Perception: First Form of Mind Paperback / softback

In Perception: First Form of Mind, Tyler Burge develops an understanding of the most primitive type of mental representational: perception.

Focusing on the functions and capacities of perceptual states, Burge accounts for their representational content and structure, and develops a formal semantics for them.

The discussion explains the role of iconic format in the structure.

It also situates the accounts of content, structure, and semantics within scientific explanations of perceptual-state formation, emphasizing formation of perceptual categorization.

In the book's second half, Burge discusses what a perceptual system is.

Exploration of relations between perception and other primitive capacities-conation, attention, memory, anticipation, affect, learning, and imagining-helps distinguish perceiving, with its associated capacities, from thinking, with its associated capacities.

Drawing mainly on vision science, not introspection, Perception: First Form of Mind is a rigorous, agenda-setting work in philosophy of perception and philosophy of science.