Free Ebook Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle
Curious? Obviously, this is why, we intend you to click the web link web page to check out, then you can appreciate guide Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle downloaded up until finished. You could conserve the soft data of this Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle in your gadget. Certainly, you will bring the gadget almost everywhere, won't you? This is why, each time you have downtime, every single time you can enjoy reading by soft copy publication Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle
Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle
Free Ebook Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle
Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle. Adjustment your practice to hang or lose the time to just talk with your good friends. It is done by your everyday, don't you really feel tired? Currently, we will reveal you the extra behavior that, actually it's an older practice to do that could make your life a lot more certified. When really feeling tired of always talking with your close friends all leisure time, you can locate guide entitle Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle then read it.
To get over the issue, we now give you the innovation to download guide Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle not in a thick printed file. Yeah, checking out Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle by on the internet or getting the soft-file simply to read can be one of the means to do. You may not feel that reading a publication Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle will work for you. However, in some terms, May people successful are those who have reading behavior, included this type of this Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle
By soft data of the e-book Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle to read, you could not have to bring the thick prints anywhere you go. At any time you have going to review Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle, you could open your device to review this book Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle in soft data system. So easy as well as fast! Reviewing the soft documents book Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle will certainly provide you easy method to check out. It could likewise be quicker due to the fact that you could read your e-book Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle all over you want. This on-line Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle could be a referred publication that you could enjoy the solution of life.
Because publication Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle has great perks to check out, lots of people now expand to have reading practice. Assisted by the developed innovation, nowadays, it is simple to purchase guide Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle Even guide is not existed yet in the marketplace, you to hunt for in this website. As exactly what you can locate of this Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle It will actually reduce you to be the very first one reading this e-book Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory Of Perception, By John R. Searle and also get the perks.
This book provides a comprehensive account of the intentionality of perceptual experience. With special emphasis on vision Searle explains how the raw phenomenology of perception sets the content and the conditions of satisfaction of experience. The central question concerns the relation between the subjective conscious perceptual field and the objective perceptual field. Everything in the objective field is either perceived or can be perceived. Nothing in the subjective field is perceived nor can be perceived precisely because the events in the subjective field consist of the perceivings , whether veridical or not, of the events in the objective field.
Searle begins by criticizing the classical theories of perception and identifies a single fallacy, what he calls the Bad Argument, as the source of nearly all of the confusions in the history of the philosophy of perception. He next justifies the claim that perceptual experiences have presentational intentionality and shows how this justifies the direct realism of his account. In the central theoretical chapters, he shows how it is possible that the raw phenomenology must necessarily determine certain form of intentionality. Searle introduces, in detail, the distinction between different levels of perception from the basic level to the higher levels and shows the internal relation between the features of the experience and the states of affairs presented by the experience. The account applies not just to language possessing human beings but to infants and conscious animals. He also discusses how the account relates to certain traditional puzzles about spectrum inversion, color and size constancy and the brain-in-the-vat thought experiments. In the final chapters he explains and refutes Disjunctivist theories of perception, explains the role of unconscious perception, and concludes by discussing traditional problems of perception such as skepticism.
- Sales Rank: #337013 in Books
- Brand: Oxford University Press USA
- Published on: 2015-02-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 5.80" h x .90" w x 8.40" l, 2.20 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
- Oxford University Press USA
Review
"...[O]ffers a straightforward, realistic account of how one perceives objects and states of affairs... Highly recommended." --Choice
"Immensely refreshing." --The Weekly Standard
"Seeing Things As They Are is full of interesting ideas. It is engagingly written, and deals with big questions about the mind-world relations and the relation between the phenomenology and intentionality of perception. I recommned it to anyone interested in what makes perceptual contact with a mind-independent world possible."
-- The Philosophers's Magazine
"Searle's book is a wonderful addition to the philosophical discipline of perception, and a useful way for someone who is not well versed in the subject to receive and extensive overview of the historical arguments. The overarching thesis is a strong defense of Direct Realism that will inspire the reader to contemplate the ways they discern meaning through experience." -- Englewood Review of Books
About the Author
John R. Searle is Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His previous publications include Making the Social World (2010) and Mind: A Brief introduction (2004), both from Oxford University Press.
