Perception and Thought

The significance and use of absence of a thing is highlighted as its presence. The role of absence in various disciplines of mathematics, physics, semi-conductor electronics, computing and cognitive sciences for ease in conceptualizing is discussed. The use of null set, null vector and null matrix are also presented.

The notion of an object file figures prominently in recent work in philosophy and cognitive science. Object files play a role in theories of singular reference, object individuation, perceptual memory, and the development of cognitive capacities. However, the philosophical literature lacks a detailed, empirically informed theory of object files. In this paper, we articulate and defend the multiple-slots view, which specifies both the format and architecture of object files. We argue that object files represent in a non-iconic, propositional format that (...) incorporates discrete symbols for separate features. Moreover, we argue that features of separate categories are stored in separate memory slots within an object file. We supplement this view with a computational framework that characterizes how information about objects is stored and retrieved. (shrink)

In the September 2020 edition of Perception, Alan Gilchrist published an editorial entitled “The Integrity of Vision” (Gilchrist, 2020). In it, Gilchrist critiques motivated perception research. His main points are as follows: (1) Motivated perception is compromised by experimental demand: Results do not actually show motivated perception but instead reflect subjects’ desires to comply with inferred predictions. (2) Motivated perception studies use designs that make predictions obvious to subjects. These transparent designs conspire with experimental demand to yield confirmatory but compromised (...) results. (3) Motivated perception research lacks guiding theory and cannot explain what appear to be contradictory results. (4) Motivated perception presents an unsupportable assault upon the impermeability of perception. The present commentary responds to these four assertions. (shrink)

Perceptual representations pick out individuals and attribute properties to them. This paper considers the role of perceptual attribution in determining or guiding perceptual reference to objects. We consider three extant models of the relation between perceptual attribution and perceptual reference–all attribution guides reference, no attribution guides reference, or a privileged subset of attributions guides reference–and argue that empirical evidence undermines all three. We then defend a flexible-attributives model, on which the range of perceptual attributives used to guide reference shifts adaptively (...) with context. This model underscores the remarkable and dynamic intelligence of our perceptual capacities. We elucidate implications of the model for the boundary between perception and propositional thought. (shrink)

The difference between perception and cognition seems introspectively obvious in many cases. Perceiving and thinking have also been assigned quite different roles, in epistemology, in theories of reference and of mental content, in philosophy of psychology, and elsewhere. Yet what is the nature of the distinction? In what way, or ways, do perception and cognition differ? The paper reviews recent work on these questions. Four main respects in which perception and cognition have been held to differ are discussed. First, their (...) phenomenal character, such as the often-remarked vivacity or immediacy of perception. Second, the way in which they represent the world, e.g. the non-propositional nature of the contents, or non-discursive character of the vehicles, that have been held to characterise perceptual representation. Third, their place in cognitive architecture, i.e., roughly, in the information-flow of the mind, such as their alleged (non-)modularity. Fourth, their mind-world relations, e.g. the way in which perceptions seem to be tightly causally linked with distal or proximal stimuli. Against this background, we distinguish some main options for an account of the perception/cognition distinction, in particular concerning whether there is one, several, or no interesting and principled distinction(s) to be drawn here. (shrink)

Expertise is a cognitive achievement that clearly involves experience and learning, and often requires explicit, time-consuming training specific to the relevant domain. It is also intuitive that this kind of achievement is, in a rich sense, genuinely perceptual. Many experts—be they radiologists, bird watchers, or fingerprint examiners—are better perceivers in the domain(s) of their expertise. The goal of this paper is to motivate three related claims, by substantial appeal to recent empirical research on perceptual expertise: Perceptual expertise is genuinely perceptual (...) and genuinely cognitive, and this phenomenon reveals how we can become epistemically better perceivers. These claims are defended against sceptical opponents that deny significant top-down or cognitive effects on perception, and opponents who maintain that any such effects on perception are epistemically pernicious. (shrink)

[File is the introduction to the forthcoming monograph] -/- Abstract to monograph -/- How and whether thinking affects perceiving is a deeply important question. Of course it is of scientific interest: to understand the human mind is to understand how we best distinguish its processes, how those processes interact, and what this implies for how and what we may know about the world. And so in the philosopher’s terms, this book is one on both mental architecture and the epistemology of (...) perception. But there is a more human interest. How we make contact with the world, and with one another, is of the most basic of importance. We can make both sensory contact and cognitive contact with the world. The first is traditionally supposed to be determined by the biological nature of our sensory systems, while the second is at least partly determined by us, what we have learned, our experiences, and so on. The most basic claim of the book is that this is mistaken and importantly so. Our sensory contact with the world can also change and in a way that is importantly affected by the cognitive contact that we have, or have had, with the world. Thinking does not just affect perceiving, thinking improves perceiving. If this is true, it changes not only how we should theorize the mind, it changes how we should understand, as individuals, our place in and contact with the world. (shrink)

A venerable view holds that a border between perception and cognition is built into our cognitive architecture and that this imposes limits on the way information can flow between them. While the deliverances of perception are freely available for use in reasoning and inference, there are strict constraints on information flow in the opposite direction. Despite its plausibility, this approach to the perception-cognition border has faced criticism in recent years. This article develops an updated version of the architectural approach, which (...) I call the dimension restriction hypothesis. According to DRH, perceptual processes are constrained to compute over a bounded range of dimensions, while cognitive processes are not. This view allows that perception is cognitively penetrable, but places strict limits on the varieties of penetration that can occur. The article argues that DRH enjoys both theoretical and empirical support, and also defends the view against several objections. (shrink)

An ongoing philosophical discussion concerns how various types of mental states fall within broad representational genera—for example, whether perceptual states are “iconic” or “sentential,” “analog” or “digital,” and so on. Here, I examine the grounds for making much more specific claims about how mental states are structured from constituent parts. For example, the state I am in when I perceive the shape of a mountain ridge may have as constituent parts my representations of the shapes of each peak and saddle (...) of the ridge. More specific structural claims of this sort are a guide to how mental states fall within broader representational kinds. Moreover, these claims have significant implications of their own about semantic, functional, and epistemic features of our mental lives. But what are the conditions on a mental state's having one type of constituent structure rather than another? Drawing on explanatory strategies in vision science, I argue that, other things being equal, the constituent structure of a mental state determines what I call its distributional properties—namely, how mental states of that type can, cannot, or must co‐occur with other mental states in a given system. Distributional properties depend critically on and are informative about the underlying structures of mental states, they abstract in important ways from aspects of how mental states are processed, and they can yield significant insights into the variegation of psychological capacities. (shrink)

When characterizing the content of a subject’s perceptual experience, does their seeing an object entail that their visual experience represents it as being a certain way? If it does, are they thereby in a position to have perceptually-based thoughts about it? On one hand, representationalists are under pressure to answer these questions in the affirmative. On the other hand, it seems they cannot. This paper presents a puzzle to illustrate this tension within orthodox representationalism. We identify several interesting morals which (...) may be drawn in response, each of which teaches us something interesting and important about perceptual experience and its interface with cognition and related phenomena. (shrink)

The question of whether perception is encapsulated from cognition has been a major topic in the study of perception in the past decade. One locus of debate concerns the role of attention. Some theorists argue that attention is a vehicle for widespread violations of encapsulation; others argue that certain forms of cognitively driven attention are compatible with encapsulation, especially if attention only modulates inputs. This paper argues for an extreme thesis: no effect of attention, whether on the inputs to perception (...) or on perceptual processing itself, constitutes a violation of the encapsulation of perception. (shrink)

Perceptual systems respond to proximal stimuli by forming mental representations of distal stimuli. A central goal for the philosophy of perception is to characterize the representations delivered by perceptual systems. It may be that all perceptual representations are in some way proprietarily perceptual and differ from the representational format of thought (Dretske 1981; Carey 2009; Burge 2010; Block ms.). Or it may instead be that perception and cognition always trade in the same code (Prinz 2002; Pylyshyn 2003). This paper rejects (...) both approaches in favor of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perception delivers a multiplicity of representational formats, some proprietary and some shared with cognition. The argument for perceptual pluralism marshals a wide array of empirical evidence in favor of iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations in perception as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) perceptual object representations. (shrink)

Short‐term memory in vision is typically thought to divide into at least two memory stores: a short, fragile, high‐capacity store known as iconic memory, and a longer, durable, capacity‐limited store known as visual working memory (VWM). This paper argues that iconic memory stores icons, i.e., image‐like perceptual representations. The iconicity of iconic memory has significant consequences for understanding consciousness, nonconceptual content, and the perception–cognition border. Steven Gross and Jonathan Flombaum have recently challenged the division between iconic memory and VWM by (...) arguing against the idea of capacity limits in favor of a flexible resource‐based model of short‐term memory. I argue that, while VWM capacity is probably governed by flexible resources rather than a sharp limit, the two memory stores should still be distinguished by their representational formats. Iconic memory stores icons, while VWM stores discursive (i.e., language‐like) representations. I conclude by arguing that this format‐based distinction between memory stores entails that prominent views about consciousness and the perception–cognition border will likely have to be revised. (shrink)

