Concept
Perception
Overview
organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment in the brain
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Perception is discussed.
For in bare naked perception, the mind is, for the most part, only passive; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving. 2. Reflection alone can give us the idea of what perception is. What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he does himself, when he sees, hears, feels, &c., or thinks, than by any discourse of mine. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind cannot miss it. And…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Perception is empirical consciousness, that is to say, a consciousness which contains an element of sensation. Phenomena as objects of perception are not pure, that is, merely formal intuitions, like space and time, for they cannot be perceived in themselves.[28] They contain, then, over and above the intuition, the materials…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
The sound is then heard as coming from a certain region in the external world. Thus perception in the mode of causal efficacy discloses that the data in the mode of sense-perception are provided by it. This is the reason why there are such given elements. Every such datum constitutes a link between the two perceptive modes.
Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism, its meaning and effect
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph
Relations bind together: thus thought-objects of perception are connected in time and in space. The genesis of the objectival analysis of sense-presentation is the recognition of sense-objects as distinct terms in time-relations and space-relations: thus thought-objects of perception are separated by time and by…
Alfred North Whitehead, The organisation of thought, educational and scientific
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Now, however, as a result of the discussion in Chapter XVI, we can include in his reaction, not only what others can observe, but also what he alone can observe. This enlarges the known sphere of perception, practically if not theoretically. But it leaves unchanged the fact that the essence of perception is a causal relation to a feature of the environment which, except in astronomy, is approximately contemporaneous…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Perception
- George Berkeley
- Gilles Deleuze
- Dignāga
- Heraclitus
- Norwood Russell Hanson
- Ibn Hazm
- John Locke
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Marshall McLuhan
- Philip K. Dick
- René Descartes
- Thomas Reid
- Ralph Barton Perry
- George Herbert Mead
- Wilhelm Wundt
- Zeno of Citium
- Paul Thagard
- Tyler Burge
- Richard McKeon
- Jerry Fodor
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Carl Stumpf
- The Order of Things
- Peter Hacker
Related ideas
- George Berkeley
- Harvard University Press
- Immanuel Kant
- Action potential
- John Locke
- Paradigm
- Light
- Learning
- Intentionality
- Organism
- Prefrontal cortex
- Meditation
- Gustav Fechner
- Holism
- Hypothesis
- Nominalism
- Proprioception
- Nervous system
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging
- Psychology
- Phoneme
- Motivation
- Sense
- Philosophy of perception
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Academic skepticism.