Perceptual Psychology: a Transcendental Perspective

Abstract

Using the meta-empirical foundations of the transcendental approach to the study of perception, the author organizes and generalizes the theoretical and empirical data of modern foreign and domestic perceptual studies (about 1,000 sources) in the following areas: methodological and methodical aspects of the modern perceptual psychology; correlation of types of scientific rationality in the modern perceptual psychology; the process of perception as a special function of the psyche, etc. The paper identifies the core methodological and methodical trends in the development of the modern perceptual psychology: expanded requirements for the lack of bias, accuracy and reliability of experimental studies; ontologization of the research subject; complexity and crosscutting features of the research system; the active use of modern technological opportunities, including the renovation of classical research methods. The author substantiates the methodological necessity of a brand new resource for studying perception from the proper positions of meta-empirical foundations — a transcendental approach, in which the directly sensory process of perception is positioned as a process of form generation helping to distinguish the generative quality of this process and capture its diffe­rence from the structural qualities of other information processes. Against the modern trends in the positioning of perception as an auxiliary stage of latent representation and categorization of objects of the external world, the author shows the relevance and identifies the means of distinguishing perception as a special function of the psyche. The paper substantiates the transcendental type of scientific rationality, alternative to the epistemological paradigm of cognition.