The Senses Classic and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives

by Macpherson, Fiona

• ISBN13: 9780195385977
• ISBN10: 0195385977
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-05-09
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. But how many senses are there? How many could there be? What makes the senses different? What interaction takes place between the senses? This book is a guide to thinking about these questions. Together with an extensive introduction to the topic, the book contains the key classic papers on this subject together with nine newly commissioned essays. One reason that these questions are important is that we are receiving a huge influx of new information from the sciences that challenges some traditional philosophical views about the senses. This information needs to be incorporated into our view of the senses and perception. Can we do this whilst retaining our pre-existing concepts of the senses and of perception or do we need to revise our concepts? If they need to be revised, then in what way should that be done? Research in diverse areas, such as the nature of human perception, varieties of non-human animal perception, the interaction between different sensory modalities, perceptual disorders, and possible treatments for them, calls into question the platitude that there are five senses, as well as the pre-supposition that we know what we are counting when we count them as five (or more). This book will serve as an inspiring introduction to the topic and as a basis from which further new research will grow.

Author Biography

Fiona Macpherson is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience and Director of Postgraduate Studies

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors
Introduction

1. Individuating the Senses, Fiona Macpherson

Section 1: Classic Papers
2. Excerpt from On the Soul, Aristotle
3. Aristotle on Demarcating the Five Senses, Richard Sorabji
4. Some Remarks About the Senses, H. P. Grice
5. Distinguishing the Senses, J. W. Roxbee Cox
6. The Senses of Martians, C. A. J. Coady
7. The Senses, excerpt from Perception and Cognition, John Heil
8. Characterizing the Senses, Mark Leon
9. Categorizing the Senses, Norton Nelkin
10. Sight and Touch, M. G. F. Martin
11. Making Sense of the Senses: Individuating Modalities in Humans and Other Animals, Brian L. Keeley

Section 2: New Papers
12. On the Nature of the Senses, Richard Gray
13. Re-imagining, Re-Viewing and Re-Touching, Robert Hopkins
14. The Senses, John Heil
15. A Proprioceptive Account of the Sensory Modalities, John O'Dea
16. The Senses as Psychological Kinds, Matthew Nudds
17. Tastes, Temperatures, and Pains, A. D. Smith
18. The Sense of Agency, Tim Bayne
19. Cross Modal Cuing and Selective Attention, Austen Clark
Index