Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (3):549–579 (2003)
Authors |
|
Abstract |
Descartes is often thought to bifurcate sensory experience into two distinct cognitive components: the sensing of secondary qualities and the more or less intellectual perceiving of primary qualities. A closer examination of his analysis of sensory perception in the Sixth Replies and his treatment of sensory processing in the Dioptrics and Treatise on Man teIls a different story. I argue that Descartes offers a unified cognitive account of sensory experience according to which the senses and intellect operate together to produce a fundamentally imagistic representation of the world in both its primary and secondary quality aspects. At stake here is not only our understanding of the cognitive structure of sensory experience but the relation of sense and intellect more generally in the Cartesian mind. The deep bifurcation in the Cartesian mind is not between the sensory perception of primary and secondary qualities but between sensory perception and purely intellectual perception.
|
Keywords | Analytic Philosophy Contemporary Philosophy Philosophy of Mind |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
ISBN(s) | 0031-8205 |
DOI | 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00308.x |
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises.Gary Hatfield - 1986 - In Amelie Rorty (ed.), Essays on Descartes' Meditations. University of California Press. pp. 45–76.
Citations of this work BETA
“The Body I Call ‘Mine’ ”: A Sense of Bodily Ownership in Descartes.Colin Chamberlain - 2019 - European Journal of Philosophy 27 (1):3-24.
I—Descartes on Nature, Habit and the Corporeal World.Sarah Patterson - 2013 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 87 (1):235-258.
Descartes on the Errors of the Senses.Sarah Patterson - 2016 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 78:73-108.
View all 13 citations / Add more citations
Similar books and articles
Sensory Qualities, Sensible Qualities, Sensational Qualities.Alex Byrne - 2011 - In Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Perception With Compensatory Devices: From Sensory Substitution to Sensorimotor Extension.Malika Auvray & Erik Myin - 2009 - Cognitive Science 33 (6):1036–1058.
Sensory States, Consciousness, and the Cartesian Assumption.Gregg Caruso - 2005 - In Nathan Smith and Jason Taylor (ed.), Descartes and Cartesianism. Cambridge Scholars Press.
Beyond Vision: The Vertical Integration of Sensory Substitution Devices.Ophelia Deroy & Malika Auvray - 2015 - In D. Stokes, M. Matthen & S. Biggs (eds.), Perception and Its Modalities. Oxford University Press.
Sensory Holism and Functionalism.Joseph Thomas Tolliver - 1999 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6):972-973.
Epistemological Problems of Perception.Laurence BonJour - 2007 - Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2009-01-28
Total views
140 ( #68,285 of 2,404,235 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
4 ( #196,836 of 2,404,235 )
2009-01-28
Total views
140 ( #68,285 of 2,404,235 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
4 ( #196,836 of 2,404,235 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads