Philosophical Approaches

Philosophers think of perception as a sensory experience (also called a sensation) that provides the perceiver with knowledge concerning the external world. This leads into an approach to perception that diverges importantly from those taken in science and in everyday thinking.

Three clarifications:

• 1.
  A sensory experience is one that has a characteristically visual, auditory, or other-sensory character. Such an experience need not originate from the sense organs.
• 2.
  “External” means external to the conscious mind. Accordingly, the perceiver's own body should be considered a part of the “external” world.
• 3.
  In philosophy, “knowledge” means something quite specific. In order for me to know something in the philosophical sense—for instance, for me to know that my friend is walking up the path to my front door—it should not only be true that she is doing this, but, more than this, I should be in a position to guarantee that she is. (A guarantee need not be absolute; many consider it enough if one can show that something is overwhelmingly likely.)

Unpacking the previous conception, then, perception is a sensory experience that allows me to guarantee some condition of the external world. Suppose I look out of the window and seem to see my friend walking up the path. Does this give me what I need to guarantee that she is? Only if it does, does my experience count as visually perceiving her. (This will be qualified and clarified in the following section.)

Notice that many sensations do not even begin to count as perception by this criterion. Somebody hits you on the head, and you “see stars.” You are in a very quiet room and “hear” internally generated white noise. You have been sitting in an airplane seat too long and feel “pins and needles” in your feet. In these cases, you have experiences with visual, auditory, or tactual character. But these experiences do not allow you to guarantee anything about the external world. They do not amount, therefore, to perception. In this entry, the philosophical approaches to perception are covered, including direct perception (including skepticism), sense data, simple and complex [Page 806]qualities, representationalism, and the theories of representational content.