Como tantas vezes na filosofia, o título não só estabelece a linha de batalha, mas expõe os preconceitos e erros do autor, pois se podemos ou não entender o jogo de linguagem 'Ver as coisas como elas são' e se é possível ter uma "teoria filosófica" de percepção" (que é Pode ser sobre como a linguagem da percepção funciona), ao contrário de uma científica, que é uma teoria sobre como o cérebro funciona, são exatamente os problemas. Este é o Searle (...) Classic, excelente e provavelmente pelo menos tão bom quanto qualquer um pode produzir, mas sem uma compreensão completa das ideias fundamentais do Wittgenstein posterior e sem entender os dois sistemas-quadro de pensamento, que poderia ter feito brilhante. Como em seu trabalho anterior, Searle evita em grande parte a ciência, mas há lapsos frequentes e não entende que problemas são sempre sobre jogos de idiomas, uma falha que ele compartilha com quase todos. Depois de fornecer uma estrutura composta por uma Mesa de Intencionalidade baseada nos dois sistemas de pensamento e pensamento e pesquisa de decisões, faço uma análise detalhada do livro. Aqueles que querem uma estrutura completa até o momento para o comportamento humano do ponto de vista moderno de dois sistemas podem consultar meus livros Talking Monkeys 3rd ed (2019), Estrutura Lógica da Filosofia, Psicologia, Mente e Linguagem em Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle 2ª ed (2019), Suicide Pela Democracy 4ª ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), The Logical Structure of Consciousness (2019, Understanding the Connections Between Science, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Politics and Economics (2020) e Illusions Utopias Suicidas no Século 21 6ª ed (2020), Observações sobre Impossibilidade, Incompletude, Paraconsistência, Indecidabilidade, Aleatoriedade, Computação, Paradoxo e Incerteza em Chaitin, Wittgenstein, Hofstadter, Wolpert, Doria, da Costa, Godel, Searle, Rodych Berto, Floyd, Moyal-Sharrock e Yanofsky (2019) e outros. (shrink)

This chapter concerns the cognitive penetration of the visual experience of colour. Alleged cases of cognitively penetrated colour perception are of special import since they concern an uncontroversial type of visual experience. All theorists of perception agree that colour properties figure properly in the content or presentation of visual perception, even though not all parties agree that pine trees or causes or other "high-level" properties can figure properly in visual content or presentation. So an alleged case of this kind does (...) not require controversial commitments regarding the admissible contents of visual perception. The chapter clarifies this theoretical importance , identifying alleged empirical cases of cognitively penetrated colour perception, and then analyzing the implications of such cases for an epistemology of perception. (shrink)

This chapter has four parts. I distinguishes some types of perceptual skills and highlights their importance in everyday perception. II identifies a well-studied class of perceptual skills: cases of perceptual expertise. III discusses a less studied possible instance of perceptual skill: picture perception. Finally, IV outlines some important mechanisms underlying perceptual skills, with special emphasis on attention and mental imagery.

In The Varieties of Reference, Evans makes two parallel claims about thought and perception. He argues that both our capacity to self-ascribe thought and our capacity to self-ascribe perception are fallible. The essay focuses on his claim about perception and examines its relation to Evans's project of rejecting a Cartesian conception of the mind. In his theory of perception, I argue, Evans embraces a conception of first-person authority that he seeks to reject in his account of thought. He is thus (...) not able to extend to perception the critique of Cartesianism that he develops in the context of his analysis of thought. My intent is not exclusively critical. By working through the difficulties that Evans's argument raises, I seek to shed light on whether and, if so, how criticisms of a Cartesian conception of thought may be extended to the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

Starting with Gareth Evans, there’s an important tradition of theorizing about perception-based demonstrative thought which assigns necessary epistemic conditions to it. Its core idea is that demonstrative reference in thought is grounded in information links, understood as links which carry reliable information about their targets and which a subject exploits for demonstrative reference by tokening the mental files fed by these links. Perception, on these views, is not fundamental to perception-based demonstrative thought but is only the information link exploited in (...) these cases. Evans himself assigns a further epistemic condition, while more recently Imogen Dickie has expanded the reliability requirement into a more complex account centered around justification. In this paper I synthesize three central proponents of this approach and show that the epistemic conditions they place on perception-based demonstrative thought are not actually required. My argument gives two examples in which there is perceptual contact with an object but this perceptual contact fails to do the epistemic work in question. The first case is stimulus-incorporating dream experiences, the second involves multimodal binding failures. I argue that this perceptual contact still affords demonstrative thought in these cases. (shrink)

