Fortgeschrittenenseminar Perception Context and Cognition 8211 Contemporary Issues Blockseminar

Since Réné Descartes, philosophers working on the topic of perception have been particularly keen on developing their theories in the light of contemporary work in the medical and biological sciences on the human sensory apparatus. This has remained true until the present day, where philosophers of perception try to connect their work to the latest neuroscientific findings. However, the present-day discussion often fails to take properly into account the very rich and sophisticated framework of many of the historical debates. This is partly due to the fact that the current debate – especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries – is mostly informed by the empiricist tradition, which has not only led to a one-sided, but also a rather simplistic approach to many issues. While this approach, which has historically been connected to fundamentalism in epistemology and meaning-atomism in the philosophy of language, has been forcefully critizised by philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Wilfred Sellars in the mid-20th century, it is still the one widely presupposed by many philosophers working in this area today. We want to contribute to correcting this failure by discussing actual problems in the neuroscience of perception in a framework informed by the Kantian philosophical tradition. The question we will mostly be focussing on will be how perception is framed by context and the conceptual capacities of the perceiver. Fakultät für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Religionswissenschaft keine Anfängerveranstaltung term paper OR (presentation+essay/record), according to the lecturer's specification (= BA and general MA program in philosophy); equivalent forms of assessment by arrangement [9 ECTS-points] LMU München SoSe 2015 apl.Prof.Dr. Sellmaier Stephan