Walter C. Murray Lecture: The Perceptual Emergence of the Self

Date: Friday, Sept. 27
Time: 5:30-7 pm
Location: Neatby-Timlin Theatre

This event is free and open to the public. Reception to follow in the foyer of Neatby-Timlin Theatre starting at 7 pm. 

About this event

Hosted by the University of Saskatchewan Department of Philosophy

The Perceptual Emergence of the Self
by Dr. Mohan Matthen (PhD)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto 

The great French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, insisted that neither the self nor the external world are inferred from perception—“The world is there,” he wrote, “prior to every analysis I could give of it. ” What does this mean?

Dr. Mohan Matthen (University of Toronto) will begin this talk with a live demonstration designed to give an intuitive grasp of the difference between perceptions in which “the world is there” and sensations in which there is no such appearance. In the former the self appears as one thing and the external world as another.

Matthen's aim is to explore this perceptual distinction. To this end, Matthen will show first that plants have elaborate sensory capacities, but that that these do not admit the difference between self and other. Then Matthen will argue, echoing Kant, that animals sense the outside world in a spatial framework. This is how they represent “the world as there.” Why do they have this spatial framework? Presumably because they move and find their way around their environment. So, it seems, our sense of self originates in perceptions we share with animals—perceptions that aid movement.

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