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Perceptual Awareness Through Touch

Ryan Nichols

in Thomas Reid's Theory of Perception

This chapter explains how Reid arrives at his appeal to suggestion by an argument from elimination. It then discusses his application of his theory of suggestion to tactile perception. Reid claims ... More

This chapter explains how Reid arrives at his appeal to suggestion by an argument from elimination. It then discusses his application of his theory of suggestion to tactile perception. Reid claims that the Way of Ideas operates upon the assumption that the immediate intentional objects of our thoughts are ideas or other representational intermediaries. The Way of Ideas attempts to reduce contentful mental states to non-contentful features of those states, whereas Reid takes intentional content as irreducible and basic. Special attention is given to Reid's experimentum crucis, or ‘crucial test’, a thought experiment involving a subject's systematic sensory deprivation. Reid seeks to show that the uses of sensation, custom, and reasoning are singly and jointly insufficient for the formation of our perceptual contents. He takes this as a fine objection to the Way of Ideas, on which sensations and reflection upon sensations are sufficient for providing us with our perceptual contents.Less

Adamantios Korais as language reformer

Peter Mackridge

in Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766-1976

This chapter discusses the linguistic theory and practice of the chief proponent of language reform at the time, Adamantios Korais (1748-1833). The origins of Korais' linguistic theory are traced to ... More

This chapter discusses the linguistic theory and practice of the chief proponent of language reform at the time, Adamantios Korais (1748-1833). The origins of Korais' linguistic theory are traced to the work of 18th-century theorists, particularly Condillac. His proposals for the reform of the Modern Greek language are analysed in terms of the following: his worship of ancient Greek perfection; his defence of Modern Greek against the aspersions cast on it by the archaists; and his ‘correction’ of Modern Greek according to the morphological rules of Ancient Greek. The chapter ends with an assessment of Korais' contribution to the language question and an account of the impact of Korais' ideas on later developments. The assessment is broadly negative, because Korais lent his enormous prestige to the already existing habit of mixing the modern language with grammatical features of the ancient, thereby encouraging later Greeks to use yet more ancient features in their writing.Less

The Invention of National Languages

Otto Dann

in Unity and Diversity in European Culture c.1800

In the second half of the eighteenth century, a qualified kind of ethnogenesis can be observed among the educated classes of the Western world. In the course of their social emancipation a new ... More

In the second half of the eighteenth century, a qualified kind of ethnogenesis can be observed among the educated classes of the Western world. In the course of their social emancipation a new political identity emerged, one orientated towards the fatherland, the state, and its population. This new ethnic consciousness bridged older identities such as estate, profession or religion. It originated in connection with the great eighteenth-century social movement of patriotism, which became more and more politicised. The philosophical discourse about the nature of language, which had existed since antiquity, intensified immensely during the eighteenth century. John Locke and George Berkeley in Britain and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac in France provided important stimuli in this respect. Johann Gottfried Herder was the first to take vernacular languages and popular poetry seriously as expressions of the culture of illiterate peoples. This chapter examines how national languages were invented and looks at the divergent situations in which the first national languages were used in Europe.Less

The History of ‘Nuances’: Imitation in the Eighteenth Century

Edward Nye

in Literary and Linguistic Theories in Eighteenth-Century France: From Nuances to Impertinence

This chapter explores the term ‘nuances’. The composite meaning ‘nuances’ is a measure of 18th-century anxiety with an old idea. It covers all kinds of imitation, from the naturalistic imitation of ... More

This chapter explores the term ‘nuances’. The composite meaning ‘nuances’ is a measure of 18th-century anxiety with an old idea. It covers all kinds of imitation, from the naturalistic imitation of Le Blon's colour engravings to the idealizing imitation of Condillac's theory of language, as if in order to maintain the standing a venerable theory it is necessary to stretch it to increasing degrees. As well as composite meaning, ‘nuances’ is multipurpose and applicable to all the arts, which goes some way to answering the ‘how’ question of artistic imitation: one art does it like another. ‘Nuances’ is also lexical football kicked backwards and forwards between those who do and do not have faith in the idea of imitation.Less

Condillac's Idea of ‘Nature’

Edward Nye

in Literary and Linguistic Theories in Eighteenth-Century France: From Nuances to Impertinence

Condillac is rarely given the credit he deserves for the range of his interests, with the result that his recurring subject of inquiry is often overlooked. Condillac finds that an unavoidable issue ... More

