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Perception :: Sensory modalities

• Distinguishing the senses [11]
• Vision [10]
• Other sensory modalities [3]
• Molyneux's problem [6]
• The senses, misc [2]

Distinguishing the senses

See also: Synesthesia, Vision, Other sensory modalities, Molyneux's problem, The senses, misc.

• Jose Luis Bermudez (1999). Categorizing qualitative states: Some problems.   (More)
• Louw Feenstra & Johannes Borgstein (2003). The senses in perspective.   (More)
• Richard Gray (2005). On the concept of a sense.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Keeley has recently argued that the philosophical issue of how to analyse the concept of a sense can usefully be addressed by considering how scientists, and more specifically neuroethologists, classify the senses. After briefly outlining his proposal, which is based on the application of an ordered set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for modality differentiation, I argue, by way of two complementary counterexamples, that it fails to account fully for the way the senses are in fact individuated in neuroethology and other relevant sciences. I suggest substantial modifications to Keeley’s account which would both solve the problem cases and make better sense of the actual classifications made by scientists. I conclude by noting some limits to the way of classifying the senses that I suggest. I conclude by suggesting that the problem I identify in Keeley’s account has arisen from a confusion that sometimes arises in the philosophical literature between how we individuate the senses and what constitutes a sense
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/synt/2005/00000147/00000003/00001334
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/p2v3w4134469106v/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/P2V3W4134469106V.pdf
  
• Brian Keeley (2002). Making sense of the senses: Individuating modalities in humans and other animals.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://mugwump.pitzer.edu/~bkeeley/work/PUBS/msos/msos.pdf
  http://mugwump.pitzer.edu/~bkeeley/work/PUBS/msos/MSOS_PAP.HTM
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(200201)99:1<5:MSOTSI>2.0.CO;2-M
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3655759.pdf
  
• Matthew Nudds (online). Is seeing just like feeling? Kinds of experiences and the five senses.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I am going to argue that two commonly held views about perceptual experience are incompatible and that one must be given up. The first is the view that the five senses are to be distinguished by appeal to the kind of experiences involved in perception; the second is the view – called Representationalism – that the subjective character of perceptual experience is solely determined by what the experience represents. We could take their incompatibility as a reason for rejecting Representationalism; but I will suggest that it’s open to the Representationalist to claim that the experiences of a single sense need have no common character
• Matthew Nudds (2000). Modes of perceiving and imagining.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1770
  
• Matthew Nudds (online). The senses as psychological kinds.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The distinction we make between five different senses is a universal one.¹ Rather than speaking of generically perceiving something, we talk of perceiving in one of five determinate ways: we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste things. In distinguishing determinate ways of perceiving things what are we distinguishing between? What, in other words, is a sense modality?² An answer to this question must tell us what constitutes a sense modality and so needs to do more than simply describe differences in virtue of which we can distinguish the perceptions of different senses. There are many such differences – the different perceptions involve different sense organs, sensitivity to different kinds of stimuli, the perception of different properties, and they involve different kinds of experiences – but which, if any, of these differences are the differences that really matter?

  1.
  

  To say what is constitutive of a sense modality we need to say what all instances of perceiving something with a particular sense have in common in virtue of which they are instances of perceiving with that sense.³ Many philosophers suppose that there is an obvious answer to this question. In order to perceive something one must have an experience of it.⁴ Seeing something requires having a _visual_ experience of it, hearing
  Additional links for this entry:
  https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1772
  http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/mnudds/papers/sapk.pdf
  
• Matthew Nudds (2004). The significance of the senses.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Standard accounts of the senses attempt to answer the question how and why we count five senses (the counting question); none of the standard accounts is satisfactory. Any adequate account of the senses must explain the significance of the senses, that is, why distinguishing different senses matters. I provide such an explanation, and then use it as the basis for providing an account of the senses and answering the counting question
  Additional links for this entry:
  https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1773
  http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/mnudds/papers/sots.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.0066-7373.2004.00080.x/abs/
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/paso/2003/00000104/00000001/art00002
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/supa/2004/00000105/00000001/art00002
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-9264.t01-1-00002/pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0066-7373.2004.00080.x
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9264.t01-1-00002
  
• John O'Dea (ms). The senses and the structure of experience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Representationalist theories of experience are often thought vulnerable to the existence of apparently non-representational differences between experiences in different sensory modalities. This goes back at least to Grice’s argument, in “Some Remarks on the Senses,” that the senses are distinguished by “introspectible character.” Employing J.J. Gibson’s useful distinction between _exploratory_ and _performatory_ behaviour, I argue that the senses can be distinguished consistently with representationalism by recognising a proprioceptive element to perceptual experience. When we perceive we are aware of using a sense organ, and differences in this respect account adequately for the felt difference between the sense modalities
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jodea.net/papers/senses-experience.html
  