Most helpful customer reviews
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
... his new book Searle counters what he calls the Bad Argument that has ruined epistemology for three centuries
By michael fowler
In the first part of his new book Searle counters what he calls the Bad Argument that has ruined epistemology for three centuries, namely the idea that we don’t perceive the world directly but through an intermediary called variously sense data, representation, or even interface. His claim is that our senses present the actual world to us, and do not create a picture or representation that must be perceived in place of the real world that it somehow resembles.
He does this first by attacking the notion that consciousness is some nonphysical entity that can’t react with physical entities. Instead Searle holds that consciousness is a biological property of the mind and is caused by neurons in the brain, just as digestion is a property of the stomach and is caused by glands and enzymes. As such consciousness belongs to the physical world and ultimately reduces to the particles and fields of atomic physics. But Searle is not a microbiologist or brain scientist and does not tell us how consciousness emerges from the brain, only that it does. He is a philosopher and here is interested in how consciousness works in perception.
In claiming that vision presents the real word to us, Searle relies on theories of causation and intentionality. An object causes light to be reflected into our eyes, and the resulting visual experience is an intentional one, by which is meant that it seems to us to be the object out there in the real world. In other words, the visual experience has conditions of satisfaction, or requirements of being a certain way, which are that it presents a real object to us. As Searle puts it, we use the same words to describe our visual experience as to describe the object we’re looking at. The result is that our experience seems to be caused by the object we are looking at, and is a presentation of that object.
In a fascinating discussion on hallucination, Searle says that when we are hallucinating, our visual apparatus works exactly the same as when we are having a true or veridical perception, except the cause of the perception shifts from the world to the mind, and the object of the perception out in the world goes missing.
Searle thinks that everything we think or perceive gives rise to a special feeling of what it’s like to do or think something. This seems to be part of his concept of intentionality. But Searle says some odd things in this connection. If he is married to one of two identical twins, for example, or presented with a car identical to the one he drives, he seems to believe that the phenomenology or appearance of one of the twins will change once he recognizes which is his wife, and the same for his car once he realizes that he’s looking at his very own car. I don’t get that, since by stipulation the identical twins and cars can’t be distinguished by appearance. Yes, the intentionality will change, since his feelings and attitudes will enter into his consciousness, but why the phenomenology also? I don’t see that he needs to say that.
Still that is a handy belief to have when you are refuting the idea that computers are conscious, as Searle does. Obviously a computer like the ones we have now do not have subjective, qualitative feelings about the world or about their computational chores, and so can’t be conscious. Searle has other arguments against the consciousness of computers as well, and it is quite refreshing to read a thinker who doesn’t subscribe to the belief that the brain is a computer and the mind some sort of computer program. Such writers as Dennett, who do hold that view, simply eliminate consciousness rather than explain it. I’m with Searle all the way here.
Searle is quite expert in zeroing in on the logical flaws in the theories of consciousness of others, and does so with a deadpan humor that can be quite amusing. He goes through the Greats we read in college, Descartes, Berkeley, Hume and Kant, and shows how their theories of the mind or skepticism have impeded understanding of what really goes on in perception. In contrast to the writing style of Dennett, he attacks the subject of consciousness in perception head on and stays with it, rather than writing about everything under the sun in a circuitous and ultimately inaccurate approach. The prose is clear if the arguments are sometimes dense, and free of jargon. Also included are helpful pictures and diagrams. It’s enjoyable when Searle challenges those with a different view of perception to draw a diagram that better explains it than his.
I would have liked Searle to talk more about so-called hardwiring in the brain, particularly as it relates to such things as language acquisition. Searle’s position is that there is no unconscious rule in the mind unless in principle it could become conscious. I don’t know if the innate rules of language acquisition could become conscious. What would that mean in the case of a two-year old leaning to speak English? Chomsky’s idea of innate but unconscious rules seem to be a given in philosophy these days, and if Searle doesn’t buy it, and I gather he doesn’t, I’d like to read more about why. Does he question all of Chomsky? How does he better explain language acquisition?
