Spatial Perception between Philosophy and Psychology

Abstract

Abstract Spatial perception occupied an important place in the early years of Mind. It not only hosted Hermann von Helmholtz’s controversy with Jan Pieter Nicolaas Land over the Kantian theory of space (1876–8), but the following decade also saw a resurgence of interest in the debate between empiricist and nativist approaches to different physiological spaces. This chapter will provide an overview of the controversy initiated by Helmholtz and of the most significant contributions to the subsequent debate as published in Mind in the 1880s. It will be shown that, while the debate in the German-speaking world focused on novel attempts to conciliate a moderate version of empiricism with neo-Kantianism, in Mind Helmholtz’s empirical approach received less known but interesting criticisms, both from philosophers trying to defend the Kantian theory, and from proponents of a nativist account of spatial perception, including Land and William James.

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