Attention plays a role in demonstrative thought: It sets the targets. Visual experience also plays a role. I argue here that it makes visual information available for use in the voluntary control of focal attention. To do so I use both introspection and neurophysiological evidence from projections between areas of attentional control and neural correlates of consciousness. Campbell and Smithies also identify roles for experience, but they further argue that only experience can play those roles. In contrast, I argue that (...) experience is not the only way in which visual information could be accessed for the voluntary control of attention. (shrink)

One of Brian Loar’s most central contributions to contemporary philosophy of mind is the notion of phenomenal intentionality: a kind of intentional directedness fully grounded in phenomenal character. Proponents of phenomenal intentionality typically also endorse the idea of cognitive phenomenology: a sui generis phenomenal character of cognitive states such as thoughts and judgments that grounds these states’ intentional directedness. This combination creates a challenge, though: namely, how to account for the manifest phenomenological difference between perception and cognition. In this paper, (...) I argue that there is in fact no obvious account of this difference. I consider three main approaches: in terms of high-level vs. low-level contents, of conceptual vs. nonconceptual content, and of propositional vs. objectual content. After arguing against each, I conclude by considering the phenomenal-intentionalist’s options moving forward. (shrink)

Traditional accounts of the perception/cognition divide tend to draw it in terms of subpersonal psychological processes, processes into which the subject has no first-person insight. Whatever betides such accounts, there seems to also be some first-personally accessible difference between perception and thought. At least in normal circumstances, naïve subjects can typically tell apart their perceptual states from their cognitive or intellectual ones. What are such subjects picking up on when they do so? This paper is an inconclusive search for an (...) answer. At its end, I conclude, without joy, that we may have to simply accept the perception/cognition distinction as a primitive and inexplicable bright line within the sphere of conscious phenomena. (shrink)

Reid endorsed a doxastic theory of perception, on which beliefs are constituents of perceptual experiences. This theory faces the problem of known illusions: we can perceive that p while believing that not-p. Some scholars argue that the problem of known illusions and other problems entail that Reid’s view cannot be charitably interpreted as a doxastic theory. This paper explores Reid’s theoretical commitments with respect to belief acquisition and uses textual evidence to show that his theory is genuinely doxastic. It then (...) argues that a Reidian response to the problem of known illusions can be formulated by appeal to the thesis that perceptual beliefs are formed noninferentially. Reid can also resist the intuition that we lack illusory beliefs in known-illusion cases given his independent reasons for doubting our capacity to identify perceptual beliefs by introspection. The paper then surveys other problems raised in the secondary literature and argues that none decisively undermine the doxastic interpretation of Reid. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of the old empiricist claim that to think about unobservable physical properties a subject must be able to think perception-based thoughts about observable properties. The central argument builds upon foundations laid down by G. E. M. Anscombe and P. F. Strawson. It bridges the gap separating these foundations and the target claim by exploiting a neglected connection between thought about properties and our grasp of causation. This way of bridging the gap promises to introduce substantive (...) constraints on right accounts of perception and perception-based thought. (shrink)

Philosophy, scientific psychology, and common sense all distinguish perception from cognition. While there is little agreement about how the perception–cognition boundary ought to be drawn, one prominent idea is that perceptual states are dependent on a stimulus, or stimulus-dependent, in a way that cognitive states are not. This paper seeks to develop this idea in a way that can accommodate two apparent counterexamples: hallucinations, which are prima facie perceptual yet stimulus-independent; and demonstrative thoughts, which are prima facie cognitive yet stimulus-dependent. (...) The payoff is not only a specific proposal for marking the perception–cognition boundary, but also a deeper understanding of the natures of hallucination and demonstrative thought. (shrink)

I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied ‘animacy’ stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further (...) argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally. (shrink)

James of Viterbio is one of the rare medieval authors to sustain a thoroughly innatist philosophy. He borrows from Simplicius the notion of idoneitas (aptitude, predisposition) so as to ground a cognition theory in which external things are not the efficient and formal causes of mental acts. A predisposition has the characteristic of being halfway between potentiality and actuality. Therefore, the subject that has predispositions does not need to be acted upon by another thing to actualize them. External things only (...) “incline” the mind to make use of a stock of cognitive schemes. Consequently, in order to avoid an infinite regress James must adopt innatism. Following the lead of late Neoplatonism, he goes as far as including, not only conceptual schemes, but also perceptual schemes among the inbuilt stock. As a result, James’s theory, while it echoes certain preoccupations and themes that are common in the thirteenth century, proves to be one of a kind. (shrink)

