Online research in philosophy

This paper comments on Gallagher’s recently published direct perception proposal about social cognition [Gallagher, S. (2008a). Direct perception in the intersubjective context. Consciousness and Cognition, 17(2), 535–543]. I show that direct perception is in danger of being appropriated by the very cognitivist accounts criticised by Gallagher (theory theory and simulation theory). Then I argue that the experiential directness of perception in social situations can be understood only in the context of the role of the interaction process in social cognition. I elaborate on the role of social interaction with a discussion of participatory sense-making to show that direct perception, rather than being a perception enriched by mainly individual capacities, can be best understood as an interactional phenomenon.

This is the third and final section of a paper, "Oxford Realism", co-written with Charles Travis.

A concern for realism motivates a fundamental strand of Oxford reflection on perception. Begin with the realist conception of knowledge. The question then will be: What must perception be like if we can know something about an object without the mind by seeing it? What must perception be if it can, on occasion, afford us with proof concerning a subject matter independent of the mind?

In recent philosophy of mind, a series of challenging ideas have appeared about the relation between the body and the sense of touch. In certain respects, these ideas have a striking affinity with Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the body. Nevertheless, these two approaches lead to very different understandings of the role of the body in perception. Either the body is characterized as a perceptual “organ,” or the body is said to function as a “template.” Despite its focus on the sense of touch, the latter conception, I will argue, nevertheless orients its understanding of tactual perception toward visual objects. This produces a distorted conception of touch. In this paper, I will formulate an alternative account, which is more faithful to what it is like to feel.

Connections among Varela's theory of enactive cognition , his evolutionary theory of natural drift, and his concept of autopoiesis are made clear. Two questions are posed in relation to Varela's conception of perception, and the tension that exists in his thought between the formal level of organization and the Jonasian notion of the organism.

1. The main tenet of the epistemic conception of hallucinations is that we can positively characterise their common makeup - if they share any at all - only in epistemic, but not in metaphysical terms.1 Hallucinations differ from perceptions in that they do not put us into contact with the world in such a way as to enable us to refer to mind-independent objects and acquire knowledge about them. And certain hallucinations are special in so far as they are, in a significant sense, subjectively indiscriminable from perceptions. According to the epistemic conception, these two claims - one being negative and metaphysical, the other positive and epistemic - capture all that can, and need to, be said about what these subjectively perception-like hallucinations have in common.2 The epistemic conception of hallucinations may be partly motivated by drawing attention to the observation that, while there is only one way in which perception can go right, there are many ways in which it can go wrong. Perception goes right just in case it relates us to the external world in the way just mentioned. In all other cases, it goes wrong; and it may fail to establish the required relation on different occasions for very different reasons.

L'auteur met en évidence l'ambiguïté de la théorie phénoménologique de la négation telle qu'elle est soutenue par Husserl. Husserl hésite entre une conception de la négation comme acte et l'incorporation de la négation au sens lui-même : entre une conception illocutionnaire et une conception propositionnelle de la négation. En définitive, il choisit la seconde conception, mais en l'étendant au niveau infrapropositionnel (à la perception). L'auteur traite ce problème comme révélateur de l'ambiguïté de la philosophie phénoménologique, suspendue entre acte et sens, langage et perception. The author shows the ambiguity of the phenomenological theory of negation, such as it is held by Husserl. Husserl hesitates between a conception of negation as an act and of negation belonging to the meaning itself : that is, between an illocutionary and a propositional view of negation. Eventually, he chooses the later, but by extending it to the subpropositional level (i.e. to perception). The author takes this problem to be revealing of the ambiguity of phenomenological philosophy, standing between act and meaning, and between language and perception.

Methodological and metatheoretical considerations -- Sensation and the empirical consciousness -- Perception, conception, and language -- An encyclopaedic and compassionate setting for Buddhist epistemology -- Perception as an epistemic modality -- Foundationalism and the phenomenology of perception -- In defense of epistemological optimism.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify Prajñākaragupta’s view of mental perception ( mānasapratyakṣa ), with special emphasis on the relationship between mental perception and self-awareness. Dignāga, in his PS 1.6ab, says: “mental [perception] ( mānasa ) is [of two kinds:] a cognition of an [external] object and awareness of one’s own mental states such as passion.” According to his commentator Jinendrabuddhi, a cognition of an external object and awareness of an internal object such as passion are here equally called ‘mental perception’ in that neither depends on any of the five external sense organs. Dharmakīrti, on the other hand, considers mental perception to be a cognition which arises after sensory perception, and does not call self-awareness ‘mental perception’. According to Prajñākaragupta, mental perception is the cognition which determines an object as ‘this’ ( idam iti jñānam ). Unlike Dharmakīrti, he holds that the mental perception follows not only after the sensory perception of an external object, but also after the awareness of an internal object. The self-awareness which Dignāga calls ‘mental perception’ is for Prajñākaragupta the cognition which determines as ‘this’ an internal object, or an object which consists in a cognition; it is to be differentiated from the cognition which cognizes cognition itself, that is, self-awareness in its original sense.

In this paper I provide a metatheoretical analysis of speech perception research. I argue that the central turning point in the history of speech perception research has not been well understood. While it is widely thought to mark a decisive break with what I call "the alphabetic conception of speech," I argue that it instead marks the entrenchment of this conception of speech. In addition, I argue that the alphabetic conception of speech continues to underwrite speech perception research today and moreover that it functions as a dogma which ought to be rejected.