Étienne Bonnot de Condillac [1714-1780] France
Sensationism: “Sensations are modifications of our being. To understand them as images of something distinct from us is to treat them as “ideas” rather than simply as “sensations,” and that is an operation that is so far from being automatic that it exceeds the capacities of animals.” Although they lend themselves to being thought.
Idea: Sensations are modifications of our being.
The structure of the eye illustrates the fact that organisms with eyes see the world by receiving light in a 2-dimensional pattern. But my experience of seeing is already in 3-dimensions. In his early work, Condillac did not explain how it was possible, but held that the mind saw from the beginning in 3-D (i.e. without even the need to learn).
Argued against examples of people who have cataracts removed to allow sight, by saying that “having a sensation does not imply being conscious of everything that sensation involves“. What’s more, “this act of attention is not an innate operation, any more than such higher cognitive operations as abstraction, judgment, or reasoning are innate operations. We need to learn how to attend to what we sense. Experience itself serves as our teacher. The operation of attention is invoked by our needs and interests.“
Idea: Awareness occupies a subset of sensation.
Idea: Awareness is not an innate operation. I learn to be aware.
E.g. The statue (in the thought experiment of a being that gains sensations one at a time) that gains vision and is presented simultaneously with red and green would obviously see these colours. But it would not see the boundary (e.g. the line) between the two colours. It has the information, but it is not aware of it.
Touch is necessary for forming the concept of space and spatial, external objects. Even as a precursor to developing a visual conception of space.
