This essay focuses on the possibility of adopting a representational approach for technoscience, in which representation is considered as a situated process of dynamic “intra-action” (Barad 2007 ). Re-elaborating the recent critiques of representationalism (Thrift 2008 ), my analysis begins by analysing Hayles’s situated model of representation from an early essay where she explains her definition of constrained constructivism (Hayles [ 1991 ] 1997). The essay then discusses the notions of figuration and diffraction and the way they are employed by (...) Haraway in many of her writings for her critique of technoscience (Haraway 1991 , 1997 ). Finally, after considering diffraction through Barad’s reading of this practice in the context of her theory of agential realism ( 2007 ), it shows the links that relate constrained constructivism, situated knowledge and agential realism, and the way all of them work at “diffract[ing] the rays of technoscience” (Haraway 1997 : 16) through an alternative representational practice. (shrink)

In this article it is argued that the optical metaphor and critical practice of diffraction further developed by Donna Haraway and Karen Barad might be no less significant than the widely spread notion of reflection, when the questions of various practices of knowledge are addressed. By considering Paul Ramsden’s approach to learning/teaching and its underlying theory in higher education alongside Karen Barad’s methodology of diffraction, it is shown that Ramsden’s understanding of learning/teaching is rather based on the theoretical assumptions of (...) diffractive practice. His notion that teaching/learning are closely related and actively shaping each other, and that learners are not disconnected from the environment and their previous experiences with the subject matter and learning process itself, adds to Barad’s onto-epistemological position that knowers know the world at the same time as being the part of the world in its ongoing intra-activity. Ramsden’s understanding of relation is diffractive, because it is not about predefined binary entities and their fixed identities, but about layers and entanglements of various previous experiences and reactions to the learning environment. In addition, looking at learning/teaching processes through a different perspective also leads to a different approach to teaching and other ways of problem-solving. Both Ramsden and Barad distrust homologies, analogies, and causality-based conceptions of knowledge sharing. Instead, the ability to respond to an always new learning/teaching environment is assessed, which implies a diffractive type of sensitivity to the context, iterative process of re-turning, and the creation of dangerously indeterminate relationships and commitments. In this way, some of Barad’s philosophical notions, i.e., the diffraction pattern, intra-activity, returning, and others, also may acquire new practical content. (shrink)

This article seeks to further the discussion of mimesis in the current new materialist philosophies that are charged with doubts about the potential of mimetic practices, i.e., practices of reflection, and propose a more differential /diffractive notion of mimesis. It argues that the concept of mimesis and performative approaches to knowledge making can be compatible. The figures of mimesis appear in the conceptualizations of both reflective and diffractive practices, and if mimesis is considered rather as a diffractive operation, it could (...) be seen as having a different efficacy and ethico-political function. Drawing on Karen Barad’s and Isabelle Stengers’ arguments, I start by showing why in the representationalist view of knowledge making, the tool of mimesis is dysfunctional—it is a way of separating and classifying copies of reality. Then, I introduce a diffractive notion ofmimesis in line with the mimetic re-turn in posthuman studies. From the perspective of relational understanding of knowledge making supported in Barad’s and Stengers’ ethico-political proposals, mimesis can be perceived as a tool for provoking change and thus, imply a need to do it carefully. (shrink)

This short essay presents a critical cartography of the critical new materialist notion and methodology of diffraction.

Quantum leaps happen in texts, too. This reading of the role of the quantum leap in Karen Barad's agential realism is necessary, because arguing that the diffractive reading strategy proposed by Barad's ethico-onto-epistemology mirrors the physical phenomenon of diffraction would indeed be representationalist. Reviewing how Barad—in her own oeuvre—has transformed diffraction into an innovative reading methodology that could not only potentially challenge the epistemological underpinnings of the canonization process that is at work in feminist theory, but could also radically change (...) the canonization practice of feminist oeuvres itself, our article embarks on a detailed examination of the ways in which the oeuvres of Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray have been mistakenly categorized and canonized in a hierarchical and Oedipalized manner. This conflict-based narrative has not only paralyzed the oeuvres of Irigaray and Beauvoir, but also has had a negative impact on the canonization of sexual difference philosophy as a whole in feminist theory. By (re)reading the oeuvres diffractively, this article brings the feminist philosophies of Beauvoir and Irigaray together by invalidating the idea that the feminist canonization process always has to run along the lines of discontinuity, Oedipalization and dialectization. (shrink)

The human eyes and brain, which have finite boundaries, create a ‘‘virtual’’ space within our central nervous system that interprets and perceives a space that appears boundless and infinite. Using insights from studies on the visual system, we propose a novel fast processing mechanism involving the eyes, visual pathways, and cortex where external vision is imperceptibly processed in our brain in real time creating an internal representation of external space that appears as an external view. We introduce the existence (...) of a three-dimension default space consisting of intrapersonal body space that serves as the framework where visual and non-visual sensory information is sensed and experienced. We propose that the thalamus integrates processed information from corticothalamic feedback loops and fills-in the neural component of 3D default space with an internal visual representation of external space, leading to the experience of visual consciousness. This visual space inherently evades perception so we have introduced three easy clinical tests that can assist in experiencing this visual space. We also review visual neuroanatomical pathways, binocular vision, neurological disorders, and visual phenomenon to elucidate how the representation of external visible space is recreated within the mind. (shrink)

