A groundbreaking popular psychology book that explores the deep connection between our body and our brain. Over decades of study, University of Virginia psychologist Dennis Proffitt has shown that we are each living our own personal version of Gulliver’s Travels, where the size and shape of the things we see are scaled to the size of our bodies, and our ability to interact with them. Stairs look less steep as dieters lose weight, baseballs grow bigger the better players hit, hills look less daunting if you’re standing next to a close friend, and learning happens faster when you can talk with your hands. Written with journalist Drake Baer, Perception marries academic rigor with mainstream accessibility. The research presented and the personalities profiled will show what it means to not only have, but be, your unique human body. The positive ramifications of viewing ourselves from this embodied perspective include greater athletic, academic, and professional achievement, more nourishing relationships, and greater personal well-being. The better we can understand what our bodies are—what they excel at, what they need, what they must avoid—the better we can live our lives.

An argument that there are perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in cognitively and conceptually unmediated ways and that this sheds light on various philosophical issues. In Cognition and Perception, Athanassios Raftopoulos discusses the cognitive penetrability of perception and claims that there is a part of visual processes (which he calls “perception”) that results in representational states with nonconceptual content; that is, a part that retrieves information from visual scenes in conceptually unmediated, “bottom-up,” theory-neutral ways. Raftopoulos applies this insight to problems in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, and examines how we access the external world through our perception as well as what we can know of that world. To show that there is a theory-neutral part of existence, Raftopoulos turns to cognitive science and argues that there is substantial scientific evidence. He then claims that perception induces representational states with nonconceptual content and examines the nature of the nonconceptual content. The nonconceptual information retrieved, he argues, does not allow the identification or recognition of an object but only its individuation as a discrete persistent object with certain spatiotemporal properties and other features. Object individuation, however, suffices to determine the referents of perceptual demonstratives. Raftopoulos defends his account in the context of current discussions on the issue of the theory-ladenness of perception (namely the Fodor-Churchland debate), and then discusses the repercussions of his thesis for problems in the philosophy of science. Finally, Raftopoulos claims that there is a minimal form of realism that is defensible. This minimal realism holds that objects, their spatiotemporal properties, and such features as shape, orientation, and motion are real, mind-independent properties in the world.

"Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us," writes Alva Noë. "It is something we do." In Action in Perception, Noë 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, Noë 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. Noë 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.

A thorough, accessible introduction to philosophy of perception unlike competitors which are higher level or edited collections Lots of beneficial student features: chapter summaries, annotated further reading, glossary Perception is one of the most important enduring problems in philosophy, with lots of renewed interest as a result of advances in cognitive science and psychology Fascinating examples such as hallucination, illusion, blindsight, the reliability of introspection Excellent complement to our strong backllist in philosophy of mind

What can illusions teach us about pain? Is what we see, hear, and feel as simple as it appears to be? The modern science of perception has unearthed new ways to think about pain - as a multi-sensory and multi-factorial phenomenon. Leading pain researchers, Dan Harvie and Lorimer Moseley, walk us through this science by interacting with illusions that challenge our assumptions on how perception actually works. A visually stunning, fun and accessible read to help anyone better understand and respond to pain.

. Bruce Goldstein's SENSATION AND PERCEPTION, the best-seller which has helped over 150,000 students understand the ties between how we sense the world and how the body interprets these senses, is now in a brilliant full-color Seventh Edition. A key strength of this text has always been the ability to show the student what they are learning through examples and visuals. Now, the book takes this visual learning one step further by using color throughout as a learning tool. As the sole author of the text, Goldstein's singular voice combines with his extensive classroom experience and most innovative research to create a visual text unparalleled in the field. The text walks the student through an intriguing journey of the senses with a mixture of clarity and thoroughness. The accompanying, "Virtual Lab" media exercises (available both on CD-ROM, within the Perception PsychologyNowTM student tutorial platform, and in the online WebTutorTM Advantage product) offer a wide array of animations and examples designed to stimulate understanding of difficult concepts. Every chapter has been updated for currency and readability, and a new chapter six on Visual Attention rounds off this timely revision.

In this book the authors relate and discuss the idea that perceptual processes can be considered at many levels. A phenomenon that appears at one level may not be the same as a superficially similar phenomenon that appears at a different level. For example "induced motion" can be analyzed in terms of eye movements or at the retinal level or at a much higher cognitive level: how do these analyses fit together? The concept of levels also makes us think of the flow of information between levels, which leads to a consideration of the roles of top-down and bottom-up (or feed-forward, feed-back) flow. There are sections devoted to vestibular processing, eye movement processing and processing during brightness perception. The final section covers levels of processing in spatial vision. All scientists and graduate students working in vision will be interested in this book as well as people involved in using visual processes in computer animations, display design or the sensory systems of machines.