Perceptual Categories Derived from Reid's "Common Sense" Philosophy

Area of Science:

• Philosophy of Mind
• Cognitive Science
• Epistemology

Background:

• Thomas Reid's 18th-century 'common sense' philosophy distinguished perception from other mental states.
• Empirical research often overlooks these nuanced distinctions in perception and experience.
• Existing literature lacks a systematic framework for categorizing diverse mental experiences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To extend Thomas Reid's framework to eleven distinct mental categories.
• To analyze the relationship between perception and other experiential categories.
• To introduce a novel 'computational philosophy' approach for analyzing mental dependencies.

Main Methods:

• Categorization of eleven distinct mental experiences, building on Reid's philosophy.
• Scoring each category based on five properties abstracted from Reid's work.
• Formation of a 5x11 matrix to enable statistical analysis of category interdependencies.

Main Results:

• A comprehensive matrix detailing eleven mental categories and five experiential properties.
• Demonstration of statistical measures for quantifying mutual dependencies between mental categories.
• Identification of potential empirical relevance for philosophical distinctions in cognitive research.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework offers a systematic method for analyzing diverse mental experiences.
• Computational analysis of mental category dependencies provides novel insights.
• Revisiting philosophical distinctions can inform and advance current cognitive science research.