One sceptical rejoinder to those who claim that sensory perception is cognitively penetrable is to appeal to the involvement of attention. So, while a phenomenon might initially look like one where, say, a perceiver’s beliefs are influencing her visual experience, another interpretation is that because the perceiver believes and desires as she does, she consequently shifts her spatial attention so as to change what she senses visually. But, the sceptic will urge, this is an entirely familiar phenomenon, and it hardly (...) involves some special or theoretically important cognitive effect on sensory perception. Even supposing that the sceptic is correct about cases that are accurately described in this way, the rejoinder oversimplifies the possible roles that attention may play in mediating cognition and perception. This paper aims to identify these different roles, and by emphasis on empirical research on feature-based and object-based attention. What emerges is a plausible and well- evidenced mental schema that describes attention -mediated cognitive penetration. At the very least, the burden of proof is shifted to the sceptic, as he then must show that there are no mental phenomena involving attention in the more nuanced ways described here. One additional benefit of this analysis is that it illuminates various features of attention and its relation to both cognition and phenomenal consciousness. Therefore the analysis should be of interest to a broad range of theorists of the mind, and not just those invested in the cognitive penetration debate. (shrink)

The basic entity in phenomenology is the phenomenon. Knowing the phenomenon is another issue. The phenomenon has been described as the real natural object or the appearance directly perceived in phenomenology and analytic philosophy of perception. Within both traditions, philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Russell and Wittgenstein have considered that perceptual experience demonstrates what a phenomenon is on the line between the mind and the external world. Therefore, conceptualizing the phenomenon is based on the perceptual evidence. However, if the (...) belief that perception is “theory-laden” is true, then perception can also be “philosophy-laden.” These philosophers have not noticed whether perceptual knowledge is independent of philosophies. If perceptual knowledge is not independent of philosophies, a philosopher’s background philosophy can influence what he or she claims to know about the phenomenon. For Husserl, experience is direct evidence of what exists. The textual evidence shows that Sartre rejects the distinction between appearance and reality based on the assumption of the phenomenon. By examining Husserl’s Ideas and Sartre’s Being and Nothingness I conclude that these philosophers’ philosophical languages influence their perceptual knowledge. Philosophical traditions affect the thoughts of perception. (shrink)

Pautz has argued that the most prominent naive realist account of hallucination—negative epistemic disjunctivism—cannot explain how hallucinations enable us to form beliefs about perceptually presented properties. He takes this as grounds to reject both negative epistemic disjunctivism and naive realism. Our aims are two: First, to show that this objection is dialectically ineffective against naive realism, and second, to draw morals from the failure of this objection for the dispute over the nature of perceptual experience at large.

Whilst in recent years sports studies have addressed the calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to theorisations of sport and physical activity, the ‘promise of phenomenology’ remains largely under-realised with regard to sporting embodiment. Relatively few accounts are grounded in the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology offers a powerful framework for such analysis. A wide-ranging, multi-stranded, and interpretatively contested perspective, phenomenology in general has been taken up and utilised in very different ways within different disciplinary fields. (...) The purpose of this article is to consider some selected phenomenological threads, key qualities of the phenomenological method, and the potential for existentialist phenomenology in particular to contribute fresh perspectives to the sociological study of embodiment in sport and exercise. It offers one way to convey the ‘essences’, corporeal immediacy and textured sensuosity of the lived sporting body. The use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is also critically addressed. (shrink)

In this article, I make a distinction between two versions of non-epistemicism about seeing, and bring explicitly into view and argue against a particular version defended by Dretske. More specifically, I distinguish non-epistemic seeing as non-conceptual seeing, where concept possession is assumed to be cognitively demanding, from non-epistemic seeing as seeing without noticing, where noticing is assumed to be relatively cognitively undemanding. After showing that Dretske argues for the possibility of non-epistemic seeing in both senses of the term, I target (...) his thesis that a given subject sees all the objects that are visually differentiated in her visual field, where visual differentiation does not require that she notice those objects. I argue that the notion of a visual field deployed in the formulation of the thesis cannot be phenomenal and therefore that seeing without noticing amounts to mere visual confrontation. I further argue that since the epistemicist does not deny the existence of seeing without noticing in the sense of mere visual confrontation, there is a clear sense in which Dretske's non-epistemicism turns out to be trivial. (shrink)

Hili Razinsky, free downlad at link. ABSTRACT: Emotional perceptions are objectivist (objectivity-directed or cognitive) and conscious, both attributes suggesting they cannot be ambivalent. Yet perceptions, including emotional perceptions of value, allow for strictly objectivist ambivalence in which a person unitarily perceives the object in mutually undermining ways. Emotional perceptions became an explicandum of emotion for philosophers who are sensitive to the unique conscious character of emotion, impressed by the objectivist character of perceptions, and believe that the perceptual account solves a (...) worry about the possibility of a conflict between an emotion and a judgement. Back into the 1980s Greenspan has argued that emotional ambivalence is possible, her reasons implying that objectivist accounts of emotion are inconsistent with ambivalence. Tappolet has more recently replied that perceptual accounts allow for emotional ambivalence since the opposed values seen in ambivalence are good or bad in different senses. The present paper identifies strict objectivist ambivalence between judgements and between emotional perceptions by contrasting them with such ambivalence of separate values such as evoked by Tappolet. (shrink)

