Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

177923

Background knowledge and natural language understanding

Christopher A. Fields

pp. 261-274

Abstract

It could be argued that cognitive science was founded by Kant, who sought the necessary conditions that would have to be satisfied by any entity that perceived the world as he did (Flanagan, 1984). Kant rejected the view, championed by 20th-century behaviorism, that perception could be understood simply in terms of the impact of environment, of light, sound, pressure, etc., on the perceiver. He argued instead that perception involved active selection and structuring of such stimuli by the cognitive apparatus of the perceiver. He then set out to discover how perceivers selected and structured these environmental impacts [1]. The components of Kant's model are familiar. He required the mind to impose a Euclidean space-time structure, as well as the concept of object and the "categories" of quantity, quality, modality and relation on sensation. Apperception (seeing-that) resulted from this structuring of sensation by the perceiver.

Publication details

Published in:

Otto Herbert, Tuedio James (1988) Perspectives on mind. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 261-274

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-4033-8_21

Full citation:

Fields Christopher A. (1988) „Background knowledge and natural language understanding“, In: H. Otto & J. Tuedio (eds.), Perspectives on mind, Dordrecht, Springer, 261–274.