Consciousness and Perceptual Experience

This book describes and proposes an unusual integrative approach to human perception that qualifies as both an ecological and a phenomenological approach at the same time. Thomas Natsoulas shows us how our consciousness - in three of six senses of the word that the book identifies - is involved in our activity of perceiving the one and only world that exists, which includes oneself as a proper part of it, and that all of us share together with the rest of life on earth. He makes the case that our stream of consciousness - in the original Jamesian sense minus his mental/physical dualism - provides us with firsthand contact with the world, as opposed to our having such contact instead with theorist-posited items such as inner mental representations, internal pictures, or sense-image models, pure figments and virtual objects, none of which can have effects on our sensory receptors.1. Introduction: concepts of consciousness; 2. Skepticism regarding consciousness; 3. The normal waking state; 4. Contact with the world; 5. Environment; 6. The life-world; 7. Perceptual content; 8. Experiential presence; 9. Viewing; 10. Inner awareness; 11. Conclusion: against virtual objects.