William James Perception Theory Analysis

Discussing the Theories of Perception in Relation to William James’ Ideas. Perception is often defined as the unconscious and conscious awareness of the events and objects in the environment of the perceiver (Norman 2002 p. 73). Perception is divided into theories with 2 of the main theories being top-down constructivism and direct perception (Lappin 2013 p. 39). William James’ belief that what people perceive comes partly through our senses but that the larger part of what we perceive happens in our minds infers from the Helmholtz (1962) theory of inferential perception, or constructivism, which was expanded on by Gregory (1980). The concept that what we perceive comes entirely through our senses, however, is a separate theory known as direct …show more content…
When light entering the eye was examined, it was found to be highly complex and rich in information (Gordon 2004). Gibson (1966) also argued that movement is an essential part of our perception, as our view of the world is rarely seen from a stationary position. This is because we constantly move our eyes, head and body's in the direction towards or away from a stimulus (Gibson 1966). The direct perception theory proposes that movement is perceived through joint application of the environmental structure and the position of the observer in the environment (Lappin 2013). Optical flow is also an essential part of this theory, in relation to movement, which states that as one moves towards a particular textured stimulus, which remains stationary, it will apparently ‘grow’ in size and other textures expand as they are approached and contract as they pass by the head (Gordon 2004). This optical flow of texture is known as an invariant (Gordon …show more content…
The ecological approach to perception, founded by Gibson, which says that perception is the response to environmental stimuli which takes place directly (Haber & Hershedon 1973), does not follow James’ idea but is still essential in understanding how perception takes place. Helmholtz and Gregory’s inferential theory approach,which William James’ statement relates to, maintain the idea that perception is a constructive process and that “unconscious inference”, through learning and previous knowledge of the stimulus, is a major part of the perceiving process (Gordon 2004). This essay also addressed how both of the theories do not hold the sufficient amount of evidence in certain fields to allow one to be recognised as the true theory of perception over the other. The direct perception theory does not address the stimulus as a complex thing, while the inferential theory fails to verify their use of