The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1680-1760. By Stephen Gaukroger. Pp. ix, 505, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, £40.00
The Heythrop Journal, 2013
On Perceptual Constancy
Perception and Cognition
Human perception normally occurs through stimulation of nerve endings that leads to brain activit... more Human perception normally occurs through stimulation of nerve endings that leads to brain activity and conscious perception. For example, vision normally occurs when light reflected from objects stimulates the receptor cells in the retina. Phenomenologically speaking, the content of the visual perception corresponds more closely to distant objects than to the patterns of light on the retina. When we are observing a rectangular table while standing at one end, it projects a trapezoidal shape onto the retina, yet our experience of the shape of the tabletop tends toward that of a rectangle in depth.
Attention in the work of Descartes: Mental and physiological aspects
Les Etudes philosophiques, 2017
James on the Perception of Space
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 8, 2020
The perception of space was a central topic in the philosophy, psychology, and sensory physiology... more The perception of space was a central topic in the philosophy, psychology, and sensory physiology of the nineteenth century. William James engaged all three of these approaches to spatial perception. On the prominent issue of nativism versus empirism, he supported nativism, holding that space is innately given in sensory perception. This chapter focuses on James’s discussions of the physiology and psychology of spatial perception in his Principles of Psychology. It first examines the historical context for James’s work, guided by (and commenting on) his own account of that history. Included here are his arguments for nativism. It then examines central aspects of his theory of spatial sensation, perception, and conception. Finally, it touches on the reception of his nativism, his phenomenological holism, his characterization of perception as involving active processes of discernment and construction, and his conception of perceiving organisms as environmentally embedded.
Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology, Dec 14, 2017
Classical constructivists such as Rock and Hoffman contend that the processes of perception are i... more Classical constructivists such as Rock and Hoffman contend that the processes of perception are intelligent and construct perceptual experience by going beyond the stimulus information or by creating a percept that deviates from the physical properties of the object. On these terms, Gibson's theory of perception is anti-constructivist. After reviewing classical constructivism, this article maintains, first, that the phenomenology of visual space shows a deviation from physical spatial properties, by being contracted in depth, even under fullcue conditions, a fact that makes trouble for Gibson's version of direct realism. Second, independently of the first argument, it contends that perception is pervasively constructed in the sense that stimulus information must be transformed to yield perception. Accordingly, perception is radically constructed in its very bones.
Avant toute chose, l'attention est un acte de l'esprit. Aussi est-elle pour un dualiste comme Des... more Avant toute chose, l'attention est un acte de l'esprit. Aussi est-elle pour un dualiste comme Descartes quelque chose qui se produira d'abord dans une substance mentale. Les individus peuvent prêter attention à diverses choses, qu'il s'agisse de la conversation d'un ami, d'un concert donné par un quatuor à cordes ou des étapes d'un subtil argument métaphysique. Prêter son attention implique que l'on dirige son esprit sur le contenu pertinent, qu'il soit de nature sensible ou purement intellectuel, mais aussi que l'on ignore les autres perceptions visuelles ou sonores qui, quoiqu'elles ne fassent pas partie de la conversation ou du concert, peuvent affecter les organes des sens, ou encore, dans le même ordre d'idées, que l'on reste concentré sur tel ou tel argument métaphysique malgré l'afflux de pensées nouvelles. Une perte d'attention ou un détournement de celle-ci peut se produire si la nouvelle cible possède suffisamment de force. Qu'un ami perdu de vue depuis longtemps passe non loin du lieu où je suis en train de discuter, mon attention pourra, à cause de cet ami, être détournée de la conversation. Un léger bruissement ou un peu d'agitation dans le public ne perturbera peutêtre pas l'attention de ceux qui assistent au concert, mais un coup de tonnerre provoqué par un éclair tout proche les forcera à porter leur attention sur lui. Un lecteur attentif des Méditations de Descartes peut rester concentré sur un argument même si son contenu, par exemple la conclusion que mon corps et le reste du monde n'existent pas, contrevient à ses croyances habituelles. Mais la fatigue mentale pourra finalement avoir raison de son attention et le faire retomber dans ses croyances ordinaires 1 . Les écrits philosophiques du temps de Descartes prenaient bien en compte le thème de l'attention sans en donner toutefois un traitement 1. « Je demeurerai obstinément attaché à cette pensée », mais « ce dessein est pénible & laborieux, & une certain paresse m'entraîne insensiblement dans le train de ma vie ordinaire » (R. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia (1641).