Is action-guiding vision cognitively penetrable? More specifically, is the visual processing that guides our goal-directed actions sensitive to semantic information from cognitive states? This paper critically examines a recent family of arguments whose aim is to challenge a widespread and influential view in philosophy and cognitive science: the view that action-guiding vision is cognitively impenetrable. I argue, in response, that while there may very well be top–down causal influences on action-guiding vision, they should not be taken to (...) be an instance of cognitive penetration. Assuming otherwise is to assign a computational role to the influencing states that they cannot perform. Although questions about cognitive penetrability are ultimately empirical, the issues addressed in this paper are largely philosophical. The discussion here highlights an important set of considerations that help better understand the relations between cognition, vision, and action. (shrink)

This article explores Donna Haraway’s overlooked theories of coalition-building along with the tactics of transversalism. I initially outline Haraway’s contributions and discuss why the cyborg of coalition has been ignored. I then relate this work to transversal politics, a form of coalition-building that acknowledges both the need for more open understandings of the subject and also the threatening circumstances that form these ‘hybrid’ subjects. The intriguing alliance that can be formed between them offers ways of dealing with the fears and (...) self-defensiveness that often stand in the way of creating effective political groups. Having explored the tactics that could productively structure interactions between Haraway’s cyborg actors, I broaden this out to discuss community more generally, in order to further explore the possible applications of these theories of coalition. Finally, through the work of Linnell Secomb and Jean-Luc Nancy, I suggest a vision of a community of cyborgs. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel theory of what it is that makes vision a representational affair. Vision is a process of representation; a fact that does not depend on it being "contentfull" or "indirect". Even if it turns out that vision is direct and/or intrinsically "contentless", it is nevertheless defined by features that decisively make it count as a process or representation. The phenomenology of vision is key here: as we see, we are directly presented with (...) aspects of the environment that are at various distances away from us. Through the process of vision, aspects of the environment that would otherwise still be unavailable or “absent”, are made (quasi-)available, or (quasi-)present. This already by itself makes vision deserving of the name ‘representational’, even if those distant aspects of the world are presented to us directly and contentless. In part I, I provide a bit of an overview of the relevant theoretical landscape, and I give my own take on how we may frame and approach some of the issues with respect to mental representation. Then, in part II, I argue that the representational features of vision must primarily be sought at the level of conscious experience. In part III, I elaborate on the two most common theories that are associated with the view that vision is ‘representational’, and proceed to show that there is in fact a third, more direct, way in which vision can be considered as essentially a process of representation. Finally, in part IV, I show that the kind of interaction problems that arise with the more traditional notions of representation also arise with this newer, more direct, notion. (shrink)

Academics should produce quality scholarly research. However, the demands of the marketised, neoliberal higher education institution and the increase in the academic’s bureaucratic and administrative tasks do not allow for adequate engagement with the deep work and slow forms of scholarship that are needed to produce cutting-edge and insightful research. Many academics find it challenging to think critically and creatively under such conditions, yet they are unwilling to fill their time with shallow work instead. Thus, they are torn between producing (...) an institutionally-determined number of research outputs, and striving towards producing quality scholarly work that advances knowledge in the academic’s discipline. Reading groups serve to rework this tension by providing a communal and scheduled place and mind-space for reading major academic works. Reading takes time and persistence. We find that setting aside time and creating creative spaces for reading groups offer an opportunity for silent revolt against the pressures of the higher education institution. In this (post)qualitative inquiry we diffractively read – “through one another” – two autoethnographical accounts to experiment with our experiences of various reading groups over a period of three years while positioning ourselves in relation to Barad’s notion of diffraction. This speculative experimentation entails a myriad of ideas and methods that serve to decentre hegemonic, monolithic knowledge systems through seeking alternative ways of knowing, and recognises the importance of the entanglement of matter and meaning in tracing (and countering) the social relations produced in neoliberalist contexts. Such (re)thinking is thus a vital counterpoint to the neoliberal obsessions of the higher education context, (re)directing the scholar to new non-autonomous and mutable landscapes. (shrink)

David Milner and Melvyn Goodale’s dissociation hypothesis is commonly taken to state that there are two functionally specialized cortical streams of visual processing originating in striate (V1) cortex: a dorsal, action-related “unconscious” stream and a ventral, perception-related “conscious” stream. As Milner and Goodale acknowledge, findings from blindsight studies suggest a more sophisticated picture that replaces the distinction between unconscious vision for action and conscious vision for perception with a tripartite division between unconscious vision for action, conscious (...) class='Hi'>vision for perception, and unconscious vision for perception. The combination excluded by the tripartite division is the possibility of conscious vision for action. But are there good grounds for concluding that there is no conscious vision for action? There is now overwhelming evidence that illusions and perceived size can have a significant effect on action (Bruno & Franz, 2009; Dassonville & Bala, 2004; Franz & Gegenfurtner, 2008; McIntosh & Lashley, 2008). There is also suggestive evidence that any sophisticated visual behavior requires collaboration between the two visual streams at every stage of the process (Schenk & McIntosh, 2010). I nonetheless want to make a case for the tripartite division between unconscious vision for action, conscious vision for perception, and unconscious vision for perception. My aim here is not to refute the evidence showing that conscious vision can affect action but rather to argue (a) that we cannot gain cognitive access to action-guiding dorsal stream representations, and (b) that these representations do not correlate with phenomenal consciousness. This vindicates the semi-conservative view that the dissociation hypothesis is best understood as a tripartite division. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess the enactive account of visual perception recently defended by Alva Noë (2004). I argue inter alia that the enactive account falsely identifies an object’s apparent shape with its 2D perspectival shape; that it mistakenly assimilates visual shape perception and volumetric object recognition; and that it seriously misrepresents the constitutive role of bodily action in visual awareness. I argue further that noticing an object’s perspectival shape involves a hybrid experience combining both perceptual and imaginative elements—an (...) act of what I call ‘make‐perceive’. (shrink)

