Perception

Perception PDF Author: Paul Rookes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134655231
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Paul Rookes and Jane Willson explain perception and perceptual processes in a way that almost anyone can understand. The study of perception, or how the brain processes information from the senses , has fascinated psychologists and philosophers for a long time. Perception takes the key research areas and presents the arguments and findings in a clear, concise form, enabling the reader to have a quick working knowledge of the area. This clear and informative text discusses sensation and perception then looks at theories and explanations of perception. The way visual perception is structured is examined, followed by an analysis of the development of perceptual processes. The authors then consider individual social and cultural variations in perceptual organisation. Perception will be particularly useful to students new to higher-level study. With its helpful textbook features to assist in examination and learning techniques, it should interest all introductory psychology students.

Perception

Perception PDF Author: Paul Rookes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134655231
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book

Book Description
Paul Rookes and Jane Willson explain perception and perceptual processes in a way that almost anyone can understand. The study of perception, or how the brain processes information from the senses , has fascinated psychologists and philosophers for a long time. Perception takes the key research areas and presents the arguments and findings in a clear, concise form, enabling the reader to have a quick working knowledge of the area. This clear and informative text discusses sensation and perception then looks at theories and explanations of perception. The way visual perception is structured is examined, followed by an analysis of the development of perceptual processes. The authors then consider individual social and cultural variations in perceptual organisation. Perception will be particularly useful to students new to higher-level study. With its helpful textbook features to assist in examination and learning techniques, it should interest all introductory psychology students.

Thomas Reid's Theory of Perception

Thomas Reid's Theory of Perception PDF Author: Ryan Nichols
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0199276919
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The thesis that the mind cannot directly apprehend features of the physical world - what Reid calls the Way of Ideas - is a staple of Early Modern philosophical tradition. This commitment to the direct awareness of, and only of, mental representations unifies the otherwise divergent philosophical systems of Rationalists and Empiricists. Thomas Reid battles against this thesis on many fronts, in particular over the nature of perception.Ryan Nichols lays the groundwork for Reid's theory of perception by developing Reid's unheralded argument against a representational theory of thought, which Nichols applies to his discussion of the intentionality of perceptual states and Reid's appeal to 'signs'. Reid's efforts to preserve common sense epistemic commitments also lead him to adopt unique theories about our concepts of primary and secondary qualities, and about original and acquired perceptions. About the latter pair, Nicholsargues that most perceptual beliefs depend for their justification upon inferences. The Way of Ideas holds that sensations are objects of awareness and that our senses are not robustly unified. Nichols develops Reid's counter-proposals by examining his discussion of the evolutionary purpose ofsensations, and the nature of our awareness of sensations, as well as his intriguing affirmative answer to Molyneux's questions.Nichols brings to the writing of this book a consummate knowledge of Reid's texts, published and unpublished, and a keen appreciation for Reid's responses to his predecessors. He frequently reconstructs arguments in premise/conclusion form, thereby clarifying disputes that have frustrated previous Reid scholarship. This clarification, his lively examples, and his plainspoken style make this book especially readable. Reid's theory of perception is by far the most important feature of Reid'sphilosophical system, and Nichols offers what will be, for a long time to come, the definitive analysis of this theory.

Seeing Things as They are

Seeing Things as They are PDF Author: John R. Searle
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199385157
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive account of the intentionality of perceptual experience. With special emphasis on vision Searle explains how the raw phenomenology of perception sets the content and the conditions of satisfaction of experience. The central question concerns the relation between the subjective conscious perceptual field and the objective perceptual field. Everything in the objective field is either perceived or can be perceived. Nothing in the subjective field is perceived nor can be perceived precisely because the events in the subjective field consist of the perceivings, whether veridical or not, of the events in the objective field. Searle begins by criticizing the classical theories of perception and identifies a single fallacy, what he calls the Bad Argument, as the source of nearly all of the confusions in the history of the philosophy of perception. He next justifies the claim that perceptual experiences have presentational intentionality and shows how this justifies the direct realism of his account. In the central theoretical chapters, he shows how it is possible that the raw phenomenology must necessarily determine certain form of intentionality. Searle introduces, in detail, the distinction between different levels of perception from the basic level to the higher levels and shows the internal relation between the features of the experience and the states of affairs presented by the experience. The account applies not just to language possessing human beings but to infants and conscious animals. He also discusses how the account relates to certain traditional puzzles about spectrum inversion, color and size constancy and the brain-in-the-vat thought experiments. In the final chapters he explains and refutes Disjunctivist theories of perception, explains the role of unconscious perception, and concludes by discussing traditional problems of perception such as skepticism.

