Perception and its Objects (Paperback)

Bill Brewer

ISBN 10: 0199674698 / ISBN 13: 9780199674695

Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013

About this Item

Paperback. Bill Brewer presents, motivates, and defends a bold new solution to a fundamental problem in the philosophy of perception. What is the correct theoretical conception of perceptual experience, and how should we best understand the most fundamental nature of our perceptual relation with the physical objects in the world around us? Most theorists today analyse perception in terms of its representational content, in large part in order to avoid fatal problems attendingthe early modern conception of perception as a relation with particular mind-dependent objects of experience. Having set up the underlying problem and explored the lessons to be learnt from the variousdifficulties faced by opposing early modern responses to it, Bill Brewer argues that this contemporary approach has serious problems of its own. Furthermore, the early modern insight that perception is most fundamentally to be construed as a relation of conscious acquaintance with certain direct objects of experience is, he claims, perfectly consistent with the commonsense identification of such direct objects with persisting mind-independent physical objects themselves. Brewer here provides acritical, historical account of the philosophy of perception, in order to present a defensible vindication of empirical realism. Bill Brewer presents a bold new answer to a fundamental question of philosophy: what is the nature of our perceptual relation with objects in the world? His account of perceptual experience captures the fact that physical objects are both the very things that are subjectively presented in perception, and also entirely independent of experience. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780199674695

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Perception and its Objects (Paperback)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199674698
• ISBN 13: 9780199674695
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Bill Brewer presents, motivates, and defends a bold new solution to a fundamental problem in the philosophy of perception. What is the correct theoretical conception of perceptual experience, and how should we best understand the most fundamental nature of our perceptual relation with the physical objects in the world around us? Most theorists today analyse perception in terms of its representational content, in large part in order to avoid fatal problems attending the early modern conception of perception as a relation with particular mind-dependent objects of experience. Having set up the underlying problem and explored the lessons to be learnt from the various difficulties faced by opposing early modern responses to it, Bill Brewer argues that this contemporary approach has serious problems of its own. Furthermore, the early modern insight that perception is most fundamentally to be construed as a relation of conscious acquaintance with certain direct objects of experience is, he claims, perfectly consistent with the commonsense identification of such direct objects with persisting mind-independent physical objects themselves. Brewer here provides a critical, historical account of the philosophy of perception, in order to present a defensible vindication of empirical realism.

About the Author

Bill Brewer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Previously he taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Brown University and Berkeley. He is the author of Perception and Reason (OUP, 1999) and an editor of Spatial Representation (OUP, 1999), and has published many papers and journal articles on philosophy of mind and action, metaphysics and epistemology.