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The Perception/Cognition Divide: One More Time, With Feeling

  • Uriah Kriegel
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The Philosophy of Perception
This chapter is in the book The Philosophy of Perception

Abstract

Traditional accounts of the perception/cognition divide tend to draw it in terms of subpersonal psychological processes, processes into which the subject has no first-person insight. Whatever betides such accounts, there seems to also be some first-personally accessible difference between perception and thought. At least in normal circumstances, naïve subjects can typically tell apart their perceptual states from their cognitive or intellectual ones. What are such subjects picking up on when they do so? This paper is an inconclusive search for an answer. At its end, I conclude, without joy, that we may have to simply accept the perception/cognition distinction as a primitive and inexplicable bright line within the sphere of conscious phenomena.

Abstract

Traditional accounts of the perception/cognition divide tend to draw it in terms of subpersonal psychological processes, processes into which the subject has no first-person insight. Whatever betides such accounts, there seems to also be some first-personally accessible difference between perception and thought. At least in normal circumstances, naïve subjects can typically tell apart their perceptual states from their cognitive or intellectual ones. What are such subjects picking up on when they do so? This paper is an inconclusive search for an answer. At its end, I conclude, without joy, that we may have to simply accept the perception/cognition distinction as a primitive and inexplicable bright line within the sphere of conscious phenomena.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Content V
  3. Editorial IX
  4. 1. Objectivity and Realism
  5. Perception: Ground of Empirical Objectivity 3
  6. Objectivity: How is it Possible? 23
  7. Realism’s Kick 39
  8. The Good, The Bad, and The Naïve 57
  9. 2. Content and Intentionality
  10. How to Think About the Representational Content of Visual Experience 77
  11. Structure, Intentionality and the Given 95
  12. Brentano on Perception and Illusion 119
  13. The Problem with J. Searle’s Idea That ‘all Seeing is Seeing-as’ (or What Wittgenstein did not Mean With the Duck-Rabbit) 135
  14. 3. Perception, Cognition and Images
  15. The Perception/Cognition Divide: One More Time, With Feeling 149
  16. Why Verbal Understanding is Unlikely to be an Extended Form of Perception 171
  17. Sound and Image 189
  18. 4. The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception
  19. Bias-Driven Attention, Cognitive Penetration and Epistemic Downgrading 199
  20. Pre-Cueing, Early Vision, and Cognitive Penetrability 217
  21. Predictions do not Entail Cognitive Penetration: “Racial” Biases in Predictive Models of Perception 235
  22. 5. Epistemology of Perception
  23. Boundless 251
  24. The Manifest and the Philosophical Image of Perceptual Knowledge 275
  25. The Co-Presentational Character of Perception 303
  26. Knowledge Without Observation: Body Image or Body Schema? 323
  27. 6. Perception and the Sciences
  28. Scheinbewegungen. Wahrnehmung zwischen Wissensgeschichte und Gegenwartskunst 337
  29. Zur Analogie von Wittgensteins Konzept des Aspektwechsels und der wissenschaftlichen Metapher als Vehikel der Innovation 357
  30. 7. Wittgenstein
  31. The Structure of Tractatus and the Tractatus Numbering System 377
  32. Wittgensteins Welt 399
  33. Index of Names 417
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110657920-009

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Content V
  3. Editorial IX
  4. 1. Objectivity and Realism
  5. Perception: Ground of Empirical Objectivity 3
  6. Objectivity: How is it Possible? 23
  7. Realism’s Kick 39
  8. The Good, The Bad, and The Naïve 57
  9. 2. Content and Intentionality
  10. How to Think About the Representational Content of Visual Experience 77
  11. Structure, Intentionality and the Given 95
  12. Brentano on Perception and Illusion 119
  13. The Problem with J. Searle’s Idea That ‘all Seeing is Seeing-as’ (or What Wittgenstein did not Mean With the Duck-Rabbit) 135
  14. 3. Perception, Cognition and Images
  15. The Perception/Cognition Divide: One More Time, With Feeling 149
  16. Why Verbal Understanding is Unlikely to be an Extended Form of Perception 171
  17. Sound and Image 189
  18. 4. The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception
  19. Bias-Driven Attention, Cognitive Penetration and Epistemic Downgrading 199
  20. Pre-Cueing, Early Vision, and Cognitive Penetrability 217
  21. Predictions do not Entail Cognitive Penetration: “Racial” Biases in Predictive Models of Perception 235
  22. 5. Epistemology of Perception
  23. Boundless 251
  24. The Manifest and the Philosophical Image of Perceptual Knowledge 275
  25. The Co-Presentational Character of Perception 303
  26. Knowledge Without Observation: Body Image or Body Schema? 323
  27. 6. Perception and the Sciences
  28. Scheinbewegungen. Wahrnehmung zwischen Wissensgeschichte und Gegenwartskunst 337
  29. Zur Analogie von Wittgensteins Konzept des Aspektwechsels und der wissenschaftlichen Metapher als Vehikel der Innovation 357
  30. 7. Wittgenstein
  31. The Structure of Tractatus and the Tractatus Numbering System 377
  32. Wittgensteins Welt 399
  33. Index of Names 417
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