DOCSLIB.ORG

Form Without Matter Empedocles and Aristotle on Color Perception

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Form Without Matter Empedocles and Aristotle on Color Perception Form without Matter Empedocles and Aristotle on Color Perception Mark Eli Kalderon 2 i Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see. James Joyce, Ulysses “Quand nos yeux se touchent, fait-il jour ou fait-il nuit?” Jacques Derrida, Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy ii Contents 1 Empedocles 1 1.1 Dialectic .................................... 1 1.2 The Answer in the Style of Gorgias .................... 4 1.3 Empedocles’ Theory of Vision ....................... 7 1.4 Empedoclean Puzzlement .......................... 12 1.5 Definition ................................... 15 2 Perception at a Distance 17 2.1 The Sensible Qualities of Remote External Particulars ........ 19 2.1.1 External ................................ 20 2.1.2 Particular ............................... 26 2.1.3 Remote ................................ 30 2.2 Against the Empedoclean Principle .................... 31 2.3 The Generalized Form of Empedoclean Puzzlement .......... 39 3 Transparency 41 3.1 Motive and Method ............................. 41 3.2 Transparency in De Anima .......................... 42 3.3 Transparency in De Sensu ........................... 54 4 Color 65 4.1 Aristotle’s Explanatory Strategy ...................... 65 4.2 The Objects of Perception ......................... 66 4.3 The Definition of Color ........................... 76 4.4 Color and Transparency ........................... 93 5 Light and Dark 97 5.1 Chromatic Harmony ............................. 97 5.2 Empirical Support .............................. 99 5.3 Parmenides ................................... 104 5.4 Empedocles .................................. 107 iii iv CONTENTS 6 The Generation of the Hues 121 6.1 Aristotle’s Three Models .......................... 121 6.1.1 Juxtaposition ............................. 122 6.1.2 Overlap ................................ 127 6.1.3 Mixture ................................ 131 6.1.4 Two Puzzles about Mixture .................... 134 6.2 Chromatic Ratios of Light and Dark ................... 137 6.3 Assessment ................................... 145 7 The Eye 153 7.1 The Soul of the Eye .............................. 153 7.2 Transparency and the Anatomy of the Eye ................ 158 7.3 Interior Illumination ............................. 165 8 Two Transitions to Actuality 169 8.1 The Problem .................................. 169 8.2 The Endoxa ................................... 169 8.3 Distinctions and Refinements ....................... 175 8.3.1 The Triple Scheme ......................... 175 8.3.2 Destructive and Preservative Change .............. 178 8.3.3 Privative Change and Change to a Thing’s Disposition and Nature ................................. 181 8.4 The General Characterization of Perception .............. 184 9 Form Without Matter 189 9.1 The Capacity to Assimilate ......................... 189 9.2 The Wax Analogy ............................... 190 9.2.1 Assimilation of Form ........................ 191 9.2.2 Without Matter ........................... 199 9.2.3 Sensory Presentation as a Mean .................. 204 9.3 The Resolution of Empedoclean Puzzlement .............. 210 Preface This is an essay in the philosophy of perception written in the medium of histori- ography. My motives for writing the present essay, for pursuing the philosophy of per- ception through its history, derive from a number of sources. Let me take this opportunity to describe some of them. For a number of years, over a series of papers (Kalderon, 2007, 2008, 2011b,a,c) that followed on from an earlier collaboration (Hilbert and Kalderon, 2000), I have defended an antimodern conception of color and color perception. According to that conception, colors are mind-independent qualities of material surfaces, trans- parent volumes, and radiant light sources, and color perception is the presentation of particular instances of these qualities in the visual awareness afforded by the sub- ject’s perceptual experience. This is how,I argue, our color experience presents it- self as being, and I undertook to defend this conception from challenges that arise from the problem of conflicting appearances—what Hume (1748) regarded as the “slightest bit of philosophy” required to reject any such conception of color and color perception. This conception is an antimodern conception of color in that, in the face of a consensus that persisted for four centuries—remarkable indeed in philosophy—colors are not conceived to be secondary qualities. Indeed, they are on a par with shape. And this conception is an antimodern conception of color perception in that color perception is not merely a mental reaction, a conscious modification of the perceiving subject, but the presentation of mind-independent qualities of spatiotemporal particulars located at a distance from the perceiving subject. Defending an antimodern conception of color and color perception prompted me to investigate premodern conceptions of color and color perception. I had, at any rate, been drawing on ancient sources in thinking about the problem of con- flicting appearances as it arises in its contemporary guise. However, just because the conception defended was antimodern, did not make it premodern. I turned to premodern sources for at least two reasons. First, to further loosen the grip of the modern conception