ABSTRACT
THE inspective awareness of sense qualia, which was described in the last chapter, is no doubt a rudimentary type of cognition, but since it is doubtful whether sense data can exist apart from or can be apprehended except in their perceptual context, integrated knowledge of objects first emerges with perception. Perception defined as the apprehension of common objectsthe visible, tangible, audible "things" of ordinary sense experience-is the cognitive unit in relation to which sensation is precognitive or subcognitive. To characterize sensation in this way is not to deny the possibility of genuine knowledge about sense data, their properties and relations, but merely to emphasize that such knowledge involves selective abstraction from the total perceptual apprehension of phenomenal objects. Perceptual experience is analysable into and is an interpretation of its sensuous ingredients. Moreover, perception underlies and preconditions the higher types of cognition, namely, memory, scientific knowledge, as well as self-knowledge and knowledge of other selves. Perception is the unit of cognition in that it is the most elementary form of knowledge of objects, from which all other forms of objective knowledge are directly or indirectly derived.
