The present study used eye tracking methodology to examine rereading benefits for spatially transformed text. Eye movements were monitored while participants read the same target word twice, in two different low-constraint sentence frames. The congruency of perceptual processing was manipulated by either applying the same type of transformation to the word during the first and second presentations , or employing two different types of transformations across the two presentations of the word . Perceptual specificity effects were demonstrated such that (...) fixation times for the second presentation of the target word were shorter for the congruent condition compared to the incongruent condition. Moreover, we demonstrated an additional perceptually non-specific effect such that second reading fixation times were shorter for the incongruent condition relative to a baseline condition that employed a normal typography during the first presentation and a transformation during the second presentation. Both of these effects were similar in magnitude for high and low frequency words, and both effects persisted across a 1 week lag between the first and second readings. We discuss the present findings in the context of the distinction between conscious and unconscious memory, and the distinction between perceptually versus conceptually driven processing. (shrink)

This book provides an accessible and up-to-date discussion of contemporary theories of perceptual justification that each highlight different factors related to perception, i.e., conscious experience, higher-order beliefs, and reliable processes. The book’s discussion starts from the viewpoint that perception is not only one of our fundamental sources of knowledge and justification, but also plays this role for many less sophisticated animals. It proposes a scientifically informed reliabilist theory which can accommodate this fact without denying that some of our epistemic abilities (...) as human perceivers are special. This allows it to combine many of our intuitions about the importance of conscious experience and higher-order belief with the controversial thesis that perceptual justification is fundamentally non-evidential in character. (shrink)

Recent evidence from cognitive neuroscience suggests that certain cognitive processes employ perceptual representations. Inspired by this evidence, a few researchers have proposed that cognition is inherently perceptual. They have developed an innovative theoretical approach that rests on the notion of perceptual simulation and marshaled several general arguments supporting the centrality of perceptual representations to concepts. In this article, I identify a number of weaknesses in these arguments and defend a multiple semantic code approach that posits both perceptual and non-perceptual representations.

We introduce a new version of the perceptual retouch model. This model was used for explaining properties of temporal interaction of successive objects in reaching conscious representation. The new model incorporates two interactive binding operations – binding features for objects and binding the bound feature-objects with a large scale oscillatory system that corresponds to perceptual consciousness. Here, the typical result of masking experiments – second object advantage in conscious perception – is achieved by applying the effects of a common synchronizing (...) oscillator with a delay. This delayed modulation of each of the feature-binding first-order oscillators that represent emerging and decaying neural activities of each of the objects guarantees that the oscillating synchrony of the feature-neurons of the following object is higher than the synchrony of the feature-neurons of the first presented object. Thus we model the fact that the following object dominates the preceding object in conscious perception. We also show the capacity of the model to simulate illusory misbinding of features from different objects. The third qualitative effect, the relative release of the first object from backward masking is achieved by priming the non-specific oscillatory modulation ahead in time. (shrink)

Both Arthur Danto and Jerry Fodor are modularist: they both think that perception is an encapsulated process that is in no way influenced by any kind of non‐perceptual processing. Danto's aesthetics can in part be separated out from his modularism, leading us to draw slightly different but arguably even more interesting conclusions from famous thought experiments such as the Gallery of Indiscernibles. Danto firmly rejects this post‐Wittgensteinian turn, offering evidence for his position that perception is neutral to language (...) and cognition of three connected kinds. These are optical illusions, cultural and historical variation in pictorial representation, and the perception and cognition of animals. Despite his avowed rejection of perceptual plasticity, some doubts might arise about the actual extent of Danto's modularism. Extended perception involves “associations” that “have reference to things that lie outside the minimal visual experience.”. (shrink)

Synesthetic experiences of color have been traditionally conceptualized as a perceptual phenomenon. However, recent evidence suggests a role of higher order cognition in the formation of synesthetic experiences. Here, we discuss how synesthetic experiences of color differ from and influence veridical color processing, and how non-perceptual processes such as imagery and color memory might play a role in eliciting synesthetic color experience.

Proponents of non-conceptual content have recruited it for various philosophical jobs. Some epistemologists have suggested that it may play the role of “the given” that Sellars is supposed to have exorcised from philosophy. Some philosophers of mind (e.g., Dretske) have suggested that it plays an important role in the project of naturalizing semantics as a kind of halfway between merely information bearing and possessing conceptual content. Here I will focus on a recent proposal by Jerry Fodor. In a recent paper (...) he characterizes non-conceptual content in a particular way and argues that it is plausible that it plays an explanatory role in accounting for certain auditory and visual phenomena. So he thinks that there is reason to believe that there is non-conceptual content. On the other hand, Fodor thinks that non-conceptual content has a limited role. It occurs only in the very early stages of perceptual processing prior to conscious awareness. My paper is examines Fodor’s characterization of non-conceptual content and his claims for its explanatory importance. I also discuss if Fodor has made a case for limiting non-conceptual content to non-conscious, sub-personal mental states. (shrink)

Synesthetic experiences of color have been traditionally conceptualized as a perceptual phenomenon. However, recent evidence suggests a role of higher order cognition in the formation of synesthetic experiences. Here, we discuss how synesthetic experiences of color differ from and influence veridical color processing, and how non-perceptual processes such as imagery and color memory might play a role in eliciting synesthetic color experience.

Earlier work has demonstrated that attention is indirectly cognitively malleable by processes of self-association – processes by which agents explicitly associate an item with the self. We extend this work by considering the manipulation of attention to both salient and non-salient objects. We demonstrate that self-association impacts attentional processing not only of non-salient objects, but also regarding salient items known to command attention. This result indicates the flexibility and susceptibility of attentional processing to cognitive manipulation.

The present paradigm involved manipulating the congruency of the perceptual processing during the study and test phases of a recognition memory task. During each trial, a gaze-contingent window was used to limit the stimulus display to a region either inside or outside a 108 square centred on the participant’s point of gaze, constituting the Central and Peripheral viewing modes respectively. The window position changed in real time in concert with changes in gaze position. Four experiments documented better task performance (...) when viewing modes at encoding and retrieval matched than when they mismatched (i.e., perceptual specificity effects). Viewing mode congruency effects were demonstrated with both verbal and non-verbal stimuli. The present research is motivated and discussed in terms of theoretical views proposed in the 1970s including the levels-of-processing framework and the proceduralist viewpoint. In addition, implications for current processing and multiple systems views of memory are outlined. (shrink)

How internal categories influence how we perceive the world is a fundamental question in cognitive sciences. Yet, the relation between perceptual awareness and perceptual categorization has remained largely uncovered so far. Here, we addressed this question by focusing on face perception during subliminal and conscious perception. We used morphed continua between two face identities and we assessed, through a masked priming paradigm, the perceptual processing of these morphed faces under subliminal and supraliminal conditions. We found that priming from subliminal (...) faces followed linearly the information present in the primes, while priming from visible faces revealed a non-linear profile, indicating a categorical processing of face identities. Our results thus point to a special relation between perceptual awareness and categorical processing of faces, and support the dissociation between two modes of information processing: a subliminal mode involving analog treatment of stimuli information, and a supraliminal mode relying on discrete representation. (shrink)

