if taken at its full competence. (shrink)