Perceiving Images and Styles

Marks individually or in combination constitute images that represent objects. How do those images represent those objects? Marks vary in style, both between and within images. Images also vary in style. How do those styles relate to each other and to the objects that those images represent? Referencing a diverse range of images, we answer the first question with a response-dependence theory of image representation derived from Mark Johnston, differentiating Lockean primary qualities of marks from secondary qualities of images. We answer the second question with a perceptual theory of style derived from Paul Grice, differentiating physical style from image style, and representing conventionally from representing conversationally.

“Our eyes are sentinels unto our judgments”: Embodied Perception in The Changeling

This essay argues that Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling (1622) draws on debates about sense perception in the period to interrogate the effects of dramatic representation. After a brief overview of early modern perceptual theory, this essay demonstrates that the play's villain, De Flores, manipulates other characters’ perception through language. In fact, De Flores uses theatrical language to manipulate how other characters perceive their environment, indicating the theater's ability to manipulate audiences. By affecting how characters perceive, De Flores affects other characters’ ability to process and react to their environment, which impedes their judgment. The essay argues that much of The Changeling's dramatic action unfolds through a conflict between two models of perception—presentational and representational—that undergird much of the play's dramatic conflict. In the play, pervasive anxiety about judgment, particularly how perception affects judgment, is structured around the distinction between these two models of perception. Considering the play alongside representational and presentational models indicates how early modern dramatists engage with intellectual theories to consider how representation works and how spaces are experienced. In this way, the theater refracts and dramatizes theories about perception.

COGNITIVE STYLE (FDI-Field Dependence-Independence): a motivational support for learning

The concept of cognitive style has its origins in the movement "New Look" emerging research proposed by Klein and Schlesinger, in an article titled “Where is the perceiver in perceptual theory?” an inappropriate assumption for psychologists of the time claiming the intelligibility and its evidence.

Intentional Directedness and Immanent Content

This paper will investigate the roots of intentionality in Aristotle’s theory of perception and assess the accuracy of Brentano’s proposed location of intentionality in Aristotle. When introducing intentionality into contemporary philosophy, Brentano attributed it to Aristotle, whose theory of psychology he believed to reveal the characteristics of intentional inexistence. After setting up a working definition of intentionality that stresses such features as immanent content and intentional directedness, I will then clarify Aristotle’s theory of perception with regard to these two characteristics. I draw the conclusion that we can only find the roots of immanent content in Aristotle’s perceptual theory. For him, directedness moves from the sensible object to the sensitive soul, and thus it does not correspond to what contemporary philosophers define as intentional directedness.

The Role of Metaphor in Advertisement Texts: A Psycholinguistic-Structural Study

This paper investigates the role and usage of metaphor in advertising texts from a psycho-linguistic, structural perspective. It adopts Al- Najjar (1984) structural classification of metaphor to go hand in hand with Frazier's (1987) perceptual theory of garden path of comprehension on the side of the advertisees. The analysis traces the impact of employing metaphorical texts in texting adverts. It discusses how, linguistically, unrelated words are connected together in terms of cognitive process (garden path). Indirect targeting of meaning by manipulating linguistic tools like structural options generates one of the most attractive factors for a text which is vagueness. Hovering around the exact wording of some meaning provides the advertiser enough space to insert multi-meanings, concepts, and ideas. As such, different unique impact can be made on the advertisees. The paper analyses some selected English advertising texts depending on an eclectic model made out of these two models. Finally, it ends with some conclusions which assure that relational metaphor is comprehended serially, while sentential metaphor is comprehended in a parallel garden path.

What kind of evaluative states are emotions? The attitudinal theory vs. the perceptual theory of emotions

This paper argues that Deonna and Teroni's attitudinal theory of emotions faces two serious problems. The first is that their master argument fails to establish the central tenet of the theory, namely, that the formal objects of emotions do not feature in the content of emotions. The second is that the attitudinal theory itself is vulnerable to a dilemma. By pointing out these problems, our paper provides indirect support to the main competitor of the attitudinal theory, namely, the perceptual theory of emotions.