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Discussion: Gestalt Switching: Hanson, Aronson, and Harré

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Edmond Wright
Edmond Wright*
Affiliation:
This discussion takes up an attack by Jerrold Aronson (seconded by Rom Harré) on the use made by Norwood R. Hanson of the Gestalt-Switch Analogy in the philosophy of science. Aronson's understanding of what is implied in a gestalt switch is shown to be flawed. In his endeavor to detach conceptual understanding from perceptual identification he cites several examples, without realizing the degree to which such gestalt switches can affect conceptualizing or how conceptualizing can affect gestalts. In particular, he has not confronted the possibility of such gestalt selection being involved in the basic identification of what we term “entities”
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Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 480 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Send reprint requests to the author, Swedish Collegium for the Advanced Study of the Social Sciences, Götavägen 4, Uppsala, S - 752 36, SWEDEN.

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