Editing Perception (section)

=== Evolutionary psychology ===
Many philosophers, such as [[Jerry Fodor]], write that the purpose of perception is knowledge. However, [[Evolutionary psychology|evolutionary psychologists]] hold that the primary purpose of perception is to guide action.<ref name="Gaulin 4">Gaulin, Steven J. C. and Donald H. McBurney. Evolutionary Psychology. [[Prentice Hall]]. 2003. {{ISBN|978-0-13-111529-3}}, Chapter 4, pp. 81–101.</ref> They give the example of [[depth perception]], which seems to have evolved not to aid in knowing the distances to other objects but rather to aid movement.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Evolutionary psychologists argue that animals ranging from [[fiddler crab]]s to humans use eyesight for [[Collision avoidance in transportation|collision avoidance]], suggesting that vision is basically for directing action, not providing knowledge.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> [[Neuropsychology|Neuropsychologists]] showed that perception systems evolved along the specifics of animals' activities. This explains why bats and worms can perceive different frequency of auditory and visual systems than, for example, humans.

Building and maintaining sense organs is [[metabolically]] expensive. More than half the brain is devoted to processing sensory information, and the brain itself consumes roughly one-fourth of one's metabolic resources. Thus, such organs evolve only when they provide exceptional benefits to an organism's fitness.<ref name="Gaulin 4" />

Scientists who study perception and sensation have long understood the human senses as adaptations.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Depth perception consists of processing over half a dozen visual cues, each of which is based on a regularity of the physical world.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Vision evolved to respond to the narrow range of electromagnetic energy that is plentiful and that does not pass through objects.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Sound waves provide useful information about the sources of and distances to objects, with larger animals making and hearing lower-frequency sounds and smaller animals making and hearing higher-frequency sounds.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Taste and smell respond to chemicals in the environment that were significant for fitness in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> The sense of touch is actually many senses, including pressure, heat, cold, tickle, and pain.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Pain, while unpleasant, is adaptive.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> An important adaptation for senses is range shifting, by which the organism becomes temporarily more or less sensitive to sensation.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> For example, one's eyes automatically adjust to dim or bright ambient light.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Sensory abilities of different organisms often co-evolve, as is the case with the hearing of echolocating bats and that of the moths that have evolved to respond to the sounds that the bats make.<ref name="Gaulin 4" />

Evolutionary psychologists claim that perception demonstrates the principle of modularity, with specialized mechanisms handling particular perception tasks.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> For example, people with damage to a particular part of the brain are not able to recognize faces (''[[prosopagnosia]]'').<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Evolutionary psychology suggests that this indicates a so-called face-reading module.<ref name="Gaulin 4" />