The philosophy of perceptions a Wittgensteinian perspective

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to balance a positive account of the family of concepts included in and logically involved with the concept of perception, with critical considerations of accounts that are philosophically problematic. The problematic accounts in question will range from those of Wittgenstein’s contemporaries, or near contemporaries, such as Russell, Janes and Kohler, to those of psychologists and philosophers of our own time, some, but not all, of whom profess to embrace Wittgenstein’s position; these will include the authors of a standard textbook on visual perception (Bruce and Green), Quine, Peacocke, Vesey, Anscombe, Martin, McDowell, Mulhall and Candlish, Additionally, the general nature of the problems in question will be reflected in a positive account of the concepts of acceleration (chapter 1), identity and personal identity (chapter 5), in relation to problematic accounts given by Leibniz and Parfit respectively. Crucial to this aim will be an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s position that is distinct from all those positions that profess to be Wittgensteinian, but that in fact remain in the grip of the very Cartesian / empiricist preconceptions that Wittgenstein diagnoses as the source of the problems. This will be the key to the positive account, and will depend on showing that Wittgenstein's diagnosis is essentially the same for all problems of a philosophical nature, despite its highly specific application to problems concerning various concepts in different parts of the Investigations, whose subtle differences it is equally important to discern clearly.