Chapter 2 is about perception. I rank it as the best chapter in the book. His treatment is more elaborate than Ayn Rand's, but very coherent with it and there is little disagreement. They differ slightly on how sensations or sensory input are integrated into perceptions.
Some key points follow.
- Perception is axiomatic. It is our primary, basic contact with the world.
- Perception is inerrant and the foundation of all knowledge. Any errors are conceptual.
- We are aware of existence as a unified whole, not involving our consciously constructing things to be aware of existence.
- Perceptual content is automated, a biological given, not subject to volitional control. We have some control over attention but not content.
- He appeals to the direct realism of J. J. Gibson.
A rather unique feature is his distinction form vs. object. He traces it back to Thomas Aquinas. Leonard Peikoff made the same distinction in OPAR, but not as strongly as Binswanger does.
My aside: this use of form is very different from Aristotle's. Aristotle famously held that every physical object is a compound of matter and form. Binswanger uses form to mean the nature of perceptual awareness.
He tackles many of the topics often discussed by philosophers regarding perception: hallucination, naïve realism, representationalism, and appearance versus reality.
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