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Observation Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jerry Fodor*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Abstract

Several arguments are considered which purport to demonstrate the impossibility of theory-neutral observation. The most important of these infers the continuity of observation with theory from the presumed continuity of perception with cognition, a doctrine widely espoused in recent cognitive psychology. An alternative psychological account of the relation between cognition and perception is proposed and its epistemological consequences for the observation/theory distinction are then explored.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1984

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