SOCB43H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Vitalism, Visual Cortex, Physical Law
Document Summary
Chapter 1: only your own sensory experience is directly accessible to you. Sensation: the ability to detect a stimulus and to turn that detection into a private experience. Perception: the act of giving meaning to those detected sensations. Everything we feel, think, and do depends on sensations and perceptions reason why philosophers have talked about it for over 2 millennia. 18th century french philosopher etienne bonnot de condillac asked readers to imagine a statue with no senses (thus no mental life). Then he imagined adding the statue"s nose so the mental life would consist of only that smell. By adding more senses and experience, he imagined a real mental life developing: researchers studying topics in sensation and perception can be found in biology, computer science, medicine, neuroscience, and many other fields. Dualists hold the mind has an existence separate from material world of the body: example, what"s the faintest/loudest sound you can hear.
