percept

The percept is a perceived form of external stimuli or their absence. Vivid dreams could also be considered as a form of perception without a clear source of external stimuli. The term is primarily used in philosophy and psychology as sense-datum to explain perception.

Ambiguous images

It is important to discern percept from stimuli or their absence. Stimuli are not necessarily translated into a percept and rarely does a single stimulus translate into a percept. Also, absence of adequate stimuli may be translated into multiple percepts, experienced randomly, one at a time, as in some sensory illusions. And the same stimuli, or absence of them, may result in different percepts depending on subject’s culture and previous experiences.

Examples on the left illustrate how the same ambiguous stimuli could give rise to more than one percept. The same lines on the left of the image can be translated into a percept of transparent cube viewed from above or one viewed from below. The shape on the right could be interpreted as a vase or as two faces facing each other.

The percept also binds sensations from all of the senses in a whole. A picture of a talking person on a TV screen, for example, is bound to the sound of speech from speakers to form a percept of a talking person.

The example of transparent cube could also be used to illustrate the difference between cognition and recognition. If we are used to seeing a cube from above much more than from below, we will recognise the transparent cube viewed from above much faster and easier. The view from below would then need a significant cognitive effort that will take a noticeable moment.

In philosophy, ambiguity of stimuli is commented upon by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations (1953), and Rudolf Arnheim in Art and Visual Perception (1954). It is also a term used in Rudolf Steiner's theory of knowledge, which treats the relation of percept and concept.

Marshall McLuhan declared that he was more interested in percepts than concepts.

Percept is also a term used by Leibniz^[1], Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari^[2] to define perception gone independent from their authors. According to Deleuze, science uses percepts, while art works with affects and philosophy creates concepts.

References

1. ^ Leibniz' Monadology
2. ^ Deleuze and Guattari's What is Philosophy?

See also

Philosophy portal

• Concepts
• Perception