Consciousness and Perceptual Experience
July 25, 2013 DOI: 10.1017/cbo9780511790409 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that consciousness, understood as a Jamesian stream of consciousness stripped of mental/physical dualism, provides firsthand contact with the one shared world, and contends that theorist-posited inner representations, internal pictures, and sense-image models are figments that cannot affect sensory receptors. |
Abstract
This book describes and proposes an unusual integrative approach to human perception that qualifies as both an ecological and a phenomenological approach at the same time. Thomas Natsoulas shows us how our consciousness - in three of six senses of the word that the book identifies - is involved in our activity of perceiving the one and only world that exists, which includes oneself as a proper part of it, and that all of us share together with the rest of life on earth. He makes the case that our stream of consciousness - in the original Jamesian sense minus his mental/physical dualism - provides us with firsthand contact with the world, as opposed to our having such contact instead with theorist-posited items such as inner mental representations, internal pictures, or sense-image models, pure figments and virtual objects, none of which can have effects on our sensory receptors.