Condillac is rarely given the credit he deserves for the range of his interests, with the result that his recurring subject of inquiry is often overlooked. Condillac finds that an unavoidable issue in his recurring interest in the representation of ideas is artistic imitation, and this becomes most apparent when we do justice to the range of his interests and consider a number of his works in parallel with each other. This chapter focuses on two works the Essai sur l'origine des connoissances humaines (1746) and the Art d'écrire (1798). The first is an abstract study of epistemology; the second is a practical discussion of literary style. They come together, however, in their shared terminology and concepts, and it is this middle ground which we may call Condillac's aesthetic thought. His theories are another example of how far the idea of imitation can be stretched to accommodate a variety of approaches.Less

beyond Hume and Wolff

Udo Thiel

in The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume

The Conclusion outlines the general themes and development that characterize eighteenth-century debates about self-consciousness and personal identity after Hume, Wolff and his followers and critics ... More

The Conclusion outlines the general themes and development that characterize eighteenth-century debates about self-consciousness and personal identity after Hume, Wolff and his followers and critics (the details will be dealt with in a sequel to this volume, entitled The Enlightened Subject). There is a rich variety of views and arguments, but four thematic groups can be identified. First, from the 1740s to the 1770s the notion of feeling becomes prominent (Condillac, Rousseau), emphasizing the immediacy by which we relate to our own self and personal identity. Second, there are attempts by materialist philosophers to deal with these issues– mainly thinkers of the 1770s and 1780s, including for example Joseph Priestley. Third, there is the Scottish School of Common Sense, most importantly Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart in the 1780s and 90s - here, personal identity is thought of as a necessary condition of thought and action. Fourth, there is Kant and the debates about Kant at the end of the century - with thinkers such as Karl Leonhard Reinhold whose contributions can help to illuminate and critically evaluate the Kantian as well as the earlier approaches to the issues of self-consciousness and personal identity.Less

The Enlightenment: From Hobbes to Condillac

in The Scenic Imagination: Originary Thinking from Hobbes to the Present Day

During the Enlightenment, the imagined scene of representation was first used as a means to understand human institutions, particularly language. The origin of language(s) was the subject of numerous ... More

During the Enlightenment, the imagined scene of representation was first used as a means to understand human institutions, particularly language. The origin of language(s) was the subject of numerous eighteenth-century works by writers such as Pierre de Maupertuis, Adam Smith, and Etienne de Condillac, whose 1746 book, Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines (1746), contains the first articulated hypothetical scene of origin for human language. Most of these works were thought experiments that sought to understand how perceptions and sensations could produce signs. Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau address the scenic origin of the social order in Leviathan (1651) and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754), respectively, along with the latter's The Social Contract (1762). These works arguably define the intellectual and roughly, the chronological limits, of the Enlightenment scenic imagination as a basis for political theory. Both writers use the “social contract” to unite in a single social unit persons who are biologically unrelated to each other.Less

Alternative Anthropologies: Vico and Herder

in The Scenic Imagination: Originary Thinking from Hobbes to the Present Day

Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) offers a historically unique insight into the generative relationship between the sacred, language, and human order. He argues that language is a product of mimesis, ... More

Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) offers a historically unique insight into the generative relationship between the sacred, language, and human order. He argues that language is a product of mimesis, that the first language was participatory rather than simply referential, and that the objects of this language were sacred rather than profane. For Vico, this elementary sacred, constituted by anthropomorphic explanations of natural phenomena, is a providential means for imposing order through terror on “savage” society. Vico's “new science” posits that we can only fully know (that is, analyze) what we ourselves have constructed—a principle reminiscent of the originary hypothesis. In his book La Scienza Nuova (1730–1744), Vico variously describes the first linguistic signs as gestures, graphic representations, onomatopoetic sounds, emotional interjections, and rhythmic monosyllables derived from song. In his Essay on the Origin of Language (1772), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) rejects Etienne de Condillac's attempt to derive human language from natural signs.Less

Introduction

in The Rhetoric of Error from Locke to Kleist

This book investigates the rhetoric of error by focusing on canonical texts drawn primarily from the literary, philosophical, and aesthetic writings of Britain and Germany in the eighteenth century, ... More