Perceptual grouping has traditionally been thought to be governed by innate, universal principles. However, recent work has found differences in Japanese and English speakers' non-linguistic perceptual grouping, implicating language in non-linguistic perceptual processes (Iversen, Patel, & Ohgushi, 2008). Two experiments test Japanese- and English-learning infants of 5-6 and 7-8 months of age to explore the development of grouping preferences. At 5-6 months, neither the Japanese nor the English infants revealed any systematic perceptual biases. However, by 7-8 months, the same age (...) as when linguistic phrasal grouping develops, infants developed non-linguistic grouping preferences consistent with their language's structure (and the grouping biases found in adulthood). These results reveal an early difference in non-linguistic perception between infants growing up in different language environments. The possibility that infants' linguistic phrasal grouping is bootstrapped by abstract perceptual principles is discussed. (shrink)

The Perceptual Hypothesis is that we sometimes see, and thereby have non-inferential knowledge of, others' mental features. The Perceptual Hypothesis opposes Inferentialism, which is the view that our knowledge of others' mental features is always inferential. The claim that some mental features are embodied is the claim that some mental features are realised by states or processes that extend beyond the brain. The view I discuss here is that the Perceptual Hypothesis is plausible if, but only if, the mental features (...) it claims we see are suitably embodied. Call this Embodied Perception Theory. I argue that Embodied Perception Theory is false. It doesn't follow that the Perceptual Hypothesis is implausible. The considerations which serve to undermine Embodied Perception Theory serve equally to undermine the motivations for assuming that others' mental lives are always imperceptible. (shrink)

Speech is intelligible even when the temporal envelope of speech is distorted. The current study investigates how native and non-native speakers perceptually restore temporally distorted speech. Participants were native English speakers (NS), and native Japanese speakers who spoke English as a second language (NNS). In Experiment 1, participants listened to “locally time-reversed speech” where every x-ms of speech signal was reversed on the temporal axis. Here, the local time reversal shifted the constituents of the speech signal forward or backward from (...) the original position, and the amplitude envelope of speech was altered as a function of reversed segment length. In Experiment 2, participants listened to “modulation-filtered speech” where the modulation frequency components of speech were low-pass filtered at a particular cut-off frequency. Here, the temporal envelope of speech was altered as a function of cut-off frequency. The results suggest that speech becomes gradually unintelligible as the length of reversed segments increases (Experiment 1), and as a lower cut-off frequency is imposed (Experiment 2). Both experiments exhibit the equivalent level of speech intelligibility across six levels of degradation for native and non-native speakers respectively, which poses a question whether the regular occurrence of local time reversal can be discussed in the modulation frequency domain, by simply converting the length of reversed segments (ms) into frequency (Hz). (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a principal argument in favor of the existence of non-conceptual content (henceforth NCC) fails. That is, I do not accept that considerations regarding the richness of our perceptual experiences support the existence of NCC. I argue instead that the existence of NCC is empirically motivated. Here is an outline of the paper. First, I set out the distinction between conceptual content and NCC as we understand it. Second, I consider the richness argument (RA), and (...) argue that it fails. I argue in particular that RA (or RA-style arguments) are either self-defeating or confl ict with reasonably established accounts of early perceptual processing. Third, I tackle a residual phenomenological puzzle and offer a solution to it. Fourth, I argue that the existence of NCC enjoys empirical support. I argue in particular that states associated with early stages of visual perceptual processing have NCC. (shrink)

Perceptual filling-in for vision is the insertion of visual properties (e.g., color, contour, luminance, or motion) into one’s visual field, when those properties have no corresponding retinal input. This paper introduces and provides preliminary empirical support for filled/non-filled pairs, pairs of images that appear identical, yet differ by amount of filling-in. It is argued that such image pairs are important to the experimental testing of theories of consciousness. We review recent experimental research and conclude that filling-in involves brain activity with (...) relatively high integrated information (Phi) compared to veridical visual perceptions. We then present filled/non-filled pairs as an empirical challenge to the integrated information theory of consciousness, which predicts that phenomenologically identical experiences depend on brain processes with identical Phi. (shrink)

There has been a lot of discussion about how the cognitive penetrability of perception may or may not have important implications for understanding perceptual justification. The aim of this paper is to argue that a different set of findings in perceptual psychology poses an even more serious challenge to the very idea of perceptual justification. These findings are about the importance of perceptual processing that is not driven by corresponding sensory stimulation in the relevant sense modality (such as amodal (...) completion and multimodal completion). I argue that these findings show that everyday perception is in fact a mixture of sensory stimulation-driven perceptual processing and perceptual processing that is not driven by corresponding sensory stimulation in the relevant sense modality and we have strong reasons to doubt the epistemic pedigree of the latter process. The implication of this is not that we should become skeptics or deny the possibility of perceptual justification. It is, rather, that the only way in which we can understand when and whether a perceptual state justifies beliefs is by paying close attention to empirical facts about the reliability of perceptual processing that is not driven by corresponding sensory stimulation in the relevant sense modality. In this sense (a very narrow sense) epistemology needs to be naturalized. (shrink)

Older adults with age-related hearing loss often use hearing aids to compensate. However, certain challenges in speech perception, especially in noise still exist, despite today’s HA technology. The current study presents an evaluation of a home-based auditory exercises program that can be used during the adaptation process for HA use. The home-based program was developed at a time when telemedicine became prominent in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included 53 older adults with age-related symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss. (...) They were divided into three groups depending on their experience using HAs. Group 1: Experienced users. Group 2: New users. Group 3: Non-users. These three groups underwent auditory exercises for 3 weeks. The auditory tasks included auditory detection, auditory discrimination, and auditory identification, as well as comprehension with basic and more complex stimuli, presented in quiet and in noisy listening conditions. All participants completed self-assessment questionnaires before and after the auditory exercises program and underwent a cognitive test at the end. Self-assessed improvements in hearing ability were observed across the HA users groups, with significant changes described by new users. Overall, speech perception in noise was poorer than in quiet. Speech perception accuracy was poorer in the non-users group compared to the users in all tasks. In sessions where stimuli were presented in quiet, similar performance was observed among new and experienced uses. New users performed significantly better than non-users in all speech in noise tasks; however, compared to the experienced users, performance differences depended on task difficulty. The findings indicate that HA users, even new users, had better perceptual performance than their peers who did not receive hearing aids. (shrink)

Perceptual experience usually comes with “phenomenal force”, a strong sense that it reflects reality as it is. Some philosophers have argued that it is in virtue of possessing phenomenal force that perceptual experiences are able to non‐inferentially justify beliefs. In this article, I introduce an alternative, inferentialist take on the epistemic role of phenomenal force. Drawing on Bayesian modeling in cognitive science, I argue that the sense of reality that accompanies conscious vision can be viewed as epistemically appraisable in light (...) of its rational etiology. (shrink)

