Empirical Conditions for a Reidean Geometry of Visual Experience

Topoi 35 (2):511-522 (2016)
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Abstract

Thomas Reid's Geometry of Visibles, according to which the geometrical properties of an object's perspectival appearance equal the geometrical properties of its projection on the inside of a sphere with the eye in its centre allows for two different interpretations. It may (1) be understood as a theory about phenomenal visual space – i.e. an account of how things appear to human observers from a certain point of view – or it may (2) be seen as a mathematical model of viewpoint-relative but mind-independent relational properties of objects. This paper makes a systematic and a historical claim. I shall argue, first, that given certain features of the human visual system phenomenal visual space differs in several aspects from Reidean visual space. Secondly, I suggest that, since Reid was aware of some of these empirical facts, we should interpret Reid as endorsing the second interpretation of the Geometry of Visibles.

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Author's Profile

Hannes Matthiessen
Humboldt University, Berlin

References found in this work

Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man.Thomas Reid - 1785 - University Park, Pa.: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Derek R. Brookes & Knud Haakonssen.
Sense and Sensibilia.John Langshaw Austin - 1962 - Oxford University Press. Edited by G. Warnock.
An Inquiry Into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense.Thomas Reid - 1997 - Cambridge University Press. Edited by Elizabeth Schmidt Radcliffe, Richard McCarty, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya.
The Bounds of Sense.P. F. Strawson - 1966 - Philosophy 42 (162):379-382.
The bounds of sense: an essay on Kant's Critique of pure reason.Peter F. Strawson - 1975 - [New York]: Harper & Row, Barnes & Noble Import Division. Edited by Lucy Allais.

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