This paper concerns how extant theorists of predictive coding conceptualize and explain possible instances of cognitive penetration. §I offers brief clarification of the predictive coding framework and relevant mechanisms, and a brief characterization of cognitive penetration and some challenges that come with defining it. §II develops more precise ways that the predictive coding framework can explain, and of course thereby allow for, genuine top-down causal effects on perceptual experience, of the kind discussed in the context of cognitive penetration. §III develops (...) these insights further with an eye towards tracking one extant criterion for cognitive penetration, namely, that the relevant cognitive effects on perception must be sufficiently direct. Throughout these discussions, we extend the analyses of the predictive coding models, as we know them. So one open question that surfaces is how much of the extended analyses are genuinely just part of the predictive coding models, or something that must be added to them in order to generate these additional explanatory benefits. In §IV, we analyze and criticize a claim made by some theorists of predictive coding, namely, that (interesting) instances of cognitive penetration tend to occur in perceptual circumstances involving substantial noise or uncertainty. It is here that our analysis is most critical. We argue that, when applied, the claim fails to explain (or perhaps even be consistent with) a large range of important and uncontroversially interesting possible cases of cognitive penetration. We conclude with a general speculation about how the recent work on the predictive mind may influence the current dialectic concerning top-down effects on perception. (shrink)

The cognitive penetrability of perceptual experiences has been a long-standing topic of disagreement among philosophers and psychologists. Although the notion of cognitive penetrability itself has also been under dispute, the debate has mainly focused on the cases in which cognitive states allegedly penetrate perceptual experiences. This paper concerns the plausibility of two prominent cases. The first one originates from Susanna Siegel’s claim that perceptual experiences can represent natural kind properties. If this is true, then the concepts we possess change the (...) way things appear to us. The second candidate for cognitive penetration is Fiona Macpherson’s claim that, in addition to concepts, our beliefs can penetrate perceptual experiences. It is argued that neither candidate is a case of cognitive penetration. In doing so, I provide an explanation to both that is based on perceptual learning, a non-cognitive phenomenon where relatively slow and long-lasting modifications to an organism’s perceptual system bring about changes in perception. This explanation is theoretically more plausible and remains closer to the empirical data than the explanations based on cognitive penetration. (shrink)

Research in vision science, developmental psychology, and the foundations of cognitive science has led some theorists to posit referential mechanisms similar to indices. This hypothesis has been framed within a Fodorian conception of the early vision module. The article shows that this conception is mistaken, for it cannot handle the ‘interface problem’—roughly, how indexing mechanisms relate to higher cognition and conceptual thought. As a result, I reject the inaccessibility of early vision to higher cognition and make some constructive remarks on (...) the perception–cognition interface. -/- 1 The Case for Visual Indices 1.1 Preliminary assumptions 1.2 Transcendental arguments 1.3 Evidence from vision science 2 Visual Indices, Object Files, and Fodorian Modularity 3 The Interface Problem 3.1 Top-down attention and modularity 3.2 Selective attention and information 4 Revising the Indexing Hypothesis 4.1 Revising the perception–cognition interface 4.2 Revising the modularity of early vision 5 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

Object files are mental representations that enable perceptual systems to keep track of objects as numerically the same. How is their reference fixed? A prominent approach, championed by Zenon Pylyshyn and John Campbell, makes room for a non-satisfactional use of properties to fix reference. This maneuver has enabled them to reconcile a singularist view of reference with the intuition that properties must play a role in reference fixing. This paper examines Campbell’s influential defense of this strategy. After criticizing it, a (...) new approach is sketched. The alternative view introduces representational contents to explain perceptual individuation. After arguing that those contents are not satisfactional, it is concluded that there is room for a third view of reference fixing that does not fit into the singularist/descriptivist dichotomy. (shrink)

