A Comparative Analysis of the Notion of Perception and Its Process in Environmental Psychology and Philosophy with an Emphasis on Its Application to Urban Design

Human’s perception and cognition of city form based on his mutual interaction with the environment. The knowledge of urban design, which is aimed at creating a good environment for humans, tries to identify ways of deepening the relationship. It has mostly utilized the achievements of environmental psychology, but the notion of perception, as an epistemological issue, has its conceptual roots in other cognitive domains such as philosophy. Philosophy can be considered the origin of conceptualization of perception while this notion has suffered from the inattention of urban designers. The present research aimed to make maximum use of the viewpoints of Iranian philosophers on the notion of perception to identify productive achievements of philosophical opinions in this regard, including those that are applicable to urbanknowledge. It tried to attain this goal by drawing comparative analysis between philosophical achievements and those of environmental psychology.
In this study, the notion of perception was explored and investigated based on content (including issues based on the content of perception) and procedure (including issues based on its procedural structure and its design in urban design) in the following two cognitive fields: philosophy and environmental psychology. The effectiveness of the use of philosophers referred to in each section was assessed as well.
The present manuscript adopts an interpretive (non-positivistic) approach and uses the logical reasoning method to perform a comparative assessment of the viewpoints of two areas of knowledge. Research findings were tested using the Delphi method (theoretical saturation) and the principle of research. This study aimed to answer the following questions: How are the thoughts of Iranian philosophers effective for perception as compared to environmental psychology? How can the opinions of Iranian philosophers be used for explaining the nature of structure of the perception process and its application to urban design?
Among Iranian philosophers of Islamic eras, the theories of the following famous philosophers have had the most contribution to the growth of philosophical movements in Iran: Avicenna, Sohrevardi and Mullasadra.
Research findings revealed that application of the thoughts of Iranian philosophers is useful for clarification of the nature of perception and its contents as well as refinement of the structure of perception and its phases. The process of perception has the following levels with respect to philosophy: sensory perception, imaginary perception, illusive perception and rational perception. Each of these phases is differentiated from other levels using a constructive factor. Each phase also has a specific function and product. The most important issues derived from the opinions of philosophers are presented in the following table.

The research adopted an interpretive approach (instead of a positivist approach) to the analysis of contents of texts. It also studied the viewpoints of the aforementioned two cognitive Results of comparison and integration of the two theoretical areas showed that environmental perception is a “subjective and objective process [12]”, which results from the interactive (mutual) relationship between the human and environment. This process has a dynamic and progressive nature. It depends on human’s constant growth and his mental construct. During the perception process, the mental image resulting from the influence of the environment is re-created to demonstrate the true essence of the environment.
The perception process is composed of distinctive steps and various functions which are classified in the following three groups: reception and selection (emotional perception) organization and preservation (imaginary perception) and interpretation and signification (rational perception). In addition, numerous factors (human and environmental) influence the process and mechanism of perception in the form of stable dynamic factors.