of color and color perception. Though thoroughly convinced of its error, it had been my experience v vi CONTENTS that the effects of this dominant paradigm lingered in my thinking, and I engaged with premodern thinkers to counteract this. In this regard, I was self-consciously following the example of Deleuze whose early historical studies were an attempt to break free from what was, within his tradition, the then dominant structuralist paradigm. Second, not only did I seek alternative perspectives in order to see the subject matter with fresh eyes—to think outside the modern paradigm, but I was also pre- pared to learn from my predecessors. Both about color and color perception, but also about problems or challenges that had been obscured by the modern paradigm. Aristotle was a natural figure for me to focus on. He was the great defender of the manifest image in the classical world. And like Aristotle, I was engaged in just such a reconciliationist project. The problematic relationship between contemporary philosophy of perception and its history provided an additional motive. Approximately forty years ago phi- losophy of perception remained a central and relatively active area of concern. For various reasons, philosophy of perception ceased to be an area of active concern and was no longer regularly taught as part of the core curriculum. There was thus a period of forgetting. I have mixed feelings about this. The present renaissance in the philosophy of perception perhaps owes its renewed energy precisely to this forgetting. On the other hand, I was frustrated that hard won insights had been lost. To address this, at least for myself, I undertook to study its history. The present essay grew out of that study. There were more specific motives as well. For example, I have long been puz- zled by the prevalence of a primordial family of tactile metaphors for visual aware- ness. Thus the objects of perception are said to be “grasped” or “apprehended”. Visual experience puts us into perceptual “contact” with its objects. Broad (1965), for example, speaks of visual awareness as a mode of “prehension”. What unites these metaphors is that they are all a mode of assimilation and ingestion is a nat- ural variant. I wanted to understand what would make these metaphors apt. Most contemporary philosophers deploy these metaphors with little self-consciousness. They are lifeless in their hands. Looking at earlier occurrences of these metaphors, when they were more vivid and powerful, could, however, provide guidance. As Nietzsche insightfully observed: The relief-like, incomplete presentation of an idea, of a whole philoso- phy, is sometimes more effective than its exhaustive realization: more is left for the beholder to do, he is more impelled to continue work- ing on that which appears before him so strongly etched in light and shadow, to think it through to the end, and to overcome even that constraint which has hitherto prevented it from stepping forth fully CONTENTS vii formed. (Nietzsche, 1996, §178 92) With that in mind, I undertook what might be described as a conceptual geneal- ogy. That is to say, I looked at early historical occurrences of these metaphors, when they remained strongly etched in light and shadow, in order to interpret their significance for us. Unsurprisingly, in their very earliest occurrences, they do not occur as metaphors at all. Thus according to Empedocles, color perception is literally a form of ingestion. Colors are understood to be effluences, fine material bodies, that must be taken within the interior of the eye in order to be presented to the organ of sight and so be seen. For early thinkers, deploying tactile descriptions for
Load more

Recommended publications
  • On Matter: Schelling's Anti-Platonic Reading of the Timaeus Tyler Tritten
    93 The Official Journal of the North American Schelling Society Volume 1 (2018) On Matter: Schelling’s Anti-Platonic Reading of the Timaeus Tyler Tritten This essay1 contrasts the so-called emanationism of Neoplatonism, particularly Proclus’s, with the naturephilosophy2 of F.W.J. Schelling. The contention is that Schelling’s thought is Neo-Platonist because thoroughly Platonist (albeit not at all Platonic, that is, dualistic), except that his project stands Neoplatonism on its head by inverting the order of procession. Schelling agrees with Neoplatonism that matter is the lowest and most inferior of the hypostases—not even constituting a proper hypostasis itself, because incapable of self-reversion—but he differs in viewing matter as cosmologically prior to intellect, soul, the demiurge and so forth. The question concerns not the hierarchical but the ontological ordering of matter. For Schelling, procession is not a descent into being (and eventually non-being) from a one beyond being, but an elevation (Steigerung) and intensification of being, which precludes the need for return (έπιστροφή [epistrophē]). This is the trademark of Schelling’s late distinction between positive and negative philosophy. Positive philosophy is progressive, beginning with the inferior as the most original in order to ascend 1 This article is a slightly revised and shortened version of chapter three of my The Contingency of Necessity: Reason and God as Matters of Fact (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017). 2 In Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (London: Continuum, 2008) Ian Hamilton Grant speaks of Schelling not as a practitioner of the philosophy of nature, but as a naturephilosopher.
    [Show full text]
  • Critical Realism 27 Wikipedia Articles
    Critical Realism 27 Wikipedia Articles PDF generated using the open source mwlib toolkit. See http://code.pediapress.com/ for more information. PDF generated at: Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:36:28 UTC Contents Articles Critical realism 1 Roy Bhaskar 5 Structure and agency 8 Roy Wood Sellars 12 George Santayana 13 Arthur Oncken Lovejoy 20 Bernard Lonergan 22 Samuel Alexander 25 John Cook Wilson 30 Harold Arthur Prichard 31 H. H. Price 32 C. D. Broad 34 David Graeber 37 Margaret Archer 41 Michael Polanyi 43 Thomas Torrance 49 John Polkinghorne 52 Ian Barbour 60 Arthur Peacocke 63 Alister McGrath 67 N. T. Wright 71 James Dunn (theologian) 77 Geoffrey Hodgson 79 Transcendental realism 81 Alex Callinicos 82 Göran Therborn 85 Transformative Studies Institute 86 References Article Sources and Contributors 91 Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 92 Article Licenses License 93 Critical realism 1 Critical realism In the philosophy of perception, critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data (for example, those of primary qualities) can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data (for example, those of secondary qualities and perceptual illusions) do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events. Put simply, Critical Realism highlights a mind dependent aspect of the world, which reaches to understand (and comes to understanding of) the mind independent world. Contemporary critical realism most commonly refers to a philosophical approach associated with Roy Bhaskar. Bhaskar's thought combines a general philosophy of science (transcendental realism) with a philosophy of social science (critical naturalism) to describe an interface between the natural and social worlds.
    [Show full text]
  • Aristotle on Thinking ( Noêsis )
    Aristotle on Thinking ( Noêsis ) The Perception Model DA III.4-5. Aristotle gives an account of thinking (or intellect—noêsis ) that is modeled on his account of perception in Book II. Just as in perception, “that which perceives” ( to aisthêtikon ) takes on sensible form (without matter), so in thinking “that which thinks” ( to noêtikon ) takes on intelligible form (without matter). Similarly, just as in perception, the perceiver has the quality of the object potentially, but not actually, so, too, in understanding, the intellect is potentially (although not actually) each of its objects. Problem This leaves us with a problem analogous to the one we considered in the case of perception. There we wondered how the perceiver of a red tomato could be potentially (but not actually) red (prior to perceiving it), and yet become red (be actually red) in the process of perceiving it. Here the question is how the intellect that thinks about a tomato (or a horse) is potentially a tomato (or a horse), and then becomes a tomato (or a horse) in the process of thinking about it. The problem about thinking seems more severe: for although there is a sense in which the perceiver becomes red (the sense organ becomes colored red), there does not seem to be a comparable sense in which the intellect becomes a tomato (or a horse). (1) there is no organ involved, and (2) there does not seem to be room in there for a tomato (let alone a horse). The Differences from Perception As we will see, there are important differences between perceiving and understanding, beyond the fact the one involves taking on perceptible form and the other intelligible form.
