Author: Berit Brogaard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199395241
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Within the contemporary philosophical debates over the nature of perception, the question of whether perception has content in the first place recently has become a focus of discussion. The most common view is that it does, but a number of philosophers have questioned this claim. The issue immediately raises a number of related questions. What does it mean to say that perception has content? Does perception have more than one kind of content? Does perceptual content derive from the content of beliefs or judgments? Should perceptual content be understood in terms of accuracy conditions? Is naive realism compatible with holding that perception has content? This volume brings together philosophers representing many different perspectives to address these and other central questions in the philosophy of perception.
Does Perception Have Content?
Author: Berit Brogaard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199395241
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Within the contemporary philosophical debates over the nature of perception, the question of whether perception has content in the first place recently has become a focus of discussion. The most common view is that it does, but a number of philosophers have questioned this claim. The issue immediately raises a number of related questions. What does it mean to say that perception has content? Does perception have more than one kind of content? Does perceptual content derive from the content of beliefs or judgments? Should perceptual content be understood in terms of accuracy conditions? Is naive realism compatible with holding that perception has content? This volume brings together philosophers representing many different perspectives to address these and other central questions in the philosophy of perception.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199395241
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Within the contemporary philosophical debates over the nature of perception, the question of whether perception has content in the first place recently has become a focus of discussion. The most common view is that it does, but a number of philosophers have questioned this claim. The issue immediately raises a number of related questions. What does it mean to say that perception has content? Does perception have more than one kind of content? Does perceptual content derive from the content of beliefs or judgments? Should perceptual content be understood in terms of accuracy conditions? Is naive realism compatible with holding that perception has content? This volume brings together philosophers representing many different perspectives to address these and other central questions in the philosophy of perception.
Perception and Its Objects
Author: Dr. Bill Brewer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199260257
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Book Description
Bill Brewer presents, motivates, and defends a bold new solution to a fundamental problem in the philosophy of perception. What is the correct theoretical conception of perceptual experience, and how should we best understand the most fundamental nature of our perceptual relation with the physical objects in the world around us? Most theorists today analyse perception in terms of its representational content, in large part in order to avoid fatal problems attending the early modern conception of perception as a relation with particular mind-dependent objects of experience. Having set up the underlying problem and explored the lessons to be learnt from the various difficulties faced by opposing early modern responses to it, Bill Brewer argues that this contemporary approach has serious problems of its own. Furthermore, the early modern insight that perception is most fundamentally to be construed as a relation of conscious acquaintance with certain direct objects of experience is, he claims, perfectly consistent with the commonsense identification of such direct objects with persisting mind-independent physical objects themselves. Brewer here provides a critical, historical account of the philosophy of perception, in order to present a defensible vindication of empirical realism.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199260257
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Book Description
Bill Brewer presents, motivates, and defends a bold new solution to a fundamental problem in the philosophy of perception. What is the correct theoretical conception of perceptual experience, and how should we best understand the most fundamental nature of our perceptual relation with the physical objects in the world around us? Most theorists today analyse perception in terms of its representational content, in large part in order to avoid fatal problems attending the early modern conception of perception as a relation with particular mind-dependent objects of experience. Having set up the underlying problem and explored the lessons to be learnt from the various difficulties faced by opposing early modern responses to it, Bill Brewer argues that this contemporary approach has serious problems of its own. Furthermore, the early modern insight that perception is most fundamentally to be construed as a relation of conscious acquaintance with certain direct objects of experience is, he claims, perfectly consistent with the commonsense identification of such direct objects with persisting mind-independent physical objects themselves. Brewer here provides a critical, historical account of the philosophy of perception, in order to present a defensible vindication of empirical realism.
Perception and Its Content
Author: Daniel Kalpokas
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666923559
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Book Description
What is perception? What is, if any, its content? What is the contribution of perception to knowledge? Perception and Its Content: Toward the Propositional Attitude View argues that perception has conceptual, propositional, and world-dependent content. After criticizing those theories of experience that conceive it as contentless (the causal-linkage approach and naïve realism), the book examines the nature of perceptual content. Daniel Kalpokas critically scrutinizes different varieties of non-conceptualism and claims that the content of experience is partly conceptual. Perception and Its Content defends the propositional-attitude view, according to which perceptual content is propositional in nature, and explores the world-dependent character of such content. Kalpokas holds that the content of experience is composed of concepts and the presented objects, such as they appear from the subject’s point of view and determined environmental conditions. According to this view, perception provides non-inferential knowledge of the truth-makers of our judgments and beliefs. Furthermore, and importantly, that view sheds light on how the mind relates to the world.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666923559
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Book Description
What is perception? What is, if any, its content? What is the contribution of perception to knowledge? Perception and Its Content: Toward the Propositional Attitude View argues that perception has conceptual, propositional, and world-dependent content. After criticizing those theories of experience that conceive it as contentless (the causal-linkage approach and naïve realism), the book examines the nature of perceptual content. Daniel Kalpokas critically scrutinizes different varieties of non-conceptualism and claims that the content of experience is partly conceptual. Perception and Its Content defends the propositional-attitude view, according to which perceptual content is propositional in nature, and explores the world-dependent character of such content. Kalpokas holds that the content of experience is composed of concepts and the presented objects, such as they appear from the subject’s point of view and determined environmental conditions. According to this view, perception provides non-inferential knowledge of the truth-makers of our judgments and beliefs. Furthermore, and importantly, that view sheds light on how the mind relates to the world.
