Action in Perception by Alva Noe

Action in Perception by Alva Noe

"Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us," writes Alva Noe. "It is something we do." In Action in Perception, Noe argues that perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought-that perception is a kind of thoughtful activity. Touch, not vision, should be our model for perception. Perception is not a process in the brain, but a kind of skillful activity of the body as a whole. We enact our perceptual experience.

To perceive, according to this enactive approach to perception, is not merely to have sensations; it is to have sensations that we understand. In Action in Perception, Noe investigates the forms this understanding can take. He begins by arguing, on both phenomenological and empirical grounds, that the content of perception is not like the content of a picture; the world is not given to consciousness all at once but is gained gradually by active inquiry and exploration. Noe then argues that perceptual experience acquires content thanks to our possession and exercise of practical bodily knowledge, and examines, among other topics, the problems posed by spatial content and the experience of color. He considers the perspectival aspect of the representational content of experience and assesses the place of thought and understanding in experience. Finally, he explores the implications of the enactive approach for our understanding of the neuroscience of perception.

He studies the mind's nature and human experience. He is the author of a number of publications, including Out of Our Minds (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2009) and Weird Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015). He was awarded a Guggenheim grant in 2012 and the Judd/Hume Award in Advanced Visual Studies in 2018. He was a weekly contributor to 13.7: Cosmos and Culture, a science blog run by National Public Radio.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262640633
ISBN 10	0262640635
Title	Action in Perception
Author	Alva Noe
Series	Representation And Mind Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2006-01-20
Number of pages	296
Prizes	Winner of Honorable Mention, 2007 Book Prize presented by the American Philosophical Association. 2007
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.