Boundless
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Charles Travis
Abstract
How can perceptual experience reveal the truth to us? How can it bear for us on what (or how) to think? Consider a way for something to relate to something such that, depending on how A is, for A so to relate to B may be, eo ipso, for B to be true. There is such a relation, for example, between the thought that Sid drinks and Pia writes and the thought that Pia writes. Here the way that first item must be is specifiable. The way it is: being true. The relation is thus truth-transmitting. In such a relation B, a potential truth, must be something conceptually structured. Now an idea: So, too, A; there are such relations only between conceptually structured things. An idea with some currency. On it, the conceptual is, so to speak, unbounded. In Wittgenstein’s mocking words, “one cannot step outside it, one must always turn back again. There is no outside, outside there is no air to breathe” (Investigations §103). But this idea misconceives radically the business of representing-as, and it is disastrous. For, first, it erases the conceptual altogether. Second, it encourages a sort of desperate reverse-psychologism, with which empirical psychological theses masquerade as conceptual necessities. So the conceptual is bounded. Some relations are, not truth-transmitting, but truth yielding. All this the present brief.
Abstract
How can perceptual experience reveal the truth to us? How can it bear for us on what (or how) to think? Consider a way for something to relate to something such that, depending on how A is, for A so to relate to B may be, eo ipso, for B to be true. There is such a relation, for example, between the thought that Sid drinks and Pia writes and the thought that Pia writes. Here the way that first item must be is specifiable. The way it is: being true. The relation is thus truth-transmitting. In such a relation B, a potential truth, must be something conceptually structured. Now an idea: So, too, A; there are such relations only between conceptually structured things. An idea with some currency. On it, the conceptual is, so to speak, unbounded. In Wittgenstein’s mocking words, “one cannot step outside it, one must always turn back again. There is no outside, outside there is no air to breathe” (Investigations §103). But this idea misconceives radically the business of representing-as, and it is disastrous. For, first, it erases the conceptual altogether. Second, it encourages a sort of desperate reverse-psychologism, with which empirical psychological theses masquerade as conceptual necessities. So the conceptual is bounded. Some relations are, not truth-transmitting, but truth yielding. All this the present brief.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Content V
- Editorial IX
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1. Objectivity and Realism
- Perception: Ground of Empirical Objectivity 3
- Objectivity: How is it Possible? 23
- Realism’s Kick 39
- The Good, The Bad, and The Naïve 57
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2. Content and Intentionality
- How to Think About the Representational Content of Visual Experience 77
- Structure, Intentionality and the Given 95
- Brentano on Perception and Illusion 119
- The Problem with J. Searle’s Idea That ‘all Seeing is Seeing-as’ (or What Wittgenstein did not Mean With the Duck-Rabbit) 135
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3. Perception, Cognition and Images
- The Perception/Cognition Divide: One More Time, With Feeling 149
- Why Verbal Understanding is Unlikely to be an Extended Form of Perception 171
- Sound and Image 189
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4. The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception
- Bias-Driven Attention, Cognitive Penetration and Epistemic Downgrading 199
- Pre-Cueing, Early Vision, and Cognitive Penetrability 217
- Predictions do not Entail Cognitive Penetration: “Racial” Biases in Predictive Models of Perception 235
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5. Epistemology of Perception
- Boundless 251
- The Manifest and the Philosophical Image of Perceptual Knowledge 275
- The Co-Presentational Character of Perception 303
- Knowledge Without Observation: Body Image or Body Schema? 323
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6. Perception and the Sciences
- Scheinbewegungen. Wahrnehmung zwischen Wissensgeschichte und Gegenwartskunst 337
- Zur Analogie von Wittgensteins Konzept des Aspektwechsels und der wissenschaftlichen Metapher als Vehikel der Innovation 357
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7. Wittgenstein
- The Structure of Tractatus and the Tractatus Numbering System 377
- Wittgensteins Welt 399
- Index of Names 417
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Content V
- Editorial IX
-
1. Objectivity and Realism
- Perception: Ground of Empirical Objectivity 3
- Objectivity: How is it Possible? 23
- Realism’s Kick 39
- The Good, The Bad, and The Naïve 57
-
2. Content and Intentionality
- How to Think About the Representational Content of Visual Experience 77
- Structure, Intentionality and the Given 95
- Brentano on Perception and Illusion 119
- The Problem with J. Searle’s Idea That ‘all Seeing is Seeing-as’ (or What Wittgenstein did not Mean With the Duck-Rabbit) 135
-
3. Perception, Cognition and Images
- The Perception/Cognition Divide: One More Time, With Feeling 149
- Why Verbal Understanding is Unlikely to be an Extended Form of Perception 171
- Sound and Image 189
-
4. The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception
- Bias-Driven Attention, Cognitive Penetration and Epistemic Downgrading 199
- Pre-Cueing, Early Vision, and Cognitive Penetrability 217
- Predictions do not Entail Cognitive Penetration: “Racial” Biases in Predictive Models of Perception 235
-
5. Epistemology of Perception
- Boundless 251
- The Manifest and the Philosophical Image of Perceptual Knowledge 275
- The Co-Presentational Character of Perception 303
- Knowledge Without Observation: Body Image or Body Schema? 323
-
6. Perception and the Sciences
- Scheinbewegungen. Wahrnehmung zwischen Wissensgeschichte und Gegenwartskunst 337
- Zur Analogie von Wittgensteins Konzept des Aspektwechsels und der wissenschaftlichen Metapher als Vehikel der Innovation 357
-
7. Wittgenstein
- The Structure of Tractatus and the Tractatus Numbering System 377
- Wittgensteins Welt 399
- Index of Names 417
