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Some Epistemological Aspects of Recent Work in Visual Perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

John Heffner
John Heffner*
Affiliation:
Lebanon Valley College
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Extract

In adults and even in small children, visual perception is framed against a richly developed and relatively stable cognitive background. This background affects vision itself. Experimental evidence in cognitive psychology shows that the effects of this background on visual perception are logically immediate and not the products of reasoning or of deliberation. Nor are the effects of this cognitive background discovered solely in the patterns of use which the perceiver makes of visually received information. In this paper three of the principle aspects of epistemological treatments of visual perception are assessed in view of the cognitive structuring of the visual process. First, traditional distinctions among the sensory, phenomenal, and cognitive aspects of the visual process prove to be less clear than formerly they were thought to be. Second, the concept of perceptual strategies is argued to be reasonable and fruitful in the epistemological analysis of the visual process.

Type
Part V. Epistemological Foundations of Science
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1976 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1976 , 1976 , pp. 165 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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