Concept
Visual perception
Overview
Visual perception is the ability to detect light and use it to form an image of the surrounding environment. Photodetection without image formation is classified as light sensing. In most vertebrates, visual perception can be enabled by photopic vision (daytime vision) or scotopic vision (night vision), with most vertebrates having both. Visual perception detects light (photons) in the visible spectrum reflected by objects in the environment or emitted by light sources. The visible range of light is defined by what is readily perceptible to humans, though the visual perception of non-humans often extends beyond the visual spectrum. The resulting perception is also known as vision, sight, or eyesight (adjectives visual, optical, and ocular, respectively). The various physiological components involved in vision are referred to collectively as the visual system, and are the focus of much research in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and molecular biology, collectively referred to as vision science.
Visual perception is an active process in which the brain interprets and organizes sensory information rather than simply recording visual input. Perception is influenced by factors such as prior knowledge, expectations, and contextual information, allowing the visual system to construct meaningful representations of the surrounding environment.
Visual perception involves not only what we see but also how our brain process information, which is also adaptive and influenced by both lifelong experience and changing cognitive capacities.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Wood, again, is only relative in so far as it is some one's property, not in so far as it is wood. It is plain, then, that in the cases mentioned substance is not relative. But with regard to some secondary substances there is a difference of opinion; thus, such terms as 'head' and 'hand' are defined with reference to that of which the things indicated are a part, and so it comes about that these appear to have a…
Aristotle, The Categories
States what Visual perception is; the author is tied to Visual perception in the knowledge graph.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ The closing sections (149-60), as I have said, are supplementary, and profess to determine the sort of extension—visible or tangible—with which Geometry is concerned. In concluding that it is tangible, he tries to picture the mental state of Idominians, or unbodied spirits, endowed with visual perceptions _only_, and asks what _their_ conception of outness and solid extension…
George Berkeley, The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4
The author is tied to Visual perception in the knowledge graph; names Visual perception twice.
To control inference it is necessary to analyze this complex situation--to determine what is data for inference and what is irrelevant. This analysis involves discriminative resolution into more ultimate simples. The resources of experimentation, all sorts of microscopic, telescopic, and registering apparatus, are called in to perform that analysis. As a result we differentiate not merely visual data from…
John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
States what Visual perception is; the author is tied to Visual perception in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Visual perception
Related ideas
- Book of Optics
- George Berkeley
- Isaac Newton
- Ancient Greek
- Johannes Kepler
- Ibn al-Haytham
- Light
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Molecular biology
- Neuroscience
- Linguistics
- Psychology
- Plato
- Ptolemy
- Perception
- Roger Bacon
- Aristotle
- Visual cortex
- Brain
- Mechanism (philosophy)
- Diels–Kranz numbering
- Bayesian inference
- Timaeus (dialogue)
- Natural environment
Place in the tradition
Part of Eliminative materialism.