Perceptual Learning: The Flexibility of the Senses

Experts from wine tasters to radiologists to bird watchers have all undergone perceptual learning - that is, long-term changes in perception that result from practice or experience. Philosophers have been discussing such cases for centuries, from the 14th-century Indian philosopher Vedanta Desika to the 18th-century Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid to a great many contemporary philosophers. This text uses recent evidence from psychology and neuroscience to show that perceptual learning is genuinely perceptual, rather than post-perceptual.