The Role of Material Impressions in Reid's Theory of Vision: A Critique of Gideon Yaffe's “Reid on the Perception of the Visible Figure”

Abstract

The Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 1 (2) 2003, 117–133 ISSN 1479-6651 Reid maintained that the perceptions that we obtain from the senses of smell, taste, hearing, and touch are “suggested” by corresponding sensations. However, he made an exception for the sense of vision. According to Reid, our perceptions of the real figure, position, and magnitude of bodies are suggested by their visible appearances, which are not sensations but objects of perception in their own right. These visible appearances have figure, position, and magnitude, as well as “colour”, and up to now, the standard view among Reid scholars (including one of us) has been that Reid maintained that our perceptions of visible figure, position, and magnitude are also not suggested by any sensation. They are instead suggested by the material impression made by light on the retina. In what follows, we refer to this as the “standard interpretation” of Reid’s position on the perception of visible figure. Gideon Yaffe challenges the standard interpretation. According to Yaffe, Reid believed that our perceptions of visible figure are suggested by corresponding visual sensations, specifically, by sensations of color. This is a good thing, according to Yaffe, because the standard interpretation is “implausible”. The most valuable feature of Yaffe’s paper is the attention it draws to a number of passages that pose problems for proponents of the standard interpretation. Yaffe shows that the passages that appear to endorse the standard interpretation contain incidental comments that render their interpretation questionable, and he also shows that there are passages where Reid appears to endorse what we call (for the sake of contrast), the Yaffe interpretation – that our perceptions of visible figure are suggested by sensations of color. At the very least, therefore, Yaffe has posed an interpretative difficulty for those wishing to endorse the standard interpretation. We do not think that this difficulty is insuperable, however. We also think that the Yaffe interpretation could not possibly be correct. In what follows we do two main things: First, we look at the problem of the perception of visible figure independently of reference to the texts where Reid