[lit-ideas] Re: The Causal Theory of Perception
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2014 11:52:09 -0800 (PST)
Thanks JL for his well-informed comments on Grice's paper. I have to admit that
I don't fully understand the relevance of some of Grice's examples to the
subject at hand, but perhaps I would understand it on a more careful reading.
As I understand, Grice says that a statement like: "I saw a cat" conventionally
implies that there really was a cat, and if a speaker is using it differently,
i.e. without this implication, or without necessarily committing himself to it,
then this is disimplicature. We may choose to call it disimplicature or some
other such term but nevertheless there are such 'loose' uses of see in
every-day language.
My mention of Aristotle was rather offhand and, even though I mentioned the
Aristotelian view of causality as comprising efficient cause, formal cause,
material cause and final cause, what I suggested about perception differs from
Aristotle's own view on the subject. For Aristotle, the perceiver receives the
sensible form of the object, thus presumably the formal cause of perception
would be contained in the object itself. (Although the potentiality to receive
the form needs to be present in the receiver.) Since I have at hand a paper by
Mortimer Adler, " Sense Cognition: Aristotle vs. Aquinas" I thought that I
would quote a part of it.
Adler says that the Aristotelians and the Thomists agree that:
(a) that, in the case of material composites, the form of that which is
knowable and can become actually known (i.e., the form of the quod) must be
received in the knower, separated from or without its matter (i.e., the matter
to which it is united in the quod);
A distinction is further made between 'sensible forms' and 'intelligible
forms'.
Well, perhaps this can be of some use, I might write more later if I get some
ideas.
O.K.
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