This chapter touches upon the damaging impact of neoliberal reason on institutions of higher education, and my efforts as a teacher to help turn things around by re-vitalizing the classroom. After a critique of current neoliberal ‘borderline times’, the chapter takes the reader on a journey of diffractive re-imaginings in which I share some of my experiences of co-learning with undergraduates in an American feminist-philosophical classroom. My central argument is that the neoliberalism-induced crisis in education can be affirmatively counteracted through (...) experimentations with various posthuman and new materialist theories, and the Harawayan-Baradian methodology of diffraction in particular. Furthermore, informed by the impression that theory and pedagogical praxis go hand in hand in many contemporary feminist new materialisms, I zoom in on daily acts of resistance against the neoliberal corporatization of the American university, acts that actualized themselves as feminist new materialist pedagogies. Three examples of diffractive pedagogical strategies are then discussed in detail. (shrink)

Introduction There are some exceptions, which we shall see below, but virtually all theories in psychology and cognitive science make use of the notion of representation. Arguably, folk psychology also traffics in representations, or is at least strongly suggestive of their existence. There are many different types of things discussed in the psychological and philosophical literature that are candidates for representation-hood. First, there are the propositional attitudes – beliefs, judgments, desires, hopes etc. (see Chapters 9 and 17 of this volume). (...) If the propositional attitudes are representations, they are person-level representations – the judgment that the sun is bright pertains to John, not a subpersonal part of John. By contrast, the representations of edges in V1 of the cerebral cortex that neuroscientists talk about and David Marr’s symbolic representations of “zero-crossings” in early vision (Marr 1982) are at the “sub-personal” level – they apply to parts or states of a person (e.g. neural parts or computational states of the visual system). Another important distinction is often made among perceptual, cognitive, and action-oriented representations (e.g. motor commands). Another contrast lies between “stored representations” (e.g. memories) and “active representations” (e.g. a current perceptual state). Related to this is the distinction between “dispositional representations” and “occurrent representations.” Beliefs that are not currently being entertained are dispositional, e.g. your belief that the United States is in North America - no doubt you had this belief two minutes ago, but you were not consciously accessing it until you read this sentence. Occurrent representations, by contrast, are active, conscious thoughts or perceptions. Which leads us to another important distinction: 1 between conscious and non-conscious mental representations, once a bizarre-sounding distinction that has become familiar since Freud (see Chapter 4 of this volume). I mention these distinctions at the outset to give you some idea of the range of phenomena we will be considering, and to set the stage for our central “problem of representation”: what is a mental representation, exactly, and how do we go about deciding whether there are any? We know there are public representations of various kinds: words, maps, and pictures, among others.. (shrink)

One of the more powerful impressions created by vision is that of a coherent, richly-detailed world where everything is present simultaneously. Indeed, this impression is so compelling that we tend to ascribe these properties not only to the external world, but to our internal representations as well. But results from several recent experiments argue against this latter ascription. For example, changes in images of real-world scenes often go unnoticed when made during a saccade, flicker, blink, or movie cut. This (...) "change blindness" provides strong evidence against the idea that our brains contain a picture-like representation of the scene that is everywhere detailed and coherent. (shrink)

Pictures are 2D surfaces designed to elicit 3D-scene-representing experiences from their viewers. In this essay, I argue that philosophers have tended to underestimate the relevance of research in vision science to understanding the nature of pictorial experience. Both the deeply entrenched methodology of virtual psychophysics as well as empirical studies of pictorial space perception provide compelling support for the view that pictorial experience and seeing face-to-face are experiences of the same psychological, explanatory kind. I also show that an empirically (...) informed account of pictorial experience provides resources to develop a novel, resemblance-based account of depiction. According to what I call the deep resemblance theory, pictures work by presenting virtual models of objects and scenes in phenomenally 3D, pictorial space. (shrink)

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the "two visual systems" hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in conscious visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver's bodily actions. In this paper, I review and assess three main sources (...) of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis. I argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency. (shrink)

