How does cognition influence emotion?  (Page 12/13)

• The claim, then, is that there is a class of beliefs that are typically fixed by sensory/perceptual processes, and that the fixation of beliefs in this class is, in a sense that wants spelling out, importantly theory neutral. A a first shot at what the theory neutrality of observation comes to: given the same stimulations, two organisms with the same sensory/perceptual psychology will quite generally observe the same things, and hence arrive at the same observational beliefs, however much their theoretical commitments may differ.

Is there a difference between perception and cognition? How someone perceives the world is based off of - and influenced by - how they think of the world. Perception is the organization, identification and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment , Daniel (2011). Psychology. Worth Publishers . Cognition is how our minds use sensory data, in addition for being a name for all of a humans intellectual faculties - language, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making. So what is the exact relationship between perception and cognition? Here again is Fodor:

• Precisely parallel to the philosophical doctrine that there can be no principled distinction between observation and inference is the psychological doctrine that there can be no principled distinction between perception and cognition . The leading idea here is that "perception involves a kind of problem solving--a kind of intelligence (Gregory 1970). Perception, according to this account, is the process wherein an organism assigns probable distal causes to the proximal stimulations it encounters. What makes the solution of perceptual problems other than mere routine is the fact that, as a matter of principle, any given pattern of proximal stimulation is compatible with a great variety of distal causes; there are, if you like, many possible worlds that would project a given pattern of excitation on the sensory mechanisms of an organism. To view the mental processes which mediate perception as inferences is thus necessarily to view them as nondemonstrative inferences. "We are forced ... to suppose that perception involves betting on the most probable interpretation of sensory data, in terms of world objects" (Gregory 1970). It is worth stressing the putative moral: what mediates perception is an inference from effects to causes. The sort of mentation required for perception is thus not different in kind - though no doubt it differs a lot in conscious accessibility-- from what goes on in Sherlock Holmes' head when he infers the identity of the criminal from a stray cigar band and a hair or two. If what Holmes does deserves to be called cognition, perception deserved to be called cognition too, or so, at least, some psychologists like to say.

So observation is similar to perception, and inference is similar to cognition. When someone interprets or infers information, they are thinking - and when someone observes the world around them they could likewise be viewed as just seeing (or 'perceiving').