Objectivity and Subjectivity Revisited: Colour as a Psychobiological Property
Oxford University Press eBooks, Nov 6, 2003
This chapter focuses on the notion of color as a property of the surfaces of objects. It consider... more This chapter focuses on the notion of color as a property of the surfaces of objects. It considers three positions on what colors are: objectivist, subjectivist, and relationalist. Examination of the arguments of the objectivists will help us understand how they seek to reduce color to a physical property of object surfaces. Subjectivists, by contrast, seek to argue that no such reduction is possible, and hence that color must be wholly subjective. This chapter argues that when functional considerations are taken into account, a relationalist position best accommodates the primary data concerning color perception, and permits a better understanding of the ways in which color is both objective and subjective. The chapter ends with a reconsideration of the notions of objectivity and subjectivity themselves, and a consideration of how modern technology can foster misleading expectations about the specificity of color properties.
N THE EIGHTEENTH and nineteenth centuries the majority of theories of visual perception were buil... more N THE EIGHTEENTH and nineteenth centuries the majority of theories of visual perception were built upon the view that during the process of vision there occur two conscious states with quite different phenomenal properties. The first state is a mental representation of the two-dimensional retinal image. The second is our experience of the "visual world" of objects distributed in depth. According to the then commonly accepted theory, the mental correlate of the retinal image is the truly immediate component of perception, and it provides the raw material from which the mind generates the three-dimensional visual world. Yet this retinal correlate the "sensory core" of the perceptual process-typically goes unnoticed, and the percipient takes his experience of the three-dimensional visual world to be direct and unmediated.2 Although it may seem odd that an unnoticed state of consciousness should be viewed as the psychologically fundamental component of the visual process, that which we have labelled the "sensory core" has played a central role in visual theory since Berkeley drew his celebrated distinction between the immediate
Philosophy of Biology, Psychology, and Neuroscience-Studies in the Interaction of Psychology and Neuroscience-Neuroethology and the Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Wundt and Psychology as Science: Disciplinary Transformations
Perspectives on Science, 1997
E. G. Boring’s History of Experimental Psychology continues to dominate the historiography of psy... more E. G. Boring’s History of Experimental Psychology continues to dominate the historiography of psychology (with some revisions). This article challenges the revised standard account on several points. It shows (1) that psychology has variously been considered a part of natural science from antiquity; (2) that Wundt considered psychology to be an autonomous discipline, distinct from philosophy; (3) that Wundt and Boring overemphasized the theoretical discontinuity between the “old” and “new” psychologies; and (4) that several major figures in the expansion of psychology in America were not antimetaphysical. What is called the “founding” of psychology as a science in the late nineteenth century was really the initial stages in the transformation of an existing scientific discipline through expanded application of experimental techniques, a transformation that took more than a half-century to complete.
Kant on the perception of space (and time)
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 30, 2006
Although the “Transcendental Aesthetic” is the briefest part of the first Critique , it has garne... more Although the “Transcendental Aesthetic” is the briefest part of the first Critique , it has garnered a lion's share of discussion. This fact reflects the important implications that Kant drew from his arguments there. He used the arguments concerning space and time to display examples of synthetic a priori cognition, to secure his division between intuitions and concepts, and to support transcendental idealism. Earlier, in the years around 1770, Kant's investigations into space and time had facilitated his turn toward “critical” philosophy. Prior to that time, Kant's main interests in space and time pertained to physics and metaphysics. As he entered the critical period, he delved into the cognitive basis of our experience of space (and time), and drew his conclusions about their ideality. Kant's doctrines of space and time provoked extensive response in his own time and throughout the nineteenth century. These responses variously concerned the metaphysics, physics, epistemology, psychology, and geometry of space. Throughout the nineteenth century, philosophers, physiologists, and psychologists sought to extend or to refute Kant's theories of space. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, many had rightly concluded that the existence of non-Euclidean geometry as a candidate description of physical space refuted Kant's full doctrine of space - though some have hoped that his position might be saved by restricting it to “visual space.”
