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'Apperception' (Latin ''ad'' + ''percipere'', to perceive) has the following meanings:

★ In epistemology, it is "the introspective or reflective apprehension by the mind of its own inner states" (Ledger Wood in ''Runes'').

★ In psychology, it is "the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole" (Ledger Wood in ''Runes''). In short, it is to perceive new experience in relation to past experience.

'Example 1:' We see a fire (visual perception). By ''apperception'' we correlate the appearance of fire with past experiences of being burned. Having combined present and past experience we realize this is a situation in which we should avoid placing our hand in the fire and being burned.^[1]

'Example 2:' A rich child and a poor child walking together come across the same $10.00 bill on the sidewalk. The rich child says it is not very much money and the poor child says it is a lot of money. The difference lies in how they apperceive the same event -- the lens of past experience through which they see and value (or devalue) the money.^[2]

★ In philosophy, Kant distinguished ''empirical apperception'' from ''transcendental apperception''. The first is "the consciousness of the concrete actual self with its changing states", the so-called "inner sense". The second is "the pure, original, unchangeable consciousness which is the necessary condition of experience as such and the ultimate foundation of the synthetic unity of experience" (Otto F. Kraushaar in ''Runes''). See ''Kantianism''.

★ The eastern concept of the sanskara (or samskara) can also be looked upon as a form of apperception -- seeing events through the 'lens' of accumulated impressions.

Contents

See also

References

External links

See also

★ Spatial Apperception Test

★ Thematic Apperception Test

References

1. From a discussion of apperception by William James, "Talks to Teachers," Chapter 14
2. ''The Evolution of Perception and the Cosmology of Substance'' by Christopher Ott, 2004.


★ Runes, Dagobert D. (ed.), ''Dictionary of Philosophy'', Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, NJ, 1972.

External links

★ William James (1892), "Talks to Teachers", Chapter 14.