The Perceptual Hypothesis is that we sometimes see, and thereby have non‐inferential knowledge of, others' mental features. The Perceptual Hypothesis opposes Inferentialism, which is the view that our knowledge of others' mental features is always inferential. The claim that some mental features are embodied is the claim that some mental features are realised by states or processes that extend beyond the brain. The view I discuss here is that the Perceptual Hypothesis is plausible if, but only if, the mental features (...) it claims we see are suitably embodied. Call this Embodied Perception Theory. I argue that Embodied Perception Theory is false. It doesn't follow that the Perceptual Hypothesis is implausible. The considerations which serve to undermine Embodied Perception Theory serve equally to undermine the motivations for assuming that others' mental lives are always imperceptible. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a principal argument in favor of the existence of non-conceptual content (henceforth NCC) fails. That is, I do not accept that considerations regarding the richness of our perceptual experiences support the existence of NCC. I argue instead that the existence of NCC is empirically motivated. Here is an outline of the paper. First, I set out the distinction between conceptual content and NCC as we understand it. Second, I consider the richness argument (RA), and (...) argue that it fails. I argue in particular that RA (or RA-style arguments) are either self-defeating or confl ict with reasonably established accounts of early perceptual processing. Third, I tackle a residual phenomenological puzzle and offer a solution to it. Fourth, I argue that the existence of NCC enjoys empirical support. I argue in particular that states associated with early stages of visual perceptual processing have NCC. (shrink)

In fundamental beliefs, in other words, in the internalist theory of knowledge, our beliefs are guaranteed by solid mental foundations, unshakable premises, epistemic principles and some reasons that lead to truth. However, in the theory of non-fundamental beliefs, that is, externalism, the conditions that guarantee knowledge are generally sought outside the mind. Now, in the epistemological sense, obtainingin formation by chance or situations that will eliminate error in information are not the kind of evidence or some principles present in the (...) mind that foundationalists put forward; Cognitive resources such as perception, memory, introspection should also be taken into account in the expression of non-core beliefs. Accordingly, according to a non-foundationalist understanding of knowledge, belief is generally justifiedif it is the result of a reliable mental process such as standard perceptual processes, remembering states in terms of stored data, and introspection, and if there is nothing that weakens this reliable mental process. While the knowledge obtained based on basic beliefs is expressed with justified and perhaps even guaranteed true beliefs, reliable/causal cognitive and external processes are also taken into account in the transformation of non-basic beliefs in to knowledge. The importance of this study emerges as it aims to investigate the plausibility of fundamental and non-fundamental beliefs from the context of knowledge construction by investigating the issue from two dimension sand trying to produce a synthesis. In addition, it aims to justify both types of beliefs and secure knowledge within the framework of internalist and externalist theories of knowledge. Fundamental and non-fundamental belief forms have been described and partially compared within the framework of internalist and externalist understandings of knowledge, and this study has been prepared from a research and analysis perspective. The scope and limitation level of this study is related to the role of our beliefs in the construction of knowledge. While basic beliefs are expressed based on basic epistemic principles and solid mental foundations, non-basic beliefs are explained based on both cognitive and external sources such as perception, memory, introspection, experience and reliability. Th eproblematics of this study are generally about how basic and non-basic beliefs are distinguished and expressed, and which elements are used to guarantee knowledge. The study first tried to define and compare basic and non-basic beliefs. Afterwards, he tried to find solutions to the problems of this research by considering the relationship of both forms of belief with knowledge. (shrink)

The topic of this article is to develop an alternative, ontologically settled, problematic intuition about how to establish theoretical criteria of (non) conceptuality of an intentional content which kind of properties must an object possess to be able to furnish a full formal satisfaction to a conceptualization process? Are there any objects upon which our concepts can only go in vain in a sort of non conceptual short circuit’s breakdown in the very same act, in order to be caught in (...) a perceptual process? To give one or more answers to these questions, the article analyzes some examples of thing which are very difficult to conceive immediate y by means of predicative concept, the so -called Odradek object (O/o),taking inspiration by the case of a Kafka’ s famous tale character.It is possible to show the existence of almost a odd phenomenon of optical illusion in which the behaviour of perceptual structure of certain objects is very clear y similar to an O/o s one (Frisby’s effect in the Waterfall illusion, for example). Nevertheless, conclusions of the article will show how the reasons to believe in the plausibility of this hypothesis are more a priori and conceptually based than psychologically and experimentally inspired. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:139. COULD AN IMPRESSION BE A PROCESS? Processes are of two main kinds, depending on whether the process has or lacks culmination. I am concerned with non-culminating processes, e.g., with a burning fuse sans explosion. This is reported as secondary by any good dictionary, derived from the head, or culminating, sense of 'process'. An ontological criterion for 'process' is as follows: something is absolutely unchanging, if it is unchanging (...) in every sense of the word. Those who hold that, e.g., a monotonous sound is absolutely unchanging hold that in an absolutely unchanging universe there is no reason why there should not be such a sound. Like any absolutely unchanging existent, a sound is caught, so to speak, in an instantaneous freeze on all change. Those who opt for process hold that change is, so to speak, of its essence. Hence, in an absolutely unchanging world, there could not be a process. The question I wish to raise is not whether there are processes, and certainly not whether Hume opts for processes. It is doubtful that Hume entertained the question of process. Indeed, that is the point. One of Hume's main commentators, R. W. Church, holds that Hume's perceptual atoms, defined by his dictum that distinguishability mutually entails separability, as well as their philosophical relations, are incompatible with the thesis that "experiences exist not in succession but in process." Church goes on to say that it is "difficult to see how... 'process' can have meaning for Hume. He plainly holds perceptions and their contents to be successive merely. I begin by considering Church's reason why Hume must reject processes, and then consider an additional reason drawn from Hume's account of time. Specifically, 140. divisibility òf time terminates in unchanging atoms. The essence of process is change. Hence, no temporal atom is a process. Neither reason, I argue, suffices for holding that impressions and processes are mutually exclusive. Hume holds that distinguishability mutually entails separability. Church holds that this dictum defines Hume's perceptual atomism. To highlight the atomism it is supposed to define, he rewords it, as follows: "Whatever is distinguishable is intrinsically self-identical and therefore self-contained." What does this rewording mean? According to Church, Hume, in the body of the Treatise, holds that resemblance is qualitative identity distributed, numerically, over many complexes. "On Hume's theory of abstract ideas, 'resemblance' is a verbal term referring (in virtue of habits of association) to any case of a qualitative 4 identity numerically distributed." Further, the qualitative identity in question is not relative to any difference from another quality, Bradley to the contrary notwithstanding. Difference, for Hume, is incompatible with relation and it is itself not a relation. It follows, according to Church, that Hume's absolute self-identity mutually entails self -containment. So much for Church's version of Hume's perceptual atomism. Is it incompatible with process, as Church claims? A trombone's slide illustrates non-culminating process with succession. Let us use it as a basis for an account. A trombone's slide is unbroken not only qua sound but qua pitch. Nevertheless, it incorporates pitch multiplicity. By "successive merely" does Church mean that the transition from pitch to pitch must be broken, contrary to what is heard, and, for this reason, Hume cannot account for the slide qua process? If so, he is mistaken. 141. Distinguishability mutually entails separability for Hume, but this does not mean that the transition from pitch to pitch cannot be experienced as a slide. In fact, it is easy to show that a trombone's slide conforms to Hume's dictum, by reason of the just noticeable difference and Hume's philosophical relation of contiguity in time. We are dealing with three notions: first, distinction, and, in particular, how pitches in the slide are distinguished. Second, separability, and, in particular, how separation corresponding to distinction is guaranteed by the fact of process. Third, slide, and, in particular how Hume's philosophical relation of temporal contiguity, coupled with the just noticeable difference, guarantees phenomenal slide. I take up these three notions in the order mentioned. The distinction between two pitches in the trombone's slide is... (shrink)

Some recent surveys of the modern philosophical debate over the existence of non-conceptual perceptual content have concluded that the distinction between conceptual and non-conceptual representations is largely terminological. To remedy this terminological impasse, Robert Hanna and Monima Chadha claim that non-conceptualists must defend an essentialist view of non-conceptual content, according to which perceptual states have representational content whose structure and psychological function are necessarily distinct from that of conceptual states. Hanna and Chadha additionally suggest that non-conceptualists should go “back to (...) Kant” to find the most defensible version of an essentialist content non-conceptualism. I propose instead that non-conceptualists go back even further to the seventh-century Indian Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti, so that they may not only find historical precedent for an essentialist content view, but also some better arguments in its favor. This essay reconstructs Dharmakīrti's essentialist non-conceptualism about the contents of conscious sensory representations and the refined theory of conceptualization that it presupposes. In particular, I examine his arguments from the proprietary phenomenology of sensory experience, the cognitive encapsulation of sensory processing, as well as the iconic format of sensory representations, and assess the strength of these arguments relative to their modern counterparts. (shrink)

Perceptual processes differ from cognitive, this paper argues, in functioning to be causally controlled by proximal stimuli, and being modular, at least in a modest sense that excludes their being isotropic in Jerry Fodor's sense. This claim agrees with such theorists as Jacob Beck and Ben Phillips that a function of stimulus-control is needed for perceptual status. In support of this necessity claim, I argue, inter alia, that E.J. Green's recent architectural account misclassifies processes deploying knowledge of grammar as perceptual. (...) _Pace_ Beck and Phillips, however, I argue a function of stimulus-control is insufficient for perceptual as opposed to cognitive status. One consideration in favour of such insufficiency, noted but (I argue) not convincingly rebutted by these theorists, concerns perpetually grounded demonstrative thought. Two other considerations trade on the fact that a function of stimulus-control can arise not from blind nature but intentional design or social institutions, where so-functioning processes may but need not be perceptual. I offer two cases where such processes are cognitive, viz. skilful play-by-play announcing of ongoing events, and voluntary visualizing of ongoing events under the guidance of apt play-by-play announcements, dubbed announcement-driven visualizing (ADV). The cognitive status of these three diverse phenomena cannot be explained by an absence of a perception-like representational format or content (for ADV has such) or by a presence of personal-level mental states causally mediating between stimuli and outputs (for perception has such). A bettter explanation invokes, I argue, the non-modular character of the generating process. (shrink)

The object of this study was to investigate whether level of processing (LOP) modulates enhanced memory performance for emotional stimuli, and, if so, whether the LOP effects relate to their gist and details. During the study phase, participants were presented with colourful pictures with negative, neutral and positive valences and encoded the emotional pictures under either a semantic (living/non-living judgement) or a perceptual (left/right position judgement) condition. During the test phase, they judged whether the presented picture was old or (...) new in Experiments 1 and 2, and also judged whether a specific concept, labelled using words, had been studied in Experiment 2. The results showed that under both encoding conditions, the details of both negative and positive pictures were recognised better than those of neutral pictures. Also, the gist of negative pictures was recognised better than that of neutral pictures but only under the semantic condition. These data provide evidence that the LOP differentially modulates enhanced emotional memory for gist and details of pictures. (shrink)

Seeking to avoid the typical binary choices between symbolic representations and no representations, or between functionally decomposable psychological processes and no psychological processes, or between direct perception of mind-independent physical properties and indirect perception of sense data, this article proposes that even a clear-thinking friend of Gibson can accept that perception of the environment is mediated by appearances and that such appearances are produced by functionally decomposable, rule-instantiating psychological processes. In so doing, it avoids both hyper-intellectualization of the perceptual process (...) and the positing of sense data as immediate objects of perception. It considers notions of perceptual mediation from classical Gestalt psychology, while referencing recent phenomenological arguments showing that perception does not simply conform to mind-independent physical properties. Perception presents objects and scenes under a phenomenal aspect, in a manner suitable to be action-guiding. Finally, it examines neuroscientific decompositions of Gibsonian information pickup mechanisms, finding that such mechanisms are reasonably described as effecting processes of construction. As a separate point, such mechanisms are usefully described as including subpersonal, non-symbolic representations and processes of information integration. (shrink)

Two common strategies have dominated attempts to account for the nature of taste. On the one side, we have an affectivist understanding of taste where aesthetic attribution has to do with the expression of a subjective response. On the other side, we find a non-affectivist approach according to which to judge something aesthetically is to epistemically track its main aesthetic properties. Our main argument will show that neither emotion nor perception can explain the nature of aesthetic taste single-handedly. In this (...) paper, our principal aim is to examine the relationship between perceptual discernment and emotional sensibility as we find it in the process of ascribing aesthetic qualities. Is it the nature of the specific aesthetic property in question which determines the way in which perception and emotion are balanced in aesthetic attribution, or is it, rather, something about how our sensory skills operate? One of the notions we would like to explore in greater detail in this context is the idea of attunement, or the way in which aesthetic agents can align themselves to the content of an artwork o in order to better grasp its content and significance. According to our proposed picture, the exercise of taste involves an adjustment of one’s emotional sensibility to the aesthetic character of o. From here, we will posit both emotional and perceptual training as part of an agent’s aesthetic education in her use of aesthetic terms. (shrink)

Is color experience cognitively penetrable? Some philosophers have recently argued that it is. In this paper, we take issue with the claim that color experience is cognitively penetrable. We argue that the notion of cognitive penetration that has recently dominated the literature is flawed since it fails to distinguish between the modulation of perceptual content by non-perceptual principles and genuine cognitive penetration. We use this distinction to show that studies suggesting that color experience can be modulated by factors of the (...) cognitive system do not establish that color experience is cognitively penetrable. Additionally, we argue that even if color experience turns out to be modulated by color-related beliefs and knowledge beyond non-perceptual principles, it does not follow that color experience is cognitively penetrable since the experiences of determinate hues involve post-perceptual processes. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications that these ideas may have on debates in philosophy. (shrink)

This thesis mounts an attack against accounts of perceptual justification that attempt to analyze it in terms of evidential justifiers, and has defended the view that perceptual justification should rather be analyzed in terms of non-evidential justification. What matters most to perceptual justification is not a specific sort of evidence, be it experiential evidence or factive evidence, what matters is that the perceptual process from sensory input to belief output is reliable. I argue for this conclusion in the following way. (...) Chapter 1: The Arguments from HallucinationChapter 1 presents a skeptical argument from hallucination that starts from a premise about the alleged introspective indistinguishability of perception and hallucination, and concludes that perceptual knowledge is impossible. Underlying this argument are certain assumptions about the nature of perceptual justification, and different responses to the argument portray different views of perceptual justification. Evidentialism and dogmatism both reject the premise that appearances do not provide evidence sufficient for perceptual knowledge, although they disagree about the precise nature of the appearances. Epistemological disjunctivism rejects the premise that introspectively indistinguishable experiences provide the same evidence, while upholding the idea that some sort of evidence, namely factive evidence, is necessary for perceptual justification and knowledge. Process reliabilism rejects the premise that evidence is necessary for perceptual knowledge on the grounds that even perceptual justification can be obtained without evidence, as long as the cognitive process producing the belief is reliable.Chapter 2: EvidentialismChapter 2 starts by introducing some motivations for experientialist views of perceptual justification, such as evidentialism and dogmatism, which hold that conscious experiences evidentially justify perceptual beliefs. These motivations have to do with their ability to accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition that demon-deceived subjects have justified perceptual beliefs and the Blindsight Intuition that blindsighters do not have justified perceptual beliefs. However, experientialist views are also faced with a Sellarsian dilemma: either experience is construed as non-propositional, but then the proposed evidential relation is unclear, or experience is construed as propositional, but then it is ad hoc to hold that they can evidentially justify without being justified themselves.Chapter 2 continues with a discussion of evidentialism, which grasps the first horn of this dilemma. I argue that evidentialism cannot adequately explain why a non-propositional experience constitutes evidence for this rather than that belief, and also does not provide any account of how to determine which belief fits an evidence-set which partly consists out of non-propositional experiences. Although a reliabilist version of evidentialism can provide a better account of these matters, it suffers from counter-intuitive predictions about justification and a conception of evidence that is so liberal that it could even include blindsighters and clairvoyants as having such evidence.Chapter 3: DogmatismChapter 3 focuses on variants of dogmatism, a theory of perceptual justification that grasps the second horn of the Sellarsian dilemma by holding that a perceptual experience with the content that p is sufficient for immediate prima facie justification of the belief that p. I first argue that dogmatism should identify perceptual experiences with high-level conscious states to accommodate the problem of novice vs. expert identification and the problem of the speckled hen. I then argue that this version of dogmatism still fails to meet a certain explanatory challenge which I dub the `Distinctiveness Problem'. Dogmatism should explain what is so distinctive about perceptual experience that enables it, in contrast with desire and imagination, to evidentially justify the belief that p without, in contrast with belief, being justified itself.Phenomenalist answers to this problem fail because they either do not provide a distinctive property of perceptual experience, or else provide a property that is reducible to or possibly caused by beliefs. In both cases, dogmatism would have the result that intuitively unjustifying experiences, such as imaginations, nevertheless become capable of justifying beliefs. Moreover, phenomenalists still need some explanation of why phenomenology is epistemically relevant at all.A new variant of the problem of the speckled hen is an intuitive illustration of this point against dogmatists. If a perceptual experience that p is not reliably connected to the fact that p or the belief that p, then beliefs based on this experience simply will not be intuitively justified. One possible response to this problem incorporates reliability into the content of experience in the sense that an experience cannot have the content that p if it is not reliably connected to both the fact that p and the belief that p. However, this will lose the motivation from the New Evil Demon Scenario, and will make large concessions towards reliabilism.Chapter 4: Epistemological DisjunctivismGiven these problems for experientialist views of perceptual justification, chapter 4 focuses on a different evidential account of justification: epistemological disjunctivism. According to the Justified True Belief version of Epistemological Disjunctivism, the fact that I see that p is the factive and reflectively accessible evidence in virtue of which I know that p. I argue that JTBED faces formidable problems: first, it cannot adequately deal with the basis problem, second, it cannot accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition, third,it faces the problem of hyper-intellectualization, and fourth, it has no good account of reflective access.Knowledge First Epistemological Disjunctivism, in contrast, holds that seeing that p just is a way of knowing that p. The fact that I see that p constitutes my justification for believing that p, even though it is not necessary for my knowledge that p. Although this view solves most of the above problems, I argue that KFED still faces a challenge of its own: its notion of justification is so strong that justification entails knowledge but is not itself entailed by it. This means that it too faces a hyper-intellectualization objection because it cannot accommodate animal justification, and that it too will struggle to accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition.Nevertheless, there is something to the epistemological disjunctivist idea that higher-order capabilities are important to perceptual justification. Specifically, higher-order capabilities provide one with a way of accommodating the Blindsight Intuition without appealing to the notion of experiential evidence: blindsighters are epistemically worse off than normal human perceivers because they lack higher-order beliefs about how they are gaining their information. If one holds that these higher-order beliefs provide a special sort of justification for perceptual beliefs, then blindsighters lack this type of justification. Chapter 5: Process ReliabilismAfter displaying the problems of several evidential accounts of perceptual justification, chapter 5 introduces a non-evidential account: process reliabilism. The classic version of this view holds that the reliability of a belief-forming process is necessary and sufficient for the prima facie justification of a specific set of beliefs, namely, those that arise out of belief-independent processes. Two classic major problems for this view consist of counterexamples to both the necessity and sufficiency of reliability for justification. Although the Generality Problem raises some difficulties for reliabilism, they do not appear to be insurmountable.The second part of chapter 5 focuses on a variety of process reliabilism, inferentialist reliabilism, that is explicitly aimed at responding to clairvoyance cases. According to inferentialist reliabilism, one should distinguish between basic and non-basic beliefs, where basic beliefs are those that result out of the non-inferential operation of an inferentially opaque cognitive system that developed in a natural way. Reliability is only sufficient for the justification of basic beliefs, while non-basic beliefs also require conditional reliability and justification of the beliefs on which they are based.This distinction between basic and non-basic beliefs is meant to answer the challenge arising out of clairvoyance cases because these are all supposedly cases in which the resulting beliefs arenon-basic. However, I argue that the beliefs in these cases come out as non-basic primarily because of the etiological constraint on cognitive systems, a constraint that is unfortunately undermotivated. It seems that beliefs can be justified even if they are produced by a cognitive system that developed by accident, or by a system that was artificially designed to produce those beliefs. So even though the inferentialist reliabilist might have a point in distinguishing between basic and non-basic beliefs, it is still in need of a different response to clairvoyance cases. Chapter 6: Rejoinders for ReliabilismChapter 6 improves on the inferentialist reliabilist account of justification by presenting a different way of dealing with the clairvoyance cases and New Evil Demon Scenario. I start from the empirically plausible idea that we know that we are perceiving when we are perceiving, not because of the use of experiential evidence, but rather, because of an unconscious source-monitoring mechanism. I then argue that the existence of such a source-monitoring mechanism could be used to explain why clairvoyance cases actually have to do with defeat rather than absence of prima facie justification: beliefs that pop up in our head should be recognized as stemming from untrustworthy sources, and so we acquire defeating higher-order beliefs about the first-order beliefs. I also argue that this defeat should be able to occur even if the higher-order beliefs are themselves unjustified. This defeater-account of clairvoyance is preferable to several externalist alternatives. Making reliability relative to a specific world seems rather ad hoc, and further requirements on justification, such as evidence-based belief, cognitively integrated belief, or properly produced belief, all appear unnecessary and are susceptible to adapted versions of the clairvoyance case.I further argue for an alternative inferentialist reliablist response to the New Evil Demon Intuition which treats it as mistaken rather than correct. The New Evil Demon Intuition might arise because of a mistaken view of actual perceptual justification as having to do with experiential evidence. This mistaken view could be explained by the fact that experience is actually reliably connected to belief and is often cited in response to a knowledge-challenge. If this is a correct analysis of the New Evil Demon Intuition, then there is an element of question-begging involved when this scenario is still pressed against inferentialist reliabilists who do not adhere to the experientialist assumption it presupposes.With the inferentialist reliabilist account in hand,we are able to see that many of the premises of the epistemological argument from hallucination are problematic. Evidence does not appear to be required for perceptual knowledge, as perceptual justification does not even require such evidence. Moreover, if we accept a reliabilist model of introspection, then we are often able to know on the basis of introspection that we are perceiving rather than hallucinating. Once one gets clear about the alternatives, it becomes apparent that the argument thrives on internalist assumptions about justification and knowledge that one need not accept. (shrink)

Contents: PART I BASIC ASPECTS AND VARIETIES OF CONTROL: - Emotion, Cognition, and Control: Limits of Intentionality - Self-Efficacy: The Foundation of Agency - The Orchestration of Selection, Optimization and Compensation: An Action-Theoretical Conceptualization of a Theory of Developmental Regulation - Freedom of the Will -- the Basis of Control. PART II CONSCIOUS, AUTOMATIC, AND CONTROLLED PROCESSES: - Automatic and Controlled Uses of Memory in Social Judgments - Are Controlled Processes Conscious? - Intuition and Levels of Control: The Non-Rational Way (...) of Reacting, Adapting, and Creating. PART III PERCEPTION, KNOWLEDGE, MEMORY, AND LEARNING: - The Issue of Control in Sensory and Perceptual Processes: Attention Selects and Modulates the Visual Input - The Control of Knowledge Activation in Discourse Comprehension - Working Memory and Attentional Control - Problem-Oriented Learning: Facilitating the Use of Domain-Specific and Control Strategies through Modeling by an Expert - The Role of Cognitive Structure in the Development of Behavioral Control: A Dynamic Skills Approach. (shrink)

This article reviews how behavioral methods, event-related potentials, and functional magnetic resonance imaging are used to understand the acquisition of perceptual expertise in both adult and developmental populations. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the research focused on understanding the role and nature of experience in both the acquisition of perceptual expertise and the development of expert face processing. Behavioral tasks designed to assess perceptual expertise in adults include: perceptual discrimination and matching tasks and (...) the categorization and recognition memory tasks. Training studies are used to mimic the natural acquisition of face and non-face perceptual expertise. Using these various methods and techniques, studies of perceptual expertise prove useful to the understanding of specialization of perceptual skills and categorization abilities and expands our understanding of the function and plasticity of the visual system. (shrink)

The aim of the study is to spell out and consider Plato' s views on perceptual cog­nition. It is argued that Plato is cornrnitted to the view that perceptual cognition can be rational, and that beliefs about the sensible world need not be confused or ill-founded. Plato' s interest in the matter arises from worries over the way in which his fore­runners and contemporaries conceived of perceptual cognition. They conceived of cognitive processes in terms of corporeal changes and attempted to (...) explain perceptual cognition in causal terms. The problem with such accounts, according to Plato, is that they make perceptual cognition an entirely passive process, and seem incapable of accommodating the freedom of reason. Plato's main target is Protagoras' view on cognition and he accuses him of con­flating different cognitive phenomena that ought to be kept apart. More particularly, he suggests that Protagoras' 'man the measure' thesis is based on the conflation of sen se perception, belief and appearing, and that Protagoras is cornmitted to the view that beliefs are arrived at in a non-rational way. It is shown how Plato takes issue with Protagoras by disentangling these three cognitive phenomena. It is argued that Plato' s way of understanding these notions leaves room for the possibility that reason plays apart in perceptual cognition and that we arrive at beliefs in a rational way. In the course of spelling out the argument, Plato' s views on a number of topics are scrutinised: the perceptual mechanism; the objects of sense perception; perceptual content; the nature of belief; the eon trast between belief and appearing; the nation of reason. (shrink)

The theoretical applicability of the constructs of configurality, holism, and Gestalten are ubiquitous in perceptual psychology, yet there is a noticeable absence of a generally accepted, unified theory of Gestalt phenomena. Aside from a few quite specific models of performance in some particular sphere, rigorous definitions and quantitative models are scarce. In addition, in the realm of quantitative dynamic information-processing characteristics, definitions, proposed explanations, and derivations regarding concepts of holistic vs non-holistic objects are rare if extant at all. The (...) primary goal of this chapter is to argue for the establishment of a mathematical language within which the properties of strategic concepts that describe and purport to distinguish configural as opposed to non-configural perception can be elucidated. We do this in two ways, each of which is intended to compel formal connections among diverse operational concepts, and facilitate the translation to testable experimental hypotheses. (shrink)

Our perception of external features comprises, among others, functional and phenomenological levels. At the functional level, the perceiver’s mind processes external features according to its own causal- functional organization. At the phenomenological level, the perceiver has consciousness of external features. The question of this paper is: How do the functional and the phenomenological levels of perception relate to each other? The answer I propose is that functional states of specifically perceptual attention constitute the necessary basis for the arising of consciousness (...) in a perceiver. -/- Widely studied within cognitive psychology, perceptual attention is still awaiting a thoroughgoing philosophical treatment. The paper presents and draws upon Anne Treisman’s feature-integration theory of attention (cf. A. Treisman & G. Gelade, “A Feature-Integration Theory of Attention,” Cognitive Psychology, 12, 1980. Pp. 97-136). According to this theory, attentional mechanisms are responsible for the binding of perceptual features into coherent and stable objects of perception. By itself, I will claim, the theory of feature integration does not allow a straightforward reduction of consciousness to the functional processing underlying it. However, on the basis of Treisman’s theory we can produce a methodological argument for endorsing the non-reductivist thesis that attentional states constitute the necessary basis for the arising of consciousness in a perceiver. The paper closes by presenting this argument, according to which the thesis is implied by a unified account of the common representational natures of attentional and conscious states. (shrink)

For cognitivist accounts of aesthetic appreciation, appreciation requires an agent (1) to perceptually respond to the relevant aesthetic features of an object o on good evidential grounds, (2) to have an autonomous grasp of the reasons that make the claim about the aesthetic features of o true by pointing out the connection between non-aesthetic features and the aesthetic features of o, (3) to be able to provide an explanation of why those features contribute to the overall aesthetic value of o. (...) In this framework, aesthetic emotions have traditionally been confined to the level of aesthetic perception (1) and dismissed from the process of reason-giving (2, 3). I argue that this dismissal is due, firstly, to a questionable perceptual reading of the connection between emotional experience and value, and, secondly, to a narrow focus on the basic emotions. My argument will reveal that the non-standard or ‘intellectual’ emotions, the emotions which are in fact most important to appreciation, can play a significant epistemic role in our appreciative practices. They can do this because they (a) help us to deliberately focus our attention and (b) place the appreciator in a state of second-order awareness of their mental states. I conclude the paper by showing how these two epistemic tools (a, b) can help the appreciator to meet the explanatory/justificatory conditions (2) and (3). (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory is an influential, non-mainstream account of perception and perceptual consciousness intended to improve in various ways on orthodox theories. It is often taken to be a variety of enactivism, and in common with enactivist cognitive science more generally, it de-emphasises the theoretical role played by internal representation and other purely neural processes, giving theoretical pride of place instead to interactive engagements between the brain, non-neural body and outside environment. In addition to offering a distinctive account of the (...) processing that underlies perceptual consciousness, the sensorimotor theory aims to offer a new and improved account the logical and phenomenological character of perceptual experience, and the relation between physical and phenomenal states. Since its inception in a 2001 paper by O’Regan and Noë, the theory has prompted a good deal of increasingly prominent theoretical and practical work in cognitive science, as well as a large body of secondary literature in philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of perception. In spite of its influential character, many of the theory’s most basic tenets are incompletely or ambiguously defined, and it has attracted a number of prominent objections. This thesis aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of the sensorimotor theory, including the key theoretical concepts of sensorimotor contingency, sensorimotor mastery, and presence-as-access, and defends a particular understanding of the respective theoretical roles of internal representation and behavioural capacities. In so doing, the thesis aims to highlight the sensorimotor theory’s virtues and defend it from some leading criticisms, with particular attention to a response by Clark which claims that perception and perceptual experience plausibly depend on the activation of representations which are not intimately involved in bodily engagements between the agent and environment. A final part of the thesis offers a sensorimotor account of the experience of temporally extended events, and shows how with reference to this we can better understand object experience. (shrink)

Individual differences in phonological processing abilities have often been attributed to perceptual factors, rather than to factors relating to learning and memory. Here, we consider the contribution of individual differences in declarative and procedural memory to phonological processing performance in adulthood. We examined the phonological processing, declarative memory, and procedural memory abilities of 79 native English-speaking young adults with typical language and reading abilities. Declarative memory was assessed with a recognition memory task of real and made-up objects. (...) Procedural memory was assessed with a serial reaction time task. For both tasks, learning was assessed shortly after encoding, and again after a 12-h, overnight delay. We regressed phonological processing ability with memory performance on both days. We found that declarative memory, but not procedural memory, was highly predictive of phonological processing abilities. Specifically, declarative memory scores obtained shortly after learning were associated with non-word repetition performance, whereas declarative memory scores obtained after the overnight delay were associated with phonological awareness. Procedural memory was not associated with either of the phonological processing measures. We discuss these findings in the context of adult participants with mature phonological systems. We examine possible implications for the relationship between declarative memory and phonological processing in adulthood. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor wrote the following assessment of Danto’s importance in 1993: “Danto has done something I’ve been very much wanting to do: namely, reconsider some hard problems in aesthetics in the light of the past 20 years or so of philosophical work on intentionality and representation” (Fodor 1993, p. 41). Fodor is absolutely right: some of Danto’s work could be thought of as the application of some influential ideas about perception that Fodor also shared. The problem is that these ideas (...) have turned out to be false. Both Danto and Fodor are modularist: they both think that perception is an encapsulated process that is in no way influenced by any kind of non-perceptual processing (see, e.g., Fodor 1983, Pylyshyn 1984). Many of Danto’s famous and influential arguments rely very directly on this modularist assumption. There is now, however, a wealth of evidence against modularism of the strong kind held to by Danto and Fodor. We now know that perceptual experience is not determined entirely by the retinal input: our visual processing is influenced at various point in a top-down manner. What we know and what kinds of visual stimuli we have encountered previously deeply influence how the retinal input is processed. The empirical literature on this is vast and conclusive (for an overview, see Teufel and Nanay 2017 but see also the references in the last section of this paper). What does this mean for Danto’s views on art and perception? While one of Danto’s premises may turn out to be false, the history and examples he gave are valuable and bear repeating. Even more importantly, Danto’s aesthetics can in part be separated out from his modularism, leading us to draw slightly different but arguably even more interesting conclusions from famous thought experiments such as the Gallery of Indiscernibles. (shrink)

Mental imagery is an important topic in classical and modern philosophy, as it is central to the study of knowledge; since subjects can recall features of perceptual experiences in different ways and times, even modifying their structure, in this brief essay we will focus on non-perceptive mental images and to this purpose we will analyse, on the one hand, the nature of perceptive mental images ; on the other hand, NPMI generation according to different strategic conditions and retrieval modalities and, (...) so, their structural relationships with PMI. Thus, we will clarify what NPMI amounts to and, to this purpose, we will address the issue of epistemic correlation and semantic reference. As regards the former, we will adopt the notion of ‘belief’, both to describe which attitude supports the use of an NPMI and to account for its relationship with a PMI. As regards the latter, we will talk about weak ontology between an NPMI and the world, to conceive ‘the way in which’ mental imagery, despite the absence of a sensorial modification, refers to physical objects. As the subject’s mental contents determine, but do not constrain, what NPMI is like, we will deal with the ‘involvement’ of prior knowledge and the notion of meaningful space to underline that its generation is always the result of a wide process which involves perceptive visual information already processed and stored together with further mental contents. So, though some Authors consider mental imagery to be a ‘percept-like’ image and, somehow, espouse the theory of reactivation, we will pose a challenge to this theory – i.e. to what we call mental imagery standard framework – describing an NPMI in terms of configurational setting and indeterminacy. Consequently, we will propose a non-linear dynamic framework of mental imagery generation , according to which an NPMI is not reducible to a mere recalling of figural features of a perceptive image. (shrink)

The redundant-signals paradigm (RSP) is designed to investigate response behavior in perceptual tasks in which response-relevant targets are defined by either one or two features, or modalities. The common finding is that responses are speeded for redundantly compared to singly defined targets. This redundant-signals effect (RSE) can be accounted for by race models if the response times do not violate the race model inequality (RMI). When there are violations of the RMI, race models are effectively excluded as a viable account (...) of the RSE. The common alternative is provided by co-activation accounts, which assume that redundant target signals are integrated at some processing stage. However, ‘co-activation’ has mostly been only indirectly inferred and the accounts have only rarely been explicitly modeled; if they were modeled, the RSE has typically been assumed to have a decisional locus. Yet, there are also indications in the literature that the RSE might originate, at least in part, at a non-decisional or motor stage. In the present study, using a distribution analysis of sequential-sampling models (ex-Wald and Ratcliff Diffusion model), the locus of the RSE was investigated for two bimodal (audio-visual) detection tasks that strongly violated the RMI, indicative of substantial co-activation. Three model variants assuming different loci of the RSE were fitted to the quantile reaction time proportions: a decision, a non-decision, and a combined variant both to vincentized group as well as individual data. The results suggest that for the two bimodal detection tasks, co-activation has a shared decisional and non-decisional locus. These findings point to the possibility that the mechanisms underlying the RSE depend on the specifics (task, stimulus, conditions, etc.) of the experimental paradigm. (shrink)

This paper argues that various phenomenological considerations support a non-representational causal account of visual experience. This position claims that visual experiences serve as a non-representational causally efficacious medium for the production of beliefs concerning the external world. The arguments are centered on defending a non-representational causal account’s understanding of the cognitive significance of visual experience. Among other things, such an account can easily explain the inextricable role that background beliefs and conceptual capacities play in perceptually-based external world belief-formation processes, the (...) fact that visual mental states constrain beliefs because of their presentational phenomenology, and the phenomenon known as the transparency of visual experience. (shrink)

The paper argues that the English verb ‘to see’ can denote three different kinds of conscious states of seeing, involving visual experiences, visual seeming states and introspective seeming states, respectively. The case for the claim that there are three kinds of seeing comes from synesthesia and visual imagery. Synesthesia is a relatively rare neurological condition in which stimulation in one sensory or cognitive stream involuntarily leads to associated experiences in a second unstimulated stream. Visual synesthesia is often considered a case (...) of illusory visual experience. This, however, turns out to be a questionable characterization, as there is evidence suggesting that the brain must cognitively process the stimulus in order for the associated synesthetic experience to arise. Furthermore, some very vivid, visual forms of synesthesia do not involve additional processing in the visual cortex. Visual synesthetic experience is likely to be a non-veridical state of seeming rather than an illusory visual experience. Visual seeming states are cognitive states distinct from visual experiences in terms of their representational richness and their neural correlates. Visual seeming states that are non-deviantly causally related to the states of affair they represent constitute a type of non-experiental seeing. Introspective seeming states that are non-deviantly causally related to underlying visual images constitute a second type of non-experiental seeing. The English verb ‘to see’ can denote all three types of seeing, which is to say that ‘to see’ is polysemous. (shrink)

This commentary argues that Gallagher's account of direct social perception has remained underdeveloped in several respects. Gallagher has not provided convincing evidence to support his claim that mindreading is rare in social situations. He and other direct perception theorists have not offered a substantive critique of standard theories of mindreading because they have attacked a much stronger claim about the putative unobservability of mental states than most theories of mindreading imply. To provide a genuine alternative to standard theories of mindreading, (...) the direct perception theorist needs to provide more detailed answers to the following questions: What are the criteria for distinguishing perceptual processes from non-perceptual processes? How exactly does direct social perception function on the subpersonal level? What is the content of direct social perception? How does direct perception theory relate to more recent developments in the mindreading literature? (shrink)

The spatial-temporal association indicates that time is represented spatially along a left-to-right line. It is unclear whether the spatial-temporal association is mainly related to a perceptual or a motor component. In addition, the spatial-temporal association is not consistently found using a time reproduction task. Our rationale for this finding is that, classically, a non-lateralized button for performing the task has been used. Using two lateralized response buttons, the aim of the study was to find a spatial-temporal association in a time (...) reproduction task. To account for the perceptual component, reference and target stimuli were presented in different spaces through four experiments. In all experiments, a Spatial-Temporal Association of Response Codes (STEARC) effect was found and this effect was not modulated by the spatial position of both reference and target stimuli. The results suggested that the spatial-temporal association was mainly derived from the spatial information provided by response buttons, reflecting a motor but not visuospatial influence. (shrink)

Cognitive-pragmatic approaches to how metaphors are understood view the activation of perceptual or motor effects as inferred (Steinhart 2001; Bergen 2005; Wilson and Carston 2006; Carston 2010; Gibbs and de Macedo 2010; Wilson and Carston 2019). Crucially, inferences elicit conceptual representations, e.g. in the form of implicatures, and/or mental simulations, e.g. in the form of imagery, memory, an impression and other private elements. Emotional effects, being non-conceptual, must be left out of this picture. But evidence in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics has (...) shown that metaphors activate brain regions linked to emotions (for a review, see Ifantidou 2019; Citron 2020), and that in L2, in the absence of fully-propositional meaning (due to unknown words), metaphors yield meaningful interpretations by evoking imagery, impressions, emotions (Ifantidou 2019, 2021a, 2021b; Ifantidou and Hatzidaki 2019). Drawing on relevance-theoretic views, we would like to argue that metaphors are processed in not entirely propositional terms. Subjective experience heuristics (originally proposed as “availability heuristic” by Tversky and Kahneman 1974; Schwarzand and Wänke 2002; “affect heuristic” by Zajonc 1980) allows making rapid responses by absorbing emotions, imagery, impressions, into the interpretation process, an ability which outweighs (the need for) standard inferential reasoning processes. Such a position is likely to apply to non-metaphorical language, too and thus pervade linguistic processing in general. (shrink)

According to Hubert Dreyfus’s famous claim that expertise is fundamentally “mindless,” experts in any domain perform most effectively when their activity is automatic and unmediated by concepts or cognitive processes like attention and memory. While several scholars have recently challenged the plausibility of Dreyfus’s “mindless” account of expertise for explaining a wide range of expert activities, there has been little consideration of the one form of expertise which might be most amenable to Dreyfus’s account – namely, perceptual expertise. Indeed, Dreyfus’s (...) account of expert coping is ultimately an account of perceptual expertise, in that an expert’s intuitive situational responses are thought to rely on a sophisticated repertoire of perceptual skills. In this paper, I examine the feedforward model of sensory processing that Dreyfus uses to illustrate the perceptual underpinnings of expert action, and consider its resonance with psychological research that characterizes perceptual expertise as being automatic, holistic, pre-attentive, and non-cognitive in nature. However, citing competing empirical research, I argue instead that Dreyfus’s model of perceptual expertise cannot adequately explain the integral roles of attention, memory, and conceptual knowledge in expert object recognition. I conclude that the Dreyfusian model of perceptual expertise fails – the perceptual repertoire of skills that grounds expert object recognition is not operative in isolation from the expert’s conceptual repertoire. (shrink)