apperception
Americannoun
-
the attainment of full awareness of a sensation or idea
-
the act or process of apperceiving
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of apperception
First recorded in 1745–55; from French or directly from New Latin (Leibnitz) apperceptiōn-, stem of apperceptiō. See ap- 1, perception
Explanation
Apperception is how your mind puts new information in context. You get a perception of a chair through your eyes, but apperception is how your mind relates it to chairs you've seen before. We have many perceptions: information we take in through our senses, like "It's cloudy today." An apperception goes one step further by considering the perception in relation to things you’ve perceived in the past. "There's Julia" is a perception, but "Julia is my friend" is an apperception, because it's based on past experience. "My stomach hurts" is a perception, but "I might throw up" is an apperception. Apperception is a sophisticated mental process that keeps developing through our lives.
Vocabulary lists containing apperception
Flowers for Algernon
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cept, capt, ceive (take, hold, seize)
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capt, cept, ceive, List 3
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It is, in the phrase of Leibniz, perception: but not apperception.
From Hegel's Philosophy of Mind by Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
He agreed with Herbart regarding the philosophy of apperception so far as it related to intellectual culture, but he painted Jo entirely out of harmony with Herbart’s psychology in relation to soul development.
From Dickens As an Educator by Hughes, James L. (James Laughlin)
No one dreams, of course, that the great synthetic apperception, for which our modern time seems ripe, will come through the delivery of some hundred addresses, or the discussions of some hundred audiences.
From International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume I Philosophy and Metaphysics by Various
But as Kant's unity of apperception became for Green merely a symbol of the world's inherent intelligibility, the latter did not regard it as an actual process of synthesis.
From John Dewey's logical theory by Howard, Delton Thomas
This is the only sure way to secure perfect apperception, and without apperception the new knowledge lies dormant, if not dead, and unrelated in the memory until it disappears, as did Bitherstone’s.
From Dickens As an Educator by Hughes, James L. (James Laughlin)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
