Molyneux's question : vision, touch, and the philosophy of perception / Michael J. Morgan.

  • Morgan, Michael J.
Date:
1977
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Molyneux's question : vision, touch, and the philosophy of perception / Michael J. Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    91/236 (page 79)
    BERKELEY AND CONDILLAC contrary, they quite reasonably saw it as fundamental to their principles that vision should be immediate. How could they claim otherwise when Locke had said: First, our senses, conversant with particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them. And thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call sensation. (Essay, П. i. 3) There was no question of sensations being learned; how could they be, when all was learned from them, and there was nothing in the mind before they arrived? It followed, and there was no dispute about it, that when the blind man's eyes were opened he would have exactly the same sensations as ourselves. There was equal certainty about the reason why we should experience particular sensations in response to particular forms of stimulation. It was implanted in us by nature, or by God (the terms were almost interchangeable for these purposes]. As Con- dillac put it, talking about perception of distance: 'II est natureP^ que la vue de ses objets me donne quelque idée de la distance où je suis de cet homme: il est même impossible que je n'ai pas cette idée, toutes les fois que je les apercevois' ('Nature determines that the sight of these objects should tell me how far the man is away; it is impossible that I should not have this impression every time I see them']. Or again: 'II seroit curieux de découvrir les lois que Dieu suit, quand il nous enrichit des différentes sensations de la vue' ('It would be interesting to discover the principles that are followed by God when he enriches us with the different visual sensations': Essai, i. vi. 13]. Locke frequently talked of God's 'annexing' sensations to objects: 'It has therefore pleased our wise creator to annex to several objects, and the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that 'Naturel' is best translated as 'innate'. See, for example, Diderot: 'Cette aptitude est-elle naturelle ou acquise?' ('Réfutation de Helvétius', in Oeuvres philosophiques, ed. P. Vernière (Paris: Garnier, 1964] 151). 81