Hi, Heidi,
Thank you for some great posts. I enjoyed reading them.
In your last post, you wrote,
"I guess that you can say that perception is an activity that takes place inside a mind, but since it must necessarily always be a perception of something, then without that something there will be no perception"
I suggest not.
There are many examples of a perception occurring without it being a perception of something in the real world. The literature of illusion and delusion describes many such situations.
One explanation of this is that everything we see is generated by the mind, and the input of the eyes only gives hints as to which things the mind should show to us.
This is easy to get personal experience of. Two examples come to mind.
If one creates a darkened space with objects in it such that it is dark enough that when we look we can see the firing of our individual light receptors, then if we adjust our eyelids to dim the light further, we can often see things that are not there. They are simply generated by our mind.
Another example, is to listen while spending time in a large computer server room. At times it is possible to hear snippets of music as if being played by the computers there. Again , the music is generated in our heads.
Gibson's work is limited in part because it is missing biological foundations that provide causal explanation and justification of Gibson's psychological claims. Antonio Damasio offers this part of the story to support Gibson in for example 'The Feeling of What Happens'. I did a precis of Damasio's findings for design researchers which may be still valid (or at least as valid in historical terms as Gibson's work). It is available at https://www.love.com.au/docs/2003/Damasio.pdf
Third, Gibson's work can be seen as a restating of the work of Baruch Spinoza. Much of what Gibson discusses is what Spinoza refers to as the human knowledge of 'reason' and the relationships between objects (including humans). - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/
May be interesting to note that Damasio's next book after 'The feeling of What Happens' is 'Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain'.
Best wishes,
Terry
==
Dr Terence Love
CEO
Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
Perth, Western Australia
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www.designoutcrime.org
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