Observer Mechanics

Observer Mechanics PDF Author: Bruce M. Bennett
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 1483263134
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Observer Mechanics: A Formal Theory of Perception provides information pertinent to the fundamental aspects of perception. This book provides an approach to the study of perception that attempts to be both general and rigorous. Organized into 10 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the structure of perceptual capacity. This text then presents the relationship between observers and Turing machines. Other chapters provide a formal framework in which to describe an observer and its objects of perception, and then develop from this framework a perceptual dynamics. This book discusses as well the conditions in which an observer may be said to perceive truly and discusses how stabilities in perceptual dynamics might permit the genesis of higher level observers. The final chapter deals with the relationship between the formalisms of quantum mechanics and observer mechanics. This book is a valuable resource for physicists, psychophysicists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, and perceptual psychologists.

Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy

Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Simo Knuuttila
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402061250
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This is the first extensive account of philosophical psychology of perception from ancient to early modern times. The book aims to shed light on the developments in the theories of sense-perception in medieval Arabic and Latin philosophy, their ancient background and traditional and new themes in early modern thought. Particular attention is paid to the philosophically significant parts of the theories. The articles concentrate on the so-called external senses and related themes.

Perception, Theory, and Commitment

Perception, Theory, and Commitment PDF Author: Harold I. Brown
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226076188
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
With originality and clarity, Harold Brown outlines first the logical empiricist tradition and then the more historical and process-oriented approach he calls the “new philosophy of science.” Examining the two together, he describes the very transition between them as an example of the kind of change in historical tradition with which the new philosophy of science concerns itself. “I would recommend it to every historian of science and to every philosopher of science. . . . I found it clear, readable, accurate, cogent, insightful, perceptive, judicious, and full of original ideas.” —Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Isis “The best and most original aspect of the book is its overall conception.” —Thomas S. Kuhn Harold I. Brown is professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University.

Aquinas's Theory of Perception

Aquinas's Theory of Perception PDF Author: Anthony J. Lisska
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191083666
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Anthony J. Lisska presents a new analysis of Thomas Aquinas's theory of perception. While much work has been undertaken on Aquinas's texts, little has been devoted principally to his theory of perception and less still on a discussion of inner sense. The thesis of intentionality serves as the philosophical backdrop of this analysis while incorporating insights from Brentano and from recent scholarship. The principal thrust is on the importance of inner sense, a much-overlooked area of Aquinas's philosophy of mind, with special reference to the vis cogitativa. Approaching the texts of Aquinas from contemporary analytic philosophy, Lisska suggests a modest 'innate' or 'structured' interpretation for the role of this inner sense faculty. Dorothea Frede suggests that this faculty is an 'embarrassment' for Aquinas; to the contrary, the analysis offered in this book argues that were it not for the vis cogitativa, Aquinas's philosophy of mind would be an embarrassment. By means of this faculty of inner sense, Aquinas offers an account of a direct awareness of individuals of natural kinds—referred to by Aquinas as incidental objects of sense—which comprise the principal ontological categories in Aquinas's metaphysics. By using this awareness of individuals of a natural kind, Aquinas can make better sense out of the process of abstraction using the active intellect (intellectus agens). Were it not for the vis cogitativa, Aquinas would be unable to account for an awareness of the principal ontological category in his metaphysics.

Phenomenal Qualities

Phenomenal Qualities PDF Author: Paul Coates
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198712715
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
A team of distinguished philosophers and psychologists explore the nature of phenomenal qualities, the qualities of conscious experiences, and the ways in which they fit in with our understanding of mind and reality. This volume offers an indispensable resource for anyone wishing to understand the nature of conscious experience.

Perception

Perception PDF Author: Frank Jackson
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521215503
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
What is the nature of, and what is the relationship between, external objects and our visual perceptual experience of them? In this book, Frank Jackson defends the answers provided by the traditional Representative theory of perception. He argues, among other things that we are never immediately aware of external objects, that they are the causes of our perceptual experiences and that they have only the primary qualities. In the course of the argument, sense data and the distinction between mediate and immediate perception receive detailed defences and the author criticises attempts to reduce perceiving the believing and to show that the Representative theory makes the external world unknowable. Jackson recognises that his views are unfashionable but argues in detail that they are to be preferred to their currently favoured competitors. It will become an obvious point of reference for all future work on the philosophy of perception.

Indirect Perception

Indirect Perception PDF Author: Irvin Rock
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262181778
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
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.