Casey O'Callaghan

Many people fear losing one or more of their senses, and most fear losing some more than others. However, if a disability such as being without the use of a sense does not in the long run make a person worse off, then such fears may not seem reasonable, warranted, or apt. This paper argues that our senses are distinctive sources of value. In particular, our senses play an underappreciated axiological role. They figure deeply in our cares, concerns, and projects, and they are sources of final or non-instrumental value. Moreover, different senses comprise distinct collections of perceptual capacities that contribute in distinctive ways to a person’s cares, concerns, and projects. Therefore, from one’s present evaluative perspective, it makes sense to fear the loss of such a distinctive source of value, and it makes sense to fear the loss of some senses more than others, even if, after adapting, the loss of a sense does not impact one’s overall, long-term well-being.

Approaches to the perception–cognition distinction tend toward two extremes. Many embrace a hard border, treating perception and cognition as mutually exclusive, non-overlapping categories. By contrast, eliminativism denies that any principled, theoretically useful distinction exists between perception and cognition. This article offers a third way, describing a principled but soft border between perception and cognition. This non-exclusive approach differentiates perception from cognition while allowing that they overlap. Because it rests on the notion of a psychological capacity, we call it the capacities approach. Perception and cognition are distinct psychological faculties, each of which comprises a collection of psychological capacities. What unifies and differentiates each such collection is the distinctive way in which its capacities are exercised. Perceptual capacities are those that can be exercised in a stimulus-dependent manner, whereas cognitive capacities are those that can be exercised in a stimulus-independent manner. Because some capacities, including those associated with approximate number, language, and imagery, can be exercised in each such manner, some capacities belong to both perception and cognition. We argue that the capacities approach offers an illuminating taxonomy and handles both the empirical facts and the tricky cases better than its rivals.