Two traditions have had a great impact on the theoretical and experimental research of perception. One tradition is statistical, stretching from Fechner's enunciation of psychophysics in 1860 to the modern view of perception as statistical decision making. The other tradition is phenomenological, from Brentano's “empirical standpoint” of 1874 to the Gestalt movement and the modern work on perceptual organization. Each tradition has at its core a distinctive assumption about the indivisible constituents of perception: the just-noticeable differences of sensation in the (...) tradition of Fechner vs. the phenomenological Gestalts in the tradition of Brentano. But some key results from the two traditions can be explained and connected using an approach that is neither statistical nor phenomenological. This approach rests on a basic property of any information exchange: a principle of measurement formulated in 1946 by Gabor as a part of his quantal theory of information. Here the indivisible components are units (quanta) of information that remain invariant under changes of precision of measurement. This approach helped to understand how sensory measurements are implemented by single neural cells. But recent analyses suggest that this approach has the power to explain larger-scale characteristics of sensory systems. (shrink)

The endeavor to naturalize the philosophy of biology brings the problem of agency to the forefront, along with renewed attention to the organism and organicism. In this article, we argue for a mutualist approach to agency that starts to unravel layers of this complex issue by focusing on perception and action at the core of all biological agency. The mutuality of animals and their surroundings is seen as distinct from the typical concepts of organism, preexisting environment, and their interactions. Mutuality (...) means a deep ontological and epistemological compatibility between the organism and its surround. We suggest that the concept of direct perception developed and empirically researched in the tradition of the ecological approach, launched by James J. Gibson, offers a promising path to approach agency within an ecological–mutuality framework. At the core of our definition of agency is the animal’s ability to self-initiate actions and activities. Animals are the source of their own actions and activities within the mutual, co-defining relation to their surround. The place of agency related to mutuality has not been elaborated sufficiently thus far, in either biology or ecological psychology. In this article, our goal is to argue for the necessity of placing agency into an ecological–mutuality framework and of further research in this direction in line with Marjorie Grene’s call to assimilate Gibson’s theory of knowledge into biology. (shrink)

In his 1995 book Colour vision (New York: Routledge), Evan Thompson proposes a new approach to the ontology of color according to which it is tied to the ecological dispositions-affordances described by J.J. Gibson and his followers. Thompson claims that a relational account of color is necessary in order to avoid the problems that go along with the dispute between subjectivists and objectivists about color, but he claims that the received view of perception does not allow a satisfactory relational account (...) of color. Hence to avoid the problems of the subjectivist/objectivist dispute one must abandon the received view of perception. I describe an account which is similar to Thompson's, but which invokes instead the physical dispositional properties described by the received view. All of the distinguishing characteristics that Thompson claims separate his ecological dispositions from physical dispositions are in fact found in the physical dispositions appealed to by my proposed theory. Because my proposed theory is similar to subjectivism, Thompson's departure from the received view is not as radical as he claims. In a final section I describe the a posteriori manner in which a substantive departure from the received view must be carried out by describing an example of ecological experimentation. (shrink)

The Gestalt psychologists adopted a set of positions on mind-body issues that seem like an odd mix. They sought to combine a version of naturalism and physiological reductionism with an insistence on the reality of the phenomenal and the attribution of meanings to objects as natural characteristics. After reviewing basic positions in contemporary philosophy of mind, we examine the Gestalt position, characterizing it m terms of phenomenal realism and programmatic reductionism. We then distinguish Gestalt philosophy of mind from instrumentalism and (...) computational functionalism, and examine Gestalt attributions of meaning and value to perceived objects. Finally, we consider a metatheoretical moral from Gestalt theory, which commends the search for commensurate description of mental phenomena and their physiological counterparts. (shrink)

An approach to implementing variational Bayesian inference in biological systems is considered, under which the thermodynamic free energy of a system directly encodes its variational free energy. In the case of the brain, this assumption places constraints on the neuronal encoding of generative and recognition densities, in particular requiring a stochastic population code. The resulting relationship between thermodynamic and variational free energies is prefigured in mind–brain identity theses in philosophy and in the Gestalt hypothesis of psychophysical isomorphism.

Deleuze’s “transcendental empiricism” and the “empirical side” of Whitehead’s metaphysics are paradoxical unless placed in the context of their unorthodox readings of empiricism. I explore this context focusing on their engagements with Hume. Both subvert presumptions of a categorical gap between external nature and internal human experience and open possibilities for a speculative empiricism that is non-reductive while still affirming experience as source for philosophical thinking. Deleuze and Whitehead follow Hume in beginning with events of sensation as primary but do (...) not presume the logic of (human) subjects and objects (of nature) as necessary structuring polarities for their interpretation. This challenges a basic distinction (between inner and outer or between self and world) that seems inherent in the ordinary concept of experience, thus earning the moniker speculative. The speculative empiricist studies how these abstractions arise from events of experience prior to their consolidation in representation. This includes a critical component: to what extent do unexamined assumptions about conceptual abstraction hinder, block, or prefigure experiential attention? This critical component has existential implications for how we attend to the affective, intuitive, and preconceptual. (shrink)

Starting from Marr's ideas about levels of explanation, a theory of the data structures and access processes in human memory is demonstrated on 10 tasks. Functional characteristics of human memory are captured implementation-independently. Our theory generates a multidimensional task classification subsuming existing classifications such as the distinction between tasks that are implicit versus explicit, data driven versus conceptually driven, and simple associative (two-way bindings) versus higher order (threeway bindings), providing a broad basis for new experiments. The formal language clarifies the (...) binding problem in episodic memory, the role of input pathways in both episodic and semantic (lexical) memory, the importance of the input set in episodic memory, and the ubiquitous calculation of an intersection in theories of episodic and lexical access. (shrink)

