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Chapter

Informed by “sense and reason”

Chapter

Informed by “sense and reason”

DOI link for Informed by “sense and reason”

Informed by “sense and reason” book

Margaret Cavendish’s theorizing about perception

Informed by “sense and reason”

DOI link for Informed by “sense and reason”

Informed by “sense and reason” book

Margaret Cavendish’s theorizing about perception
ByDeborah Boyle
BookThe Senses and the History of Philosophy

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Edition 1st Edition
First Published 2019
Imprint Routledge
Pages 18
eBook ISBN 9781315184418

ABSTRACT

One method Margaret Cavendish uses is something like inference to the best explanation, and so this may be what she mean by “regular sense and reason.” As Hobbes wrote in Leviathan: the cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling. Before examining how Cavendish appeals to ordinary perceptual phenomena to argue that pressure model of perception (PMP) is unacceptable, it will be helpful to sketch Cavendish’s own alternative theory of sense perception and how it fits into her broader natural-philosophical system. Cavendish’s texts thus support ascribing a third distinction to her, between two senses of “rational perception.” Cavendish’s alternative account of perception does agree with PMP in one respect, which is that sense perceptions are constituted by motions. The very existence of sense perceptions indicates that Hobbes’s PMP is an unacceptable theory, Cavendish argues.

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