    [Show full text]
  • Plotinus and the Artistic Imagination John S
    Roger Williams University DOCS@RWU School of Architecture, Art, and Historic School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications Preservation 2015 Plotinus and the Artistic Imagination John S. Hendrix Roger Williams University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://docs.rwu.edu/saahp_fp Part of the Architecture Commons Recommended Citation Hendrix, John S., "Plotinus and the Artistic Imagination" (2015). School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications. Paper 31. http://docs.rwu.edu/saahp_fp/31 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation at DOCS@RWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DOCS@RWU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Plotinus and the Artistic Imagination John Hendrix In the thought of Plotinus, the imagination is responsible for the apprehen- sion of the activity of Intellect. If creativity in the arts involves an exercise of the imagination, the image-making power that links sense perception to noet- ic thought and the nous poietikos , the poetic or creative intellect, then the arts exercise the apprehension of intellectual activity and unconscious thought. According to John Dillon in “Plotinus and the Transcendental Imag- ination,” 1 Plotinus’ conception of the imagination led to the formulation of the imagination as a basis of artistic creativity. In Plotinus, imagination operates on several different levels: it produces images in sense perception, it synthesizes images in dianoetic thought, and it produces images in correspondence with the articulation through logos of noetic thought.
    [Show full text]
  • The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato and Their Successors
    THE BIRTH OF RHETORIC ISSUES IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY General editor: Malcolm Schofield GOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY Studies in the early history of natural theology L.P.Gerson ANCIENT CONCEPTS OF PHILOSOPHY William Jordan LANGUAGE, THOUGHT AND FALSEHOOD IN ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY Nicholas Denyer MENTAL CONFLICT Anthony Price THE BIRTH OF RHETORIC Gorgias, Plato and their successors Robert Wardy London and New York First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 First published in paperback 1998 © 1996 Robert Wardy All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Wardy, Robert. The birth of rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato, and their successors/ Robert Wardy. p. cm.—(Issues in ancient philsophy) Includes bibliographical rerferences (p. ) and index. 1. Plato. Gorgias. 2. Rhetoric, Ancient.
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking the Connection of Metaphor and Commonplace
    RETHINKING THE CONNECTION OF METAPHOR AND TOPOS MAREIKE BUSS & JÖRG JOST RWTH AACHEN 1. Introduction Having survived the «death of rhetoric» (R. BARTHES 1985: 115), metaphor has become the centre of intensive research by philosophers of language and linguists in the twentieth cen- tury. Nowadays it is widely accepted that metaphor is not reducible to «a sort of happy extra trick with words» (I. A. RICHARDS [1936] 1964: 90), but is rather said to be a funda- mental principle of linguistic creativity with an invaluable cognitive function and heuristic potential. Topos or rather commonplace has, in contrast, a predominantly negative connota- tion in everyday and scientific language. Topos, which originally designated the place where to find the arguments for a speech, has become the cliché, the worn out phrase, or the stereotype. Nevertheless, there are numerous critical studies focusing on topoi in their heu- ristic and argumentative function. Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric is one of the first and most important ‘textbooks’ for speech production. Following Aristotle, the purpose of rhetorical speech consists in persuading by argumentation. In this respect he defines rhetoric as «the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever.» (Rhetoric I, 1355b/14,2). Now, persuasion presupposes – as any perlocutionary act – that the utterances have been under- stood by the audience, in short: it presupposes (text) comprehension.1 When analysing the first three phases of rhetoric – heuresis, taxis and lexis – two features in particular stand out on account of the role they play in argumentation: topos and metaphor, which are treated in the heuresis and the lexis.2 Metaphor works in a heuristic and aesthetic manner, while topos operates in a heu- ristic and logical manner.
