According to an influential view, the detection of action possibilities and the selection of a plan for action are two segregated steps throughout the processing of visual information. This classical approach is committed with the assumption that two independent types of processing underlie visual perception: the semantic one, which is at the service of the identification of visually presented objects, and the pragmatic one which serves the execution of actions directed to specific parts of the same objects. However, as our (...) knowledge of vision has improved over the years, this established view has turned out to be only an approximation. This paper sets out the details of a non-modularist approach to visual perception of action possibilities and explains how to resist the lure of cognitive segregation. (shrink)

The “binding problem” has been a central question in vision science for some 30 years: When encoding multiple objects or maintaining them in working memory, how are we able to represent the correspondence between a specific feature and its corresponding object correctly? In this letter we argue that the boundaries of this research program in fact extend far beyond vision, and we call for coordinated pursuit across the broader cognitive science community of this central question for cognition, which we dub (...) “Binding Problem 2.0”. (shrink)

This paper examines the applicability of the object concept to the chemical senses, by evaluating them against a set of criteria for object-hood. Taste and chemesthesis do not generate objects. Their parts, perceptible from birth, never combine. Orthonasal olfaction (sniffing) presents a strong case for generating objects. Odorants have many parts yet they are perceived as wholes, this process is based on learning, and there is figure-ground segregation. While flavors are multimodal representations bound together by learning, there is no functional (...) need for flavor objects in the mouth. Rather, food identification occurs prior to ingestion using the eye and nose, with the latter retrieving multimodal flavor objects via sniffing (e.g., sweet smelling caramel). While there are differences in object perception between vision, audition, and orthonasal olfaction, the commonalities suggest that the brain has adopted the same basic solution when faced with extracting meaning from complex stimulus arrays. (shrink)

We present a framework for epistemic logic, modeling the logical aspects of System 1 and System 2 cognitive processes, as per dual process theories of reasoning. The framework combines non-normal worlds semantics with the techniques of Dynamic Epistemic Logic. It models non-logically-omniscient, but moderately rational agents: their System 1 makes fast sense of incoming information by integrating it on the basis of their background knowledge and beliefs. Their System 2 allows them to slowly, step-wise unpack some of the logical consequences (...) of such knowledge and beliefs, by paying a cognitive cost. The framework is applied to three instances of limited rationality, widely discussed in cognitive psychology: Stereotypical Thinking, the Framing Effect, and the Anchoring Effect. (shrink)

In this paper we design a new logical system to explicitly model the different deductive reasoning steps of a boundedly rational agent. We present an adequate system in line with experimental findings about an agent’s reasoning limitations and the cognitive effort that is involved. Inspired by Dynamic Epistemic Logic, we work with dynamic operators denoting explicit applications of inference rules in our logical language. Our models are supplemented by (a) impossible worlds (not closed under logical consequence), suitably structured according to (...) the effect of inference rules, and (b) quantitative components capturing the agent’s cognitive capacity and the cognitive costs of rules with respect to certain resources (e.g. memory, time). These ingredients allow us to avoid problematic logical closure principles, while at the same time deductive reasoning is reflected in our dynamic truth clauses. We further show that our models can be reduced to awareness-like plausibility structures that validate the same formulas and we give a sound and complete axiomatization with respect to them. This approach to the agent’s internal deductive reasoning is finally combined with actions of external information. (shrink)

In philosophy, “singular thought” refers to our capacity to represent entities as individuals, rather than as possessors of properties. Philosophers who defend singularism argue that perception allows us to mentally latch onto objects and persons directly, without conceptualizing them as being of a certain sort. Singularists assume that singular thought forms a unified psychological kind, regardless of the nature of the individuals represented. Empirical findings on the special psychological role of persons as opposed to inanimates threaten singularism. They raise the (...) possibility that tracking individuals specifically as persons might require conceptualizing them in certain ways, for example, as persons. In this paper, we take such a possibility seriously but ultimately reject it. Instead, we propose to revise a prominent singularist theory, the theory of mental files, in order to accommodate data on the psychological distinctiveness of persons: We advocate the postulation of perceptual person-files. Perceptual tracking via person-files is different from object-tracking but also from descriptive classification under the sortal concept PERSON. (shrink)

Philosophers have suggested that, in order to understand the particular visual state we are in during picture perception, we should focus on experimental results from vision neuroscience—in particular, on the most rigorous account of the functioning of the visual system that we have from vision neuroscience, namely, the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’. According to the initial version of this model, our visual system can be dissociated, from an anatomo-functional point of view, into two streams: a ventral stream subserving visual recognition, (...) and a dorsal stream subserving the visual guidance of action. Following this model, philosophers have suggested that, since the two streams have different functions, they represent different properties of a picture. However, the original view proposed by the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’ about the presence of a strong anatomo-functional dissociation between the two streams has recently been questioned on both philosophical and experimental grounds. Indeed, the analysis of several new pieces of evidence seems to suggest that many visual representations in our visual system, related to different tasks, are the result of a deep functional interaction between the streams. In the light of the renewed status of the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’, also our best philosophical model of picture perception should be renewed, in order to take into account a view of the process of picture perception informed by the new evidence about such interaction. Despite this, no account fulfilling this role has been offered yet. The aim of the present paper is precisely to offer such an account. It does this by suggesting that the peculiar visual state we are in during picture perception is subserved by interstream interaction. This proposal allows us to rely on a rigorous philosophical account of picture perception that is, however, also based on the most recent results from neuroscience. Unless the explanation offered in this paper is endorsed, all the recent evidence from vision neuroscience will remain unexplained under our best empirically informed philosophical theory of picture perception. (shrink)