In Defense of Direct Perception
ABSTRACT: My goal in this paper is to defend the claim that one can directly perceive an object without possessing any descriptive beliefs about this object. My strategy in defending this claim is to rebut three arguments that attack my view of direct perception. According to these arguments, the notion of direct perception as I construe it is objectionable since: (1) it is epistemically worthless since it leaves perceived objects uninterpreted; (2) it cannot explain how perceived objects are identified; and (3) it is ill-prepared to assign objective content to perceptual states.
What is involved in the claim that one directly perceives an object? The notion of direct perception that I propose to defend in this paper is this: that one 'directly' perceives an object if one's perception of this object is not mediated by beliefs. Put another way, a 'direct' perceiver does not believe anything about an object in (directly) perceiving it. On this construal of the notion of direct perception, it follows that if one directly perceives an object, one does not describe this object; for any description of an object is expressed as a belief, and direct perceptions do not involve beliefs. The direct perceiver, I claim, does not (and indeed may be completely unable to) give a description of the perceived object, without this lack (or inability) detracting from the fact that the object is directly perceived.
In defending this view of direct perception, we need to become clearer on how it is possible for a belief to mediate one's perception of an object. There are (at least) two ways in which this can occur. Here's the first.
A belief can be said to mediate one's perception of an object if a belief se...
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...ld, itself, be an interpretation—but then we've simply displaced the problem one step, for the question will arise again with this interpretation, to wit, what is its object. Nor could the object of an interpretation simply be what satisfies the interpretation (or, put another way, whatever satisfies the descriptive beliefs associated with a perception) for an object could satisfy this interpretation, without being the de facto object of perception. Indeed, an object of indirect perception might not, in actuality, even satisfy one's associated descriptive beliefs—and still it will be indirectly perceived. Thus, the object of an indirect perception must be what is provided by a direct perception—what other object could be a candidate? That is, the notion of an indirect perception relies on a prior notion of a direct perception, and is indeed inconceivable without it.
On December 2, 1823, President James Monroe articulated his seventh annual message to Congress. This message presented Americans with a statement that changed the way the Western Hemisphere would be view and how international affairs toward the new Latin colonies would be handle from this point forward. It addressed European nations in particular and stated that “the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet nations” The Monroe Doctrine was initially designed to protect the Latin colonies but later President Theodore Roosevelt extended the Doctrine to include the United States would be the policing powers of the Western Hemisphere, this became known as the Roosevelt Corollary. Roosevelt stated that the United States had a “morale mandate” to ensure that other nations used appropriate attitudes toward Latin America. Roosevelt felt strongly in about the conduct of other nations and further stated: “It is not that the United States feels and land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the U...
The Monroe Doctrine played a vital role in forming United States foreign policy. It was implemented at a time in the United States when Manifest Destiny was aggressively in effect. The US was freshly out from the control Europe had over them. The forming of Latin America in 1822 sparked interest in the US. The Latin America was experiencing similar problems in trying to gain independence from European control. The Holy Alliance, a coalition formed by Russia, Austria and Prussia, were attempting to interfere with this progress. The British took a stance against the Alliance to preserve trade and commercial interest. With Britain on his side, President Monroe took this opportunity to present the Monr...
1. The Monroe Doctrine was a bold statement of American Foreign Policy-discuss its origins-its focus at the time and the impact it has during the pre-Civil War period of American diplomacy.
In Stephen Jay Gould’s essay, “Some close encounters of a mental kind,” Gould discussed about how certainty can be both blessing and dangerous. According to Gould, certainty can be blessing because it can provide warmth, comfort and secure. However, it can also be a danger because it can trick our mind with false information of what we see and remember in our mind. Gould also talked about the three levels of possible error in direct visual observation: misperception, retention and retrieval. According to Gould, our human mind is the greatest miracle of nature and the wicked of all frauds and tricksters mixed. To support his argument and statements, he used an example of an experiment that Elizabeth Loftus, a professor from University of California Irvine, did to her students and a personal experience of his childhood trip to the Devils Tower. I agree with Gould that sight and memory do not provide certainty because what we remember is not always true, our mind can be tricky and trick us into believing what we see/hear is real due to the three potential error of visual observation. Certainty is unreliable and tricky.
