Philosophy of perception
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The philosophy of perception is concerned with the nature of perceptual experience and the status of perceptual data, in particular how they relate to beliefs about, or knowledge of, the world.cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/ BonJour, Laurence (2007): "Epistemological Problems of Perception." ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', accessed 1.9.2010. Any explicit account of perception requires a commitment to one of a variety of
ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...
or
metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of h ...
views. Philosophers distinguish internalist accounts, which assume that perceptions of objects, and
knowledge Knowledge is an Declarative knowledge, awareness of facts, a Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with individuals and situations, or a Procedural knowledge, practical skill. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is oft ...
or
belief A belief is a subjective Attitude (psychology), attitude that something is truth, true or a State of affairs (philosophy), state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some Life stance, stance, take, or opinion ...
s about them, are aspects of an individual's mind, and
externalist Internalism and externalism are two opposite ways of integrating and explaining various subjects in several areas of philosophy. These include human motivation, knowledge, justification, meaning, and truth. The distinction arises in many areas of d ...
accounts, which state that they constitute real aspects of the world external to the individual. The position of naïve realism—the 'everyday' impression of physical objects constituting what is perceived—is to some extent contradicted by the occurrence of perceptual illusions and hallucinations and the relativity of perceptual experience as well as certain insights in science. Realist conceptions include phenomenalism and direct and indirect realism. Anti-realist conceptions include
idealism Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical realism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysics, metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, Spirit (vital essence), spirit, or ...
and
skepticism Skepticism ( US) or scepticism ( UK) is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...
. Recent philosophical work have expanded on the philosophical features of perception by going beyond the single paradigm of vision (for instance, by investigating the uniqueness of olfaction).


Scientific accounts of perception

An object at some distance from an observer will reflect light in all directions, some of which will fall upon the corneae of the
eyes An eye is a sensory organ that allows an organism to perceive visual information. It detects light and converts it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons (neurones). It is part of an organism's visual system. In higher organisms, the ey ...
, where it will be focussed upon each
retina The retina (; or retinas) is the innermost, photosensitivity, light-sensitive layer of tissue (biology), tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some Mollusca, molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focus (optics), focused two-dimensional ...
, forming an image. The disparity between the electrical output of these two slightly different images is resolved either at the level of the lateral geniculate nucleus or in a part of the
visual cortex The visual cortex of the brain is the area of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information. It is located in the occipital lobe. Sensory input originating from the eyes travels through the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalam ...
called 'V1'. The resolved data is further processed in the visual cortex where some areas have specialised functions, for instance area V5 is involved in the modelling of motion and V4 in adding colour. The resulting single image that subjects report as their experience is called a 'percept'. Studies involving rapidly changing scenes show the percept derives from numerous processes that involve time delays. Recent
fMRI Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...
studies show that dreams, imaginings and perceptions of things such as faces are accompanied by activity in many of the same areas of brain as are involved with physical sight. Imagery that originates from the senses and internally generated imagery may have a shared
ontology Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of realit ...
at higher levels of cortical processing.
Sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...
is analyzed in term of pressure waves sensed by the
cochlea The cochlea is the part of the inner ear involved in hearing. It is a spiral-shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth, in humans making 2.75 turns around its axis, the modiolus (cochlea), modiolus. A core component of the cochlea is the organ of Cort ...
in the ear. Data from the eyes and ears is combined to form a 'bound' percept. The problem of how this is produced, known as the
binding problem The unity of consciousness and (cognitive) binding problem is the problem of how objects, background, and abstract or emotional features are combined into a single experience. The binding problem refers to the overall encoding of our brain circuit ...
. Perception is analyzed as a
cognitive process Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ima ...
in which information processing is used to transfer information into the mind where it is related to other information. Some psychologists propose that this processing gives rise to particular mental states ( cognitivism) whilst others envisage a direct path back into the external world in the form of action (radical
behaviourism Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understand the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex elicited by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that indivi ...
). Behaviourists such as
John B. Watson John Broadus Watson (January 9, 1878 – September 25, 1958) was an American psychologist who popularized the scientific theory of behaviorism, establishing it as a List of psychological schools, psychological school.Cohn, Aaron S. 2014.Watson, J ...
and B.F. Skinner have proposed that perception acts largely as a process between a stimulus and a response but have noted that
Gilbert Ryle Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900 – 6 October 1976) was a British philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase " ghost in the machine". Some of Ryle's ideas in philosophy of mind have been ca ...
's " ghost in the machine of the brain" still seems to exist. "The objection to inner states is not that they do not exist, but that they are not relevant in a functional analysis". This view, in which experience is thought to be an incidental by-product of information processing, is known as epiphenomenalism. Contrary to the behaviouralist approach to understanding the elements of cognitive processes,
gestalt psychology Gestalt psychology, gestaltism, or configurationism is a school of psychology and a theory of perception that emphasises the processing of entire patterns and configurations, and not merely individual components. It emerged in the early twent ...
sought to understand their organization as a whole, studying perception as a process of figure and ground.