Mental capacities for perceiving, remembering, thinking, and planning involve the processing of structured mental representations. A compositional semantics of such representations would explain how the content of any given representation is determined by the contents of its constituents and their mode of combination. While many have argued that semantic theories of mental representations would have broad value for understanding the mind, there have been few attempts to develop such theories in a systematic and empirically constrained way. This paper contributes to (...) that end by developing a semantics for a ‘fragment’ of our mental representational system: the visual system’s representations of the bounding contours of objects. At least three distinct kinds of composition are involved in such representations: ‘concatenation’, ‘feature composition’, and ‘contour composition’. I sketch the constraints on and semantics of each of these. This account has three principal payoffs. First, it models a working framework for compositionally ascribing structure and content to perceptual representations, while highlighting core kinds of evidence that bear on such ascriptions. Second, it shows how a compositional semantics of perception can be compatible with holistic, or Gestalt, phenomena, which are often taken to show that the whole percept is ‘other than the sum of its parts’. Finally, the account illuminates the format of a key type of perceptual representation, bringing out the ways in which contour representations exhibit domain-specific form of the sort that is typical of structured icons such as diagrams and maps, in contrast to typical discursive representations of logic and language. (shrink)

In this paper, building on these previous works, we propose to go deeper into the understanding of crowd behavior by proposing an approach which integrates ontologi- cal models of crowd behavior and dedicated computer vision algorithms, with the aim of recognizing some targeted complex events happening in the playground from the observation of the spectator crowd behavior. In order to do that, we first propose an ontology encoding available knowledge on spectator crowd behavior, built as a spe- cialization of (...) the DOLCE foundational ontology, which allows the representation of categories belonging both to the physical and to the social realms. We then propose a simplified and tractable version of such ontology in a new temporal extension of a description logic, which is used for temporally coupling events happening on the play- ground and spectator crowd behavior. At last, computer vision algorithms provide the input information concerning what is observed on the stands and ontological reasoning delivers the output necessary to perform complex event recognition. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the advantages of a theory of political representation for a prag- matist theory of (global) democracy. I first outline Dewey’s disregard for political rep- resentation by analyzing the political, epistemological and aesthetic underpinnings of his criticism of the Enlightenment ideal of democracy and its trust in the power of the detached gaze. I then show that a theory of political representation is not only com- patible with a pragmatist Deweyan-pragmatist perspective on democratic politics but also (...) that Dewey’s concept of “publics”, if applied to contemporary circumstances of globalized politics, requires such a theory. I suggest a pragmatic theory of political rep- resentation that combines elements of Dewey’s aesthetics, particularly his own theory of vision, with Michael Saward’s conception of representative claim-making into the notion of aesthetic democratic representation. (shrink)

‘Visualisations play an important role in science’, this seems to be an uncontroversial statement today. Scientists not only use visual representations as means to communicate their research results in publications or talks, but also often as surrogates for their objects of interest during the process of research. Thus, we can make a distinction between two contexts of usage here, namely the explanatory and the exploratory context. The focus of this paper is on the latter one. Obviously, using visualisations as surrogates (...) for their objects of depiction presupposes the assumption that the former can tell us something relevant about the latter. Thus, a particular referential relation between object and image has to be assumed that can transfer the relevant information. Furthermore, as science is a collaborative enterprise – a social activity – this information has to be intersubjectively accessible and stable. Nonetheless, philosophers of science still quarrel about the epistemic and ontological status of such visualisations. After all, they are means to visualise theoretical entities, such as the Higgs Boson, i.e. entities that are principally not observable with the unaided eye. Especially the significant reliance on information technology devices to access this world of the unobservable provokes a lot of suspicion with regard to the referential status of such visualisations. In this sense, quite a few philosophers adopt social constructivism as an explanatory hypothesis. A particular image is constructed with the aid of instruments and theoretical assumptions; hence it does not refer to an entity outside this system. In this paper, I will critically analyse this assumption and try to argue for an alternative point of view. (shrink)

Block (Trends Cogn Sci 7:285–286, 2003) and Prinz (PSYCHE 12:1–19, 2006) have defended the idea that SSD perception remains in the substituting modality (auditory or tactile). Hurley and Noë (Biol Philos 18:131–168, 2003) instead argued that after substantial training with the device, the perceptual experience that the SSD user enjoys undergoes a change, switching from tactile/auditory to visual. This debate has unfolded in something like a stalemate where, I will argue, it has become difficult to determine whether the perception acquired (...) through the coupling with an SSD remains in the substituting or the substituted modality. Within this puzzling deadlock two new approaches have been recently suggested. Ward and Meijer (Conscious Cogn 19:492–500, 2010) describe SSD perception as visual-like but characterize it as a kind of artificially induced synaesthesia. Auvray et al. (Perception 36:416–430, 2007) and Auvray and Myin (Cogn Sci 33:1036–1058, 2009) suggest that SSDs let their users experience a new kind of perception. Deroy and Auvray (forthcoming) refine this position, and argue that this new kind of perception depends on pre-existing senses without entirely aligning with any of them. So, they have talked about perceptual experience in SSDs as going "beyond vision". In a similar vein, MacPherson (Oxford University Press, New York, 2011a) claims that “if the subjects (SSD users) have experiences with both vision-like and touch-like representational characteristics then perhaps they have a sense that ordinary humans do not” (MacPherson in Oxford University Press, New York, 2011a, p. 139). (shrink)