This paper serves to introduce the papers from the symposium by the same title, by describing the sort of work done in philosophy of psychology conceived as a branch of the philosophy of science, distinguishing it from other discussions of psychology in philosophy, and criticizing the claims to set limits on scientific psychology in the largely psychologically uninformed literatures concerning "folk psychology' and "wide" and "narrow" content. Philosophy of psychology as philosophy of science takes seriously and analyzes the explanatory structures, (...) conceptual problems, and evidentiary practices of extant scientific psychology. (shrink)

A serious crisis is identified in theories of neurocomputation, marked by a persistent disparity between the phenomenological or experiential account of visual perception and the neurophysiological level of description of the visual system. In particular, conventional concepts of neural processing offer no explanation for the holistic global aspects of perception identified by Gestalt theory. The problem is paradigmatic and can be traced to contemporary concepts of the functional role of the neural cell, known as the Neuron Doctrine. In the absence (...) of an alternative neurophysiologically plausible model, I propose a perceptual modeling approach, to model the percept as experienced subjectively, rather than modeling the objective neurophysiological state of the visual system that supposedly subserves that experience. A Gestalt Bubble model is presented to demonstrate how the elusive Gestalt principles of emergence, reification, and invariance can be expressed in a quantitative model of the subjective experience of visual consciousness. That model in turn reveals a unique computational strategy underlying visual processing, which is unlike any algorithm devised by man, and certainly unlike the atomistic feed-forward model of neurocomputation offered by the Neuron Doctrine paradigm. The perceptual modeling approach reveals the primary function of perception as that of generating a fully spatial virtual-reality replica of the external world in an internal representation. The common objections to this picture-in-the-head concept of perceptual representation are shown to be ill founded. Key Words: brain-anchored; Cartesian theatre; consciousness; emergence; extrinsic constraints; filling-in; Gestalt; homunculus; indirect realism; intrinsic constraints; invariance; isomorphism; multistability; objective phenomenology; perceptual modeling; perspective; phenomenology; psychophysical parallelism; psychophysical postulate; qualia; reification; representationalism; structural coherence. (shrink)

Fechner's conception of psychophysics included both “outer psychophysics” the relation between stimulus intensity and the response reflecting sensation strength, and “inner psychophysics” the relation between neurelectric responses and sensation strength. In his own time outer psychophysics focussed on the form of the psychophysical law, with Fechner espousing a logarithmic law, Delboeuf a variant of the logarithmic law incorporating a resting level of neural activity, and Plateau a power law. One of the issues on which the dispute was focussed concerned the (...) appearance of contrasts if the overall illumination was increased or decreased; another issue was the question of whether a sensation of a “just noticeable difference” established for one value of a sensory dimension appeared the same for a value elsewhere on the dimension. The development of “inner psychophysics” led through the works of Delboeuf, Solomons, Jastrow, and Thurstone to modern signal detection theory. A third line of research, devoted to the question of what was meant by the “measurement” of sensation strength, stemmed from the criticism of Fechner's work by von Kries (1882) and others. Although a valid body of science could be built up without the intervening variable called “sensation strength,” such a science might be a cumbersome representation of reality. When an optical contrast is set up, and its overall illumination is increased or decreased, subjective contrasts involving medium levels of lightness vary little as illumination varies (as a power law based on sensation ratios or a logarithmic law based on sensation differences predict), but subjective contrasts involving extreme levels of lightness might be subject to the effects of other variables. (shrink)

A focused review of the literature on reasoning suggests that mechanisms based upon contraries are of fundamental importance in various abilities. At the same time, the importance of contraries in the human perceptual experience of space has been recently demonstrated in experimental studies. Solving geometry problems represents an interesting case as both reasoning abilities and the manipulation of perceptual–figural aspects are involved.In this study we focus on perceptual changes in geometrical problem solving processes in order to understand whether a mental (...) manipulation in terms of opposites might help. Four conditions were studied, two of which concerned the search for contraries as an implicit or explicit strategy.Results demonstrated that contraries, when used explicitly in solution processes, constitute an effective heuristic: The number of correct solutions increased, less time was needed to find a solution and participants were oriented towards the use of perception-based solutions—not only wer.. (shrink)

The thesis proposes that understanding is a matter of experiencing a pattern. To experience a pattern involves seeing how a task, principle, or problem space is structured; to attend to the relevant information; and to be able to use that information as it relates to the knowledge domain at hand. The every day concept of understanding, which is a term used in many ways is discussed and it is explored how it can be turned into something measurable. The overall focus (...) of the thesis is on the process leading to understanding and the transient stage between not understanding and understanding. A more specific focus is on the role that attention play for understanding – in particular attending to relevant visual stimuli. The aim of the thesis has been to use attention to visual stimuli to explore part of the processes underlying understanding by asking whether or not attending to critical areas correlates with understanding; use eye tracking as well as other complementary methods to identify underlying cognitive processes and evaluate and discuss the pedagogical implications of the studies conducted. The studies reported in the thesis represent two related projects. One was conducted in a controlled laboratory setting, the second in a classroom. Both were designed to explore understanding-as-experiencing-a-pattern and investigated how students attend to relevant visual information in mathematical problems in an attempt to examine part of the process leading to understanding. The results reported in the thesis do show that attention to problem-relevant areas of visual stimuli is correlated with understanding of the task and proficiency with which the task is performed. Also, a new methodology was developed for capturing the dynamic reading of mathematical representations – one that can be applied in other domains as well. By focusing on understanding-as-experiencing-a-pattern and its relation to visual attention, and by using both quantitative and qualitative measures, the thesis has provided a relatively fine-grained description of some aspects of what students are doing when they come to an understanding. (shrink)