    [Show full text]
  • Lucan's Natural Questions: Landscape and Geography in the Bellum Civile Laura Zientek a Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulf
    Lucan’s Natural Questions: Landscape and Geography in the Bellum Civile Laura Zientek A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2014 Reading Committee: Catherine Connors, Chair Alain Gowing Stephen Hinds Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Classics © Copyright 2014 Laura Zientek University of Washington Abstract Lucan’s Natural Questions: Landscape and Geography in the Bellum Civile Laura Zientek Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Catherine Connors Department of Classics This dissertation is an analysis of the role of landscape and the natural world in Lucan’s Bellum Civile. I investigate digressions and excurses on mountains, rivers, and certain myths associated aetiologically with the land, and demonstrate how Stoic physics and cosmology – in particular the concepts of cosmic (dis)order, collapse, and conflagration – play a role in the way Lucan writes about the landscape in the context of a civil war poem. Building on previous analyses of the Bellum Civile that provide background on its literary context (Ahl, 1976), on Lucan’s poetic technique (Masters, 1992), and on landscape in Roman literature (Spencer, 2010), I approach Lucan’s depiction of the natural world by focusing on the mutual effect of humanity and landscape on each other. Thus, hardships posed by the land against characters like Caesar and Cato, gloomy and threatening atmospheres, and dangerous or unusual weather phenomena all have places in my study. I also explore how Lucan’s landscapes engage with the tropes of the locus amoenus or horridus (Schiesaro, 2006) and elements of the sublime (Day, 2013).
    [Show full text]
  • Socrates's Great Speech
    Forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Philosophy Penultimate draft prior to publication Socrates’s Great Speech: The Defense of Philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias Tushar Irani Abstract: This paper focuses on a neglected portion of Plato’s Gorgias from 506c to 513d during Socrates’s discussion with Callicles. I claim that Callicles adopts the view that virtue lies in self- preservation in this part of the dialogue. Such a position allows him to assert the value of rhetoric in civic life by appealing not to the goodness of acting unjustly with impunity, but to the badness of suffering unjustly without remedy. On this view, the benefits of the life of rhetoric depend on the idea that virtue consists in the power to protect oneself from the predations of others. I argue that by challenging this understanding of virtue as self-preservation, Socrates both deprives Callicles of any remaining justification for the rhetorical life in the Gorgias and, at the same time, makes room for his own defense of the life of philosophy. Keywords: Plato, Gorgias, Socrates, Callicles, philosophy, rhetoric, virtue, the good life, hedonism, self–preservation 1. Introduction My title alludes of course to Callicles’s “great speech” at 482c–486d in the Gorgias.1 That speech, at the heart of the dialogue and almost four Stephanus pages in length, falls into two parts: first, Callicles offers an analysis of what is just by nature in contrast to what is just by mere convention; then, he issues a long diatribe against Socrates and the life of philosophy. The 1 The term “great speech” is commonly used by scholars to refer to the substantial length of Callicles’s speech, rather than to its qualitative merits.
    [Show full text]
  • Intellect and the Structuring of Reality in Plotinus and Averroes John S
    Roger Williams University DOCS@RWU School of Architecture, Art, and Historic School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications Preservation 2012 Intellect and the Structuring of Reality in Plotinus and Averroes John S. Hendrix Roger Williams University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://docs.rwu.edu/saahp_fp Part of the Classics Commons Recommended Citation Hendrix, John S., "Intellect and the Structuring of Reality in Plotinus and Averroes" (2012). School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications. Paper 29. http://docs.rwu.edu/saahp_fp/29 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation at DOCS@RWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DOCS@RWU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Intellect and the Structuring of Reality in Plotinus and Averroes John Hendrix Though Averroes is not generally considered to be sympathetic to Neoplatonic thinking, there are definite parallels between the philoso- phies of intellect of Averroes and Plotinus. Both can be considered to be “Idealists” in that intelligible form precedes sensible form in per- ception, and that the material intellect of Averroes or Reason Principle of Plotinus, nous hylikos or pathetikos , depends in its functioning on the agent intellect of Averroes or Intellectual Principle of Plotinus, nous poietikos . The formation of the image in the oculus mentis is co- incident with the formation of a thought, and the sensible form is a transient residue of the permanent intelligible form, as if it is reflected in a mirror and projected on a surface.