The paper presents a new philosophical theory of blurred vision according to which visual experiences have two types of content: exteroceptive content, characterizing external entities, and interoceptive content, characterizing the state of the visual system. In particular, it is claimed that blurriness-related phenomenology interoceptively presents acuity of vision in relation to eye focus. The proposed theory is consistent with the representationalist thesis that phenomenal character supervenes on representational content and with the strong transparency thesis formulated in terms of (...) mind-independentness. Furthermore, the interoceptive approach is free from controversial assumptions adopted by other philosophical theories of blurred experiences and is able to account for the epistemic and motivational role of visual blur, i.e. that blurred experiences provide a prima facie justification for beliefs regarding our vision and motivate actions directed toward our eyes. (shrink)

According to a common opinion, human olfactory experiences are significantly different from human visual experiences. For instance, olfaction seems to have only rudimentary abilities to represent space; it is not clear whether olfactory experiences have any mereological structure; and while vision presents the world in terms of objects, it is a matter of debate whether there are olfactory object-representations. This paper argues that despite these differences visual and olfactory experiences share a hierarchical subject/property structure. Within this structure, olfactorily experienced (...) odours and visual objects have the same status: they are primary subjects which unify other represented elements into perceptual units. (shrink)

Quilty-Dunn et al. argue that deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) optimized for image classification exemplify structural disanalogies to human vision. A different kind of artificial vision – found in reinforcement-learning agents navigating artificial three-dimensional environments – can be expected to be more human-like. Recent work suggests that language-like representations substantially improves these agents’ performance, lending some indirect support to the language-of-thought hypothesis (LoTH).

Certain simple thoughts about pictures suggest that the contents of pictures are closely bound to vision. But how far can the striking features of depiction be accounted for merely in terms of the especially visual contents which belong to pictures, without considering, for example, any issues concerning the nature of the visual experiences with which pictures provide us? This article addresses that question by providing an account of the distinctively visual contents belonging to pictures, and by using that account (...) to explain many notable general facts about depiction. Some implications of the resulting framework for the main stream of current theorizing about pictorial representation are also discussed. (shrink)

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

According to the sensorimotor account, vision does not imply theconstruction of internally generated representations of the environment, butit isthe skillful exercise of the sensorimotor contingencies obeying sense-specific laws. In this short study, I focus on the notion of “sensorimotor law” and characterize the kind of explanation providedby the sensorimotor theory as a form of covering law model. I then question the nature of such sensorimotor laws and describe them as mechanisms. I show that a mechanistic interpretation provides a better (...) account of the sensorimotor invariances, which fosters us to rebalance the explanatory burden of sensorimotor action and information. Finally, I show that the question of the roleof representations within the sensorimotor theory should be reconsidered. (shrink)

In The Innocent Eye, Nico Orlandi argues that vision is not a cognitive process. In particular, she argues that forming subject-level visual representations that are available for reasoning should not itself be understood as a process of inference. This comes to the claim that vision (properly so-called) is a process that produces representations but is not best understood as a process that uses representations.

This article reviews the debate on ‘intersectionality’ as the dominant approach in gender studies, with an emphasis on the politics of representation. The debate on intersectionality officially began in the late 1980s, though the approach can be traced back to the institutionalization of women's studies in the 1970s and the feminist movement of the 1960s. Black and lesbian feminists have long advocated hyphenated identities to be the backbone of feminist thought. But in recent years, intersectionality has sustained criticism from numerous (...) angles within gender studies, ranging from feminist philosophy to applied political research. This article will use the theorization of ‘interference’ as a searchlight to produce an overview of this interdisciplinary debate, culminating in our affirmative answer to the question: should we move from intersectionality to interference? Our answer is based on onto-epistemological reflections, i.e., reflections in which being and knowing are always already entangled. -/- . (shrink)

Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience supervenes upon its representational content. The phenomenon of blurry vision is thought to raise a difficulty for this position. More specifically, it is alleged that representationalists cannot account for the phenomenal difference between clearly seeing an indistinct edge and blurrily seeing a distinct edge solely in terms of represented features of the surrounding environment. I defend representationalism from this objection by offering a novel account of the phenomenal (...) difference between these two kinds of cases. (shrink)

Traditionally, vision science and information/data visualization have interacted by using knowledge of human vision to help design effective displays. It is argued here, however, that this interaction can also go in the opposite direction: the investigation of successful visualizations can lead to the discovery of interesting new issues and phenomena in visual perception. Various studies are reviewed showing how this has been done for two areas of visualization, namely, graphical representations and interaction, which lend themselves to work on (...) visual processing and the control of visual operations, respectively. The results of these studies have provided new insights into aspects of vision such as grouping, attentional selection and the sequencing of visual operations. More generally yet, such results support the view that the perception of visualizations can be a useful domain for exploring the nature of visual cognition, inspiring new kinds of questions as well as casting new light on the limits to which information can be conveyed visually. (shrink)

Tracking theories of mental representation posit a privileged relation between color representations and the color properties of objects. Tracking theories of mental representation have been used to motivate color realism as they posit that the function of color vision is to represent the colors of objects. It has been argued that tracking theories have a major flaw, namely they cannot account for reliable misrepresentation. It has further been suggested that reliable color misrepresentation is a live possibility. In this chapter, (...) I argue that the current evidence indicates that our color representations reliably misrepresent. This conclusion undermines tracking theories and the color realist theories they purport to motivate. (shrink)

