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Rationality in Perception: Transformations of Mind and Cognition 1250-1550

Fact Sheet

Reporting

Results

Objective

The project RiP aims to provide a groundbreaking new interpretation of late medieval theories of mind and cognition by focusing on the influence higher cognitive (rational) powers exert on lower (sensory) ones in the neglected tradition of Augustinian philosophy of perception.

Due to increasing difficulties in explaining the unity and objectivity of perceptual experience, late medieval authors came to question the dominant Aristotelian theory, with its passive account of perception and emphatic separation between sensory and intellectual functions. This led to a resurfacing of the Augustinian tradition, which is characterized by an emphasis on activity and top-down processing, built around the notions of intentionality and self-awareness.

The project investigates the hypothesis that perception changes from being explained on the basis of a model of the soul that is metaphysically composite of really distinct clusters of functions to a model in which rationality permeates the functions previously attributed to lower cognitive capacities. It is the 'flow of reason', an expression found in a late sixteenth-century textbook.

The project has therefore two main objectives:
(1) to offer the first systematic study of late medieval theories of perception, focusing on the relation between the senses and intellect
(2) to retrace the shift in late medieval philosophy of perception that led to (a) a progressive questioning of direct realism in cognition and (b) the incremental reduction of all psychological functions to the mind.

The results of the project will allow a better understanding of the philosophical assumptions of late medieval theories of cognition, shedding new light on the historical background of early modern and contemporary conceptions of rationality.

Programme(s)

H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Topic(s)

ERC-StG-2014 - ERC Starting Grant

Call for proposal

ERC-2014-STG

See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Host institution

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO

Address

Yliopistonkatu 3
00014 Helsingin Yliopisto

Finland

Activity type

Higher or Secondary Education Establishments

EU Contribution

€ 1 415 627,50

Website

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Beneficiaries (1)

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HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO

Finland

EU Contribution

€ 1 415 627,50

Project information

RiP

Grant agreement ID: 637747

Project website

Status

Ongoing project

Start date

1 April 2015
End date

31 March 2020

Funded under:

H2020-EU.1.1.

Overall budget:

€ 1 415 627,50
EU contribution

€ 1 415 627,50

Hosted by:

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO

Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RiP (Rationality in Perception: Transformations of Mind and Cognition 1250-1550)

Reporting period: 2016-10-01 to 2018-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Central to the question of how we come to know the external world, objects and their properties, are the processes through which this information is acquired, interpreted, identified, stored. The ways to account for these different aspects have varied throughout the history of philosophy. Medieval authors shared the belief in human capability to perceive the world as it is both because they believed that we share with the world the same metaphysical structures – matter and form, substance and accident – and because we are naturally endowed with the necessary cognitive powers to grasp how things are. Perception is, in the context of the dominant Aristotelian philosophy of perception, understood as a particular case of a general theory of causation. But medieval thinkers were intrigued about the cognitive mechanisms that made it possible to be aware not just of isolated qualities but of objects endowed with certain specific properties. Although scholars have dwelt into medieval accounts of these mechanisms and the powers responsible for them, the precise nature of the relation between the senses and intellect remains to be thoroughly investigated. The present project investigates the roots of this question in late medieval theories of perception, especially in the period ca. 1250-1550.

The project is led by the research hypothesis of whether the development of a unified view of the mind is associated with an active account of perception in the Augustinian tradition. In order to do this, the project investigates the relation between the senses and intellect interact in perception-related functions, how are non-veridical perceptual experiences (hallucinations, sensory illusions) explained, what is the role (if any) of imagination and the cogitative power in actual in actual perception, whether judgment of any sort occurs with perception as in the perspectivist model of visual sensations, etc. The project has two main objectives:

(1) to offer the first systematic study of late medieval theories of perception, focusing on the relation between the senses and intellect

(2) to retrace the shift in late medieval philosophy of perception that led to the (a) progressive questioning of direct realism in cognition and (b) incremental reduction of all psychological functions to the mind.

With that purpose in mind, the research focuses on four main interconnected areas of inquiry:

A) The role of reason in perceptual experience, that is to say how human perception becomes increasingly intellectualized in late medieval theories of cognition. The project investigates the hypothesis that by the late medieval period a theory of the mind emerged according to which the borders between these different functions became blurred and how existing content and structures influence the way sensory information is acquired. This explains the puzzle in historical philosophical research of the constitution of a conception of psychological functions characterized by an all-encompassing rationality, namely the interference of higher cognitive resources at basic sensory level.

