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Mobility Technologies for Visually Impaired People Through the Prism of Classic Theories of Perception

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Mobility of Visually Impaired People

Abstract

What, if anything, do the classic philosophies of perception have to tell us about technical objects, which, from the cane to more contemporary devices, aim to facilitate the mobility of the visually impaired? Is it possible that we should just leave these philosophies where we most often class them, that is, in the past synonymous with passé?

Where does the blind man’s self begin? At the tip of the stick? At the handle of the stick? Or at some point halfway up the stick?

Gregory Bateson

This chapter has been translated from French into English by Collette Alexander (ENS Lyon), whom we thank warmly.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On this point, see Marion [7, 28] and Le Ru [26]. On the topic of the Cartesian use of the figure of the blind man with the stick for thinking more generally on the transmission of movement, see Le Ru [27].

  2. 2.

    See notably Lenay et al. [25].

  3. 3.

    Merleau–Ponty writes: “The Cartesian model of vision is modelled after the sense of touch” (ibid.). This reading is also that of M. Serres, but rejected by Cavaillé. Cf. [7, 34].

  4. 4.

    Cf. Merleau–Ponty, ibid., p. 136 : “(…) the vision upon which I reflect ; I cannot think it except as thought, the mind’s inspection, judgment (…)”.

  5. 5.

    On this point, we thus join Alquié [1, p. 429], for whom the “natural geometry” evoked by Descartes about the blind man with the stick is neither a conscious nor unconscious calculation, but a “mysterious effect by which the bodily dispositions give sense-experience and knowledge to the soul what it must sense and know” (our translation). Quoted in Cavaillé [7, p. 117].

  6. 6.

    This is also how J.-P. Cavaillé assesses these pages of the Optics [7, pp. 62–65].

  7. 7.

    Cf. the Description on the human body, in which Descartes treats the operation of the five senses one after the other, and explains the differences in sensations they occasion by the specificity of nerves that constitute them.

  8. 8.

    The fact that state-of-the-art canes exist today gives confirmation on this point, Cf. Pissaloux and Velazquez [32].

  9. 9.

    Cf. Bach-y-Rita [3], Declerck et al. [14, p. 253].

  10. 10.

    Ibid.

  11. 11.

    Cf. Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Rule XII.

  12. 12.

    Cf. [11], the chapter entitled “Le surgissement temporel de la sensation”.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    But not “despite us” as found in other natural judgements in Malebranche.

  15. 15.

    According to the now adopted formula from Marion [28, p. 254].

  16. 16.

    The researcher thus estimates that a kind of sensations is not determined by the organ they issue from, nor by the subjective experience of the subject that receives them but by the type of stimulus that occasions them.

  17. 17.

    Cf. Reich et al. [33].

  18. 18.

    Descartes [21, p. 113]: “Thought. I use this term to include everything that is within us in such a way that we are immediately aware of it”.

  19. 19.

    Descartes [23, art. XVII].

  20. 20.

    Cf. Chottin [10].

  21. 21.

    The problem seems to come from the fact that, according to the Cartesian theory of perceptual learning, these are not natural perceptions, entirely conscious, which allow the attainment of artificial perceptions, but only the cerebral movements, which are unperceived.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., p. 30.

  23. 23.

    1754, p. 155: “(…) I forewarn the reader that it is very important to put himself exactly in the place of the statue we are going to observe”.

  24. 24.

    Condillac [12, p. 253].

  25. 25.

    Ibid., p. 279: “It is the hand that, guiding vision successively over the different parts of a shape, etches all these parts in memory; it is the hand that, so to say, guides the engraving tool when the eyes begin to attribute to the exterior the light and colours that they have first experienced as in themselves”. Our emphasis.

  26. 26.

    Here we are far from the alleged passivity of the body, but also of the mind, to which classic empiricism would be condemned.

  27. 27.

    This principle also works for sounds, and the other sensible qualities.

  28. 28.

    Condillac [12, p. 234].

  29. 29.

    On the relationships between semiotic conceptions and geometric conceptions of perception, see [8].

  30. 30.

    From here it is a matter of proprioceptive sensations.

  31. 31.

    On this notion of sensorimotor schemas, see Lenay et al., op. cit.

  32. 32.

    In the debate that sees contemporary researchers in opposition on this subject, our philosophers would thus agree with Degenaar [15], Warren et al. [35], and find Bach-y-Rita [3] and [31] erroneous.

  33. 33.

    For example, see [13].

  34. 34.

    On his side, Descartes only indicated, on the topic of his blind tailor and manual exploration, that he “does not judge a body to be double although he touches it with his two hands” (18, 19, p. 170)—without describing the process which according to him arises out of bypassing the laws of the union.

  35. 35.

    We specify here that this is not exactly what Condillac maintained. The reasoning that his statue performs does not carry over pre-existing objective data—we will see that he does not fall into the circle that Merleau–Ponty implicitly denounces here.

  36. 36.

    On the idea that such a “meaning” can be interpreted in rationalist terms, and thus take part in the contemporary quarrel over conceptual contents of perception, see Bimbenet [6], in particular p. 22.

  37. 37.

    It would seem that Merleau–Ponty has never read Condillac.

  38. 38.

    On the Merleau-Pontian critique of intellectualism, see L. Angelino [2]

  39. 39.

    Cf. ‘The Plan of This Work’, p. 171: “Judgement, reflection, desires, passions and so forth are only sensation itself differently transformed”.

  40. 40.

    “In the gaze we have at our disposal a natural instrument analogous to the blind man’s stick” [29, p. 153]. “I have only to see something to know how to reach it and deal with it” [30, p. 124].

  41. 41.

    On the relationships between ICT and philosophical theories, see, for example, Declerck, op. cit., p. 207.

  42. 42.

    P. 28: “(…) the two doctrines, then, have this idea in common that attention creates nothing, since a world of impressions in itself or a universe of determining thought are equally independent of the action of mind”.

  43. 43.

    On the persistence of a certain dualism in Merleau–Ponty, see Barbaras [5, pp. 94–95].

  44. 44.

    On the reversal of the form/consciousness relationship in later Merleau-Ponty, see Barbaras 4, p. 162.

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  1. IHRIM, ENS and CNRS, Lyon, France

    Marion Chottin

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  1. Université de Rouen Normandie, Rouen, France

    Edwige Pissaloux

  2. Universidad Panamericana, Aguascalientes, Mexico

    Ramiro Velazquez

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Chottin, M. (2018). Mobility Technologies for Visually Impaired People Through the Prism of Classic Theories of Perception. In: Pissaloux, E., Velazquez, R. (eds) Mobility of Visually Impaired People. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54446-5_3

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