Also Searle still leaves us with a kind of dualism. After explaining our centuries-old failure to solve the mind-body problem as set up by Descartes and others, where mind is something nonphysical that in principle can’t react casually with the physical world, he opts for a kind of materialism with two different ontologies, or types of existence. There is the first-person ontology of an individual’s private conscious events, and the third-person ontology of the objective world. But somehow both are the same kind of stuff reducible to atoms and forces. Well, it sounds right. The trick, and I think Searle pulls it off, is to present a coherent theory of perception without tripping up, to do it better than the rest, and to do it with humor and style.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
A Good Introduction to Philosophy of Perception
By A.Luther
When it comes to making technical philosophical jargon easily understood, John Searle is one of the best. That is not to say that Searle dumbs things down for the audience, it's just that he is good at getting rid of all the hyperbole that often exists in academic philosophy. Searle opens his book with a critique of what he calls the "Bad Argument" in philosophy. The Bad Argument is that since we may have a perceptual experience of the world that is really a hallucination but is in fact indistinguishable from a veridical (accurate) perception then what both hallucinatory and veridical perception must have in common is the perception of "sense data." Searle contends that this is a huge philosophical mistake that many of the "great" western philosophers have made and has led to problems with what these philosophers can say about the ontologically objective world. Searle contends that what is missing is an understanding of the intentional nature of perception. That is, perception provides us with a direct presentation of the objective world unmediated by sense data because it is the nature of perception to be about the objective events in the world that cause our perceptions. In working out his argument Searle touches on the issue of consciousness, classic thought experiments in philosophy of mind such as the "brain in the vat" and he discusses the philosophical notion of disjunctivism in perception. Disjunctivism is the argument that veridical and hallucinatory perceptions are different because there is something phenomenally different in our experience of veridical perception versus hallucination. No fan of disjuncitivism, Searle argues that there is no difference in the subjective or phenomenal character of veridical perceptions and hallucination - no difference in what he calls their subjective ontology - but there is a difference in their intentional character. Namely, that while veridical percepts are about objects in the world, hallucinations are actually about nothing at all. On reading Searle I find myself partly in agreement with him but only up to a limited point. The biggest problem I have with Searle is his view that the brain "causes" consciousness and that subjective experience are created "in the head." I think this a big problem for his "Direct Realist" position of perception since it means that our perceptions cannot be unmediated as any brain activity relevant to consciousness must be instead mediated by sensory signals from our sensory receptors. Hence those internal brain dynamics relevant to consciousness do not have direct contact with the physical objects that we experience as the subjective contents of perception. Like most contemporary philosophers and scientists who study consciousness and brain, this leads Searle to believe that that subjective experience is a brain event. However, Searle, despite being adamant that consciousness is a natural product of the brain cannot say how the brain causes consciousness. In later chapters of the book Searle is critical of computational theories of mind, so we can rule out that the possibility that he thinks that consciousness is somehow a bi-product of information processing in the brain. This leaves one confused as to how Searle thinks the brain creates the subjective contents of our experience. I should also note that in discussing how relations between the world and subjective perceptions of it occur, he is dismissive of both resemblance theories - the notion that we perceive objects in the world accurately because our perceptions somehow resemble those objects - and causal theories that suggest we perceive objects in the world because our perceptions occur at the end of what Searle calls "a billiard ball" chain of causative events. While I agree with Searle that he is right to dismiss these explanations of how we perceive the world, Searle does not really replace it with anything else since the current neuroscience understanding of how the brain might perceive the world boils right down to "billiard ball" causation, or what Aristotle would have called efficient and material causation between brain and world. My gut feeling is that Searle is really a lot more sceptical about our capacity to scientifically understand the mind/consciousness then he lets on to his audience. I definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to come to grips with the problems in the philosophy of perception.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
CUTTING THE GORDIAN KNOT
By Claudio Ferreira Costa
This is the best defence of direct realism that I've ever seen. The fallacy that Searle identifies in the literature on the problem of perception is fundamental, and he is right in saying that it was in a certain sense tragic, originating the whole traditions of representationalism and idealism. This deceptivelly easy to read book is a philosophical achievement. He knows how to cut the Gordian knot.
Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle PDF
Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle EPub
Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle Doc
Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle iBooks
Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle rtf
Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle Mobipocket
Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception, by John R. Searle Kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment