According to Carneades' theory, the improvement of which our powers of perception are capable is not a matter of approaching the condition of perfect discrimination of self-evident impressions ever more closely; it consists instead in refining one's appreciation for the complicated relations between impressions in virtue of which they add to or detract from each other's value as evidence.
Since spatial relations cannot proceed directly to consciousness, spatial localization is possible only if the non-spatial representations are accompanied by "a qualitative property of some kind which the impression acquires … in virtue of the peculiar nature of the place at which it comes into contact with the body" (Micro, I, p. 309).
But if so, no impression could be self-warranting in virtue of the way in which its content was represented.
In its details, the view is strikingly similar to Aquinas's: Descartes identifies these ideas as the basis of our knowledge of first principles; he holds that the ideas themselves are formed only in virtue of sensory impressions; he identifies God as the ultimate source of these ideas.
Gyekye is quick to note that there are some Akan expressions and judgments about the life and conduct of people that appear to give the impression that personhood is something that is acquired or bestowed upon one in virtue of taken responsibility in the community.
On this view, objective empirical judgments (i.e., empirical judgments which purport to refer to objects rather than merely subjective seemings or connections of sense impressions, and which purport to be universally valid for all judging subjects) are endowed with their objectivity and generality in virtue of the a priori concepts embodied in the relevant forms of judgment.
In virtue of what, precisely, would you distinguish them aesthetically?
Some historical discussions of the representational properties of mind (e.g., Aristotle De Anima, Locke 1689/1975, Hume 1739/1978) seem to assume that nonconceptual representations — percepts ("impressions"), images ("ideas") and the like — are the only kinds of mental representations, and that the mind represents the world in virtue of being in states that resemble things in it.
And thus not in virtue of the satisfaction of (ii*).
