The Sensory Core and the Medieval Foundations of Early Modern Perceptual Theory

Abstract

N THE EIGHTEENTH and nineteenth centuries the majority of theories of perception were built upon the view that during the process of vision there occur two conscious states with quite different phenomenal properties. The first state is a mental representation of the two-dimensional retinal image. The second is our experience of the visual of objects distributed in depth. According to the then commonly accepted theory, the mental correlate of the retinal image is the truly immediate component of perception, and it provides the raw material from which the mind generates the three-dimensional world. Yet this retinal correlate the sensory core of the perceptual process-typically goes unnoticed, and the percipient takes his experience of the three-dimensional world to be direct and unmediated.2 Although it may seem odd that an unnoticed state of consciousness should be viewed as the psychologically fundamental component of the process, that which we have labelled the sensory core has played a central role in theory since Berkeley drew his celebrated distinction between the immediate