• P. Ross (2001). Qualia and the senses.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://web.gc.cuny.edu/cogsci/private/ross-qualia-senses.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-9213.00243/enhancedabs/
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/phiq/2001/00000051/00000205/art00005
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8094(200110)51:205<495:QATS>2.0.CO;2-U
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8094(200110)51:205<495:QATS>2.0.CO;2-U
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9213.00243
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3543030.pdf
  
• Peter Ross (forthcoming). Common sense about qualities and senses.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There has been some recent optimism that addressing the question of how we distinguish sensory modalities will help us consider whether there are limits on a scientific understanding of perceptual states. For example, Ned Block has suggested that the way we distinguish sensory modalities indicates that perceptual states have qualia which at least resist scientific characterization. At another extreme, Brian Keeley argues that our common-sense way of distinguishing the senses in terms of qualitative properties is misguided, and offers a scientific eliminativism about common-sense modalities which avoids appeal to qualitative properties altogether. I’ll argue contrary to Keeley that qualitative properties are necessary for distinguishing senses, and contrary to Block that our common- sense distinction doesn’t indicate that perceptual states have qualia. A non-qualitative characterization of perceptual states isn’t needed to avoid the potential limit of scientific understanding imposed by qualia
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/18113h050r0x0185/fulltext.pdf
  

Vision

See also: Visual consciousness, Externalism and the theory of vision, Distinguishing the senses, Other sensory modalities, Molyneux's problem.

• Paul Churchland (1995). Machine stereopsis: A feedforward network for fast stereo vision with movable fusion plane.   (More)
• Austen Clark (1996). Three varieties of visual field.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The goal of this paper is to challenge the rather insouciant attitude that many investigators seem to adopt when they go about describing the items and events in their "visual fields". There are at least three distinct categories of interpretation of what these reports might mean, and only under one of those categories do those reports have anything resembling an observational character. The others demand substantive revisions in one's beliefs about what one sees. The ur-concept of a "visual field" is that of the "sum of things seen", but one can interpret the latter in very different ways. The first is the "field of view", or the sum of physical things seen. The second is an array of visual impressions, whose spatial relations are distinct from those of physical phenomena in front of the eyes. The third is an intentional object: the world as it is represented visually. These three categories are described, and various locutions of vision science--such as "optic array", "retinocentric space", "visual geometry", "virtual object" and others--are analyzed and variously located within them. Finally, a recent argument purporting to necessitate the existence of a version two visual field is examined and shown wanting
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ucc.uconn.edu/~wwwphil/visall5.html
  http://selfpace.uconn.edu/paper/ClarkAusVisall5.pdf
  
• John Dilworth (2002). Varieties of visual representation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Pictorial representation is one species of visual representation--but not the only one, I argue. There are three additional varieties or species of visual representation--namely 'structural', 'aspect' and 'integrative' representation--which together comprise a category of 'delineative' rather than depictive visual representation. I arrive at this result via consideration of previously neglected orientational factors that serve to distinguish the two categories. I conclude by arguing that pictures (unlike 'delineations') are not physical objects, and that their multiplicity and modal narrowness motivates a view of them as instead being (one kind of) 'delineatively' represented content or subject matter, as represented by those objects that are (commonly but wrongly, in my view) assumed to be pictures
• Vadim Glezer (1989). Vision and mind.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jmPO2RpoG-kC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=+Vision+and+mind+Glezer&ots=xGlbLrXyFN&sig=OgwUY1UFR41ZyG5YE_Ke621xzng
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jmPO2RpoG-kC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=+Vision+and+mind+Glezer&ots=xGm9OsYuJM&sig=UaVC0fup5vfeEO7MY5x-WFuG2rU
  
• Benj Hellie (ms). Visual form, attention, and binocularity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One’s visual experience will change. One change is that the penny looks to be presented obliquely, where it once looked to be presented head-on. This is a change in the ostensible three-dimensional spatial properties of the penny: certain parts of the penny look to have become more distant from one; other parts look to have become closer to one
• Christopher Hill (online). Visual awareness and visual qualia.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Department of Philosophy Brown University Providence, RI 02915
• Mohan Matthen (2007). Defining vision: What homology thinking contributes.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The specialization of visual function within biological function is reason for introducing “homology thinking” into explanations of the visual system. It is argued that such specialization arises when organisms evolve by differentiation from their predecessors. Thus, it is essentially historical, and visual function should be regarded as a lineage property. The colour vision of birds and mammals do not function the same way as one another, on this account, because each is an adaptation to special needs of the visual functions of predecessors—very different kinds of predecessors in each case. Thus, history underlies function. We also see how homology thinking figures in the hierarchical classification of visual systems, and how it supports the explanation of visual function by functional role analysis
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/5795753306u46336/fulltext.pdf
  
