Perception: First Form of Mind

Description

In Perception: First Form of Mind, Tyler Burge develops an understanding of the most primitive type of mental representational: perception. Focusing on the functions and capacities of perceptual states, Burge accounts for their representational content and structure, and develops a formal semantics for them. The discussion explains the role of iconic format in the structure. It also situates the accounts of content, structure, and semantics within scientific explanations of perceptual-state formation, emphasizing formation of perceptual categorization. In the book's second half, Burge discusses what a perceptual system is. Exploration of relations between perception and other primitive capacities-conation, attention, memory, anticipation, affect, learning, and imagining-helps distinguish perceiving, with its associated capacities, from thinking, with its associated capacities. Drawing mainly on vision science, not introspection, Perception: First Form of Mind is a rigorous, agenda-setting work in philosophy of perception and philosophy of science. Acknowledgments Contents Preface Animal Eyes List of Figures Abbreviations PART I. PERCEPTION 1. Introduction 2. Perception 3. Perceptual Constancy: A Central Natural Psychological Kind PART II. FORM 4. Some Basics about Perceptual Systems 5. Perceptual Reference Requires Perceptual Attribution 6. Form and Semantics of Representational Contents of Perceptual States 7. Perceptual Attributives and Referential Applications in Perceptual Constancies 8. Egocentric Indexing in Perceptual Spatial and Temporal Frameworks 9. The Iconic Nature of Perception PART III. FORMATION 10. First-Formed Perception: Its Richness and Autonomy 11. Intra-Saccadic Perception and Recurrent Processing 12. Further Attributives: Primitive Attribution of Causation, Agency PART IV. SYSTEM 13. Perceptual-Level Representation and Categorization 14. Conation: Relatively Primitive, Perceptually Guided Action 15. Perceptual Attention 16. Perceptual Memory I: Shorter Term Systems 17. Perceptual Memory II: Visual Perceptual Long-Term Memory 18. Perceptual Learning, Perceptual Anticipation, Perceptual Imagining 19. Perception and Cognition 20. Conclusion Bibliography Author Index Subject Index