| 释义 |
perception|pəˈsɛpʃən|
Also 5 -sepcion, -ceptioune.
[In earlier senses, a. OF. perception action of receiving (12th c. in Littré); in later, perh. directly ad. L. perceptiōn-em, lit. ‘receiving, collecting’, hence ‘sensuous or mental apprehension, perception, intelligence, knowledge’: n. of action from percipĕre to take, receive, perceive.]
The action, faculty, or product of perceiving.
I. From the literal sense of L. percipĕre, to take, receive.
1. The collection or receiving of rents, etc. Now only in legal phraseology.
1493Acta Audit. (1839) 184/1 The lordis..deliueris þat..Alexr Inness of þt Ilk dois wrang in þe perceptioune vptaking and withalde of þe malez and gerssoumez of þe landis of menedy. 1723Pres. St. Russia I. 60 Revenues..which are the Czar's own both as to Propriety and Perception. 1769Aclome Inclos. Act 7 Entry, distress, and perception of the rents and profits. 1847Addison Law of Contracts ii. i. §1 (1883) 240 The lessee had the benefit of..the perception of the profits for the whole term purported to be granted. 1885Law Rep. 16 Q. Bench Div. 62 There must have been something more than a mere perception of profits.
†2. The receiving or partaking of the Eucharist or sacred elements. Obs.
1483Caxton Gold. Leg. 435/1 Y⊇ masse may be comprysed in four partyes..the third parte dureth fro the pater noster vnto the persepcion & the fourth parte dureth fro the percepcion vnto thende of the masse. 1624Gataker Transubst. 105 What this potion and perception is (saith he) it is our part to learne. 1674Ch. & Court of Rome 7 The..entire perception of the holy Eucharist.
II. From the secondary or metaphorical sense of L. percipĕre, to be or become cognizant of.
3. a. The taking cognizance or being aware of objects in general; sometimes practically = consciousness. In Locke esp. as distinct from volition.
1611Cotgr., Perception, a perception; a perceiuing, apprehension, vnderstanding. 1632Sherwood, A perceiuing or perception, perception, appercevance. 1665Glanvill Def. Van. Dogm. 20 Perception of spirituals, universals and other abstracts from sense, as Mathematical lines,..self reflection, Freedom,..are not at all competible to body or matter. 1665― Scepsis Sci. xii. 64 The Best Philosophy..derives all sensitive Perception from Motion, and Corporal impress. 1690Locke Hum. Und. ii. i. §9 Having Ideas and Perception being the same thing. Ibid. vi. §2 The two great and principal Actions of the Mind..are these two: Perception, or Thinking, and Volition, or Willing. 1725Watts Logic i. i, First, the Nature of Conception or Perception shall just be mentioned..Perception is that Act of the Mind (or as some Philosophers call it, rather a Passion or Impression) whereby the Mind becomes conscious of any Thing, as when I feel Hunger, Thirst, or Cold, or Heat; when I see a Horse, a Tree, or a Man; when I hear a human Voice, or Thunder. 1751Harris Hermes i. ii. (1786) 15 By the Powers of Perception, I mean the Senses and the Intellect.
†b. By Bacon used of the fact of being affected by an object without contact, though consciousness is absent. Obs.
1626Bacon Sylva ix. Pref., It is certaine, that all Bodies whatsoeuer, though they have no sense, yet they haue Perception:..and sometimes this Perception in some kinde of Bodies is farre more subtill than the Sense:..a Weather-Glasse will finde the least difference of the Weather in Heat or Cold, when Men finde it not. Ibid. §462 It is..reported that..a Cucumber..will, in 24 houres shoot so much out, as to touch the pot [of water]: which if it be true..discouereth Perception in Plants, to moue towards that which should helpe and comfort them. Ibid. §819 Great Mountaines haue a Perception of the Disposition of the Aire to Tempests, sooner than the Valley's or Plaines below.
4. a. The taking cognizance or being aware of a sensible or quasi-sensible object.
1704J. Harris Lex. Techn. I, Perception, is the clear and distinct apprehension of any Object offered to us, without forming any Judgement concerning them. 1736Butler Anal. i. i, The whole apparatus of vision, or of perception by any other of our senses. 1813Sir H. Davy Agric. Chem. (1814) 55 Vegetables are living structures distinguished from Animals by exhibiting no signs of perception. 1836J. Taylor Phys. The. Another Life 62 Now we think of five species of perception, hereafter we may become familiar with a hundred or a thousand. 1868N. Porter Hum. Intellect i. iii. §102 (1872) 119 Perception, in the technical and limited sense of the term, is appropriated to the knowledge of material objects, and of the external world. This knowledge is gained or acquired by means of the senses, and hence, to be more exact, we call it sensible perception, or, more briefly, sense-perception. 1882Proc. Soc. Psych. Research I. 13 Gathering evidence on the obscure but important question of what may be termed supersensuous perception.
b. loosely. Personal observation; esp. sight.
