Perception, hallucination, and illusion /

Fish (Massey Univ., New Zealand) is a philosopher, and this is a book best suited to philosophers, in particular those interested in the philosophy of knowledge, i.e., epistemology. Fish defends the disjunctivist argument supporting naive realism, which is the view that there is a material world independent of the individual, that individuals' senses allow them to perceive that world correctly, and that things in that world do possess the characteristics they appear to have--such as color, shape, texture, warmth, loudness, and so on. Two phenomena challenge this view: illusions and hallucinations. Disjunctivism argues that the mental state of veridical (i.e., not illusory or hallucinatory) perception is different than the mental state of nonveridical perception. These different mental states may, at times, be hard to discriminate, but they are not the same, hence naive realism can underlie veridical perception. Fish is knowledgeable about recent work in perception and discusses research in such phenomena as inattentional blindness and achromatopsia (total color blindness). Though Fish's writing style is clear and direct, his vocabulary is that of a professional philosopher. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduates students, researchers, faculty. R. H. Cormack New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology