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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.
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.
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.
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
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 .
During the past 25 years, the field of space and motion perception has rapidly advanced. Once thought to be distinct perceptual modes, space and motion are now thought to be closely linked. Perception of Space andMotion provides a comprehensive review of perception and vision research literature, including new developments in the use of sound and touch in perceiving space and motion. Other topics include the perception of structure from motion, spatial layout,and information obtained in static and dynamic stimulation.Spatial layoutStructure from motionInformation on static and dynamic stimulation (visual, acoustic, and haptic)
Perception is one of the oldest and most deeply investigated topics in psychology, and it raised some profound philosophical questions. It is concerned with how we use the information reaching our senses to inform our behaviour, and to create our subjective experience of the surrounding world. Brian Rogers discusses the philosophical question of what it means to perceive, and describes how we are able to perceive the particular characteristics of objects and scenes such as their lightness, colour, form, depth, and motion. He argues that perception should not be seen as a separate process but rather as part of a 'perceptual system', involving both the extraction ofperceptual information and the control of action--Amazon.com.
Anatomically, the central nervous system looks remarkably symmetrical--from the relatively simple structures of the spinal cord to the extensively convoluted folds of the cerebral hemispheres. At the functional level, however, there are striking differences between the left and right hemispheres. Although popular writings attribute language abilities to the left hemisphere and spatial abilities to the right, differences in hemispheric function appear to be more subtle. According to Ivry and Robertson, asymmetries over a wide range of perceptual tasks reflect a difference in strength rather than kind, with both hemispheres contributing to the performance of complex tasks, whether linguistic or spatial. After an historical introduction, the authors offer a cognitive neuroscience perspective on hemispheric specialization in perception. They propose that the two hemispheres differ in how they filter task-relevant sensory information. Building on the idea that the hemispheres construct asymmetric representations, the hypothesis provides a novel account of many laterality effects. A notable feature of the authors' work is their attempt to incorporate hemispheric specialization in vision, audition, music, and language within a common framework. In support of their theory, they review studies involving both healthy and neurologically impaired individuals. They also provide a series of simulations to demonstrate the underlying computational principles of their theory. Their work thus describes both the cognitive and neurological architecture of hemispheric asymmetries in perception.