Perceptual Ecology
Perceptual Ecology

Author: Edward C. Carterette

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2013-09-24

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1483276236

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Handbook of Perception, Volume X: Perceptual Ecology, deals with perceptual aspects of the study of interaction of persons with their environment. The book is organized into six parts. Part I examines an ecological approach to the perceptual systems and cultural differences in perception. Part II is devoted to impaired perception and action. It includes studies on perception by the deaf and blind, and outlines the intellectual principles necessary for understanding sensory aids. Part III on aesthetics covers central problem of aesthetic theories and the generation and measurement of aesthetic forms. Part IV on architecture, music, art, and cinema discusses the perceptual aspects of architecture; the psychology of music; and the perception of art and motion pictures. Part V deals with the role of olfactory hedonics in perfumery and the assessment and abatement of noxious odors; and food habits, gastronomy, and analysis of flavors and foods. Part VI focuses on parapsychology. It reviews experimental evidence on telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis in order to assess the status of parapsychology and show why it is paradoxy, outside of accepted opinion, after some 100 years of psychic research.

Lectures on Perception
Lectures on Perception

Author: Michael T. Turvey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-31

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 0429813384

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Lectures on Perception: An Ecological Perspective addresses the generic principles by which each and every kind of life form—from single celled organisms (e.g., difflugia) to multi-celled organisms (e.g., primates)—perceives the circumstances of their living so that they can behave adaptively. It focuses on the fundamental ability that relates each and every organism to its surroundings, namely, the ability to perceive things in the sense of how to get about among them and what to do, or not to do, with them. The book’s core thesis breaks from the conventional interpretation of perception as a form of abduction based on innate hypotheses and acquired knowledge, and from the historical scientific focus on the perceptual abilities of animals, most especially those abilities ascribed to humankind. Specifically, it advances the thesis of perception as a matter of laws and principles at nature’s ecological scale, and gives equal theoretical consideration to the perceptual achievements of all of the classically defined ‘kingdoms’ of organisms—Archaea, Bacteria, Protoctista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia.

The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception
The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception

Author: James J. Gibson

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 113505973X

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This is a book about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do. The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision -- and what this book is about.

Cognitive Ecology
Cognitive Ecology

Author: Morton P. Friedman

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 1996-02-05

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 0080529275

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Cognitive Ecology identifies the richness of input to our sensory evaluations, from our cultural heritage and philosophies of aesthetics to perceptual cognition and judgment. Integrating the arts, humanities, and sciences, Cognitive Ecology investigates the relationship of perception and cognition to wider issues of how science is conducted, and how the questions we ask about perception influence the answers we find. Part One discusses how issues of the human mind are inseparable from the culture from which the investigations arise, how mind and environment co-define experience and actions, and how culture otherwise influences cognitive function. Part Two outlines how philosophical themes of aesthetics have guided psychological research, and discuss the physical and aesthetic perception of music, film, and art. Part Three presents an overview of how the senses interact for sensory evaluation.

An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development
An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development

Author: Eleanor J. Gibson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-05-15

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9780195347395

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The essential nature of learning is primarily thought of as a verbal process or function, but this notion conveys that pre-linguistic infants do not learn. Far from being "blank slates" that passively absorb environmental stimuli, infants are active learners who perceptually engage their environments and extract information from them before language is available. The ecological approach to perceiving-defined as "a theory about perceiving by active creatures who look and listen and move around"-was spearheaded by Eleanor and James Gibson in the 1950s and culminated in James Gibson's last book in 1979. Until now, no comprehensive theoretical statement of ecological development has been published since Eleanor Gibson's Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development (1969). In An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development, distinguished experimental psychologists Eleanor J. Gibson and Anne D. Pick provide a unique theoretical framework for the ecological approach to understanding perceptual learning and development. Perception, in accordance with James Gibson's views, entails a reciprocal relationship between a person and his or her environment: The environment provides resources and opportunities for the person, and the person gets information from and acts on the environment. The concept of affordance is central to this idea; the person acts on what the environment affords, as it is appropriate. This extraordinary volume covers the development of perception in detail from birth through toddlerhood, beginning with the development of communication, going on to perceiving and acting on objects, and then to locomotion. It is more than a presentation of facts about perception as it develops. It outlines the ecological approach and shows how it underlies "higher" cognitive processes, such as concept formation, as well as discovery of the basic affordances of the environment. This impressive work should serve as the capstone for Eleanor J. Gibson's distinguished career as a developmental and experimental psychologist.