Merleau-Ponty distinguishes three aspects of the psychological process; basic sensations, perception, and the associations of memory (Merleau-Ponty, 1994). Basic sensations receive raw information from the world and transduce them for our perceptual processes. Perception unifies the infinite amount of information about our environment, from our environment, into a meaningful structure. Perception is interpretive, but its presentation of the world is as distal and objective. There are three central features of perception for Merleau-Ponty. First, perception is synthesized independently by the body and not by the mind (consciousness).
Primarily, the United States foreign policy behind the Monroe Doctrine was introduced by President James Monroe in the midst of many Latin American countries gaining their independence from Spain. The doctrine stated that attempts by European countries to colonize or interfere with states in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as acts of aggression and U.S. intervention would be necessary. The Monroe Doctrine set the precedent for various foreign policies that would result in U.S. involvement in Latin America.
The knowledge question being pursued in this essay is: what role does what we expect to see- or are used to seeing- play in what we observe? What we expect to see greatly influences the observations that we make, as confirmation bias is created therefore we are more likely to accept something as true. It is difficult to make observations with neutrality once bias is formed.
Accepting that we cannot establish the "objectivity" of our experiences' content, Kant nevertheless attempts to resist a slide into relativism by insisting that they are mediated by rationally delineated categories which supposedly insure the transcendental or universal nature of their form, thereby providing an absolute standard against which we might check the veridicality of our descriptions of, and communications concerning, them. However as a priori preconditions of the possibility of experience such categories are obviously inexperienceable in themselves, and consequently must also fall to the phenomenological reduction. (3) Nevertheless, a moments reflection will confirm that our experiences do indeed exhibit structure or form, and that we are able, even from within, or wholly upon the basis of, the (phenomenologically reduced) realm of, our experiences per se, to distinguish between the flux of constantly changing and interrupted subjective appearances, and the relatively unchanging and continuously existing objects constituted therein. Husserl confirms:
Gibson (1979) developed an ecological approach to the study of visual perception, which is a new and radical approach to the whole field of psychology that humans perceive their environment directly without mediation by cognitive process or by mental entities. According to his assertion of direct perception, there is enough information in our environment to make sense of the world (Gibson, 1977). Gibson (1979) said “direct perception is an activity of getting information from ambient array of light” (p. 147), and further called this a process of information pickup. That is, there is no need for mental processing since every object and event in the world have inherent meanings that are detected and exploited by humans. So his perception is based on information, not on sensations, which is in contrast with the conventional perspective of perception.
... So following all of this, if the 'sensible objects' that we perceive are of the mind, then we can not claim that there is an external world (class, lecture) (James, 2).
...tween actual perception and the sensations produced within our minds. It is a fallacy of ignorance to assume that there is no existence outside of the mind because we have no way of perceiving it.
What we see in some things can based on our past experiences and things we’vewe have seen before. If you ever look at the clouds during the day and try to decide what you see and then ask someone else what they see it’sit is about very little chance that everyone will see the same thing. This is what I think of
The Monroe Doctrine and the Manifest Destiny stated America's philosophies regarding foreign policy. The Monroe Doctrine (1823), crafted by President Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, was a statem...
5) Pattern of neuronal activity associated with conscious and unconscious processing of visual signals, Sahraie, et al.
(2012). Perception, conscious and unconscious processes. In F. G. Barth, P. Giampieri-Deutsch & H. Klein (Eds.), Sensory perception: Mind and matter; sensory perception: Mind and matter (pp. 245-264, Chapter xi, 404 Pages) Springer Science + Business Media/SpringerWienNewYork, Vienna. Retrieved from http://vortex3.uco.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.vortex3.uco.edu/docview/1037892527?accountid=14516