The Structure Of Perceptual Experience

This innovative new collection features six original essays exploring the spatial, temporal, and other structures that shape conscious perception. Includes cutting-edge research on an increasingly influential topic in the philosophy of the mind Explores structural differences between the senses and between different theories of perceptual experience Offers innovative new arguments on the philosophy of perception written by leading scholars in the field

This innovative new collection features six original essays exploring the spatial, temporal, and other structures that shape conscious perception. Includes cutting-edge research on an increasingly influential topic in the philosophy of the mind Explores structural differences between the senses and between different theories of perceptual experience Offers innovative new arguments on the philosophy of perception written by leading scholars in the field

This innovative new collection features six original essays exploring the spatial, temporal, and other structures that shape conscious perception. Includes cutting-edge research on an increasingly influential topic in the philosophy of the mind Explores structural differences between the senses and between different theories of perceptual experience Offers innovative new arguments on the philosophy of perception written by leading scholars in the field

This book explores the important yet neglected relationship between the philosophy of time and the temporal structure of perceptual experience. It examines how time structures perceptual experience and, through that structuring, the ways in which time makes perceptual experience trustworthy or erroneous. Sean Power argues that our understanding of time can determine our understanding of perceptual experience in relation to perceptual structure and perceptual error. He examines the general conditions under which an experience may be sorted into different kinds of error such as illusions, hallucinations, and anosognosia. Power also argues that some theories of time are better than others at giving an account of the structure and errors of perceptual experience. He makes the case that tenseless theory and eternalism more closely correspond to experience than tense theory and presentism. Finally, the book includes a discussion of the perceptual experience of space and how tenseless theory and eternalism can better support the problematic theory of naïve realism. Philosophy of Time and Perceptual Experience originally illustrates how the metaphysics of time can be usefully applied to thinking about experience in general. It will appeal to those interested in the philosophy of time and debates about the trustworthiness of experience.

In the last few years there has been an explosion of philosophical interest in perception; after decades of neglect, it is now one of the most fertile areas for new work. Perceptual Experience presents new work by fifteen of the world's leading philosophers. All papers are written specially for this volume, and they cover a broad range of topics to do with sensation and representation, consciousness and awareness, and the connections between perception and knowledge and between perception and action. This will be the book on the philosophy of perception, a fascinating resource for philosophers and psychologists.

Naturalistic cognitive science, when realistically rendered, rightly maintains that to think is to deploy contentful mental representations. Accordingly, conscious perception, memory, and anticipation are forms of cognition that, despite their introspectively manifest differences, may coincide in content. Sometimes we remember what we saw; other times we predict what we will see. Why, then, does what it is like consciously to perceive, differ so dramatically from what it is like merely to recall or anticipate the same? Why, if thought is just representation, does the phenomenal character of seeing a sunset differ so stunningly from the tepid character of recollecting or predicting the sun's descent? J. Christopher Maloney argues that, unlike other cognitive modes, perception is in fact immediate, direct acquaintance with the object of thought. Although all mental representations carry content, the vehicles of perceptual representation are uniquely composed of the very objects represented. To perceive the setting sun is to use the sun and its properties to cast a peculiar cognitive vehicle of demonstrative representation. This vehicle's embedded referential term is identical with, and demonstrates, the sun itself. And the vehicle's self-attributive demonstrative predicate is itself forged from a property of that same remote star. So, in this sense, the perceiving mind is an extended mind. Perception is unbrokered cognition of what is real, exactly as it really is. Maloney's theory of perception will be of great interest in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Contemporary philosophy of perception typically focuses on discussions concerning the content and the phenomenology of perceptual experience. In a significant departure from this tradition, The Ontology of Perceptual Experience explores the very conscious phenomena to which intentional or phenomenal features are thus ascribed. Drawing on a new wave of research— including the work of maverick philosophers like Helen Steward, Brian O’Shaughnessy, and Matthew Soteriou—this book examines two ways of categorizing perceptual experiences in accordance to their dynamic structure: on the one hand, Experiential Heracliteanism, an approach striving to describe perceptual experiences in terms of irreducibly dynamic components; and, on the other, Experiential Non-Heracliteanism, which conceives perceptual experiences as dynamic phenomena that may nevertheless be described in terms of non-dynamic elements. Sebastián Sanhueza Rodríguez describes both proposals and makes a modest case on behalf of the Non-Heraclitean approach against its increasingly popular Heraclitean counterpart. This case crucially turns on the fact that the Heracliteanist engages in a controversial and perhaps unnecessary commitment to irreducibly dynamic processes. The ontological framework this book unpacks offers a platform from which traditional issues in the philosophies of mind and perception may be revisited in refreshing and potentially fruitful ways.

This is the most authoritative and comprehensive guide ever published to the state of the art in philosophy of mind, a flourishing area of research. An outstanding team of contributors offer 45 new critical surveys of a wide range of topics.