• Dan Ryder (online). Explaining the "inhereness" of qualia representationally: Why we seem to have a visual field.   (More)
• Eric Schwitzgebel (online). When our eyes are closed, what, if anything, do we visually experience?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/EyesClosed070910.pdf
  
• Barry Smith (1999). Truth and the visual field.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Abstract The paper uses the tools of mereotopology (the theory of parts, wholes and boundaries) to work out the implications of certain analogies between the 'ecological psychology' of J. J Gibson and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. It presents an ontological theory of spatial boundaries and of spatially extended entities. By reference to examples from the geographical sphere it is shown that both boundaries and extended entities fall into two broad categories: those which exist independently of our cognitive acts (for example, the planet Earth, its exterior surface); and those which exist only in virtue of such acts (for example: the equator, the North Sea). The visual field, too, can be conceived as an example of an extended entity that is dependent in the sense at issue. The paper suggests extending this analogy by postulating entities which would stand to true judgments as the visual field stands to acts of visual perception. The judgment field is defined more precisely as that complex extended entity which comprehends all entities which are relevant to the truth of a given (true) judgment. The work of cognitive linguists such as Talmy and Langacker, when properly interpreted, can be shown to yield a detailed account of the structures of the judgment fields corresponding to sentences of different sorts. A new sort of correspondence-theoretic definition of truth for sentences of natural language can then be formulated on this basis
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://wings.buffalo.edu/philosophy/faculty/smith/articles/tvf.html
  

Other sensory modalities

See also: Synesthesia, Distinguishing the senses, Vision, Molyneux's problem, The senses, misc, Pain, Pleasure, Imagery.

• Thomas Morton (2000). Archiving odors.   (More)
• Roy Sorensen (2008). Hearing silence: The perception and introspection of absences.   (More)
• Roy Sorenson (online). Hearing silence: The perception and introspection of absences.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: in Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, ed. by Matthew Nudds and Casey O’Callaghan (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2008)

Molyneux's problem

See also: The representation of space, Distinguishing the senses, Vision, Other sensory modalities, The senses, misc.

• Laura Berchielli (2002). Color, space, and figure in Locke: An interpretation of the Molyneux problem.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_philosophy/v040/40.1berchielli.html
  https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_philosophy/v040/40.1berchielli.html
  
• John Campbell (2005). Information-processing, phenomenal consciousness and Molyneux's question.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Ordinary common sense suggests that we have just one set of shape concepts that we apply indifferently on the bases of sight and touch. Yet we understand the shape concepts, we know what shape properties are, only because we have experience of shapes. And phenomenal experience of shape in vision and phenomenal experience of shape in touch seem to be quite different. So how can the shape concepts we grasp and use on the basis of vision be the same as the shape concepts we grasp and use on the basis of touch? I think this is the intuitive puzzle that underlies the question sent by the Dublin lawyer Molyneux to John Locke. This concerns a man born blind, who learns by the use of his touch to discriminate cubes from spheres. Suppose him now to gain the use of his sight. And suppose him to be presented with a cube and a sphere, of nighly the same bigness. Quaere, will he be able to tell, by the use of his vision alone, which is the sphere, and which the cube? (Locke 1975, II/ix/8.)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jcampbel/documents/MolyneuxEvans.pdf
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=gVGw15zGdOwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA195&dq=Information-processing,+phenomenal+consciousness+and+Molyneux's+question+Campbell&ots=jnDCOCsEXb&sig=PiRFeI29ae6AKrBSNGN-enNxeZY
  
• John Campbell (1996). Molyneux's question.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: in Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception (Philosophical Issues vol. 7) (Atascadero: Ridgeview 1996), 301-318, with replies by Brian Loar and Kirk Ludwig
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1996)7<301:MQ>2.0.CO;2-3
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1996)7<301:MQ>2.0.CO;2-3
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1522914.pdf
  
• John Campbell (2005). Molyneux's question and cognitive impenetrability.   (More)
• Shaun Gallagher (forthcoming). The Molyneux problem.   (More)
• Kirk Ludwig (1996). Shape properties and perception.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1996)7<325:SPAP>2.0.CO;2-G
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1996)7<325:SPAP>2.0.CO;2-G
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1522916.pdf
  

The senses, misc

See also: Synesthesia, Distinguishing the senses, Vision, Other sensory modalities, Molyneux's problem.

• Casey O'Callaghan (2006). Cross-modal illusions and perceptual content: Lessons from cross-modal illusions.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I argue that a class of recently-discovered cross-modal illusions gives reason to posit a dimension of content shared across perceptual modalities and to abandon the traditional view according to which perceptual content is exclusively constituted by discrete modality-specific contents
• Casey O'Callaghan (web). Seeing what you hear: Cross-modal illusions and perception.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Forthcoming in Philosophical Issues. This version is a penultimate draft, so please check with me if there is some bit you’d like to quote or cite

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