Descartes, Malebranche, and the Crisis of Perception

Bibliographic Data

ID9309991
AuthorsWalter Ott (0000-0002-3426-5416, corresponding author)
Year2017
Pages224
Publication date2017-05-17
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueDescartes, Malebranche, and the Crisis of Perception (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198791713.001.0001
OpenAlexW4249749023
Open LibraryOL27415386M
ISBN9780198791713
LanguageEN
Citations received7

The seventeenth century witnesses the demise of two core doctrines in the theory of perception: naïve realism about color, sound, and other sensible qualities and the empirical theory, drawn from Alhacen and Roger Bacon, that underwrote it. Ejecting such sensible qualities from the mind-independent world at once makes for a cleaner ontology, since bodies can now be understood in purely geometrical terms, and spawns a variety of fascinating complications for the philosophy of perception. If sensible qualities are not part of the mind-independent world, just what are they, and what role, if any, do they play in our cognitive economy? We seemingly have to use color to visually experience objects. Do we do so by inferring size, shape, and motion from color? Or is it a purely automatic operation, accomplished by divine decree? This book traces the debate over perceptual experience in early modern France, covering such figures as Antoine Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and Pierre-Sylvain Régis alongside their better-known countrymen René Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche

Aesthetics · Demise · Direct and indirect realism · Epistemology · Ontology · Perception · Political science · Realism · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · french · French Philosophy · History · Perception (Philosophy)

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