sensesfirstness

Sensesfirstness is a term used in philosophy of perception and cognitive science to describe a stance or feature of conscious experience in which sensory input is taken to have primacy. It denotes the idea that the content of perception is grounded first and foremost in immediate sensory data, with higher-level interpretations, concepts, and language playing a secondary or downstream role.

The concept is often contrasted with views that emphasize cognitive or conceptual influence on perception. Proponents of sensesfirstness argue that perceptual experience is organized around raw sensory information such as colors, shapes, textures, and motions, and that these elements provide a relatively unmediated basis for further cognitive processing. Critics contend that perception is permeated by top-down influences and that language, beliefs, and expectations can shape what is perceived, making the notion of a strictly sensesfirst regime controversial.

The term is used primarily in theoretical discussions rather than as a widely adopted technical label. It intersects with debates about bottom-up versus top-down processing, perceptual realism, and the nature of perceptual content. Related ideas include qualia, sensory phenomenology, and cognitive penetration.

In practice, sensesfirstness can serve as a heuristic for thinking about how perceptual data enter experience and how design and artificial perception systems might prioritize sensory input. It remains an area of ongoing discussion, with supporters emphasizing the primacy of experience and critics highlighting pervasive cognitive mediation in perception. See also perception, phenomenology, bottom-up processing, cognitive penetration.