Perception and Its Modalities
Author: Dustin Stokes
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199832811
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 513
Book Description
This volume is about the many ways we perceive. Contributors explore the nature of the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world, and how they interrelate. The volume begins to develop better paradigms for understanding the senses and perception.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199832811
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 513
Book Description
This volume is about the many ways we perceive. Contributors explore the nature of the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world, and how they interrelate. The volume begins to develop better paradigms for understanding the senses and perception.
Perception and Knowledge
Author: Walter Hopp
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139502794
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
This book offers a provocative, clear and rigorously argued account of the nature of perception and its role in the production of knowledge. Walter Hopp argues that perceptual experiences do not have conceptual content, and that what makes them play a distinctive epistemic role is not the features which they share with beliefs, but something that in fact sets them radically apart. He explains that the reason-giving relation between experiences and beliefs is what Edmund Husserl called 'fulfilment' - in which we find something to be as we think it to be. His book covers a wide range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and traditional phenomenology. It is essential reading for contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and phenomenologists alike.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139502794
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
This book offers a provocative, clear and rigorously argued account of the nature of perception and its role in the production of knowledge. Walter Hopp argues that perceptual experiences do not have conceptual content, and that what makes them play a distinctive epistemic role is not the features which they share with beliefs, but something that in fact sets them radically apart. He explains that the reason-giving relation between experiences and beliefs is what Edmund Husserl called 'fulfilment' - in which we find something to be as we think it to be. His book covers a wide range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and traditional phenomenology. It is essential reading for contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and phenomenologists alike.
Action in Perception
Author: Alva Noë
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262640635
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
"Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us," writes Alva Noë. "It is something we do." In Action in Perception, Noë argues that perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought—that perception is a kind of thoughtful activity. Touch, not vision, should be our model for perception. Perception is not a process in the brain, but a kind of skillful activity of the body as a whole. We enact our perceptual experience. To perceive, according to this enactive approach to perception, is not merely to have sensations; it is to have sensations that we understand. In Action in Perception, Noë investigates the forms this understanding can take. He begins by arguing, on both phenomenological and empirical grounds, that the content of perception is not like the content of a picture; the world is not given to consciousness all at once but is gained gradually by active inquiry and exploration. Noë then argues that perceptual experience acquires content thanks to our possession and exercise of practical bodily knowledge, and examines, among other topics, the problems posed by spatial content and the experience of color. He considers the perspectival aspect of the representational content of experience and assesses the place of thought and understanding in experience. Finally, he explores the implications of the enactive approach for our understanding of the neuroscience of perception.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262640635
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
"Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us," writes Alva Noë. "It is something we do." In Action in Perception, Noë argues that perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought—that perception is a kind of thoughtful activity. Touch, not vision, should be our model for perception. Perception is not a process in the brain, but a kind of skillful activity of the body as a whole. We enact our perceptual experience. To perceive, according to this enactive approach to perception, is not merely to have sensations; it is to have sensations that we understand. In Action in Perception, Noë investigates the forms this understanding can take. He begins by arguing, on both phenomenological and empirical grounds, that the content of perception is not like the content of a picture; the world is not given to consciousness all at once but is gained gradually by active inquiry and exploration. Noë then argues that perceptual experience acquires content thanks to our possession and exercise of practical bodily knowledge, and examines, among other topics, the problems posed by spatial content and the experience of color. He considers the perspectival aspect of the representational content of experience and assesses the place of thought and understanding in experience. Finally, he explores the implications of the enactive approach for our understanding of the neuroscience of perception.
