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Single Idea 6514

[filed under theme 12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 3. Representation ]

Full Idea

The weakest version of representationalism, found in Russell, asserts that there is no resemblance to reality on the level of secondary qualities, and also that primary qualities exhibit only a structural isomorphism.

Clarification

'Isomorphism' means have an identical organisation

Gist of Idea

Russell's representationalism says primary qualities only show the structure of reality

Source

report of Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912]) by Howard Robinson - Perception IX.2

Book Ref

Robinson,Howard: 'Perception' [Routledge 2001], p.213

A Reaction

This seems a plausible thing to say about, say, shape, but it is not clear how the idea works for hardness or mass. The sense of touch seems to be much more directly in contact with actual primary qualities than visions does (let alone smell or hearing).

The 23 ideas with the same theme [theory that mind represents in order to perceive]:

20894 Man is separated from reality [Democritus]
1734 In moral thought images are essential, to be pursued or avoided [Aristotle]
22168 Minds take in a likeness of things, which activates an awaiting potential [Aquinas]
7400 Descartes said images can refer to objects without resembling them (as words do) [Descartes, by Tuck]
18258 We can only know the exterior world via our ideas [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P]
12948 A pain doesn't resemble the movement of a pin, but it resembles the bodily movement pins cause [Leibniz]
3957 Immediate objects of perception, which some treat as appearances, I treat as the real things themselves [Berkeley]
6495 Berkeley's idealism resulted from fear of scepticism in representative realism [Robinson,H on Berkeley]
2237 It never occurs to people that they only experience representations, not the real objects [Hume]
16913 I can't intuit a present thing in itself, because the properties can't enter my representations [Kant]
6514 Russell's representationalism says primary qualities only show the structure of reality [Russell, by Robinson,H]
13983 Representation assumes you know the ideas, and the reality, and the relation between the two [Ryle]
4043 Elephants can be correctly identified from as few as three primitive shapes [Goldman]
8128 Representation must be propositional if it can give reasons and be epistemological [McDowell, by Burge]
2716 To see something as a field, I obviously need the concept of a field [Audi,R]
2717 How could I see a field and believe nothing regarding it? [Audi,R]
7629 We see objects 'directly' by representing them [McGinn]
3899 The representational theory says perceptual states are intentional states [Scruton]
6484 Most moderate empiricists adopt Locke's representative theory of perception [Robinson,H]
6638 One must be able to visually recognise a table, as well as knowing its form [Lowe]
6644 Computationalists object that the 'ecological' approach can't tell us how we get the information [Lowe]
6647 Comparing shapes is proportional in time to the angle of rotation [Lowe]
21215 The representation may not be a likeness [Velarde-Mayol]