This book investigates the rhetoric of error by focusing on canonical texts drawn primarily from the literary, philosophical, and aesthetic writings of Britain and Germany in the eighteenth century, including those by Immanuel Kant, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, and John Locke. It examines the irresolvable tensions emanating from these texts: on the one hand, they argue about a reliable production and distribution of knowledge about language, cognition, subjectivity, and value; and on the other, they put forward an alternative theory that not only refutes the first but also raises the possibility of incoherence, corruption, contingency, and randomness. The focus is on the non-systematic movement of error known as errance, which includes contaminating reflux, treasonous desertion, unpredictable circulation, violent irruption, and other movements that place simple oppositions and coherent itineraries under erasure or suspension. The book also takes up Étienne Bonnot de Condillac's claim that the danger of language is related to its metaphoricity.Less

The Project of Enlightenment (Master Systems)

Clifford Siskin

in System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge

This chapter offers a new take on the history of science by detailing how the turn from Scholasticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took the form of a gradual turn to system as the ... More

This chapter offers a new take on the history of science by detailing how the turn from Scholasticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took the form of a gradual turn to system as the “firmer” form of what the physicist, and Enlightenment scholar, David Deutsch calls “guesswork.” That turn was completed in grand fashion with Newton’s decision to communicate his principles and laws philosophically by adding a “System of the World” to his treatise. I explain how and why Newton came very close—repeatedly—to sending the Principia into the world without any “System” at all. Why was system such a vexed issue in the late seventeenth century? What was at stake for Newton in choosing to write a system over competitors such as “hypothesis”? And why, once it did make it onto the printed page, did system become so successful that a copy of Newton’s system was launched into space as one of humanity’s calling cards three centuries later? How did that particular form of knowledge come to represent—for Condillac, Goldsmith, Hume, Pownall, Granger—our species’ good and bad efforts to advance knowledge? The primary generic marker of what came to be called Enlightenment, I conclude, were the monumental efforts—highlighted by Adam Smith’s project for Scotland—to scale up systems into master SYSTEMs that persisted from roughly the 1730s through the 1780s.Less

The Emergence of Mind

Jonathan Sheehan and Dror Wahrman

in Invisible Hands: Self-Organization in the Eighteenth Century

For the first time in the eighteenth century, mind itselfbecame of urgent interest. Mind could not be taken as something merely given or foundational to human beings. Rather, as the sensationalist ... More

For the first time in the eighteenth century, mind itselfbecame of urgent interest. Mind could not be taken as something merely given or foundational to human beings. Rather, as the sensationalist and empiricist psychologies of Locke, Hume, Condillac, Hartley, and others insisted, the mind is a contingent and emergent thing, a product of a complex interaction of sensation, brain, person, and world. This chapter explores how the mind became dynamic, self-creating, and self-organizing during this period. It also explores the paradoxes that attached to the self-organizing mind. Explaining the emergence of something from nothing required a faith that complex systems can have qualities wholly lacking in their component parts. The challenges of understanding this, the chapter argues, energized the Enlightenment fascination with cognitive processes. The chapter ranges widely from the neural monism of mid-century materialists, to the debates about the origins of language, to new directions in probability research.Less

Attentive Statues

Ellen Lockhart

in Animation, Plasticity, and Music in Italy, 1770-1830

Chapter 1 examines the Milanese pantomimes of Gasparo Angiolini, in particular his ballet on the theme of Condillac’s statue, La vendetta spiritosa (Milan, 1781; revived as La vendetta ingegnosa, o ... More

Chapter 1 examines the Milanese pantomimes of Gasparo Angiolini, in particular his ballet on the theme of Condillac’s statue, La vendetta spiritosa (Milan, 1781; revived as La vendetta ingegnosa, o la Statua di Condilliac, Venice, 1791), and his project of creating a language of musical gestures that could be understood without training or acculturation. Inspired by Rousseau, Condillac, and Milanese writers such as the Verri brothers and Cesare Beccaria, Angiolini hoped that this “sign language” that could overcome linguistic and even political boundaries.Less

Walking the Property:: Ownership, Space, and the Body in Motion in Edgar Huntly

Chad Luck

in The Body of Property: Antebellum American Fiction and the Phenomenology of Possession

This chapter uncovers in Charles Brockden Brown’s gothic frontier novel a sophisticated engagement with eighteenth-century sensational psychologists, including Locke, Hume, and Condillac. The ... More