Recently, several theorists have proposed that we can perceive a range of high-level features, including natural kind features (e.g., being a lemur), artifactual features (e.g., being a mandolin), and the emotional features of others (e.g., being surprised). I clarify the claim that we perceive high-level features and suggest one overlooked reason this claim matters: it would dramatically expand the range of actions perception-based theories of action might explain. I then describe the influential phenomenal contrast method of arguing for high-level perception (...) and discuss some of the objections that have been raised against this strategy. Finally, I describe two emerging defenses of high-level perception, one of which appeals to a certain class of perceptual deficits and one of which appeals to adaptation effects. I sketch a challenge for the latter approach. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception is the idea that what we see is influenced by such states as beliefs, expectations, and so on. A perceptual belief that results from cognitive penetration may be less justified than a nonpenetrated one. Inferentialism is a kind of internalist view that tries to account for this by claiming that some experiences are epistemically evaluable, on the basis of why the perceiver has that experience, and the familiar canons of good inference provide the appropriate standards by (...) which experiences are evaluated. I examine recent defenses of inferentialism by Susanna Siegel, Peter Markie, and Matthew McGrath and argue that the prospects for inferentialism are dim. (shrink)

According to perceptualism, fluent comprehension of speech is a perceptual achievement, in as much as it is akin to such high-level perceptual states as the perception of objects as cups or trees, or of people as happy or sad. According to liberalism, grasp of meaning is partially constitutive of the phenomenology of fluent comprehension. I here defend an influential line of argument for liberal perceptualism, resting on phenomenal contrasts in our comprehension of speech, due to Susanna Siegel and Tim Bayne, (...) against objections from Casey O'Callaghan and Indrek Reiland. I concentrate on the contrast between the putative immediacy of meaning-assignment in fluent comprehension, as compared with other, less ordinary, perhaps translation-based ways of getting at the meaning of speech. I argue this putative immediacy is difficult to capture on a non-perceptual view (whether liberal or non-liberal), and that the immediacy in question has much in common with that which applies in other, less controversial cases of high-level perception. (shrink)

How can we explain our capacity to think about particulars in our external environment? Many philosophers have answered this question in terms of a sophisticated conception of space and time and the movement of objects therein. A more recent reaction against this view sought to explain this capacity solely in terms of perceptual mechanisms of object individuation. Neither explanation remains fully satisfactory. This book argues for a more desirable middle ground in terms of a pragmatist approach to demonstrative thought, where (...) this capacity is explained through graded practical knowledge of objects. This view allows us to do justice to important insights put forward by both positions criticized in the book, while avoiding their potential shortcomings. It also paves the way to a more pragmatist approach to the theory of mental representation, where the notion of practical knowledge is allowed to play a central role in our cognitive life. Finally, it shows how practical knowledge may be firmly rooted in neurobiological processes and mechanisms that conform to what the empirical sciences tell us about the mind. (shrink)

According to one important proposal, the difference between perception and cognition consists in the representational formats used in the two systems (Carey, 2009; Burge, 2010; Block, 2014). In particular, it is claimed that perceptual representations are iconic, or image-like, while cognitive representations are discursive, or language-like. Taking object perception as a test case, this paper argues on empirical grounds that it requires discursive label-like representations. These representations segment the perceptual field, continuously pick out objects despite changes in their features, and (...) abstractly represent high-level features, none of which appears possible for purely iconic representations. (shrink)

In the current literature, discussions of cognitive penetrability focus largely either on interpreting empirical evidence in ways that is relevant to the question of modularity :343–391, 1999; Wu Philos Stud 165:647–669, 2012; Macpherson Philos Phenomenol Res, 84:24–62, 2012) or in offering epistemological considerations regarding which properties are represented in perception :519–540, 2009, Noûs 46:201–222, 2011; Prinz Perceptual experience, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 434–460, 2006). In contrast to these debates, in this paper, I explore conceptual issues regarding how we ought (...) to understand the “cognitive” side of cognitive penetrability. I argue that it is only on its most narrow construal that a full-fledged defense of cognitive impenetrability has been forwarded. Specifically, I argue that the defenders of modularity have tacitly identified cognitive states with propositional states, and have thus only defended the idea that early perceptual systems are immune to the impacts of propositional knowledge. My aim then is to raise doubts about the identification of cognitive states with propositional ones. In particular, by focusing on skill, I will broaden the conceptual space for a greater number of states to have the potential to impact perceptual processing in a way that would constitute a genuine instance of cognitive penetrability. (shrink)

This chapter challenges the view that perceptual illusions are mistakes, by first of all emphasizing how the concept of illusions-as-mistakes relies on perspectives unavailable within illusory experiences and introduces norms fixed outside such experiences. A study of ‘rubber hand illusions’ suggests how illusions are not mistaken perceptions, but cases in which perceived objects makes a different kind of sense—in virtue of a norm that is not a fixed, objective standard but is ongoingly engendered within the dynamics of living, perceptual behaviour. (...) This leads to the view that perception is not founded on readymade norms that stand as a past fixed outside living dynamics. Rather, norms are rather a past that ongoingly emerges within living behaviour—they are what I call temporal spandrels of living temporality. (shrink)

