Perception and Imagination
This area studies how the mind takes in the world through perception and re-presents it through imagination and mental imagery.
Definition
Perception is the mind's capacity to represent or be presented with the environment through the senses; imagination is the capacity to entertain or simulate experiences and scenarios in the absence of the corresponding stimuli.
Scope
This area covers theories of perceptual experience, including the arguments from illusion and hallucination, the nature of mental imagery and imagination, and embodied, enactive, and extended approaches to the mind. It connects philosophy of mind to epistemology and cognitive science.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- What are we directly aware of in perceptual experience?
- How do illusion and hallucination bear on theories of perception?
- What is the nature and format of mental imagery?
- Do cognitive processes extend beyond the brain into body and world?
Key concepts
- sense-data
- intentionalism
- disjunctivism
- mental imagery
- enactivism
- extended mind
Key theories
- The problem of perception
- Illusion and hallucination challenge the naive view that we are directly aware of mind-independent objects, motivating sense-datum, intentional, and disjunctivist theories.
- Enactive and embodied perception
- Perceptual experience is constituted by sensorimotor skills and bodily activity rather than the passive reception of internal representations.
History
The problem of perception, posed by the arguments from illusion and hallucination, structured twentieth-century debate from sense-datum theories to contemporary intentionalism and disjunctivism. In parallel, the imagery debate pitted pictorial against descriptional formats, and embodied, enactive, and extended approaches reframed perception and cognition as world-involving.
Debates
- Direct versus indirect perception
- Whether we are directly aware of external objects or only of internal representations or sense-data.
- Boundaries of cognition
- Whether perceptual and cognitive processes are confined to the brain or extend into the body and environment.
Key figures
- Tim Crane
- Alva Noe
- Stephen Kosslyn
- Andy Clark
Related topics
Seminal works
- clark1998
- noe2004
- crane2021
Frequently asked questions
- What is the problem of perception?
- It is the puzzle that the possibility of illusion and hallucination seems incompatible with the natural view that perception is a direct openness to mind-independent objects.