This chapter uncovers in Charles Brockden Brown’s gothic frontier novel a sophisticated engagement with eighteenth-century sensational psychologists, including Locke, Hume, and Condillac. The chapter argues that in the novel’s famous cave sequence, Brown ingeniously narrativizes Condillac’s dictum that “touch teaches vision” and in so doing enacts a subterranean model of spatial orientation that directly evokes the “plenum versus vacuum” debates of Locke and Hume. The novel then links this spatio-sensory exploration to an array of eighteenth-century property laws that focus on the creation of boundary lines. It becomes clear that Brown’s fictional account of settler-Indian violence on the Pennsylvania frontier is designed to imaginatively re-walk the infamous “Walking Purchase” treaty of 1737 in which the Delaware tribe was defrauded of 750,000 acres. In doing so, the novel calls attention to the Native American bodies conveniently erased from the legal and historical record.Less

Sensationalism and the Construction of Intellectual Disability

Tim Stainton

in Intellectual disability: A conceptual history, 1200-1900

The seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the emergence of sensationalism as a counter to the prevailing idea that human knowledge was innate, pre-determined within us, only to emerge ... More

The seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the emergence of sensationalism as a counter to the prevailing idea that human knowledge was innate, pre-determined within us, only to emerge gradually over time. This chapter considers the influence of the theory of sensationalism on both the conceptualization of intellectual disability and the emergence of educational efforts on their behalf. It considers how the debate over sensationalism shaped Itard’s work and the theories which underpinned it, rooted most fully in the work of Locke, Rousseau, and, finally, Condillac, whose revision of Locke would create the foundation for the coming medico-psychological hegemony over intellectual disability.Less

The Nature of Soul, or Is It Just Nature?

Stanley Finger

in Franz Joseph Gall: Naturalist of the Mind, Visionary of the Brain

Gall wanted to develop a science based on what could be observed and felt—one devoid of metaphysics. Unlike Descartes, whose separation of the soul and the physical body was still very influential, ... More

Gall wanted to develop a science based on what could be observed and felt—one devoid of metaphysics. Unlike Descartes, whose separation of the soul and the physical body was still very influential, especially among the faithful, he felt speculating about the soul was superfluous for understanding the mind and brain. He was a firm believer in the Great Chain of Being, and viewed humans not as having an “immaterial principle,” but instead as having a more highly developed brain than other animals. And rather than debating the unity of the soul or whether it is immortal, he chose to emphasize how specific behaviors could be affected by brain damage, maturation, cerebral atrophy, and the like. Gall’s faculties of mind helped humans and other animals survive and cope with everyday life, and he saw them as far more dependent on nature than on nurture. With this mindset, he felt able to account for both species differences and individual strengths and weaknesses. More than to anyone else, Gall was indebted to Prussian philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder for providing him with this philosophical orientation.Less

Conclusion

Martin Lenz

in Socializing Minds: Intersubjectivity in Early Modern Philosophy

What are the crucial alterations in the common picture of early modern philosophy of mind that this study leaves us with? Even if early modern authors often seem to consider mental states as arising ... More

What are the crucial alterations in the common picture of early modern philosophy of mind that this study leaves us with? Even if early modern authors often seem to consider mental states as arising independently of the social environment, the explanatory focus is intersubjective: For Spinoza, Locke, and Hume mental states of individuals have to be explained in relation to other minds. After a brief summary, the conclusion contextualizes the metaphysical, linguistic and medical models by showing highlighting their early modern opponents and some current philosophical debates in which these models survive. In a further step, this chapter provides a brief survey of potential receptions of the models in Anne Conway, Condillac, Dugald Stewart, and Immanuel Kant.Less

Epistemological Empiricisms

Barry Allen

in Empiricisms: Experience and Experiment from Antiquity to the Anthropocene

The chapter considers the rise of modern epistemological empiricism, from Gassendi and Locke to Spencer and the positivists. The chapter studies empirical philosophy in France (Condillac, Diderot, La ... More

The chapter considers the rise of modern epistemological empiricism, from Gassendi and Locke to Spencer and the positivists. The chapter studies empirical philosophy in France (Condillac, Diderot, La Mettrie, Maine de Biran); Claude Bernard’s experimental medicine; the concept of experience in British idealism; the idea of “experimental life” in J. S. Mill and Nietzsche; Dilthey’s concept of experience (Erlebnis); Russell’s concept of sense data; and the value of experience in scientific philosophy (Mach) and logical empiricism (Carnap). Additionally the chapter discusses the emergence of observation as a scientific practice, the contributions of the social studies of science to our understanding of experimental practice, and surveys modern thought concerning visual perception.Less