1817Jas. Mill Brit. India v. ii. II. 358 By withdrawing the pretended mother from the perception of disinterested witnesses. Ibid. v. viii. 680 His agents..did state whatever they chose, matters of hearsay, as much as of perception.
5. The intuitive or direct recognition of a moral or æsthetic quality, e.g. the truth of a remark, the beautiful in objects.
1827–48Hare Guesses Ser. ii. (1873) 562 When our feelings are the most vivid our perceptions are the most piercing. 1830Mackintosh Eth. Philos. Wks. 1846 I. 16 Other philosophers..have concluded, that the utility of actions cannot be the criterion of their morality, because a perception of that utility appears to them to form a faint and inconsiderable part of our Moral Sentiments. 1840Whewell Philos. Induct. Sci. (1847) II. 569, I should propose the term..Callæsthetic, the science of the perception of beauty. 1860Tyndall Glac. ii. ix. 270 Such pleasure the direct perception of natural truth always imparts. 1890‘R. Boldrewood’ Col. Reformer (1891) 291 The ordinary prudences and severities of conscience might be calmly placed behind the perceptions. 1903Raleigh Wordsworth 158 Perception..is a transaction between the outer powers that operate on the mind through the senses and the inner powers of the mind itself, which impose their own forms on the things submitted to it.
6. In strict philosophical language (first brought into prominence by Reid): The action of the mind by which it refers its sensations to an external object as their cause. Distinguished from sensation, conception or imagination, and judgement or inference.
1762Kames Elem. Crit. III. 379 External things and their attributes are objects of perception: relations among things are objects of conception. 1785Reid Intell. Powers i. i. (1803) 28 The perception of external objects by our senses, is an operation of the mind of a peculiar nature, and ought to have a name appropriated to it... I know no word more proper to express this act of the mind than perception. Ibid. 27 We are never said to perceive things, of the existence of which we have not a full conviction... Thus perception is distinguished from conception or imagination. Secondly, Perception is applied only to external objects, not to those that are in the mind itself... Thus perception is distinguished from consciousness. Thirdly, The immediate object of perception must be something present, and not what is past. We may remember what is past, but do not perceive it... And thus it is distinguished from remembrance. In a word, perception is most properly applied to the evidence which we have of external objects by our senses. But..the word is often applied by analogy to the evidence of reason or of testimony, when it is clear and cogent. 1840Mill Diss. & Disc. (1859) II. 91 The writer who first made Perception a word of mark and likelihood in mental philosophy was Reid, who made use of it as a means of begging several of the questions in dispute between him and his antagonists. 1842Sir W. Hamilton in Reid's Wks. I. 160/2 According, as in different senses, the subjective or the objective element preponderates, we have sensation or perception. 1843Mill Logic i. iii. §4 Besides the affection of our bodily organs from without, and the sensation thereby produced in our minds, many writers admit a third link in the chain of phenomena, which they call a Perception, and which consists in the recognition of an external object as the exciting cause of the sensation. 1855Miss Cobbe Intuit. Mor. i. 46 Every perception necessitates this double element of sensation and intuition,—the objective and subjective factor in combination. 1856Ferrier Inst. Metaph. v. v. 149. a 1860 Whately Commpl. Bk. (1864) 83 We have a distinct view of the difference between the past and the present, because we have a perception of the latter, and only a conception of the former. 1860Mansel Metaph. i. 67–8 Perception..has been used by various writers in a wider or a narrower sense—sometimes as synonymous with consciousness in general, sometimes as limited to the apprehensions of sense alone. Under the latter limitation it has been found convenient to make a further restriction, and to distinguish between sensation proper and perception proper. 1876H. Maudsley Physiol. Mind iv. 221 Perception includes not only the internal feeling, but the reference of it to an external cause. 1884J. Sully Outlines Psychol. vi. 152. 1943 M. Farber Found. Phenomenology xiii. 396 The perception realizes the possibility of the development of the intending-this with its definite relation to the object. 1962Macquarrie & Robinson tr. Heidegger's Being & Time i. iii. 130 When the experience of hardness is Interpreted this way, the kind of Being which belongs to sensory perception is obliterated, and so is any possibility that the entities encountered in such perception should be grasped in their Being. 1965New Statesman 3 Sept. 327/4 He [sc. Merleau-Ponty] held..that the higher forms of human behaviour—art, science, political life—could only be understood in their genesis from original perception.
