Overview
- Offers a unique examination of the most relevant authors on active perception throughout the history of philosophy
- Presents chapters written by the foremost experts in the field
- Includes a collection of essays which is essential for understanding the origin of the contemporary discussions in the philosophy of perception
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind (SHPM, volume 14)
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Table of contents (15 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
- Aristotle and Activity and Passivity in Perception
- Augustine on Active Perception
- Avicenna on Soul's Activity in Perception
- Berkeley and Activity in Visual Perception
- Consciousness and Intentionality
- Descartes and Active Perception
- Medieval Theories of Active Perception
- Nicholas of Cusa on Active Perception
- Realism/Representationalism
- Spinoza on Activity in Sense Perception
- Thomas Hobbes on Active Perception
- challenge traditional overviews of perception
- intentional character of mental acts and mental representations
- nature of perception
- objects of perception
- phases of the process of perception
About this book
The aim of the present work is to show the roots of the conception of perception as an active process, tracing the history of its development from Plato to modern philosophy. The contributors inquire into what activity is taken to mean in different theories, challenging traditional historical accounts of perception that stress the passivity of percipients in coming to know the external world. Special attention is paid to the psychological and physiological mechanisms of perception, rational and non-rational perception and the role of awareness in the perceptual process.
Perception has often been conceived as a process in which the passive aspects - such as the reception of sensory stimuli - were stressed and the active ones overlooked. However, during recent decades research in cognitive science and philosophy of mind has emphasized the activity of the subject in the process of sense perception, often associating this activity to the notions of attention and intentionality. Although it is recognized that there are ancient roots to the view that perception is fundamentally active, the history remains largely unexplored.
The book is directed to all those interested in contemporary debates in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology who would like to become acquainted with the historical background of active perception, but for historical reliability the aim is to make no compromises.
Reviews
From the book reviews:
“The volume consists of three sets of papers: one on ancient, one on medieval, and one on early modern philosophy. … this book is a valuable source for students and scholars interested in the history of philosophical psychology. Most of the papers are accessible to a broad audience. Many of the contributors interestingly qualify the idea that there is a clear-cut distinction to be made between passive and active accounts of perception.” (Han Thomas Adriaenssen, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, October, 2014)
Editors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Active Perception in the History of Philosophy
Book Subtitle: From Plato to Modern Philosophy
Editors: José Filipe Silva, Mikko Yrjönsuuri
Series Title: Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-04360-9Published: 01 April 2014
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-35347-0Published: 03 September 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-04361-6Published: 18 March 2014
Series ISSN: 1573-5834
Series E-ISSN: 2542-9922
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 293
Number of Illustrations: 5 b/w illustrations
Topics: Epistemology, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Psychology