Description
Book SynopsisIn 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-set
Table of ContentsPreface Part I: Perception 1: Introduction 2: Perception 3: Perceptual Constancy: A Central Psychological Natural Kind Part II: Form 4: Some Basics about Perception and Perceptual Systems 5: Perceptual Reference Requires Perceptual Attribution 6: Form and Semantics of Perceptual Representational Contents 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 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: Perceptual-level Conation and 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