MindPapers: 3.2c. The Objects of Perception

Alspector-Kelly, Marc (2006). Pretending to see. Philosophical Psychology 19 (6):713-728. (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: There are three distinct projects - ontological, phenomenological, and conceptual - to pursue in the philosophy of perception. They are, however, rarely distinguished. Failure to distinguish them has resulted in their being pursued as one. Their completion then requires that they admit of the same solution, while accommodating the existence of misperception and the scientific facts concerning the perceptual process. The lesson to learn from misperceptions and those facts is, however, that no such common solution is possible, and that the projects must, and can, be pursued separately. Pursuit of the phenomenological and conceptual projects then requires a context in which discourse concerning objects of perception is permitted without ontological commitment to such objects. This is supplied by treating certain uses of perceptual locutions as within a context of pretense

Alspector-Kelly, Marc (2004). Seeing the unobservable: Van Fraassen and the limits of experience. Synthese 140 (3):331-353. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Van Fraassen maintains that the information that we canglean from experience is limited to those entities and processes that are detectable bymeans of our unaided senses. His challenge to the realist, I suggest, is that the attemptto inferentially transcend those limits amounts to a reversion to rationalism. Under pressurefrom such examples as microscopic observation, he has recently widened the scope of thephenomena to include object-like experiences without empirical objects of experience.With this change in mind, I argue that van Fraassen needs an account of perception whoseconsequence is that we can only see what we see with the unaided eye. I then argue thatreflection on the epistemically significant aspects of the perceptual process rendersvan Fraassen's characterization of the limits of experience implausible; technologicallyenhanced perception brings ``unobservables'' within those limits. An empiricismthat is compatible with realism results

Averill, Edward W. (1958). Perception and definition. Journal of Philosophy 55 (July):690-698. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Barnett, Samuel (1916). In what sense two persons perceive the same thing. Philosophical Review 25 (6):837-842. (Google | More links | Edit)

Bode, Boyd H. (1912). Consciousness and its object. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 9 (19):505-513. (Google | More links | Edit)

Bogdan, Radu J. (1986). The Objects of Perception. In Radu J. Bogdan (ed.), Roderick Chisholm. Reidel: Dordrecht. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Our perceptions, beliefs, thoughts and memories have objects. They are about or of things and properties around us. I perceive her, have beliefs about her, think of her and have memories of her. How are we to construe this aboutness (or ofness) of our cognitive states?' There are four major choices on the philosophical market. There is an interaction approach which says that the object of cognition is fixed by and understood in terms of what cognizers physically and sensorily interact with - or, alternatively, in terms of what the information delivered by such interaction is about. There is the satisfactional approach which says that the object of a cognitive state is whatever satisfies the representation constitutive of that state. There is also a hybrid approach which requires both physical/sensory interaction and representational satisfaction in the fixation of the object of cognition. And there is, finally, the direct acquaintance approach which says that only an immediate cognitive contact with things and properties can establish them as objects of cognition. The latter, as far as I can tell, goes the way perception goes, so only the remaining three approaches look like serious contenders

Brewer, Bill (2007). Perception and its objects. Philosophical Studies 132 (1):87-97. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Physical objects are such things as stones, tables, trees, people and other animals: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in. (1) therefore expresses a commonsense commitment to physical realism: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in exist, and are as they are, quite independently of anyone’s thought or experience of them

Brown, Harold I. (1972). Perception and meaning. American Philosophical Quarterly 6:1-9. (Google | Edit)

Campbell, Scott (2004). Seeing objects and surfaces, and the 'in virtue of' relation. Philosophy 79 (309):393-402. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Carrier, Leonard S. (1981). Experience And The Objects Of Perception. Washington: University Press Of America. (Google | Edit)

Dilworth, John B. (2006). A reflexive dispositional analysis of mechanistic perception. Minds and Machines 16 (4):479-493. (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: The field of machine perception is based on standard informational and computational approaches to perception. But naturalistic informational theories are widely regarded as being inadequate, while purely syntactic computational approaches give no account of perceptual content. Thus there is a significant need for a novel, purely naturalistic perceptual theory not based on informational or computational concepts, which could provide a new paradigm for mechanistic perception. Now specifically evolutionary naturalistic approaches to perception have been—perhaps surprisingly—almost completely neglected for this purpose. Arguably perceptual mechanisms enhance evolutionary fitness by facilitating sensorily mediated causal interactions between an organism Z and items X in its environment. A ‘reflexive’ theory of perception of this kind is outlined, according to which an organism Z perceives an item X just in case X causes a sensory organ zi of Z to cause Z to acquire a disposition toward the very same item X that caused the perception. The rest of the paper shows how an intuitively plausible account of mechanistic perception can be developed and defended in terms of the reflexive theory. Also, a compatibilist option is provided for those who wish to preserve a distinct informational concept of perception