7. The (or a) faculty of perceiving (in any of the preceding senses 3–6).
[1678Norris Coll. Misc. (1699) 232 That faculty of Perception whereby I apprehend Objects, whether Material or Immaterial, without any Material Species.] 1712Addison Spect. No. 519 ⁋4 Existence is a blessing to those beings only which are endowed with perception. 1841–4Emerson Ess., Love Wks. (Bohn) I. 75 He is a new man, with new perceptions. Ibid., Manners 212 Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. 1856Sir B. Brodie Psychol. Inq. I. ii. 48 The organ may be so imperfect that the perception of colours may be in a great degree..wanting. 1873M. Arnold Lit. & Dogma Pref. 25 Perhaps the quality specially needed for drawing the right conclusion from the facts..is best called perception, delicacy of perception. 1873Symonds Grk. Poets vi. 182 Had the Greek race perceptions infinitely finer than ours? 1890C. L. Morgan Anim. Life & Intell. ix. 372, I regard the bees in their cells..as workers of keen perceptions and a high order of practical intelligence.
8. a. The result or product of perceiving; = percept 2.
1690Locke Hum. Und. i. iv. §20 Whatever Idea is in the Mind, is either an actual Perception..or by the Memory it can be made an actual Perception again. Ibid. iv. xi. §4 'Tis plain, those Perceptions are produced in us by exteriour Causes affecting our Senses. 1739Hume Hum. Nat. (1874) I. i. i. 311 All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call Impressions and Ideas. 1780Bentham Princ. Legisl. v. §1 Pains and pleasures may be called by one general word interesting perceptions. 1831Brewster Nat. Magic vi. (1833) 148 Its invisibility to surrounding friends soon stamps it with the impress of a false perception.
†b. transf. A perceptible trace or vestige. Obs.
1650Bulwer Anthropomet. 88 No tract at all nor any perception of hairs is to be seen either in the lips or chin.
9. Psychol. The neurophysiological processes, including memory, by which an organism becomes aware of and interprets external stimuli or sensations (closely related to perception 4 and 6). So attrib. and Comb., as perception psychology, that branch of psychology which is concerned with the study of perception.
1875A. J. Ellis tr. Helmholtz's On Sensations of Tone i. iv. 99 There are several much more complicated cases in which many sensations must concur to furnish the foundation of a very simple perception. 1913A. A. Brill tr. Freud's Interpr. of Dreams vii. 426 We assume that a first system of apparatus takes up the stimuli of perception, but retains nothing from them—that is, it has no memory. 1949D. O. Hebb Organization of Behavior i. 16 According to these ideas, perception does depend on exciting specific parts of the receptor surface. 1951Licklider & Miller in S. S. Stevens Handbk. Exper. Psychol. 1040/1 Although the perception of speech is a psychological problem, it remained for telephone engineers..to develop procedures for the quantitative investigation of speech perception. 1956J. R. Smythies Anal. of Perception p. ix, In order to construct a comprehensive theory of perception..it would be necessary to have at least a good working knowledge of epistemology and the philosophy of sense perception, neurology, neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, psychiatry and psychopathology with particular reference to the effects produced by the hallucinogenic drugs, anthropology, physics and experimental psychology. 1958M. E. Spiro Children of Kibbutz vi. xvi. 435 Assumptions derived from an adaptation of psychoanalytic, learning, and perception theories. 1964M. A. K. Halliday et al. Linguistic Sci. iii. 60 Psychological phonetics..has arisen out of modern developments in perception psychology. 1968R. N. Haber Contemp. Theory & Res. Visual Perception (1970) p. vi, While it will be clear throughout this book that memory and what is traditionally known as perception cannot be distinguished by any but the most arbitrary of rules. 1974Drive Autumn 3/1 At least one perception expert considers they could, indeed, be doing far more in teaching distance assessment in a following situation at speeds over 30mph. Ibid. 29/2 The university's department of perception⁓psychology aims to produce a lighting system that gives clearer warning of a car's presence to pedestrians and on⁓coming traffic.
Add:[8.] c. An interpretation or impression based upon one's understanding of a situation, etc.; an opinion or awareness.
1961Devel. Program Nat. Forests (U.S. Dept. Agric. Forest Service Misc. Publ. No. 896) Nov. 14 A cadre of able spokesmen who will help to create a public perception of the university as an institution. 1977Washington Post 8 Jan. e2/5 Judges had a responsibility ‘to the total community, whose perception of the judicial branch of the system must remain one that gives the appearance of equal justice’. 1980Times 4 Jan. 10/2 An official added that ‘the perception on the street is that the Jews did this to Andy Young’. With very few exceptions, that indeed was the perception of black leaders. 1985T. Douglas Compl. Guide Advertising i. 31 Consumer research showed that the public's perception of Delsey as being soft and strong had fallen back while that of Andrex continued to grow. 1987Sunday Tel. 21 June 11/1 It is the perception of many that contemporary ‘art’ composers have ceased to write music which ordinary people enjoy listening to. This is not entirely so. |