Ways of Listening
Ways of Listening

Author: Eric Clarke

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-07-21

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0195348540

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In recent years, many psychologists and cognitive scientists have published their views on the psychology of music. Unfortunately, this scientific literature has remained inaccessible to musicologists and musicians, and has neglected their insights on the subject. In Ways of Listening, musicologist Eric Clarke explores musical meaning, music's critical function in human lives, and the relationship between listening and musical material. Clarke outlines an "ecological approach" to understanding the perception of music. The way we hear and understand music is not simply a function of our brain structure or of the musical "codes" given to us by culture, Clarke argues. Instead, cognitive, psychoacoustical, and semiotic issues must be considered within the physical and social contexts of listening. In essence, Clarke adapts John Gibson's influential ecological theory of perception to the complex process of perceiving music. In addition to making a theoretical argument, the author offers a number of case studies to illustrate his concept. For example, he analyzes the experience of listening to Jimi Hendrix's performance of the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock in 1969. Clarke examines how Hendrix's choice of instrument and venue, use of distortion, and the political climate in which he performed all had an impact on his audience's perception of the anthem. A complex convergence of broad cultural contexts and specific musical features - the entire "ecology" of the listening experience - is responsible for this performance's impact. Including both the best psychological research and careful musicological scholarship, Clarke's book offers the most complex and insightful perspective on musical meaning to date. It will be of interest to musicologists, musicians, psychologists, and scholars of aesthetics.

The Perception of the Environment
The Perception of the Environment

Author: Tim Ingold

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 644

ISBN-13: 1000504662

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In this work Tim Ingold offers a persuasive new approach to understanding how human beings perceive their surroundings. He argues that what we are used to calling cultural variation consists, in the first place, of variations in skill. Neither innate nor acquired, skills are grown, incorporated into the human organism through practice and training in an environment. They are thus as much biological as cultural. To account for the generation of skills we have therefore to understand the dynamics of development. And this in turn calls for an ecological approach that situates practitioners in the context of an active engagement with the constituents of their surroundings. The twenty-three essays comprising this book focus in turn on the procurement of livelihood, on what it means to ‘dwell’, and on the nature of skill, weaving together approaches from social anthropology, ecological psychology, developmental biology and phenomenology in a way that has never been attempted before. The book is set to revolutionise the way we think about what is ‘biological’ and ‘cultural’ in humans, about evolution and history, and indeed about what it means for human beings – at once organisms and persons – to inhabit an environment. The Perception of the Environment will be essential reading not only for anthropologists but also for biologists, psychologists, archaeologists, geographers and philosophers. This edition includes a new Preface by the author.

The Spell of the Sensuous
The Spell of the Sensuous

Author: David Abram

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-10-17

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0307830551

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Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

International Environmental Cooperation and The Global Sustainability Capital Framework
International Environmental Cooperation and The Global Sustainability Capital Framework

Author: Chenaz B. Seelarbokus

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2021-05-17

Total Pages: 506

ISBN-13: 0323859143

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International Environmental Cooperation and the Global Sustainability Capital Framework offers an integrated analysis of international environmental cooperation (IEC) and global sustainability. From a strategic management perspective, the book develops the Sustainability Capital Framework for IEC and global sustainability. The book provides an in-depth examination of the significance of state participation in international environmental agreements (IEAs), and analyzes the structure, life cycle, and evolution of IEAs. Through the Sustainability Capital Framework, the book delineates the core drivers, barriers, incentives, and critical success factors for IEC and global sustainability. - Develops the Sustainability Capital Framework for IEC and global sustainability from a strategic management perspective - Discusses the imperative for IEC through the novel lens of our common vulnerabilities and contingent survivability in the face of global environmental change - Presents a detailed discussion of the structure, life cycle, and evolution of IEAs - Identifies the core drivers, barriers, incentives, and critical success factors for IEC and global sustainability - Analyzes the human and environmental impacts of war, a core barrier to IEC and global sustainability - Highlights the human and moral dimensions of global sustainability