Learning to Perceive

Abstract

A philosophical account of perception has the task of elucidating the interface between the realm of mental attributes and that of physical objects and events. At this interface we come to appreciate the environment as being thus and so on the basis of causal contact with it. It is just at this point that certain problems arise. The first is the general problem of the way in which our sensory systems allow our thought to be about things in the world rather than about notional or solipsistic correlates of those things. A second is the relation between philosophical and scientific accounts of perception. A third problem is the idea that there is a conceptual role in the analysis of perception (which involves an understanding of mental ascriptions) for a preconceptual element or 'given' upon which the thinker's conceptual scheme can operate,' I think that our philosophical account often relies upon a flawed assumption or picture which has 'held us captive' and will attempt an analysis which does not share it. I will