Drake, Durant (1915). Where do perceived objects exist? Mind 24 (93):29-36. (Google | More links | Edit)

Dretske, Fred (1964). Observational terms. Philosophical Review 73 (January):25-42. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Goldman, Alvin (1977). Perceptual objects. Synthese 35 (3). (Cited by 11 | Google | More links | Edit)

Harrison, Ross (1970). Strawson on outer objects. Philosophical Quarterly 20 (July):213-221. (Cited by 4 | Google | More links | Edit)

Hocutt, Max O. (1968). What we perceive. American Philosophical Quarterly 5 (January):43-53. (Google | Edit)

Kelly, Sean D. (1999). What do we see (when we do)? Philosophical Topics 27:107-28. (Cited by 2 | Google | Edit)

Kraut, R. (1982). Sensory states and sensory objects. Noûs 16 (May):277-93. (Cited by 15 | Google | More links | Edit)

Kriegel, Uriah (2005). The status of appearances revisited. Iyyun 54 (July):287-304. (Google | Edit)

Liz, Manuel (2006). Camouflaged physical objects: The intentionality of perception. Theoria 21 (56):165-184. (Google | More links | Edit)

Mathrani, G. N. (1942). Do we perceive physical objects? Philosophical Quarterly (India) 18 (October):175-182. (Google | Edit)

Myers, Charles M. (1957). On actually seeing. Philosophical Studies 8 (1-2):28-32. (Google | More links | Edit)

Natsoulas, Thomas (1983). What are the objects of perceptual consciousness? American Journal of Psychology 96:435-67. (Cited by 4 | Google | More links | Edit)

Neta, Ram (2007). Contextualism and a puzzle about seeing. Philosophical Studies 134 (1):53-63. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Contextualist solutions to skeptical puzzles have recently been subjected to various criticisms. In this paper, I will defend contextualism against an objection prominently pressed by Stanley 2000. According to Stanley, contextualism in epistemology advances an empirically implausible hypothesis about the semantics of knowledge ascriptions in natural language. It is empirically implausible because it attributes to knowledge ascriptions a kind of semantic context-sensitivity that is wholly unlike any well- established type of semantic context-sensitivity in natural language

O'Shaughnessy, Brian (1965). Material objects and perceptual standpoint. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 65:77-98. (Google | Edit)

Odegard, Douglas (1978). Perception. Dialogue 17:72-91. (Google | Edit)

Ramsperger, Albert G. (1940). Objects perceived and objects known. Journal of Philosophy 37 (May):291-297. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Richman, Robert J. (1958). The whereabouts of percepts. Journal of Philosophy 55 (April):344-347. (Google | More links | Edit)

Rosenkrantz, Gary S. (1984). Acquaintance. Philosophia 14 (August):1-24. (Google | More links | Edit)

Sanford, David H. (1976). The primary objects of perception. Mind 85 (April):189-208. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)

Shwayder, D. S. (1961). The varieties and the objects of visual phenomena. Mind 70 (July):307-330. (Google | More links | Edit)

Snowdon, Paul F. (1990). The objects of perceptual experience. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 64:121-50. (Cited by 18 | Google | Edit)

Sorenson, Roy (2006). The disappearing act. Analysis 66 (4):319-325. (Google | More links | Edit)

Strawson, Peter F. (1961). Perception and identification, part II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97:97-120. (Google | Edit)

Stuart Fullerton, George (1913). Percept and object in common sense and in philosophy. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10 (3):57-64. (Google | Edit)

Stuart Fullerton, George (1913). Percept and object in common sense and in philosophy. II. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10 (6):149-158. (Google | Edit)

Suchting, W. A. (1969). Perception and the time-gap argument. Philosophical Quarterly 19 (January):46-56. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Susan Stebbing, L. (1926). Professor Whitehead's "perceptual object". Journal of Philosophy 23 (8):197-213. (Google | Edit)

Willard, Dallas (1970). Perceptual realism. Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 1:75-84. (Google | Edit)

Wright, Henry W. (1916). The object of perception versus the object of thought. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 13 (16):437-441. (Google | More links | Edit)

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