Coffey: Senses and Intellect #1

More from Peter Coffey's Epistemology; Or the Theory of Knowledge follows.

"Through the impressions produced on our senses by objects, the latter necessarily make us aware of them as they appear, even when they appear to us as otherwise than they really are. A straight stick, plunged in water, necessarily appears to the eye as bent; two plane pictures, seen through the stereoscope, necessarily appear as one solid object seen in perspective or relief; and so on. We can correct such illusions of course; but it is by intellect we correct them, not by sense: the deceived sense can never correct its own deception. Or rather, we should say, it can never correct the error:  the intellect judging spontaneously that such objects are as they appear.   [ ]
   "But while sense is thus necessitated in revealing to us how things appear, intellect is not necessitated by the mere sense impressions in judging how things are. Our sense-awareness or sense-consciousness of how things appear is not knowledge, it only furnishes the materials of knowledge, the data for interpretation. Knowledge proper is knowledge of how and what things are; it is attained only by judgment; and judgment has its immediate object the assertion of a nexus (of identity or non-identity) as real" (Vol. 1, 237-8).

His using necessarily seemed superfluous to me until he contrasted the senses with the intellect. In my opinion "not necessitated" sounds correct for judgment, but "necessitated" sounds a little off for the senses. Regarding the sense data as "given" and the judgment as "not given" sounds better to me.