La presente compilación de textos es la segunda obra colectiva fruto del trabajo del grupo de investigadores que forman parte del proyecto La Alianza Bolivariana para las Américas (ALBA), sus políticas públicas y los valores fundacionales de la integración latinoamericana y caribeña, radicado en la Universidad Central «Marta Abreu» de Las Villas, Cuba. La temática abordada en esta obra (la evaluación de políticas públicas en América Latina) es continuidad lógica del primer libro de nuestro grupo de investigación, intitulado Políticas públicas. (...) Teoría y práctica en el escenario latinoamericano, publicado en 2018 bajo el sello de la Editorial Feijóo. En aquella obra se expuso una crítica constructiva al manejo de las políticas públicas por parte de los gobiernos progresistas instalados en el poder en América Latina en los tres primeros lustros del actual siglo. Consideramos constructiva la crítica realizada en aquel texto, pues la misma partió de un cuestionamiento a la teoría sobre política pública, a sus preceptos teóricos, al escaso arsenal sobre evaluación producido por los teóricos clásicos de esta materia, y particularmente a las interpretaciones y formas de aplicación de la política pública en todo el subcontinente americano, aun cuando el interés fundamental del proyecto eran los países del ALBA. Aunque el proyecto integracionista ALBA constituye nuestro objeto de estudio declarado, para los investigadores del grupo está claro que cualquier proceso de integración regional en América Latina solo se sostendrá si está cobijado por la unidad de los pueblos latinoamericanos y caribeños en torno a la defensa de su soberanía, identidad cultural y desarrollo autóctono. Respecto a ello, el memorable líder cubano Fidel Castro, en la Cumbre Iberoamericana de Salvador de Bahía, argumentó que: «La cuestión no estriba en que cada país de nuestra área trate de salvarse por sí mismo, porque es un sueño imposible en un mundo dominado hoy por gigantes industriales y políticos. Tenemos necesidad de crear entre todos un gigante, para poder realmente desarrollarnos y disfrutar de paz, independencia y seguridad». En vista de ello, casi desde el inicio del proceso investigativo nos inclinamos a ampliar nuestras indagaciones al resto de América Latina, lo que condujo a que en este texto (y muy probablemente en las entregas futuras sobre el tema de las políticas públicas en América Latina), aparecieran trabajos que no abordaban a los países que integran o integraron el ALBA-TCP, sino a otros países del subcontinente. La evaluación de políticas públicas en América Latina fue abordada desde varios ángulos y con distintos grados de profundidad, lo que generó diversos tipos de resultados. Algunos de estos no alcanzaron el nivel de coherencia requerido para su publicación inmediata, pero de igual forma fueron muy valiosos para el aprendizaje colectivo realizado en los talleres de discusión del proyecto, por lo que damos gracias a todos los esfuerzos e intentos realizados. Dado el escaso desarrollo sobre la cuestión de la evaluación de políticas públicas y especialmente el escaso desarrollo de este acápite en América Latina, no era posible pretender lograr evaluaciones rigurosas en un primer momento. Para el grupo de investigadores era esencial ganar en cultura de evaluación y hacer conciencia sobre este aspecto, que es el objetivo central de este libro. En vista de ello, el asunto de la evaluación de políticas públicas en América Latina se abordó desde el ámbito teórico general, enfatizando en su necesidad y rigurosidad, y desde experiencias concretas de evaluación en diversos países. En varios casos, estas experiencias no podemos identificarlas con evaluaciones propiamente dichas, sino con valoraciones o acercamientos a la evaluación, que contribuyen igualmente a elevar la cultura en este aspecto y a la conciencia de la necesidad de evaluación. (shrink)

The study examines the modes of representation and communication of information through illustrative teaching aids in the 19th century. It focuses primarily on the didactic wall paintings and the tradition of lectures with slides and notes, how could the experience of these types of collectively observed images influence impressions and expectations of early film audiences. Didactic images are here analyzed primarily in terms of their compositional features, but in an effort to explain how processuality penetrated into the didactic image of (...) the 19th century also with regard to the aspect of time. As a result, the study calls for a reassessment of the importance of the didactic wall painting in the formation of modern visuality and observational practices of the late 19th century. (shrink)

At the intersection of aesthetics and the philosophy of perception lies a problem about representational images. When you look at Vermeer's View of Delft, do you in fact get to see Delft? It would be nice if we could answer in the affirmative, as it would so neatly explain many of our practices in engaging with images. Be it in churches, advertising, or psychology labs, we typically use images as substitutes for the immediate perception of things. Here is what I (...) claim: Images make it possible to see the objects they represent, and they do so because they can function in vision as perceptual mediators. A perceptual mediator is an object of perception by means of which we can perceive something wholly distinct from it. I show that, while such perceptual mediators may be exceptional in vision, in other sensory modalities they occur universally. Our sensory lives would be impoverished without the possibility of perceiving things mediately. In Chapter 1 I identify a fundamental dispute about images. The dispute is about whether images represent by making absent scenes appear to a viewer, or by merely copying the way an object or event looks. Many philosophers favour the idea that images merely copy how things look. In Chapter 2 I explain my dissatisfaction with the copy view. I lay out my main positive proposal in Chapter 3. How does the idea that images make absent objects visible fit with our current concept of perception? I formulate my answer through a study of the other sensory modalities. In audition, it is no mystery that sounds can make other things heard. My arguments forge a connection between images and sounds that has not been explored in recent work on representation or perception. I show how it offers an attractive solution to our problem. In Chapter 4, I argue that moreover, we may regard mediate perception as a purely sensory mode of perception. There is no need to rely on non-sensory or quasi-sensory effects of thought or cognition. Instead, coming to see a painted surface as an image consists in no more than discovering a previously unseen aspect of our visible surroundings. In Chapter 5 I consider at a more general level how visual images contribute to visual perception. Overall, I establish how visual representation has a structural place in our visual world. (shrink)

