Perception. Direct and indirect approaches Author: Elena Pasquinelli [INSTNICOD] Contributors: none Current version (on 2006-01-20) The claim that perception is direct consists in the argument that perception is a form of non-inferential awareness of the things we normally take ourselves to be aware of when we perceive. Mental intermediaries such as sense data, impressions, appearances are thus refused to be the things we are directly aware of in perception. The perceiver is instead directly aware of the world itself, and the world is accordingly very similar to what it seems like in perception (naïve or direct realism is connected to the direct approach to perception). There exist a certain number of direct approaches to perception, including psychologists and philosophers. Between the philosophers, the direct approach refuses the notion of sense data and of a general object of perception which would be common to illusory and non-illusory experiences. In particular Snowdon, 1980-81] and [McDowell, 1982]adopt an externalist view of perception according to which perceptual experiences are constituted by the relation between the perceiver and an external object. [Sellars, 1956] and [Strawson, 1979] too refuse the idea that perception might regard our sensory impressions: perception consists in the intentional experience of the world as being in this way or that. In the domain of psychology, two main approaches to perception represent the direct view: the ecological approach introduced by [Gibson, 1966] and the sensorimotor approach of [O’Regan & Noë, 2001]. One of the arguments against the direct approach to perception is the so-called ‘argument from illusion’. Following the argument, the experience of seeing a really existing object and the experience of seeing an object that does not exist but is merely hallucinated are indistinguishable. Thus, a common entity must exist which is the object of perception in both cases: a sense datum. The real object enters the perceptual experience only as a more or less far cause of the perceptual process.
In the same vein, indirect perception when a round form is perceived form a elliptical scheme is directly accessed so that the round shape of the object result of conjecture and speculation.
approaches assert that generic viewpoint, an by the visual system, must be inferred as a
In general, the problem of perceptual science committed with the indirect view is to explain how do we perceive what we do (i.e. a three-dimensional world) given the patterns of stimulation of the sensory organs. The main idea is that the brain actively constructs the perceptual experience through the intervention of inferential processes, thus affirming the paradigm proposed by Helmholtz of perception as unconscious inference [Fodor, 1981].
References: McDowell, J. (1982). Criteria, defeasibility and knowledge. Proceedings of the British Academy, 68, 455-479. Sellars, W. (1956). Empiricism and the philosophy of mind. In H. Feigl & M. Scriven (Eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosphy of Science. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Snowdon, P. (1980-1981). Experience, vision and causation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 81, 175-192. Strawson, P. F. (1979). Perception and its objects. In G. F. MAacDonald (Ed.), Perception and identity. London: Macmillian. Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. O'Regan, K., & Noë, A. (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(5), 939-1011. Fodor, J. A., & Pylyshyn, Z. (1981). How direct is visual perception? Some reflections on Gibson's ecological approach. Cognition, 9, 139-196.
Related items: Active perception Perception. Bayesian inference Perception. Direct approaches: the ecological approach Perception. Direct approaches: the sensorimotor approach Perception. Dynamic systems approach Indirect approaches to perception: the inferential approach
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