Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Right and the Good' and 'Posterior Analytics'

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3 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 1. Perception
You cannot understand anything through perception [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: You cannot understand anything through perception. Demonstrations are universal, and universals cannot be perceived.
     From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 87b28)
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / d. Secondary qualities
Some knowledge is lost if you lose a sense, and there is no way the knowledge can be replaced [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: The loss of any one of the senses entails the loss of a corresponding portion of knowledge, and since we learn either by induction or by demonstration, this knowledge cannot be acquired.
     From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 81a37)
     A reaction: This suggests Jackson's 'knowledge argument', that raw experience contains some genuine knowledge, for which there is no mechanistic substitute. Not that I accept….
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 7. Causal Perception
I prefer the causal theory to sense data, because sensations are events, not apprehensions [Ross]
     Full Idea: The sensum-theory seems to me less probable than a causal theory of perception, which regards sensuous experience as not being apprehension at all, but a set of mental events produced by external bodies on our bodies and minds.
     From: W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §IV)
     A reaction: The point is that there is no third item between the object and the mind, which has to be 'apprehended'. Sense-data give a good account of delusions (where we apprehend the 'data', but not the real object). I think I agree with Ross.