El problema de la libertad en José Martí es uno de los temas cardinales de su pensamiento y su acción. El siguiente trabajo aborda el tema de la libertad en el Héroe cubano no desde el punto de vista histórico, sino desde lo filosófico. A partir de esto se desarrollan las dimensiones de la libertad que se expresan en el ideario martiano: ontología, conocimiento, ética y filosófica. Todo este esquema de pensamiento es conformado para una finalidad, la libertad del hombre; (...) y sobre todo, para emancipar al Ser latinoamericano. Este ensayo tiene como objetivo explicar la noción filosófica de libertad en José Martí. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I (...) contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view.En este artículo cuestiono la tesis de que la estructura representacional de las actitudes implícitas responsables del comportamiento implícitamente sesgado es proposicional—en lugar de asociacionista. De acuerdo con la propuesta criticada, si la conducta implícita sesgada puede ocasionalmente ser modulada por consideraciones lógicas y evidenciales, entonces la estructura de las actitudes implícitas responsables de esa conducta es proposicional. Cuestiono, en particular, la verdad de este condicional. Sostengo que la sensibilidad de las actitudes implícitas a consideraciones lógicas y evidenciales resulta ser un criterio inadecuado para establecer su verdadera estructura representacional. Consideraciones de otro tipo, que enfatizan los desafíos planteados por la injusticia social estructural que las actitudes implícitas reflejan, ofrecen, concluyo, un mejor apoyo para decidir esta cuestión a favor de una visión asociacionista. (shrink)

This paper traces how media representations encouraged enthusiasts, youth and skilled volunteers to participate actively in science and technology during the twentieth century. It assesses how distinctive discourses about scientific amateurs positioned them with respect to professionals in shifting political and cultural environments. In particular, the account assesses the seminal role of a periodical, Scientific American magazine, in shaping and championing an enduring vision of autonomous scientific enthusiasms. Between the 1920s and 1970s, editors Albert G. Ingalls and Clair L. (...) Stong shepherded generations of adult ‘amateur scientists’. Their columns and books popularized a vision of independent nonprofessional research that celebrated the frugal ingenuity and skills of inveterate tinkerers. Some of these attributes have found more recent expression in present-day ‘maker culture’. The topic consequently is relevant to the historiography of scientific practice, science popularization and science education. Its focus on independent nonprofessionals highlights political dimensions of agency and autonomy that have often been implicit for such historical (and contemporary) actors. The paper argues that the Scientific American template of adult scientific amateurism contrasted with other representations: those promoted by earlier periodicals and by a science education organization, Science Service, and by the national demands for recruiting scientific labour during and after the Second World War. The evidence indicates that advocates of the alternative models had distinctive goals and adapted their narrative tactics to reach their intended audiences, which typically were conceived as young persons requiring instruction or mentoring. By contrast, the monthly Scientific American columns established a long-lived and stable image of the independent lay scientist. (shrink)

According to one brand of 'externalism', cognitive theories should individuate mental content 'widely'--that is, partly in terms of environmental features. David Marr's theory of vision is often cited in support of this view. Many philosophers (most notably, Tyler Burge) regard it as a prime example of a fruitful cognitive theory that widely individuates the representations it posits. I argue that, contrary to popular belief, Marr's theory does not presuppose an externalist view of mental content.

The main claim of this chapter is that planetary defense against asteroids cannot be implemented under a decentralized model of democratic global governance, as espoused elsewhere in this book. All relevant indices point to the necessity of establishing a centralized global political authority with legitimate coercive powers. It remains to be seen, however, whether such a political system can be in any recognizable sense democratic. It seems unconvincing that planetary-wide physical-threat, all-comprehensive macrosecuritization, coupled with deep transformations of international law, global (...) centralization of core decision-making powers, de-stigmatization of nuclear weapons and the like can proceed, succeed, and be implemented in a non-hierarchical international system where planetary defense constitutes only one regime among many, and where states basically remain the decisive actors. Although rationally and scientifically robust, the project suffers from oversimplification, as well as naivety with respect to how both international and domestic politics works. Among other topics, this chapter discusses problems associated with the rule of law and constituent powers, political representation and sources of legitimacy, conditions of multilevel collective action, or limits of theoretical idealization. The general message is that the planetary defense community needs to be more aware of the social and political context of its own enterprise. (shrink)