Problem of Perception

Important philosophical problems derive from the
epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...
of perception—how we can gain knowledge via perception—such as the question of the nature of
qualia In philosophy of mind, qualia (; singular: quale ) are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () meaning "of what ...
. Within the biological study of perception naive realism is unusable. However, outside biology modified forms of naive realism are defended.
Thomas Reid Thomas Reid (; 7 May (Julian calendar, O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scotland, Scottish philosophy, philosopher best known for his philosophical method, his #Thomas_Reid's_theory_of_common_sense, theory of ...
, the eighteenth-century founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, formulated the idea that sensation was composed of a set of data transfers but also declared that there is still a direct connection between perception and the world. This idea, called direct realism, has again become popular in recent years with the rise of
postmodernism Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...
. The succession of data transfers involved in perception suggests that sense data are somehow available to a perceiving subject that is the substrate of the percept. Indirect realism, the view held by
John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 (Old Style and New Style dates, O.S.) – 28 October 1704 (Old Style and New Style dates, O.S.)) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thi ...
and
Nicolas Malebranche Nicolas Malebranche ( ; ; 6 August 1638 – 13 October 1715) was a French Oratorian Catholic priest and rationalist philosopher. In his works, he sought to synthesise the thought of St. Augustine and Descartes, in order to demonstrate the ...
, proposes that we can only be aware of
mental representation A mental representation (or cognitive representation), in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality or its abstractions. Mental re ...
s of objects. However, this may imply an infinite regress (a perceiver within a perceiver within a perceiver...), though a finite regress is perfectly possible. It also assumes that perception is entirely due to data transfer and information processing, an argument that can be avoided by proposing that the percept does not depend wholly upon the transfer and rearrangement of data. This still involves basic ontological issues of the sort raised by
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many ...
, Locke, Hume, Whitehead and others, which remain outstanding particularly in relation to the
binding problem The unity of consciousness and (cognitive) binding problem is the problem of how objects, background, and abstract or emotional features are combined into a single experience. The binding problem refers to the overall encoding of our brain circuit ...
, the question of how different perceptions (e.g. color and contour in vision) are "bound" to the same object when they are processed by separate areas of the brain. Indirect realism (representational views) provides an account of issues such as perceptual contents,
qualia In philosophy of mind, qualia (; singular: quale ) are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () meaning "of what ...
, dreams, imaginings,
hallucinations A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the compelling sense of reality. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming ( REM sleep), which does not involve wakefulness; pse ...
, illusions, the resolution of
binocular rivalry Binocular rivalry is a phenomenon of visual perception in which perception alternates between different images presented to each human eye, eye. When one image is presented to one eye and a very different image is presented to the other (also kn ...
, the resolution of multistable perception, the modelling of motion that allows us to watch TV, the sensations that result from direct brain stimulation, the update of the mental image by saccades of the eyes and the referral of events backwards in time. Direct realists must either argue that these experiences do not occur or else refuse to define them as perceptions. Idealism holds that reality is limited to mental qualities while skepticism challenges our ability to know anything outside our minds. One of the most influential proponents of idealism was
George Berkeley George Berkeley ( ; 12 March 168514 January 1753), known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland), was an Anglo-Irish philosopher, writer, and clergyman who is regarded as the founder of "immaterialism", a philos ...
who maintained that everything was mind or dependent upon mind. Berkeley's idealism has two main strands, phenomenalism in which physical events are viewed as a special kind of mental event and
subjective idealism Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism or immaterialism, is a form of philosophical monism that holds that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that m ...
.
David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist who was best known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism. Beg ...
is probably the most influential proponent of skepticism. A fourth theory of perception in opposition to naive realism,
enactivism Enactivism is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. It claims that the environment of an organism is brought about, or enacted, by the active ...
, attempts to find a middle path between direct realist and indirect realist theories, positing that
cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
is a process of dynamic interplay between an organism's sensory-motor capabilities and the environment it brings forth. Instead of seeing perception as a passive process determined entirely by the features of an independently existing world, enactivism suggests that organism and environment are structurally coupled and co-determining. The theory was first formalized by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch in "The Embodied Mind".


