Abstract

Recently the "experimental philosophy" movement has challenged reliance on thought experiments in analytic philosophy. One reply to the challenge depends on the notion of philosophical expertise. I will discuss recent developments in this debate.

Abstract:

For Aristotle there is a perceptual faculty, with its own sense organ, for each type of perceptible quality, e.g. sight for colour, hearing for sound, etc. The perception of a quality occurs as a result of the modification of the relevant sense organ by the perceptible quality. Aristotle further holds that there is a one-to-one correspondence between a perceptible quality, a perceptual modification of a sense organ, and a content of perceptual experience; for example, a correspondence between an instance of the colour blue in the world, the modification of the sense organ of sight stimulated by this instance of blue, and the blue content of the experience.

But on this view simultaneous perceptions of several perceptible qualities can only give rise to an equivalent number of distinct perceptual contents. But then, how can we perceive a combination of perceptible qualities, such as the aroma and taste of wine, in a single perceptual content? And how can we discriminate the ruby red of the wine from the brown of the table where the glass is resting? The perception of aroma and taste, or of two different colours, does not correspond to a single modification of a sense organ, and hence a single perceptual content. But they need to be present in the same perceptual content to allow cross-modal binding in the case of aroma and taste, and perceptual discrimination in the case of red and brown. Furthermore, with which organ do we perceive the movement of an arrow, e.g. its looking bigger and sounding louder as it approaches, in a unified perceptual content? There is no single type of perceptible quality corresponding to movement, hence no single sense organ ready to be modified by it when we engage in train spotting. And similarly, how do we perceive the oneness of a sheep (its whiteness, fluffy-ness, shape etc. as being qualities of one sheep) when counting a flock of them? To address these questions Aristotle introduces what he calls the common sense and explores a variety of metaphysical models to account for experiences with a complex and yet unified content. This paper explores the metaphysics of the common sense and how it delivers a solution to three interrelated questions: the complexity of content of the perceptual experience; the complexity of the act of multi-modal perception; and the complexity of the senses comprising the perceptual system as a whole.