    [Show full text]
  • "Bringing-Before-The-Eyes": Visuality and Audience in Greek Rhetoric By
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ASU Digital Repository "Bringing-before-the-eyes": Visuality and Audience in Greek Rhetoric by Brent D. Chappelow A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved April 2016 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Shirley K Rose, Co-Chair Kathleen S. Lamp, Co-Chair Maureen Daly Goggin ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2016 ABSTRACT "Bringing-before-the-eyes": Visuality and Audience in Greek Rhetoric examines how Greek rhetorical theories are understood through the lens of visuality and the ways in which orators accounted for audience knowledges and expectations in the creation of rhetorical texts and performances. Through a close reading of Greek rhetorical texts from the classical period, I develop three heuristics for analyzing the ways in which rhetoricians invite and encourage visualized images through rhetorical practice. By exploring (1) language cues that orators use to signal visualization, (2) the ways in which shared cultural memories and ideas allow orators to call upon standardized images, and (3) the influence of stylistic choices and audience emotions related to the vividness of rhetorical images, I argue that it is possible to analyze the ways in which classical Greek orators understood and employed visual elements in their rhetorical performances. I then conduct an analysis of the visual aspects of Demosthenes' On the Embassy using these heuristics to demonstrate the ways in which these three aspects of visuality are intertwined and contribute to a greater understanding of the relationship between the verbal and the visual in rhetorical theory.
    [Show full text]
  • The Philosophical Development of Gilbert Ryle
    THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF GILBERT RYLE A Study of His Published and Unpublished Writings © Charlotte Vrijen 2007 Illustrations front cover: 1) Ryle’s annotations to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 2) Notes (miscellaneous) from ‘the red box’, Linacre College Library Illustration back cover: Rodin’s Le Penseur RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN The Philosophical Development of Gilbert Ryle A Study of His Published and Unpublished Writings Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Wijsbegeerte aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr. F. Zwarts, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 14 juni 2007 om 16.15 uur door Charlotte Vrijen geboren op 11 maart 1978 te Rolde Promotor: Prof. Dr. L.W. Nauta Copromotor: Prof. Dr. M.R.M. ter Hark Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. Dr. D.H.K. Pätzold Prof. Dr. B.F. McGuinness Prof. Dr. J.M. Connelly ISBN: 978-90-367-3049-5 Preface I am indebted to many people for being able to finish this dissertation. First of all I would like to thank my supervisor and promotor Lodi Nauta for his comments on an enormous variety of drafts and for the many stimulating discussions we had throughout the project. He did not limit himself to deeply theoretical discussions but also saved me from grammatical and stylish sloppiness. (He would, for example, have suggested to leave out the ‘enormous’ and ‘many’ above, as well as by far most of the ‘very’’s and ‘greatly’’s in the sentences to come.) After I had already started my new job outside the academic world, Lodi regularly – but always in a pleasant way – reminded me of this other job that still had to be finished.
    [Show full text]
  • What's That Smell-Journal
    Southern Journal of Philosophy (2009) VLVII: 321-348. What’s That Smell? Clare Batty University of Kentucky In philosophical discussions of the secondary qualities, color has taken center stage. Smells, tastes, sounds, and feels have been treated, by and large, as mere accessories to colors. We are, as it is said, visual creatures. This, at least, has been the working assumption in the philosophy of perception and in those metaphysical discussions about the nature of the secondary qualities. The result has been a scarcity of work on the “other” secondary qualities. In this paper, I take smells and place them front and center. I ask: What are smells? For many philosophers, the view that colors can be explained in purely physicalistic terms has seemed very appealing. In the case of smells, this kind of nonrelational view has seemed much less appealing. Philosophers have been drawn to versions of relationalism—the view that the nature of smells must be explained (at least in part) in terms of the effects they have on perceivers. In this paper, I consider a contemporary argument for this view. I argue that nonrelationalist views of smell have little to fear from this argument. It was the first time Grenouille had ever been in a perfumery, a place in which odors are not accessories but stand unabashedly at the center of interest…. He knew every single odor handled here and had often merged them in his innermost thoughts to create the most splendid perfumes. - Patrick Süskind, Perfume In philosophical discussions of the secondary qualities, color has taken center stage.
    [Show full text]