Spatial representation

An aspect of perception that is common to both realists and anti-realists is the idea of mental or perceptual space.
David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist who was best known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism. Beg ...
concluded that things appear extended because they have attributes of colour and solidity. A popular modern philosophical view is that the brain cannot contain images so our sense of space must be due to the actual space occupied by physical things. However, as René Descartes noticed, perceptual space has a projective geometry, things within it appear as if they are viewed from a point. The phenomenon of perspective was closely studied by artists and architects in the Renaissance, who relied mainly on the 11th century polymath,
Alhazen Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham ( Latinized as Alhazen; ; full name ; ) was a medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age from present-day Iraq.For the description of his main fields, see e.g. ("He is one of the princ ...
(Ibn al-Haytham), who affirmed the visibility of perceptual space in geometric structuring projections. Mathematicians now know of many types of projective geometry such as complex
Minkowski space In physics, Minkowski space (or Minkowski spacetime) () is the main mathematical description of spacetime in the absence of gravitation. It combines inertial space and time manifolds into a four-dimensional model. The model helps show how a ...
that might describe the layout of things in perception (see Peters (2000)) and it has also emerged that parts of the brain contain patterns of electrical activity that correspond closely to the layout of the retinal image (this is known as
retinotopy Retinotopy () is the mapping of visual input from the retina to neurons, particularly those neurons within the visual stream. For clarity, 'retinotopy' can be replaced with 'retinal mapping', and 'retinotopic' with 'retinally mapped'. Visual f ...
). How or whether these become conscious experience is still unknown (see McGinn (1995)).


Beyond spatial representation

Traditionally, the philosophical investigation of perception has focused on the sense of vision as the paradigm of sensory perception. However, studies on the other sensory modalities, such as the sense of smell, can challenge what we consider characteristic or essential features of perception. Take olfaction as an example. Spatial representation relies on a "mapping" paradigm that maps the spatial structures of the stimuli onto discrete neural structures and representations. However, olfactory science has shown us that perception is also a matter of associative learning, observational refinement, and a decision-making process that is context-dependent. One of the consequences of these discoveries on the philosophy of perception is that common perceptual effects such as conceptual imagery turn more on the neural architecture and its development than the topology of the stimulus itself.


