In this paper I argue that the detection of emotional expressions is, in its early stages, informationally encapsulated. I clarify and defend such a view via the appeal to data from social perception on the visual processing of faces, bodies, facial and bodily expressions. Encapsulated social perception might exist alongside processes that are cognitively penetrated, and that have to do with recognition and categorization, and play a central evolutionary function in preparing early and rapid responses to the emotional stimuli.

What is the role of face perception in mindreading? I explore this question by focusing on our quick impressions of others when we look at their faces. Drawing on a contrast between quick impressions of emotional expressions and quick impressions of character traits, I suggest that face perception can be a double-edged sword for mindreading: in some cases, it can correctly track some aspects of the mental life of others, while in other cases it can give rise to visual illusions (...) that trick the viewer into misreading others. This suggests that some cases of mind misreading might have a perceptual source. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the use of after-effects as a criterion for showing that we can perceive high-level properties. According to this criterion, if a high-level property is susceptible to after-effects, this suggests that the property can be perceived, rather than cognized. The defenders of the criterion claim that, since after-effects are also present for low-level, uncontroversially perceptual properties, we can safely infer that high-level after-effects are perceptual as well. The critics of the criterion, on the other hand, assimilate (...) it to superficially similar effects in cognition and argue that the after-effect criterion is a cognitive phenomenon rather than a perceptual one, and that as a result it is not a reliable guide for exploring the contents of perception. I argue against both of these views and show that high-level after-effects cannot be identified either with low-level after-effects or with cognitive biases. I suggest an intermediate position: high-level after-effects are not cognitive, but they are nonetheless not a good criterion for exploring the contents of perception. (shrink)