[PDF] Direct Perception eBook

Author : Tim Crane
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 43,40 MB
Release : 1992-03-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0521417279

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The nature of perception has long been a central question in philosophy. It is of crucial importance not just in the philosophy of mind, but also in epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of science. The essays in this 1992 volume not only offer fresh answers to some of the traditional problems of perception, but also examine the subject in light of contemporary research on mental content. A substantial introduction locates the essays within the recent history of the subject, and demonstrates the links between them. The Contents of Experience brings together some prominent philosophers in the field, and offers a major statement on a problem central to current philosophical thinking. Notable contributors include Christopher Peacocke, Brian O'Shaughnessy and Michael Tye.

Author : J. Christopher Maloney
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 43,80 MB
Release : 2018-06-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0190854774

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Naturalistic cognitive science, when realistically rendered, rightly maintains that to think is to deploy contentful mental representations. Accordingly, conscious perception, memory, and anticipation are forms of cognition that, despite their introspectively manifest differences, may coincide in content. Sometimes we remember what we saw; other times we predict what we will see. Why, then, does what it is like consciously to perceive, differ so dramatically from what it is like merely to recall or anticipate the same? Why, if thought is just representation, does the phenomenal character of seeing a sunset differ so stunningly from the tepid character of recollecting or predicting the sun's descent? J. Christopher Maloney argues that, unlike other cognitive modes, perception is in fact immediate, direct acquaintance with the object of thought. Although all mental representations carry content, the vehicles of perceptual representation are uniquely composed of the very objects represented. To perceive the setting sun is to use the sun and its properties to cast a peculiar cognitive vehicle of demonstrative representation. This vehicle's embedded referential term is identical with, and demonstrates, the sun itself. And the vehicle's self-attributive demonstrative predicate is itself forged from a property of that same remote star. So, in this sense, the perceiving mind is an extended mind. Perception is unbrokered cognition of what is real, exactly as it really is. Maloney's theory of perception will be of great interest in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Author : Alva Noë
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 644 pages
File Size : 33,15 MB
Release : 2002-10-25
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780262640473

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The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems—What is perception? What is the nature of perceptual consciousness? How can one fit an account of perceptual experience into a broader account of the nature of the mind and the world?—are at the heart of metaphysics. Rather than try to cover all of the many strands in the philosophy of perception, this book focuses on a particular orthodoxy about the nature of visual perception. The central problem for visual science has been to explain how the brain bridges the gap between what is given to the visual system and what is actually experienced by the perceiver. The orthodox view of perception is that it is a process whereby the brain, or a dedicated subsystem of the brain, builds up representations of relevant figures of the environment on the basis of information encoded by the sensory receptors. Most adherents of the orthodox view also believe that for every conscious perceptual state of the subject, there is a particular set of neurons whose activities are sufficient for the occurrence of that state. Some of the essays in this book defend the orthodoxy; most criticize it; and some propose alternatives to it. Many of the essays are classics. Contributors G.E.M. Anscombe, Dana Ballard, Daniel Dennett, Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, H.P. Grice, David Marr, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Zenon Pylyshyn, Paul Snowdon, and P.F. Strawson

Author : Irvin Rock
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 22,70 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780262181778

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This posthumous volume, the culmination of a long and distinguished career, brings together an original essay by the author together with a careful selection of previously published articles (most by Rock) on the theory that perception is an indirect process in which visual experience is derived by inference, rather than being directly and independently determined by retinal stimulation.

Author : D. Gram
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 28,51 MB
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9400969082

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or their surfaces can be translated without remainder into descriptions of ob jects that are neither material objects or surfaces of any material object. All of these claims have historically conspired to discredit Direct Realism. But Direct Realism can accommodate all of the premises of the three argu ments without admitting any of their conclusions. Inferential perceptual knowl edge assumes a kind of knowledge that is not inferential. Without this assump tion, we are given a vicious infinite regress. But this is compatible with the fact that any case of non-inferential knowledge has a material objeCt as its object. The fact ofinfallible perceptual awareness fails to discredit DireCt Realism for similar reasons. Infallibility is a characteristic, not of the objects which we perceive, but rather of the acts by which we perceive them. And this permits an object of such awareness to be either material or something other than material. It does not fol low from the fact of infallibility that the objects of awareness must be other than material objects. And, finally, the fact of translatability shows at most that we either can or must simultaneously perceive material objects and entities which are not material objects. It does not show that the perception of the one is the same as the perception of the other. The entire argument rests, as we shall learn, on an illicit assimilation of the notions of sameness and equivalence.

Author : James Jerome Gibson
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 40,82 MB
Release : 1986
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780898599596

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This is a book about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do. The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision -- and what this book is about.

Author : J. Christopher Maloney
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 19,7 MB
Release : 2018-06-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0190854766

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Naturalistic cognitive science, when realistically rendered, rightly maintains that to think is to deploy contentful mental representations. Accordingly, conscious perception, memory, and anticipation are forms of cognition that, despite their introspectively manifest differences, may coincide in content. Sometimes we remember what we saw; other times we predict what we will see. Why, then, does what it is like consciously to perceive, differ so dramatically from what it is like merely to recall or anticipate the same? Why, if thought is just representation, does the phenomenal character of seeing a sunset differ so stunningly from the tepid character of recollecting or predicting the sun's descent? J. Christopher Maloney argues that, unlike other cognitive modes, perception is in fact immediate, direct acquaintance with the object of thought. Although all mental representations carry content, the vehicles of perceptual representation are uniquely composed of the very objects represented. To perceive the setting sun is to use the sun and its properties to cast a peculiar cognitive vehicle of demonstrative representation. This vehicle's embedded referential term is identical with, and demonstrates, the sun itself. And the vehicle's self-attributive demonstrative predicate is itself forged from a property of that same remote star. So, in this sense, the perceiving mind is an extended mind. Perception is unbrokered cognition of what is real, exactly as it really is. Maloney's theory of perception will be of great interest in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Author : A. D. Smith
Publisher : Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 20,85 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Perception (Philosophy)
ISBN : 9788120820241

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In a major Contribution to the theory of perception, A.D.Smith presents a truly original defense of direct realism the view that in perception we are directly aware of things in a physical world. It offers two arguements against direct realism-one conceening illusion, and one concerning hallueination that upto now no theory of perception could adequately rebut.At the heart of Smiths theory is a new way of drawing the distinction between perception and sensation alone with an unusual treatment of the nature of object of halluecination .