Pylyshyn restricts cognitively penetrable vision to late vision, whereas he does not make any distinction between different kinds of penetrating cognition. I argue that this approach disconnects early vision content from late vision content and blurs the distinction between the latter and the content of thought. To overcome this problem I suggest that we should not distinguish between different kinds of visual content but instead introduce a restriction on the kind of cognition that can directly penetrate visual experience. In particular, (...) I suggest that visual experience, unlike thought, is directly penetrated only by practical non-propositional knowledge. I specify this weak cognitive penetrability in anti-representational terms. In particular, I suggest that the dependence of visual content on practical non-propositional knowledge should be conceived as a rational non-inferential relation, for it is in this way that we can account for the distinctive content of visual experience. (shrink)

According to a classic but nowadays discarded philosophical theory, perceptual experience is a complex of nonconceptual sensory states and full-blown propositional beliefs. This classical dual-component theory of experience is often taken to be obsolete. In particular, there seem to be cases in which perceptual experience and belief conflict: cases of known illusions, wherein subjects have beliefs contrary to the contents of their experiences. Modern dual-component theories reject the belief requirement and instead hold that perceptual experience is a complex of nonconceptual (...) sensory states and some other sort of conceptual state. The most popular modern dual-component theory appeals to sui generis propositional attitudes called ‘perceptual seemings’. This article argues that the classical dual-component theory has the resources to explain known illusions without giving up the claim that the conceptual components of experience are beliefs. The classical dual-component view, though often viewed as outdated and implausible, should be regarded as a serious contender in contemporary debates about the nature of perceptual experience. (shrink)

Many people have recently argued that we need to distinguish between experiences and seemings and that this has consequences for views about how perception provides evidence. In this article I spell out my take on these issues by doing three things. First, I distinguish between mere sensations like seeing pitch black all around you and perceptual experiences like seeing a red apple. Both have sensory phenomenology in presenting us with sensory qualities like colors, being analog in Dretske's sense, and being (...) fine-grained. However, only the latter have furthermore a perceptual phenomenology characterized by objectification and related dualities of perspectivality/completion and variation/constancy. Second, I elaborate on the reasons for thinking that both mere sensations and perceptual experiences need to be distinguished from accompanying seemings that passively assign things into conceptual categories and thereby tell you something about them. For example, when you look at a red apple and have the relevant recognitional abilities it will also normally seem to you that this is an apple. Finally, I argue that the best version of the popular dogmatist view about evidence is one which claims that it's neither experiences nor seemings by themselves, but rather the right sorts of composites of experiences and seemings that provide evidence. (shrink)

Do we perceptually experience meanings? For example, when we hear an utterance of a sentence like ‘Bertrand is British’ do we hear its meaning in the sense of being auditorily aware of it? Several philosophers like Tim Bayne and Susanna Siegel have suggested that we do (Bayne 2009: 390, Siegel 2006: 490-491, 2011: 99-100). They argue roughly as follows: 1) experiencing speech/writing in a language you are incompetent in is phenomenally different from experiencing speech/writing you are competent in; 2) this (...) contrast is best explained by the fact that we experience meanings in the latter case, but not the former. In contrast, in an important recent discussion Casey O’Callaghan has argued that we do not (O’Callaghan 2011). He responds to the above contrast argument by claiming that this phenomenal contrast is instead best explained by the fact that we hear language-specific phonological properties in the latter case, but not in the former. In this paper I argue that O’Callaghan’s response to the popular contrast argument is too limited in scope, provide a more general response, and present a new case against experiencing meanings. (shrink)

The distinction between top-down and bottom-up effects is widely relied on in experimental psychology. However, there is an important problem with the way it is normally defined. Top-down effects are effects of previously-stored information on processing the current input. But on the face of it that includes the information that is implicit in the operation of any psychological process – in its dispositions to transition from some types of representational state to others. This paper suggests a way to distinguish information (...) stored in that way from the kind of influence of prior information that psychologists are concerned to classify as a top-down effect. So-drawn, the distinction is not just of service to theoretical psychology. Asking about the extent of top-down processing is one way to pose some of the questions at issue in philosophical debates about cognitive penetrability – about the extent of the influence of cognitive states on perception. The existence of a theoretically-useful perception-cognition distinction has come under pressure, but even if it has to be abandoned, some of the concerns addressed in the cognitive penetrability literature can be recaptured by asking about the extent of top-down influences on any given psychological process. That formulation is more general, since it can be applied to any psychological process, not just those that are paradigmatically perceptual. (shrink)