Current Controversies In Philosophy Of Perception

Perception is an old but new important topic in philosophy,the discussion and debate on its ontology and epistemology have never stopped in the history of philosophy.Since the middle of the 20 th century,new changes have taken place in philosophy of perception based on the new scientific and philosophical context.on the one hand,the original perceptual problem has been extended,expanded and reconstructed in the new philosophical context.and created some new domains different from the traditional perceptual topics.On the other hand,the way talking about perception has also changed,that is,taking the naturalized cognition of perception as the premise,paying close attention to the empirical evidence of specific sciences such as psychology,cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience,and on this basis,a crossdisciplinary research paradigm with multi-disciplines and multi-methods has been formed,which has fundamentally brought new vitality and growing point for the study of contemporary philosophy of perception.Based on the contemporary scientific and philosophical context,this study systematically examined the historical background of philosophical research on perception,comprehensively examined the current state of research at home and abroad,and,on the basis of an accurate grasp of the characteristics and development of contemporary philosophical research on perception,extracts the hot topics and key theses that need to be addressed in current research(i.e.the nature of perception,the reality of perception,unconscious perception,the cognitive penetrability of perception,perception and action,and the multi-modalityof perception).The thesis is divided into three parts:The first part examined the historical evolution and contemporary development of philosophy of perception,including chapters 1 and 2.The first chapter systematically investigated the historical background of the study of the philosophy of perception,describing the development features of the study of the philosophy of perception from ancient Greece to the nineteenth century.Chapter 2 seriously examined the current state of research at home and abroad.Through in-depth collation and analysis,it can be found that contemporary research on the philosophy of perception developed into many routes;in terms of research domains,more attention has been paid to important theses such as perceptual representation,unconscious perception,the cognitive penetrability of perception,perceptual veridicality,the multi-modalilty nature of perception,the relationship between perception and action;in terms of research methods,naturalised epistemology has been taken as a premise,and the formation of research methodology is premised on naturalistic epistemology and is characterised by an interdisciplinary research paradigm that combines philosophy with psychology and cognitive neuroscience.Part II builded on the preparatory work of Part I and provided an in-depth study of the main controversies and issues at hand.It is divided into six chapters,ranging from Chapter 3 to Chapter 8.Chapter 3 explores the question about the nature of perception,namely the representationalism versus relationalism debate on perception.After elaborating on the central thrust of the representational and relational views,the differences between the two views are further analysed,before an interpretive contextualism based on individuated states of perception is proposed as a path of reconciliation.Since the individuation of perceptual states depends on the interpretative context,different criteria are needed to individuate perceptual states in different contexts.Some interpretive contexts require individuation of perception according to a representational view,and some contexts require individuation according to a relational view,whereby the representational and relational views are integrated into a broader framework,thus achieving unity and mediation.Chapter 4 explored the question of the reality of perception.The widely held view that perception is a true reflection of the real world has been challenged in recent years by cognitive scientists Hoffman and his collaborators who have proposed an interface theory of non-veridical perception based on evolutionary theory,biogenetics,quantum theory and rigorous mathematical tools.After describing the current debate on perceptual veridicality and non-veridicality,this study analysed and examined in depth the central tenets of the theory and its possible positive implications,especially for the study of consciousness,and concludes with an analysis of the challenges it faces.Although the theory is still highly controversial,it has the potential to stimulate widespread introspection on the issue of perceptual veridicality,to provide new ideas and perspectives for further exploration of the relationship between perception and the world,and to shake up some of the foundations of research in psychology,neuroscience,philosophy of science and other disciplines,which may lead to a new paradigm shift in theory of mind research in a more far-reaching sense.Chapter 5 examined the question of whether unconscious perception exists.Firstly,the previous debate on unconscious perception is presented,and the dilemmas of 'criterion' and 'attribution' faced by the current paradigm of unconscious perception research are identified and analysed in detail,before the principle of phenomenal coherence is proposed as a criterion for judging unconsciousness in order to avoid the dilemma,which is concentrated in the object-file paradigm and thus provides possible evidence for the existence of unconscious perception.The study attempts to provide a new methodology to facilitate and advance the debate and research on unconscious perception.Chapter 6 explored the cognitive penetrability of perception based on an analysis of Predictive Processing theory.Firstly,the cognitive penetrability debate of perception,i.e."whether perception is influenced by cognition",is presented,but the cognitive penetrability of perception remains questionable due to conceptual definitions and methodological issues in empirical studies.In this regard,this study turns to an emerging brain processing hypothesis,namely “theory of predictive coding”,which is a new theoretical presupposition with strong explanatory power and can provide a reasonable explanation for typical cases of cognitive penetrability,and which is based on a principle of cognitive penetrability itself,thus providing a new way of thinking and a possible solution to this debate.Chapter 7 examined the question of the relationship between perception and action,i.e.the debate on representational view vs enactive view.The central thrusts of the representational and enactive views are first elaborated,and a detailed analysis revealed that,despite their opposition,both view holded that perception and action are two relatively independent entities,and place perception and action in a unidirectional relationship.Combined with experimental evidence from neuroscience,an integrated pathway of perception and action,i.e.the theory of event coding,had been proposed,and offerd a new interpretation of the relationship between perception and action based on this explanatory pathway,providing evidence for a two-way interaction between perception and action.Chapter 8 focused on the issue of multi-modality of perception,i.e.whether the findings of the visual modality can be generalised to other modalities.The shortcomings of the visuo-centric research paradigm are first clarified,followed by an analysis of the differences between non-visual and visual perceptions in terms of spatial characteristics,objects,objectivity,etc.The challenges visual research faced are then pointed out,and finally crossmodality integration of perception is proposed as a possible path to solve the challenges.On the one hand,perception cannot be fully understood independently of other modality;on the other hand,the integration of information across multi-modality promotes the unification of human sensory,enhances the coherence and reliability of human perception,extends the range of perception,and makes new forms of perception possible.The crossmodality integration of perception not only challenges visuo-centrism,but also provides us with profound insights into the nature of perception,and indicates a possible path for the study of the philosophy of perception,becoming a new orientation for the study of the philosophy of perception.The third part is the conclusion and outlook.This section first summarizes the methodological features of contemporary research in philosophy of perception at a macro level,i.e.the establishment of an interdisciplinary and integrated research approaches that pays close attention to empirical evidence,and points out that this study is based on this paradigm of integration and provides an in-depth interpretation and analysis of the core issues of contemporary philosophy of perception,which has very important insights and implications.This is followed by a brief exposition and analysis of the most popular theoretical framework in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science,namely the predictive processing theory of perception,which suggests that future research in philosophy of perception may be moving towards a new path of predictive processing.