The Seeing Mind: A Narrative Review of the Philosophy of Perception from Berkeley's Vision to Perceptual Content

Abstract

The philosophy of perception---the philosophy whose subject is the seeing mind and whose battleground is the object's givenness---moved from Berkeley's 1709 vision and Reid's 1764 common sense through Helmholtz's 1867 sensations, Russell's 1914 sense-data, and Moore's 1939 hands to Sellars's 1956 myth, Austin's 1962 sensibilia, and McDowell's 1994 world. This article presents a narrative review of that arc's canonical line: Berkeley's 1709 Dublin essay, Reid's 1764 Inquiry, Helmholtz's 1867 Handbook, Russell's 1914 Open Court, Moore's 1939 proof, Sellars's 1956 Minnesota myth, Austin's 1962 Clarendon, Dretske's 1969 seeing, Gibson's 1979 affordances, McDowell's 1994 Mind and World, Noë's 2004 action, and Siegel's 2010 contents. The review is organized around three themes: the vision's theory and the sensation's inferences, in which the Berkeley's distance and the Helmholtz's unconscious named the perceptual's problem; the sense-data's and the ordinary's era, in which the Russell's particulars, the Moore's proofs, the Sellars's myths, and the Austin's ridicule gave the given its trials; and the affordances's and the contents's era, in which the Gibson's ecology, the Dretske's knowing, the McDowell's spontaneity, and the Siegel's contents carried the perception into the mind's philosophy. It is concluded that the philosophy of perception is the epistemology's widest gate---and that its arc is the seeing's reading from the vision's theory to the content's debate.