Locke and the Visual Array

Jacovides, Michael

doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00439.x

Philos Phenomenol Research

2011

DOI: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00439.x

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Locke and the Visual Array

Michael Jacovides

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2019

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“…3, p. 278). I am not sure Locke's claim is terribly convincing on its own merits; see Jacovides (, p. 78) for an excellent discussion of the phenomenology involved here.…”

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Locke on the role of judgment in perception

Ott

2019

European J of Philosophy

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How much is given in perceptual experience, and how much must be constructed? John Locke's answer to this question contains two prima facie incompatible strands. On the one hand, he claims that ideas of primary qualities come to us passively, through multiple senses: the idea of a sphere can be received either by sight or touch. On the other hand, Locke seemingly thinks that a faculty he calls "judgment" is needed to create visual ideas of threedimensional shapes. How can these accounts be made consistent? The problem comes to a head in the discussion of Molyneux's problem: can a person born blind and then made to see identify a sphere and a cube, when he had only touched them in the past? Locke's answer is no, but, as George Berkeley points out, it is hard to see why: if the ideas of shapes come to us through sight as well as touch, nothing should stop Molyneux man from instantly recognizing sphere and cube. Pace much of the existing literature, I argue that although Locke does think we receive visual ideas of primary qualities, the faculty of judgment is required to "inflate" those ideas into three dimensions and to correct for other perspectival distortions. I then show how this answer is consistent with the rest of his theory of perception. 1 | INTRODUCTION The opening eight chapters of Book II of the Essay concerning Human Understanding suggest a simple picture of sensory experience. On this view, the mind passively awaits the given of experience: ideas of primary and secondary qualities. Unlike an idea of a color, an idea of a primary quality such as shape comes to us through multiple senses. The ninth chapter threatens this simple picture. There, Locke tells us that some visual ideas of primary qualities are

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“…3, p. 278). I am not sure Locke's claim is terribly convincing on its own merits; see Jacovides (, p. 78) for an excellent discussion of the phenomenology involved here.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…As Jacovides puts it, the analogy with pain suggests that “ideas in the visual array immediately and directly correspond to the state of our retinal image” (, p. 72). I do not want to imply that Jacovides would agree with the view I am presenting; quite the contrary, since he agrees with Bolton that the given of experience is an unshaped array of colors.…”

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confidence: 99%

Locke on the role of judgment in perception

Ott

2019

European J of Philosophy

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Locke and the Visual Array

Cited by 1 publication

References 14 publications

Locke on the role of judgment in perception

Locke on the role of judgment in perception

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