Intentional Theories of Perception (Essay Sample)


Intentional theories of perception
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Introduction
Perception is a concept that covers the manner in which individuals identify, organize, and interpret information to help them in understanding their environment. There are many theories, explanations, and concepts that have been advanced by numerous groups and individuals to study it (Strawson, 2008). Intentional theories of perception accept Representational Principle, and treat visual experiences as a kind of propositional attitude in which subjects take the attitude of perceiving toward an intentional content. As pointed out by Strawson (2008), there are numerous theories, concepts, and explanations that have been advanced by various individuals to capture issues pertaining perception and other related aspects. Intentional approach perception through a number of theories and concepts is quite essential in facilitating the understanding of several aspects associated with perceptions and also helps in establishing mechanisms of addressing the challenges being faced by them to lead to favorable solutions.
The paper is going to argue in favor of the fact that the intentional theories of perception are indeed essential in facilitating proper understanding of the world and life at large. This shall be achieved by relying on two intentional theories of perception advanced by Anscombe and Armstrong that focused on helping the society to understand the information regarding perception and other related issues. There shall be an explanation of these two theories together with addressing how they overcome the challenges associated with perception. The problems will be based on illusions and hallucinations, which will have to be overcome via various deliberate measures. The key steps that are going to be followed are covering each of the above named theories separately and eventually linking them to achieve a collective goal, which is to portray how perceptions are useful in everyday’s life of society members.
The theories of perception are meant to capture the entire issue of thinking and perception of things and ideas regarding the environment of individuals. It is evident that individuals are enhanced with the ability to think and perceive the things in their environment in their diverse ways (Fish, 2010). Perceptions are meant to help individuals and the society at large on how to identify, organize, and interpret the sensory information their disposal to help in presentation and understanding of the environment. There are instances where perceptions are embedded in both imagination and experience to help people in understanding their environments in advanced ways. Perception is meant to help people to come up with ideas regarding various aspects that they want to see in their environments and situations.
The intentional theory of perception treats the entire perceptual experience as a form of mental or intentional representation. An intentional state of mind is one that represents something about the world. The theory holds that not everything that is perceived to be true is that way since perceptions can easily be affected by hallucinations and illusions, which lead to massive misrepresentations if ideas and scenarios. There are various intentional theories like Anscombe of 1965, Armstrong of 1968, and Dretske of 1969 among others that capture issues surrounding intentional perception. Anscombe had drawn his attention to the idea that perceptual verbs are normally used to satisfy the tests for non- intentionality or intentionality. Armstrong argues that the perception has to be taken as a form of belief. He observed that belief is an intentional state since it represents the world to be a certain way and the way in, which it represents the entire world to be is said to be its intentional content (Strawson, 2008). He says that the perception is a representation of the world. He goes ahead to state that it represents the world to be like its intentional content. The fact that an individual can have a perceptual experience that b is W without there being anything like W is taken as a reason for him saying that the perception is just but a form of belief-acquisition.
These theories are majorly designed and advanced to capture the nature of intentional perceptual experience as well as the status of perceptual data that is useful in determining how that experience relate to knowledge or beliefs of the world. Among the Intentionalists theories, there is the representationalism that claims that the phenomenology of visual experience is determined by its content. Perception is concerned with how individuals visualize objects and situations in their environment thus informing both their actions and decisions.
Intentional theories have managed to overcome most of the challenges posed by perception in various scenarios. One of the most contagious and serious errors associated with the theories of perception is inability to reconcile some of the apparently naked truths about people’s experience of the world with the likely possibility of various kinds of perceptual error. According to Strawson (2008), the source of this error is embedded in the fact that perceptual experience deals with the ‘openness to the world’, which is mostly threatened by hallucinations and illusions. The above explained intentional theories of perception can be used to respond to such threats since they give accounts of perception that preserves what is taken to be central or essential features of perception.
The theories discussed above are of the view that people have different perceptions of things and issues that happen in their lives. It is evident that each normally tries to perceive his environment in a manner that tends to suit his imaginations based on his abilities. Hallucinations and illusions are the greatest threat to the intentional theories of perception since they tend to reduce them to nothing in most scenarios. Illusions lead to numerous flaws when it comes to perceptions in the sense that it leads to situations where physical objects that are actually perceived appears to be in a different state or form from the perceived ones. Hallucinations are where things are perceived to be real when the state of mind of the individual in question is not as independent as possible (Fish, 2010). Both hallucinations and illusions do not necessarily involve deception though they represent a failure in the ability of a people to perceive things and situations in the right way.
There are various advantages associated with the theories of perception that have been discussed in this paper. The theory advanced by Anscombe is concerned with the generalization of ideas among individuals. An individual may be thinking about many things at ago thus making it hard for the analysts to establish since they may find it hard to infer in any case that somebody is thinking about a particular scenario at a given instance. Such a scenario leads to massive intentional generalizations that make it hard for various perceptions to be drawn. It shows that the perception allows ideas to be generalized to a level where the amount of information at the disposal of individuals becomes too general. Armstrong’s theory is concerned with the idea of belief. The theory is advantageous in the sense that it captures issues relating to belief that result from perceptions (Strawson, 2008). It is noted that individuals normally perceive events and ideas in their lives differently. There is always a manner in, which an individual can perceive things in a particular way thus leading to his belief.
There are also various disadvantages that are associated with these theories since they tend to suffer from illusions and hallucinations. The generalization base upon, which Anscombe built his theory, was quite susceptible to various weaknesses coming from the illusions (Fish, 2010). People tend to generalize their perceptions to a level where they end up not establishing anything constructive from them. Such generalizations are quite subjective in nature and can easily be affected by hallucinations depending on the mental state of an individual.
Majority of the critics of the intentional theories point out the fact that they often f...