ABSTRACT
Since this is intended as an introductory chapter, it begins with the assumption that you have either never thought much about perception or, if you have, that you don’t consider it a particularly difficult or interesting problem. Perhaps, like most people, you think that the main problems of vision, for example, are essentially those of forming a faithful image and then transmitting it directly to the brain. The aims of this chapter are to show you why this view is wrong and to offer alternative, more appropriate and much more interesting ways to think about perception. It consists of a broad introduction to perception and a general description of the main contemporary approaches to its study, followed by specific examples of each of these approaches. These examples are taken from vision because that is the sense that we know most about. However, the principles illustrated are equally relevant to the other perceptual modalities.