B) The nature of perceptual experience: this line of research will focus on medieval debates over the veridical versus illusory perception; this will be done in an original way, by approaching the issue from the viewpoint of the functional partition of the soul, that is to say the relation between the different capacities (powers or faculties in medieval parlance). This also includes the issue of self-awareness in the perceptual process.

C) The metaphysical issue of the compositional versus simple nature of the soul: this concerns the ontology of soul, i.e. the nature of the structures and operations of mental life that is relevant to understand what kind of entity the mind is and how it operates. It includes also the issue of the distinction between human and non-rational animals.

D) The active versus passive nature of perception: this will offer the first systematic mapp

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Project information

RiP

Grant agreement ID: 637747

Project website

Status

Ongoing project

Start date

1 April 2015
End date

31 March 2020

Funded under:

H2020-EU.1.1.

Overall budget:

€ 1 415 627,50
EU contribution

€ 1 415 627,50

Hosted by:

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO

Deliverables

Deliverables not available

Publications

Peer reviewed articles (8)

Nicholas of Cusa on Rational Perception

Author(s): Christian Kny and José Filipe Silva

Published in: Bulletin de philosophie médiévale, Issue 59, 2018, Page(s) 177-213, ISSN 0068-4023

Intentionality in Medieval Augustinianism

Author(s): José Filipe Silva

Published in: Phänomenologische Forschungen, 2018, Page(s) 25-43, ISSN 0342-8117

II—Perceptiveness

Author(s): José Filipe Silva

Published in: Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Issue 91/1, 2017, Page(s) 43-61, ISSN 0309-7013

DOI: 10.1093/arisup/akw019

La perception sensorielle et la physiologie du savoir. Manuel du fin XVe siecle MS Wurzburg, UB, M ch f. 118

Author(s): Annemieke Verboon

Published in: Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 2018, Page(s) 29, ISSN 0335-5985

Robert Kilwardby on Negative Judgement

Author(s): José Filipe Silva

Published in: Topoi, 2019, ISSN 0167-7411

DOI: 10.1007/s11245-018-9577-x

L'Attention dans la Philosophie de l'Esprit de John Locke

Author(s): Vili Lähteenmäki

Published in: Les Études Philosophiques, 2017, Page(s) 73-86, ISSN 0014-2166

Introduction: Assimilation and Representation in Medieval Theories of Cognition

Author(s): José Filipe Silva and Christina Thornqvist

Published in: Vivarium, Issue 57, 3-4, 2019, Page(s) 223-243, ISSN 0042-7543

Internalismi, eksternalismi ja keskiaikainen havaintofilosofia

Author(s): Juhana Toivanen & José Filipe Silva

Published in: Niin & Näin, 2017, ISSN 1237-1645

Book chapters (2)

Konnen Tiere irren? Philosophische Antworten aus dem 13. und 14. Jahrhundert.

Author(s): Anselm Oelze

Published in: Irrtum – Error – Erreur. Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 2018, Page(s) 179-194

Geschichte der Tierethik: Mittelalter

Author(s): Anselm Oelze

Published in: Erschienen in: Handbuch Tierethik. Grundlagen - Kontexte - Perspektiven, 2018

Non-peer reviewed articles (1)

Notule libri Priorum

Author(s): José Filipe Silva

Published in: History and Philosophy of Logic, Issue 38/4, 2017, Page(s) 388-390, ISSN 0144-5340

DOI: 10.1080/01445340.2017.1362760

Thesis dissertations (1)

Theories of Animal Rationality in the Later Middle Ages

Author(s): Anselm Oelze

Published in: 2016

Other (1)

Havaitsemisesta

Author(s): José Filipe Silva

Published in: Tahiti: Taidehistoria tieteenä, Issue 4 per year, 2015

Project information

RiP

Grant agreement ID: 637747

Project website

Status

Ongoing project

Start date

1 April 2015
End date

31 March 2020

Funded under:

H2020-EU.1.1.

Overall budget:

€ 1 415 627,50
EU contribution

€ 1 415 627,50

Hosted by:

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO

Project information

RiP

Grant agreement ID: 637747

Project website

Status

Ongoing project

Start date

1 April 2015
End date

31 March 2020

Funded under:

H2020-EU.1.1.

Overall budget:

€ 1 415 627,50
EU contribution

€ 1 415 627,50

Hosted by:

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO

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Last update: 24 November 2016

Record number: 193521

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Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RiP (Rationality in Perception: Transformations of Mind and Cognition 1250-1550)

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Publications

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