Outline of "Vision, Representation, and Technology in Descartes"

Essay outline p. 63 Descartes's critique of vision:
1. rejection of illusion and by extension all visible world.
2. D. constructs the visible according to mental schematism
Properties of the visible are transferred onto the mental

Pt of essay: How D's ostensible rejection of illusion reflects the allegorical nature of truth enabling D to posit a concept of truth based on truth's homology to a mathematical model.

Falseness of perception:
Deception of senses --> inability to determine reality --> evil genius --> cogito
(thought alone)
Anamorphosis 66-67
Anam. is effort to rethink the visible by instrumentalzing pictorial perspective 66
Perspective was way of organizing knowledge and define its criteria

Perspective : Rationalizes, Normalizes vision
Anamorphosis: rejects visual semblanceform of things outside visible outline of things, Displaces viewing subject.

D. rejects interplay of illusion and truth in Plato's cave instead cutting off all visual reflection. Truth as allegory that abolishes all notion of allegory.
Move to INTELLECTUAL VISION (non-ocular) 68

From things to "compendious abbreviations." Perception replaced by conceptual devices. 68 whole paragraph.

*Dalia Judovitz shifts discussion about D. & anamorphosis:
Anamorphosis shows new relation to visible-visual form not as a given but as a conceptual and technical construct.' 69 So he assimulates anam. to fit with his rationalism founded on mathematical schematism.

Instrumentalism: D.'s use of vision is not human but rather technical, including optical devices such as tele- & micro-scope to realize knowledge of world. 70

Seeing Stick: Vision operates as a blind man's stick does. Mechanical.
Sensation of light = language. Nature gives signs.
As sign, visible no longer necessary register; instead we use another faculty to read the legible signs perceive in sight. Reduction to mathematical schema. *72

Vision is not mimetic, not according to picture model of sight.
Rather, visible is symbolic form. "Vision is merely a construct whose pictorial referent is the projection of a geometric-optical system." 73

Things are defined Not by Phenomenal Domain, but by adequation to Schema.

Wax Seal:
First in D's Rules:
Body as wax imprinted by object.
Modified as "common sense" mediates between external sense and mind. "modalities of impressions of external world are schematic rather than anchored in image" 75
Sense banished and imagination too. Objects reduced to compendium of schematic figures.

Second in Meditations: --shift in Wax Metaphor 77
Failure of experience to provide meaningful info. about world.
Material liquefaction of wax cast doubt on senses.
Only by abstracting forms of perception do we get proper Concept of wax.
Identity of wax not related to phenomenal world but in terms immaterial geometric and mechanical schematism.

Ex. of sun as perceived vs. as conceived. 79
*no longer natural world that informs reason but reason that imposes its character on nature.

The 1,000 Sided Object
Intellect's hypothetical mathematical object supersedes power of imagination. Sublime Intellect sublates and reinscribes imaginaiton.

Only the mind can produce "good pictures" 81-82
Intellect imposes its ORDER 82

A concept of truth that elides its own representational character 83

Ponty's response 84.