The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2

William James

• 26 april 2020
• 1230003850190

Samenvatting:

The words Sensation and Perception do not carry very definitely discriminated meanings in popular speech, and in psychology also their meanings run into each other. Both of them name processes in which we cognize an objective world; both (under normal conditions) need the stimulation of incoming nerves ere they can occur; Perception always involves Sensation as a portion of itself; and Sensation in turn never takes place in adult life without Perception also being there. They are therefore names for different cognitive functions, not for different sorts of mental fact. The nearer the object cognized comes to being a simple quality like 'hot,' 'cold,' 'red,' 'noise,' 'pain,' aprehended irrelatively to other things, the more the state mind approaches pure sensation. The fuller of relations an object is, on the contrary; the more it is something eased, located, measured, compared, assigned to a function, etc., etc.; the more unreservedly do we call the state mind a perception, and the relatively smaller is the part it which sensation plays.