Abstract

The 21 selections are divided into three conceptual approaches to the study of perception: the neurophysiology, the psychology, and the phenomenology of perception, with a final section, some problematic studies. In effect, however, the editor is challenging the metaphysical position hidden in the attitude that behavioral physiology should be an "exact science" without philosophical commitments. Parts II and IV, no less than the explicit statements of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Gurwitsch and Erwin Strauss in Part III, stand over against a point of view which, beginning with Cartesian dualism, attempts to resolve it in a materialist reduction, a point of view in which behavior is always reaction, of nervous systems to physical stimulation from an "external," "real," world. Tibbetts is pressing two points--first, that all science must be based on some presuppositions or other and second, that any metapsychology ignores physiological and behavioral research only at its peril. In Part I, Bain, Lashley and Sperry are among the authors. In Parts II and IV Tibbetts brings together selections by Hochberg, Gregory, Gibson, Penfield, Donald Campbell, a bit of Piaget, team research reports, and more to provide in one place material not easily at hand. Some authors provide bibliographical references, and the editor gives nine more pages of bibliography.--M. B. M.