percept

noun

1. (archaic)Something perceived; the object of perception.

   “I shall, therefore, make no scruple in using the expression concept for the object of conception, and conception I shall exclusively employ to designate the act of conceiving. Whether it might not, in like manner, be proper to introduce the term percept for the object of perception, I shall not at present inquire.”

   “It may even be that the percepts detected by one sense organ are experienced as having the modality standardly associated with another.”

2. A perceived object as it exists in the mind of someone perceiving it; the mental impression that is the result of perceiving something.

   “I see an inkstand on the table: that is a percept. Moving my head, I get a different percept of the inkstand.”

   “So far as in that world it is a stable feature, holds ink, marks paper and obeys the guidance of a hand, it is a physical pen. [...] So far as it is instable, on the contrary, coming and going with the movements of my eyes, altering with what I call my fancy, continuous with subsequent experiences of its ‘having been’ (in the past tense), it is the percept of a pen in my mind.”

   “Socrates remarks that when he is well he finds wine sweet, but when ill, sour. Here it is a change in the percipient that causes the change in the percept.”

verb

1. (obsolete, rare, transitive)Synonym of perceive.

   “And is not the highest speculation of it percepted and perfected by manuall instruments, and those fallacious too, as themselves complain?”

2. (transitive)To make perceptible or distinct, to reveal.

   “The lighter and darker shading of surfaces can be understood as a means for discrimination in percepting each viewpoint, and at the same time as spatial articulation — back, forward, oblique — of the pictorial space of the picture-plane.”

   “There was a nun of modesty, who with service was heavy / And big with sweet acts all her sweet life long; / Enough wisdom she had for twenty ordinary women / Who percepted love as a breath, and as a song.”

   “Chemo‐reception, biological membranes, and a discussion of how the reception of taste and odour substances are percepted in the brain, are addressed in Chapter 2.”