Justin Good

Against the backdrop of Wittgenstein's analyses of psychological concepts, this dissertation develops a philosophical approach to the study of visual perception. The objective of the dissertation is to clarify ways in which appeals to ordinary word usage can be brought to bear on the evaluation of theories of perception. Chapter One offers an interpretation of Wittgenstein's discussion of aspectual perception in the second part of the Philosophical Investigations. The main focus of the interpretation is the phenomenon of "conceptual raggedness" and its implications. Some immediate implications of this phenomenon are traced as grounds for criticisms of two explanatory models used in theoretical reconstructions of the concept of seeing. Chapter Two addresses the concept of visual qualia in terms of the idea that visual experience is, in some important sense, ineffable. An interpretation of Wittgenstein's private language arguments serves as a basis for criticism of Saul Kripke's sociological and Daniel Dennett's naturalistic interpretations of ineffability, construed as logically-private experience. The private language arguments are shown to save the phenomenon of ineffability by exposing an insight into the nature of visual expression. ;Chapter Three addresses the topic of causal explanations of seeing. An argument is mounted against Paul Grice's claim that genuine explanations of seeing involve reference to a causal relation. The interpretation of Grice is then broadened into an interpretation of programmatic naturalism in the philosophy of mind. A critique of scientism in psychological explanation is offered. Chapter Four examines in greater detail the relation between causal analysis and grammatical investigation by examining a contemporary psychological theory of visual syntax. A critique is leveled against an attempt by the cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman to offer an epistemology of perception on the basis of scientific research into early vision processing. This argument is developed into a qualified critique of syntactic conceptions of visual meaning. A short concluding postscript elaborates the 'positive' dimension of a Wittgensteinian-inspired philosophy of visual perception by offering an interpretation of his injunction to accept the ordinary language-game as instrumental in fostering philosophical freedom of a distinctive kind