ABSTRACT
Lectures on Perception: An Ecological Perspective addresses the generic principles by which each and every kind of life form—from single celled organisms (e.g., difflugia) to multi-celled organisms (e.g., primates)—perceives the circumstances of their living so that they can behave adaptively. It focuses on the fundamental ability that relates each and every organism to its surroundings, namely, the ability to perceive things in the sense of how to get about among them and what to do, or not to do, with them. The book’s core thesis breaks from the conventional interpretation of perception as a form of abduction based on innate hypotheses and acquired knowledge, and from the historical scientific focus on the perceptual abilities of animals, most especially those abilities ascribed to humankind. Specifically, it advances the thesis of perception as a matter of laws and principles at nature’s ecological scale, and gives equal theoretical consideration to the perceptual achievements of all of the classically defined ‘kingdoms’ of organisms—Archaea, Bacteria, Protoctista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|2 pages
Foundational Concepts
chapter Lecture 9|20 pages
The Space Enigmas II: Kant, the Nature of Geometry, and the Geometry of Nature
chapter Lecture 14|14 pages
Gestalt Theory II: Fields, Self-organization, and the Invariance Postulate of Evolution
chapter Lecture 15|9 pages
Gestalt Theory III: Experience Error, CNS Error, Psycho-neural Isomorphism, Behavioral Environment
part 2|2 pages
Computational–Representational Perspective
chapter Lecture 18|18 pages
Turing Reductionism, Token Physicalism: The Computational System Assumption
part 3|2 pages
Ecological Perspective