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    Made withinDC&Austin
    Humans have no direct access to things in the external wo... — Carmelics
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    Home/Skepticism
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    Humans have no direct access to things in the external world and immediately perceive only mental likenesses (species) of those things.

    PerceptionSkepticism
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The only way the mind can know external things is through species that resemble them.
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    • 2.Species are intermediate mental entities, not the external things themselves.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Direct realists (Reid, Austin) argue that perception is a causal relation to external objects, not a relation to intermediate mental entities.
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    • 2.Positing species as intermediaries generates an infinite regress: we would need further species to perceive the original species.
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    • 3.If we only ever perceive species, we lose any epistemic ground for claiming species resemble external things at all.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Intentionality, as Brentano and Husserl articulate it, allows mental acts to be directed at external objects without requiring numerically distinct intermediate entities.
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    • 2.The species theory conflates the content of a mental act with its object, a distinction Frege's sense/reference framework shows must be kept separate.
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    Topics

    SkepticismPerception

    Connections

    1 topic

    Consciousness & Mind2 linked

    Related

    Direct realists (Reid, Austin) argue that perception is a causal relation to ext...If we only ever perceive species, we lose any epistemic ground for claiming spec...Intentionality, as Brentano and Husserl articulate it, allows mental acts to be ...Positing species as intermediaries generates an infinite regress: we would need ...
    +3 moreShow less
    Species are intermediate mental entities, not the external things themselves.The only way the mind can know external things is through species that resemble ...The species theory conflates the content of a mental act with its object, a dist...

    Similar

    The human mind can only know the external world through species (menta...85%The only way the mind can know external things is through species that...83%Direct perception does not provide access to objects outside the mind.81%The reality of an external object cannot be established through direct...77%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: crathorn
    View source passageHide passage
    The problem of knowledge is at the very heart of Crathorn’s thought. Going back to Roger Bacon, he held that the only way the human mind is able to know the external world is through species that resemble it (I Sent. q. 1, concl. 4). Bacon’s theory of the multiplication of species (multiplicatio specierum) was developed to explain causality using the model of optics. A thing c has an effect on another thing e through the multiplication of species s from c towards e, just as light is multiplied t
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit