Talk:Philosophy of perception
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[edit] Rewrite
Early November: This article needs a rewrite.
It reads like a testimonial for direct realism (which is only supported by behaviourists and post-modernists) with odd comments trying to provide balance.
30th November: the rewrite is now completed. The introduction of the "Scientific account of perception" is essential because it shows how the latest neuroscience is increasingly showing a shared ontology for dreams, imaginings and perception. This make the direct realist case untenable. See:
this is written by a fervent direct realist who points out that a shared ontology is fatal to direct realism. The scientific account is also necessary to bring those with a casual interest in the subject up to speed with the modern way of considering this issue.
The bulk of the old article has been transferred to Direct realism where it belonged. It is presented as an example of direct realist reasoning.
[edit] Comments
EntmootsOfTrolls would have liked this article to be part of User:EntmootsOfTrolls/WikiProject Body, Cognition and Senses, which provides guidelines for articles on those topics, and seeks stronger cross-linkage and cross-cultural treatment of all of these topics.
This article, cognition, perception, the senses and a few others (like perspective, visual perception, pain, irritation, pain control) are very tightly linked and probably a lot of things need to move around, as noted here:
I'm not sure that the last two paragraphs should go here. Perhaps on cognition or philosophy of mind, or better yet, on a page about autopoiesis. I'm really not sure, because I don't know anything about this; this is the first I've heard of Maturana and Varela, probably because they aren't (weren't) philosophers but scientists, and the theory is not well known by philosophers generally. --LMS
I wondered about that. That's one of the reasons I asked the question about consilience on your personal page. Perhaps I should gather my courage and write a page on autopoiesis? Where would it go? The first time I tried to write a separate page it wound up in a sort of Wikipedian limbo! I think I need help with this. :)
Well, I don't know. It would be great if you could ask advice from a philosopher who is familiar with autopoiesis. My best guess is life, mind, or cognition, depending on what, exactly, you want to say. It all depends on what the text in question is about, precisely. Since we can have articles about nearly anything, there's no excuse not be precise.
I wanted to add that I doubt that we should take the position that just because many philosophers don't know about theory T, an article on T shouldn't be linked to from a philosophy page. Just because the people who originated the autopoiesis theory are biologists, that hardly by itself means that it won't be of interest on some particular philosophy (and psychology and cognitive science and AI and biology) pages. But what we (on Wikipedia) should try to do--though I don't know if you and I could do it individually or together--is make it clear that the theory is in fact originated by biologists and that it raises issues in a way that is, in some ways, orthogonal to the way philosophers today raise them. In other words, it's a different tradition. That's very important to mention, I think, because a very large part of understanding philosophy is understanding philosophical traditions. What I'm skeptical that you and I could do is describing the relationship between the traditions; for that I suspect we'd need a philosophically-trained biologist or a biology-trained philosopher. --LMS
Neither of which I am. Sigh. After a lifetime of being a generalist (jack of all trades, so to speak) I find myself wishing I had been more of an expert in SOMEthing! I'll cut the section on autopoiesis from Perception and repost it later after I think a bit about all this. Thank you for your patience. F. Lee Horn
This is something I've been working on for some time. I'm not aware of all that has been written on perception, by any means. I've been reading these pages with great interest! :-) Still, naive and simple though it may be, I would welcome comments on what I call (perhaps a little pompously ;-)) What is reality. SteveMerrick
I have a problem with this article as a whole. It seems to me that there is insufficient information contained in the article to allow a recast to a neutral point of view without extensive external information. I would suggest that a base article closer to neutrality would perhaps create a better encyclopedia article The Ostrich.
- There's nothing wrong with this article as it is now, except for its lack of connection to other articles on various things like reality - see the WikiProject link above.
Epistemology can be very important when researching perception, because there might be mismatches in perception between the observer and that which (s)he is observing.
At the end of the section titled 'Philosophical ideas about perception' appears the sentence:
'The term neuro-linguistic programming, often abbreviated to NLP, was coined by Richard Bandler and John Grinder for their method of studying the structure of subjective experience.'
This is a non sequitur. NLP is not a philosophical field (and it is not considered to be a scientific field either). Unless someone can provide a good reason to retain the sentence I will remove it. flavius 05:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Hello people. I have had a look at the page, and it looks very good on the whole according to my admittedly limited but increasing knowledge of the subject. I have learned some things already. The article may benefit from some connections with cognitive science. Especially as it relates to internal perception (please correct or adjust me if it looks irrelevant to you, I am only partly sure on that one). Certainly the NLP information looks to be totally out of place though. I'm not sure how that managed to get in there. I will make the appropriate adjustments. Good day! Cromby 12:07, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Kant's supposed indirect realism.
The article suggests that both Locke and Kant followed indirect perception - I don't find this to be entirely accurate.
Locke's argument goes something like this:
P1.) Everything which we visually percieve is coloured P2.) Nothing phsyical is coloured C1.) The object of perception cannot be a physical thing
From this Locke arrives at the idea that there are primary (mind independent, e.g. shape and size) and secondary (mind dependent, e.g. colour) qualities - This idea shows that Locke is accurately known as an indirect realist because of the requirement of the object of the external world, and the object of perception (sense-data)
Kant's point however, is that nothing can ever be said of things-in-themselves (the noumenal) - In addition the noumenal does not cause the phenomenal (roughly similar to sense-data) and so Kant may not be considered as an indirect realist as the article suggests.
-Alex Milner
[edit] On Kant's supposed indirect realism
I have come here for the same reason. Arguably, the only philosopher who can be called an indirect realist without any controversy is Nicolas Malebranche. Locke's supposed direct realism was first pointed out, I believe, by Thomas Reid, who called the empiricist's theory of perception the "way of ideas." Most people, as the user above, have no problem citing Locke among the examples of indirect realists and I include myself in this group.
Kant is another matter entirely. He can, against what is said by the user above, be considered an indirect realist. Most of the classical commentaries (e.g. Vaihinger, Kemp Smith) do take him to be saying that our representations are the object of our perception. Against this is the opinion of many current Kant scholars, most notably Henry Allison (and Prauss among the German commentators, I believe). It is all a matter of what do you take to be appearances (Erscheinungen). If there are subjective appearances (Erscheinungen) *and* objective appearances taken as objects of experience (Phaenomena), then a direct realist interpretation might follow. If you take all occurrences of "Erscheinung" to mean "Phaenomenon", then I believe a very strange indirect realist position is the least that might follow (one might argue that what might really follow is the extremest idealism possible).
On account of it being a controversial point of interpretation, I will remove Kant's name and replace it with Malebranche's.
Kripkenstein (talk) 01:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Philosophical ideas of Perception
"Idealism holds that we create our reality whereas skepticism holds that reality is always beyond us".
This is incorrect. Idealism holds that reality is mental in nature.1Z 21:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
The current description of enactivism describes it as an alternative to realism and anti-realism. Specifically, it refers to "reality [arising]" out of a subject's interactions with the world. This strikes me as a bad description--it's not that the enactivist thinks that reality doesn't exist until you interact, but that perception depends on a kind of interaction between mind and world. I'll change it unless anyone wants to defend the current formulation. JustinBlank (talk) 03:24, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Epistemology
The article currently states that the philosophy of perception is "closely related to" the field of epistemology. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that perception simply falls under the field of epistemology. --68.149.181.145 (talk) 05:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
- I rewrote the relevant section in a way that would hopefully answer your question. JustinBlank (talk) 01:05, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