Cognition and Perception
Author: Athanassios Raftopoulos
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262258412
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 447
Book Description
An argument that there are perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in cognitively and conceptually unmediated ways and that this sheds light on various philosophical issues. In Cognition and Perception, Athanassios Raftopoulos discusses the cognitive penetrability of perception and claims that there is a part of visual processes (which he calls “perception”) that results in representational states with nonconceptual content; that is, a part that retrieves information from visual scenes in conceptually unmediated, “bottom-up,” theory-neutral ways. Raftopoulos applies this insight to problems in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, and examines how we access the external world through our perception as well as what we can know of that world. To show that there is a theory-neutral part of existence, Raftopoulos turns to cognitive science and argues that there is substantial scientific evidence. He then claims that perception induces representational states with nonconceptual content and examines the nature of the nonconceptual content. The nonconceptual information retrieved, he argues, does not allow the identification or recognition of an object but only its individuation as a discrete persistent object with certain spatiotemporal properties and other features. Object individuation, however, suffices to determine the referents of perceptual demonstratives. Raftopoulos defends his account in the context of current discussions on the issue of the theory-ladenness of perception (namely the Fodor-Churchland debate), and then discusses the repercussions of his thesis for problems in the philosophy of science. Finally, Raftopoulos claims that there is a minimal form of realism that is defensible. This minimal realism holds that objects, their spatiotemporal properties, and such features as shape, orientation, and motion are real, mind-independent properties in the world.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262258412
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 447
Book Description
An argument that there are perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in cognitively and conceptually unmediated ways and that this sheds light on various philosophical issues. In Cognition and Perception, Athanassios Raftopoulos discusses the cognitive penetrability of perception and claims that there is a part of visual processes (which he calls “perception”) that results in representational states with nonconceptual content; that is, a part that retrieves information from visual scenes in conceptually unmediated, “bottom-up,” theory-neutral ways. Raftopoulos applies this insight to problems in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, and examines how we access the external world through our perception as well as what we can know of that world. To show that there is a theory-neutral part of existence, Raftopoulos turns to cognitive science and argues that there is substantial scientific evidence. He then claims that perception induces representational states with nonconceptual content and examines the nature of the nonconceptual content. The nonconceptual information retrieved, he argues, does not allow the identification or recognition of an object but only its individuation as a discrete persistent object with certain spatiotemporal properties and other features. Object individuation, however, suffices to determine the referents of perceptual demonstratives. Raftopoulos defends his account in the context of current discussions on the issue of the theory-ladenness of perception (namely the Fodor-Churchland debate), and then discusses the repercussions of his thesis for problems in the philosophy of science. Finally, Raftopoulos claims that there is a minimal form of realism that is defensible. This minimal realism holds that objects, their spatiotemporal properties, and such features as shape, orientation, and motion are real, mind-independent properties in the world.
What It Is Like To Perceive
Author: J. Christopher Maloney
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190854774
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190854774
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
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.
Perception and its Objects
Author: Bill Brewer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191511625
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Bill Brewer presents, motivates, and defends a bold new solution to a fundamental problem in the philosophy of perception. What is the correct theoretical conception of perceptual experience, and how should we best understand the most fundamental nature of our perceptual relation with the physical objects in the world around us? Most theorists today analyse perception in terms of its representational content, in large part in order to avoid fatal problems attending the early modern conception of perception as a relation with particular mind-dependent objects of experience. Having set up the underlying problem and explored the lessons to be learnt from the various difficulties faced by opposing early modern responses to it, Bill Brewer argues that this contemporary approach has serious problems of its own. Furthermore, the early modern insight that perception is most fundamentally to be construed as a relation of conscious acquaintance with certain direct objects of experience is, he claims, perfectly consistent with the commonsense identification of such direct objects with persisting mind-independent physical objects themselves. Brewer here provides a critical, historical account of the philosophy of perception, in order to present a defensible vindication of empirical realism.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191511625
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Bill Brewer presents, motivates, and defends a bold new solution to a fundamental problem in the philosophy of perception. What is the correct theoretical conception of perceptual experience, and how should we best understand the most fundamental nature of our perceptual relation with the physical objects in the world around us? Most theorists today analyse perception in terms of its representational content, in large part in order to avoid fatal problems attending the early modern conception of perception as a relation with particular mind-dependent objects of experience. Having set up the underlying problem and explored the lessons to be learnt from the various difficulties faced by opposing early modern responses to it, Bill Brewer argues that this contemporary approach has serious problems of its own. Furthermore, the early modern insight that perception is most fundamentally to be construed as a relation of conscious acquaintance with certain direct objects of experience is, he claims, perfectly consistent with the commonsense identification of such direct objects with persisting mind-independent physical objects themselves. Brewer here provides a critical, historical account of the philosophy of perception, in order to present a defensible vindication of empirical realism.
The Rationality of Perception
Author: Susanna Siegel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198797087
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
One of the most important divisions in the human mind is between perception and reasoning. We reason from information that we take ourselves to have already, but perception is a means of taking in new information. Reasoning can be better or worse, but perception is considered beyond reproach. The Rationality of Perception argues that these two aspects of the mind become deeply intertwined when beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudice influence what weperceive. When the influences reach all the way to perceptual appearances, we face a philosophical problem: is it reasonable to strengthen what one believes or fears or suspects on the basis of an experience that wasgenerated by those very same beliefs, fears, or suspicions? Drawing on examples involving racism, emotion, and scientific theories, Siegel argues that perception itself can be rational or irrational, and makes vivid the relationship between perception and culture.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198797087
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
One of the most important divisions in the human mind is between perception and reasoning. We reason from information that we take ourselves to have already, but perception is a means of taking in new information. Reasoning can be better or worse, but perception is considered beyond reproach. The Rationality of Perception argues that these two aspects of the mind become deeply intertwined when beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudice influence what weperceive. When the influences reach all the way to perceptual appearances, we face a philosophical problem: is it reasonable to strengthen what one believes or fears or suspects on the basis of an experience that wasgenerated by those very same beliefs, fears, or suspicions? Drawing on examples involving racism, emotion, and scientific theories, Siegel argues that perception itself can be rational or irrational, and makes vivid the relationship between perception and culture.