See also

* Anil Gupta * Argument from illusion *
Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( ; ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the Phenomenon, phenomenal world as ...
* Āyatana *
Binding problem The unity of consciousness and (cognitive) binding problem is the problem of how objects, background, and abstract or emotional features are combined into a single experience. The binding problem refers to the overall encoding of our brain circuit ...
*
Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...
*
Consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...
*
Direct realism Direct may refer to: Mathematics * Directed set, in order theory * Direct limit of (pre), sheaves * Direct sum of modules, a construction in abstract algebra which combines several vector spaces Computing * Direct access (disambiguation), ...
*
Epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...
* Fiona Macpherson *
George Berkeley George Berkeley ( ; 12 March 168514 January 1753), known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland), was an Anglo-Irish philosopher, writer, and clergyman who is regarded as the founder of "immaterialism", a philos ...
* Hallucinations in the sane *
Idealism Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical realism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysics, metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, Spirit (vital essence), spirit, or ...
*
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...
* Indirect realism *
John McDowell John Henry McDowell (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, anci ...
* Map-territory relation *
Maurice Merleau-Ponty Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. ( ; ; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interes ...
* Mind's eye * Multistable perception *
Open individualism Open individualism is a view within the philosophy of self, according to which there exists only one numerically identical subject, who is everyone at all times; in the past, present and future. It is a theoretical solution to the question of ...
* Perceptual conceptualism *
Philosophical realism Philosophical realismusually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject mattersis the view that a certain kind of thing (ranging widely from abstract objects like numbers to moral statements to the physical world ...
*
Philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a ...
*
Qualia In philosophy of mind, qualia (; singular: quale ) are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () meaning "of what ...
* Roderick Chisholm * Sensorium * Solipsism * Subjective character of experience * Susanna Schellenberg * Susanna Siegel * Theories of perception *
Thomas Reid Thomas Reid (; 7 May (Julian calendar, O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scotland, Scottish philosophy, philosopher best known for his philosophical method, his #Thomas_Reid's_theory_of_common_sense, theory of ...
*
Transcendental idealism Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781). By ''transcendental'' (a term that des ...
*
Vertiginous question Benj Hellie's vertiginous question asks why, of all the subjects of experience out there, ''this'' one—the one corresponding to the human being referred to as Benj Hellie—is the one whose experiences are ''lived''? (The reader is supposed to ...
*
Visual perception Visual perception is the ability to detect light and use it to form an image of the surrounding Biophysical environment, environment. Photodetection without image formation is classified as ''light sensing''. In most vertebrates, visual percept ...
*
Visual space Visual space is the experience of space by an aware observer. It is the subjective counterpart of the space of physical objects. There is a long history in philosophy, and later psychology of writings describing visual space, and its relationsh ...
*
Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (; May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States". His work has had a profou ...


Notes


References

* * * * * * *


Further reading


Historical

* Descartes, Rene (1641). ''Meditations on First Philosophy''
Online text
* Hume, David (1739–40). ''A Treatise of Human Nature: Being An Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects''

* Kant, Immanuel (1781). ''Critique of Pure Reason''. Norman Kemp Smith (trans.) with preface by Howard Caygill, Palgrave Macmillan
Online text
* Locke, John (1689). ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding''
Online text
* Russell, Bertrand (1912). ''The Problems of Philosophy'', London: Williams and Norgate; New York: Henry Holt and Company


Contemporary

* Burge, Tyler (1991). "Vision and Intentional Content," in E. LePore and R. Van Gulick (eds.) ''John Searle and his Critics'', Oxford: Blackwell. * Chalmers DJ. (1995) "Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness." ''Journal of Consciousness Studies'' 2, 3, 200–219. * Dretske, Fred (1981). ''Knowledge and the Flow of Information'', Oxford: Blackwell. * Evans, Gareth (1982). ''The Varieties of Reference'', Oxford: Clarendon Press. * McDowell, John, (1982). "Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge," ''Proceedings of the British Academy'', pp. 455–79. * McDowell, John, (1994). ''Mind and World'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. * McGinn, Colin (1995). "Consciousness and Space," In ''Conscious Experience'', Thomas Metzinger (ed.), Imprint Academic. * Mead, George Herbert (1938). "Mediate Factors in Perception," Essay 8 in ''The Philosophy of the Act'', Charles W. Morris with John M. Brewster, Albert M. Dunham and David Miller (eds.), Chicago: University of Chicago, pp. 125–139. * Moutoussis, K. and Zeki, S. (1997). "A Direct Demonstration of Perceptual Asynchrony in Vision," ''Proceedings of the Royal Society of London'', Series B: Biological Sciences, 264, pp. 393–399. * Noe, Alva/Thompson, Evan T.: Vision and Mind: Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002. * Peacocke, Christopher (1983). ''Sense and Content'', Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Putnam, Hilary (1999). ''The Threefold Cord'', New York: Columbia University Press. * Shoemaker, Sydney (1990). "Qualities and Qualia: What's in the Mind?" ''Philosophy and Phenomenological Research'' 50, Supplement, pp. 109–31. * Tong, Frank (2003). "Primary Visual Cortex and Visual Awareness," Nature Reviews, ''Neuroscience'', Vol 4, 219
Online text
* Tye, Michael (2000). ''Consciousness, Color and Content'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. {{Authority control
Perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...
Philosophy of perception Internalism and externalism Theory of mind Phenomenology Justification (epistemology)