How are we to understand philosophical claims about sense perception being direct versus indirect? There are multiple relevant notions of perceptual directness, so I argue. Perception of external objects may be direct on some notions, while indirect on others. My interest is with the sense in which ideas count as perceptual mediators in the philosophy of Descartes and Locke. This paper has two broader aims. The first is to clarify four main notions of perceptual directness. The second is to support (...) my contention that in the texts characterizing ideas as immediate objects of perception, Descartes and Locke are invoking the notion of directness I call 'objectual'. This notion is modeled on the way a picture mediates perception of the pictured object. The upshot of my account is that – with respect to the objectual notion of directness – Descartes and Locke each hold an indirect theory of perception. (shrink)

Perception plays a central and wide‐ranging role in the philosophy of Margaret Cavendish. In this paper, I argue that Cavendish holds a naïve realist theory of perception. The case draws on what Cavendish has to say about perceptual presentation, the role of sympathy in experience, the natures of hallucination and of illusion, and the individuation of kinds. While Cavendish takes perception to have representational content, I explain how this is consistent with naïve realism. In closing, I address challenges to the (...) interpretation, one of which turns on whether Cavendish allows for action at a distance. I argue that she does. (shrink)

The book "Unnoticed Revolution. Richard Burthogge's Constructivist Idealism" focuses on the theory of cognition developed by Richard Burthogge, the seventeenth-century English philosopher and author, among other works, of the "Organum Vetus & Novum" (1678) and "An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits" (1694). Burthogge’s ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study. Nevertheless, his writings contain a highly original concept of constructivist idealism, which, when (...) seen from a historical perspective, turns out to have anticipated the crucial points of that proposed a century later by Kant. It is because at the core of Burthogge’s epistemological position lies the claim that the external object of cognition is never presented to the mind directly, but always under the 'modus concipiendi', a particular form of conceptualisation of the external reality, performed in the manner and with the means determined by the structural and functional properties of the human cognitive powers. As a result, Burthogge clearly anticipates Kant in claiming that the external world is unknowable in itself, being accessible to the human mind only through the ‘phenomena’ that the mind itself co-produces. The need for deeper analysis of the works by the ‘forgotten’ philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been recognised for at least ninety years. The discussed book tries to meet these expectations. Its direct aim is to increase our knowledge of early modern British philosophy. At the same time, the restoration of the memory of the idealist doctrine, anticipating by almost a century that of Kant, should enable us to draw some new conclusions about the internal logic and immanent dynamic of the development of the whole post-Cartesian thought. (shrink)

Thomas Reid, twórca szkockiej szkoły zdrowego rozsądku, głosił tezę, że wszystkie wcześniejsze systemy filozoficzne obciążone są tym samym „grzechem pierworodnym” – przyjęciem (w różnych formach) reprezentacjonistycznej teorii spostrzeżenia zmysłowego. Nazywał ją „teorią idei”, której konsekwencją miało być oddzielenie podmiotu i przedmiotu poznania nieusuwalną „zasłoną idei”. Konstruowanie własnej filozofii poprzedził analizą historii tego zagadnienia od starożytności do czasów sobie współczesnych, usiłując wykazać zasadność swego stanowiska. Celem artykułu jest odpowiedź na pytanie o trafność poglądów Reida, wyrażonych w przyjmowanej teorii spostrzeżenia. Chodzi więc (...) przede wszystkim o pogląd charakterystyczny dla tradycji arystotelesowsko-tomistycznej, tradycyjnie interpretowany jako prezentacjonizm, oraz poglądy Kartezjusza dotyczące statusu „idei” w procesie poznawania tzw. świata zewnętrznego. Przeprowadzone analizy wskazują jednocześnie na uproszczenia w Reidowskiej interpretacji poglądów jego poprzedników na naturę spostrzeżenia oraz na cechy krytykowanych teorii, które w pewnym stopniu usprawiedliwiają tę krytykę. ------------------------- Zgłoszono: 28/10/2022. Zrecenzowano: 24/11/2022. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 16/12/2022. (shrink)