Gestalt psychology has had a lasting impact on the study of visual perception, as perusal of rece... more Gestalt psychology has had a lasting impact on the study of visual perception, as perusal of recent comprehensive textbooks, such as Steven Palmer’s Vision Science (Cambridge, MA, 1999) and Bruce Goldstein’s Sensation and Perception (Belmont, 2010), attests. Until now, the primary English-language overviews of Gestalt psychology in general, and of Gestalt theories of visual perception in particular, were Wolfgang Kohler’s Gestalt Psychology (New York, 1929; 2nd edn., 1947) and Kurt Koffka’s Principles of Gestalt Psychology (New York, 1935). These books were written in English. Although focused on visual perception, they also covered memory, learning and insight, and behavior. They began with methodological discussions and emphasized Gestalt conceptions of field-organized brain processes. By comparison with Kohler’s and Koffka’s books, Metzger’s, which was originally published in German in 1936, is more accessible as an introduction to Gestalt theories of visual perception. It treats methodological issues by briefly surveying the history of visual theory (pp. xv–xxv). In this history, sensory atomism and unconscious inference are the villains, and Christian von Ehrenfels, with his appreciation of Gestalt qualities in perceptual experience, is the hero. This introduction makes points similar to those in Kohler’s and Koffka’s opening chapters, but by setting its criticisms of atomism and unconscious inference into a historical narrative, it eases the reader into a Gestalt frame of mind. The twelve chapters forming the body of the work develop Gestalt laws of perceptual organization and illustrate their application. The first three chapters cover organization and grouping. These and the remaining chapters are generously supplied with figures and photographs to exemplify the phenomena in question. The fourth chapter examines developmental aspects of shape perception. The fifth concerns Gestalt laws and camouflage, paying special attention to boundary
Perception: History of the Concept
Elsevier eBooks, 2001
This article focuses on the history of the concept of sensory perception in philosophy and psycho... more This article focuses on the history of the concept of sensory perception in philosophy and psychology, where perception has been studied as a source of knowledge or information and as a mental phenomenon in its own right. The ancient Greeks investigated the basic operation of the senses, including whether in vision something goes from eye to object (the extramission theory) or from object to eye (the intromission theory). Ptolemy (second century, Alexandria) elaborated a geometrical extramission theory, and Ibn al-Haytham (eleventh century, Cairo) a geometrical intromission theory. With the rise of a new physics in the seventeenth century, Aristotelean ‘real qualities’ (samples of object qualities transmitted to perceivers and into their brains) were abandoned. The so-called ‘secondary qualities’ of objects, such as colors, tastes, and odors, were now to be explained in terms of the ‘primary qualities’ of the particles making up an object, that is, the size, shape, motion, and position of the particles. Objects were attributed secondary qualities on the basis of the kinds of experiences they produced in perceivers; the secondary quality of color, as it exists in objects, is the arrangement of particles in the object that makes it affect light so as to cause an experience of a color in perceivers. The implications of the new science for perception were investigated by modern philosophers, including Descartes, Locke, Hume, Reid, Kant, and Hegel. During the nineteenth century psychophysical measurement of the relation between the physical properties of the stimulus and the resultant sensation spurred the growth of experimental psychology. Nearly all theorists held that perceptions are built up from nonspatial, punctiform sensations varying only in quality and intensity. Empirists believed that this construction is a product of learning, while nativists contended that at least two-dimensional visual representations, and possibly three-dimensional representations, are formed by innate mechanisms. E. Hering, W. James, and later the Gestalt psychologists challenged the punctiform theory, and argued that spatial representations, like color sensations, are primitive in perception. During the twentieth century Gibson challenged the traditional theory that sensory stimulation contains greatly impoverished information about the environment, which must therefore be supplemented by constructive processes of judgment or inference. Rock and others supported the constructivist approach. Some theorists preferred not to focus on perception as conscious awareness, but to see it as sensory information processing. Despite new techniques for examining the role of brain processes in perception, full understanding of how conscious awareness occurs in perception remains a goal for further research.
This paper attempts to differentiate between two models of visual space. One model suggests that ... more This paper attempts to differentiate between two models of visual space. One model suggests that visual space is a simple affine transformation of physical space. The other proposes that it is a transformation of physical space via the laws of perspective. The present paper reports two experiments in which participants are asked to judge the size of the interior angles of squares at five different distances from the participant. The perspective-based model predicts that the angles within each square on the side nearest to the participant should seem smaller than those on the far side. The simple affine model under our conditions predicts that the perceived size of the angles of each square should remain 90 • . Results of both experiments were most consistent with the perspective-based model. The angles of each square on the near side were estimated to be significantly smaller than the angles on the far side for all five squares in both experiments. In addition, the sum of the estimated size of the four angles of each square declined with increasing distance from the participant to the square and was less than 360 • for all but the nearest square.
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