Tom Vinci (Dalhousie University): “Proposal for a New Theory of Environmental Direct Realism : Anne Conway, Quantum Mechanics and the Extromissive Theory of Perception.”

Abstract

The philosophical backstory is that perception verbs are to be understood as reporting the presence of an object to a subject. This view is standard in the Early Modern period and is making a comeback, e.g. in Brewer 2018. Our question is: How do we integrate the idea of presence-to-a-subject into the existing science of the day? According to Anne Conway, writing circa 1670, we can’t. Since we do have to fit the account into science, we need to change the science. She looks to the (ancient) extromissive theory of perception to do this. This is the project that I propose to reconstruct in the modern day with the aid of Quantum Mechanics.

The reconstruction has four main objectives. (1) To show how, in principle, we might construct a modern theory of perception that fits the mathematical and physical structure of Quantum Mechanics. (2) To show that perception, thus understood, can be understood as a theory of perceptual presence. (3) To show that a causal concept in Conway’s physics, the notion of intimate presence, has the causal properties of Quantum Entanglement. (4) To show that this theory is actually an extromissive account, with an intromissive trigger, just as Conway asserts.

Dal Philosophy is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88416974335