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E-mail:
goesta.groenroos@
philosophy.su.se
Gösta Grönroos obtained his M.A. degree at Stockholm University in 1995 and was admitted as a graduate student in philosophy the same year. Ph.D. 2001.
Plato on perceptual cognition
The purpose of the study is to sort out Plato’s views on perceptual cognition. Plato is a watershed in the history of the philosophy of perception and the first thinker to be fully aware of the philosophical problems in understanding perceptual cognition. His interest in the matter has its source in worries over the part played by reason in perceptual cognition. His forerunners and contemporaries conceived of cognitive processes in terms of corporeal changes and attempted to explain perceptual cognition in causal terms. But such accounts seem incapable of accommodating the freedom of reason: we do not always think that things are the way they strike us through the senses. Plato’s main target is Protagoras and he accuses him of conflating different cognitive phenomena; he suggests that Protagoras’ ‘man the measure’ thesis is based on the conflation of sense perception (aisthesis), belief (doxa) and appearing (phantasia). In addition, Plato suggests that Protagoras’ position amounts to the view that we form beliefs in a non-rational way. It will be shown how Plato takes issue with Protagoras by disentangling these three cognitive phenomena. I argue that Plato’s way of understanding these notions leaves room for the possibility that reason can play a part in perceptual cognition and that it is within our freedom to arrive at beliefs in a rational way. In particular, it will be shown that in so far as perceptual cognition has a propositional structure and presupposes possession of concepts reason can play a part in it.
The study centres on Plato’s later writings: the Theaetetus, the Sophist, the Timaeus and the Philebus. In addition to sorting out this first serious effort to account for perceptual cognition the study sheds new light on Plato’s later thinking. It should be of interest to anyone interested in the philosophy of perception, cognitive psychology and their history, rationality, concepts, Plato, ancient philosophy and the history of philosophy.