5 May: Gottfried Vosgerau (Düsseldorf) — “The Dynamic Nature of Experience”
Sala Enzo Paci, Via Festa del Perdono 7, h. 15.00-17.00.
Abstract: I will argue that all properties we perceive are dynamic in nature, since we perceive them while interacting with the world. However, in order to distinguish between self-produced perceptions and perceptions of properties “out there”, we have to take into account our own movements and their effects with their dynamic properties. Thus, perception (in the classical sense of perceiving properties “out there”) would not be possible without the inherent perception of time. I will develop a non-ecological notion of affordances that formally captures this idea and is able to explain cognitive development. Although further abstraction can lead us to grasp concepts of properties that are not inherently dynamic, the experiential basis is. This can be generalized to all properties we can measure and empirically explore. This view, I conclude, leaves us with the perception of time being a precondition for perception of objective properties. So, we are forced to adopt either a speculative Kantian picture conceiving of time as a “form of apperception” bringing the necessary ordering into the messy manifold, or a less speculative (or at least more intuitive because more naive) account that holds the manifold we call the world to be itself structured by time, which we are able to experience.