The Primacy of Perception Revisited

The objects of perception are primary in relation to both physical objects and sensuous representations like images, which are ultimately derived from the perceptual objects they resemble. The existence of perceptual objects is dependent on the bodies of percipients, and states of consciousness in general must have physical subjects. Pre-reflectively these states are ascribed to the whole body but, strictly speaking, they are dependent only on the brain or parts of it. In the end, it turns out to be impossible to identify these parts. This fact in combination with the fact that it is impossible to pick out any psychological relations that are essential for our identity over time shows that there is nothing this identity could consist in. Physical reality is as contemporary physics rather than as common sense conceives it and, thus, so different from what we directly perceive that it cannot be said to be perceived even indirectly.

Ingmar Persson is Emeritus Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Gothenburg, and Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford University. Among his publications are six books on Oxford University Press. The Primacy of Perception Revisited revises the theory of perception originally presented in his The Primacy of Perception also published in Library of Theoria.

Library of Theoria, no 29.