Perception: Cause and Achievement

Abstract

Recently Ryle, Hamlyn, White and other analytic philosophers have directly or indirectly challenged the rationality of the psychologist’s aim to construct explanatory theories of perception. Hamlyn has reviewed various psychological theories and programs in considerable detail, White and Ryle have not, at least not in print. But the criticisms of the latter of well known philosophical analyses of ‘perception’ apply and have been applied to psychological theories as well. These critiques raise diverse philosophical and metaphilosophical issues; I will attend only to those which bear upon the assessment of the psychologist’s aim and try to defend it against its critics.