did-you-know? rent-now

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

did-you-know? rent-now

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

We're the #1 textbook rental company. Let us show you why.

9780195326574

Seeing Dark Things The Philosophy of Shadows

by
  • ISBN13:

    9780195326574

  • ISBN10:

    0195326571

  • Format: Hardcover
  • Copyright: 2008-01-08
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press

Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.

Purchase Benefits

  • Free Shipping Icon Free Shipping On Orders Over $35!
    Your order must be $35 or more to qualify for free economy shipping. Bulk sales, PO's, Marketplace items, eBooks and apparel do not qualify for this offer.
  • eCampus.com Logo Get Rewarded for Ordering Your Textbooks! Enroll Now
List Price: $89.60 Save up to $55.96
  • Rent Book $59.58
    Add to Cart Free Shipping Icon Free Shipping

    TERM
    PRICE
    DUE
    USUALLY SHIPS IN 3-5 BUSINESS DAYS
    *This item is part of an exclusive publisher rental program and requires an additional convenience fee. This fee will be reflected in the shopping cart.

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

Summary

If a spinning disk casts a round shadow does this shadow also spin? When you experience the total blackness of a cave, are you seeing in the dark? Or are you merely failing to see anything (just like your blind companion)? Seeing Dark Things uses visual riddles to explore our ability to see shadows, silhouettes, and black birds--plus some things that are only metaphorically "dark" such as holes. These dark things are anomalies for the causal theory of perception which states that anything we see must be a cause of what we see. This orthodoxy successfully explains why you see the front of this page rather than its rear. However, the causal theory has trouble explaining how you manage to see the black letters on this page. The letters are made visible by the light they fail to reflect rather than the light they reflect. Nevertheless, Roy Sorensen defends the causal theory of perception by treating absences as causes. His fourteen chapters draw heavily on common sense and psychology to vindicate the assumption that we directly perceive absences. Seeing Dark Things is philosophy for the eye. It contains fifty-nine figures designed to prompt visual judgment. Sorensen proceeds bottom-up from observation rather than top-down from theory. He regards detailed analysis of absences as premature; he hopes a future theory will refine the pictorial thinking stimulated by the book's riddles. Just as the biologist pursues genetics with fruit flies, the metaphysician can study absences by means of shadows. Shadows are metaphysical amphibians with one foot on the terra firma of common sense and the other in the murky waters of non-being. Sorensen portrays the causal theory of perception's confrontation with the shadows as a triumph against alien attack--a victory that deepens a theory that resonates so strongly with common sense and science. In sum, Seeing Dark Things is an unorthodox defense of an orthodox theory.

Author Biography


Roy Sorensen is a Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth College. He is also the author of A Brief History of the Paradox, Vagueness and Contradiction, and Thought Experiments.

Table of Contents

The eclipse riddle
Seeing surfaces
The disappearing act
Spinning Shadows
Berkeley's Shadow
Para-reflections
Para-refractions
Goethe's Colored Shadows
Filtows
Holes in the light
Black and blue
Seeing in black and blue
We see in the dark
Hearing silence
References
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Rewards Program