Consciousness and Perceptual Experience

An Ecological and Phenomenological Approach

Thomas Natsoulas

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781107004511
• eBook ISBN: 9781107273061
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

This book describes and proposes an unusual integrative approach to human perception that qualifies as both an ecological and a phenomenological approach at the same time. Thomas Natsoulas shows us how our consciousness - in three of six senses of the word that the book identifies - is involved in our activity of perceiving the one and only world that exists, which includes oneself as a proper part of it, and that all of us share together with the rest of life on earth. He makes the case that our stream of consciousness - in the original Jamesian sense minus his mental/physical dualism - provides us with firsthand contact with the world, as opposed to our having such contact instead with theorist-posited items such as inner mental representations, internal pictures, or sense-image models, pure figments and virtual objects, none of which can have effects on our sensory receptors.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Chapter 1 Introduction: concepts of consciousness
• Chapter 2 Skepticism regarding consciousness
• Chapter 3 The normal waking state
• Chapter 4 Contact with the world
• Chapter 5 Environment
• Chapter 6 The life-world
• Chapter 7 Perceptual content
• Chapter 8 Experiential presence
• Chapter 9 Viewing
• Chapter 10 Inner awareness
• Chapter 11 Conclusion: against virtual objects
• References
• Index