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

What representational state mediates between perception and action? Bence Nanay says pragmatic representations, which are outputs of perceptual systems. This commits him to the view that optic ataxics face difficulty in performing visually guided arm movements because the relevant perceptual systems output their pragmatic representations incorrectly. Here, I argue that it is not enough to say that pragmatic representations are output incorrectly; we also need to know why they are output that way. Given recent evidence that optic ataxia impairs peripersonal (...) space representation, I argue that pragmatic representations are output incorrectly because the organizing principle of the vision-for-action system is blocked by optic ataxia. I then show how this means that this principle, not pragmatic representations, is the representational state that mediates between perception and action, i.e. the principle, not pragmatic representations, is the immediate mental antecedent of action. (shrink)

[Pre-peer review draft available to download.] Our imaginative capacities shape the making of images, while the making of images has the ability to shape our imaginative capacities. What are the connections between vision and mental visual images that allow for this traffic between the contents of our minds and external images? And how are image-makers able to exploit the distinctive powers of imagery, to extend the modes of representation that are available to us, and hence also to extend the (...) resources upon which our imaginations can draw? The chapter explores various aspects of those issues. It starts by exploring “visual imagery” as a general category; and it identifies one very striking range of cases that encompasses both suitable mental and nonmental visual images. It develops a philosophical account of what is distinctive about the range of visual images thus identified. Subsequent sections then use the resulting ideas to investigate some of the ways in which various strategies for creating visual images exploit in remarkably inventive ways possibilities that are latent within the general phenomenon of imagistic representation. (shrink)

As one of the seminal theorists further developing François Laruelle’s politically-poised “non-standard philosophy,” Katerina Kolozova’s approach to animality and feminism is part of a particular post-humanist Marxist continuum (which includes Rosi Braidotti, Luce Irigaray, Donna Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles). Nonetheless, Kolozova distinguishes herself from this lineage by adhering to Laruelle’s method, liquidating philosophy of its anthropomorphic nexus. Thus, Kolozova also belongs to a more recently inaugurated and nascent tradition, working in tandem with post-Laruellean philosophers of media, technology, aesthetics and (...) feminist critique, such as Bogna Konior, Yvette Granata, Jonathan Fardy and John Ó Maoilearca. Within this variegated assemblage, Kolozova’s most recent project, Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals(2019), saliently reconciles and radicalizes Haraway’s epochal dyad of the “inhuman”—a bifurcation riven by technology on one node and the animal on the other—by a resolution of superlative unity. This methodology, adhering to Laruelle’s system of“synthesis-without-synthesizing” attempts to dissolve the spectral chimeras that have haunted philosophy’s metaphysical heredity, proffering a generic identity. (shrink)

Vision is an important metaphor in ethical and political questions of knowledge. The feminist philosopher Donna Haraway points out the “perverse” nature of an intrusive, alienating, all-seeing vision (to which we might cry out “stop looking at me!”), but also encourages us to embrace the embodied nature of sight and its promises for genuinely situated knowledge. Current technologies of machine vision – surveillance cameras, drones (for war or recreation), iPhone cameras – are usually construed as instances of (...) the former rather than the latter, and for good reasons. However, although in no way attempting to diminish the real suffering these technologies have brought about in the world, I make the case for understanding technologies of computer vision as material instances of embodied seeing and situated knowing. Furthermore, borrowing from Iris Murdoch’s concept of moral vision, I suggest that these technologies direct our labor towards self-reflection in ethically significant ways. My approach draws upon paradigms in computer vision research, phenomenology, and feminist epistemology. Ultimately, this essay is an argument for directing more philosophical attention from merely criticizing technologies of vision as ethically deficient towards embracing them as complex, methodologically and epistemologically important objects. (shrink)

Everyone would agree that the American flag is red, white and blue. Everyone should also agree that it looks red, white and blue to people with normal color vision in appropriate circumstances. If a philosophical theory led to the conclusion that the red stripes cannot look red to both men and women, both blacks and whites, both young and old, we would be reluctant (to say the least) to accept that philosophical theory. But there is a widespread philosophical view (...) about the nature of conscious experience that, together with some empirical facts, suggests that color experience cannot be veridical for both men and women, both blacks and whites, both young and old. (shrink)

It is often claimed that pre-attentive vision has an ‘iconic’ format. This is seen to explain pre-attentive vision's characteristically high processing capacity and to make sense of an overlap in the mechanisms of early vision and mental imagery. But what does the iconicity of pre-attentive vision amount to? This paper considers two prominent ways of characterising pre-attentive visual icons and argues that neither is adequate: one approach renders the claim ‘pre-attentive vision is iconic’ empirically false (...) while the other obscures its ability to do the explanatory work, which motivates positing pre-attentive visual icons in the first place. With this noted, I introduce the notion of an ‘Analogue Map’ and argue that it provides a superior characterisation of pre-attentive vision's iconicity. I then argue that this forces a reassessment of debates which have traditionally presupposed the iconicity of pre-attentive vision, emphasising ramifications for the viability of a format-based perception-thought border. (shrink)

“What is the structure of thought?” is as central a question as any in cognitive science. A classic answer to this question has appealed to a Language of Thought (LoT). We point to emerging research from disparate branches of the field that supports the LoT hypothesis, but also uncovers diversity in LoTs across cognitive systems, stages of development, and species. Our letter formulates open research questions for cognitive science concerning the varieties of rules and representations that underwrite various LoT-based systems (...) and how these variations can help researchers taxonomize cognitive systems. (shrink)