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Sam Clarke
University of Pennsylvania
  1. Beyond the icon: Core cognition and the bounds of perception.Sam Clarke - 2022 - Mind and Language 37 (1):94-113.
    This paper refines a controversial proposal: that core systems belong to a perceptual kind, marked out by the format of its representational outputs. Following Susan Carey, this proposal has been understood in terms of core representations having an iconic format, like certain paradigmatically perceptual outputs. I argue that they don’t, but suggest that the proposal may be better formulated in terms of a broader analogue format type. Formulated in this way, the proposal accommodates the existence of genuine icons in perception, (...)
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  2. The number sense represents (rational) numbers.Sam Clarke & Jacob Beck - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44:1-57.
    On a now orthodox view, humans and many other animals possess a “number sense,” or approximate number system, that represents number. Recently, this orthodox view has been subject to numerous critiques that question whether the ANS genuinely represents number. We distinguish three lines of critique – the arguments from congruency, confounds, and imprecision – and show that none succeed. We then provide positive reasons to think that the ANS genuinely represents numbers, and not just non-numerical confounds or exotic substitutes for (...)
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  3. Cognitive penetration and informational encapsulation: Have we been failing the module?Sam Clarke - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (8):2599-2620.
    Jerry Fodor deemed informational encapsulation ‘the essence’ of a system’s modularity and argued that human perceptual processing comprises modular systems, thus construed. Nowadays, his conclusion is widely challenged. Often, this is because experimental work is seen to somehow demonstrate the cognitive penetrability of perceptual processing, where this is assumed to conflict with the informational encapsulation of perceptual systems. Here, I deny the conflict, proposing that cognitive penetration need not have any straightforward bearing on the conjecture that perceptual processing is composed (...)
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  4. Joint action goals reduce visuomotor interference effects from a partner’s incongruent actions.Sam Clarke, Luke McEllin, Anna Francová, Marcell Székely, Stephen Andrew Butterfill & John Michael - 2019 - Scientific Reports 9 (1).
    Joint actions often require agents to track others’ actions while planning and executing physically incongruent actions of their own. Previous research has indicated that this can lead to visuomotor interference effects when it occurs outside of joint action. How is this avoided or overcome in joint actions? We hypothesized that when joint action partners represent their actions as interrelated components of a plan to bring about a joint action goal, each partner’s movements need not be represented in relation to distinct, (...)
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  5. Mapping the Visual Icon.Sam Clarke - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (3):552-577.
    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 (...)
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  6. Naïve realism and unconscious perception: A reply to Berger and Nanay.Alfonso Anaya & Sam Clarke - 2017 - Analysis 77 (2):267-273.
    In a recent paper, Berger and Nanay consider, and reject, three ways of addressing the phenomenon of unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. Since these three approaches seem to exhaust the options open to naïve realists, and since there is said to be excellent evidence that perception of the same fundamental kind can occur, both consciously and unconsciously, this is seen to present a problem for the view. We take this opportunity to show that all three approaches considered remain (...)
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  7. Naïve realism and phenomenal similarity.Sam Clarke & Alfonso Anaya - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (5):885-902.
    It has been claimed that naïve realism predicts phenomenological similarities where there are none and, thereby, mischaracterises the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If true, this undercuts a key motivation for the view. Here, we defend naïve realism against this charge, proposing that such arguments fail (three times over). In so doing, we highlight a more general problem with critiques of naïve realism that target the purported phenomenological predictions of the view. The problem is: naïve realism, broadly construed, doesn’t make (...)
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  8. Investigating what felt shapes look like.Sam Clarke - 2016 - I-Perception 7 (1).
    A recent empirical study claims to show that the answer to Molyneux’s question is negative, but, as John Schwenkler points out, its findings are inconclusive: Subjects tested in this study probably lacked the visual acuity required for a fair assessment of the question. Schwenkler is undeterred. He argues that the study could be improved by lowering the visual demands placed on subjects, a suggestion later endorsed and developed by Kevin Connolly. I suggest that Connolly and Schwenkler both underestimate the difficulties (...)
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  9. Do humans visually adapt to number, or just itemhood?Sami Yousif, Sam Clarke & Elizabeth Brannon - forthcoming - Proceedings of the 45Th Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society:1-6.
    Visual number adaption is a widely accepted phenomenon. This paper advances an alternative explanation for putative cases of the phenomenon. We propose that such cases may simply reflect observers adapting to the items in perceived displays, rather than their numerical quantity. Three experiments motivate consideration of this novel proposal and call into question the evidential basis for received formulations of the number adaptation hypothesis.
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  10.  46
    Border Disputes: Recent Debates along the Perception–Cognition Border.Sam Clarke & Jacob Beck - 2023 - Philosophy Compass:e12936.
    The distinction between perception and cognition frames countless debates in philosophy and cognitive science. But what, if anything, does this distinction actually amount to? In this introductory article, we summarize recent work on this question. We first briefly consider the possibility that a perception-cognition border should be eliminated from our scientific ontology, and then introduce and critically examine five positive approaches to marking a perception–cognition border, framed in terms of phenomenology, revisability, modularity, format, and stimulus-dependence.
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  11. Is Pain Modular?Laurenz Casser & Sam Clarke - forthcoming - Mind and Language.
    We suggest that pain processing has a modular architecture. We begin by motivating the (widely assumed but seldom defended) conjecture that pain processing comprises inferential mechanisms. We then note that pain exhibits a characteristic form of judgement independence. On the assumption that pain processing is inferential, we argue that its judgement independence is indicative of modular (encapsulated) mechanisms. Indeed, we go further, suggesting that it renders the modularity of pain mechanisms a default hypothesis to be embraced pending convincing counterevidence. Finally, (...)
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  12. Does the number sense represent number?Sam Clarke & Jacob Beck - 2020 - In Blair Armstrong, Stephanie Denison, Michael Mack & Yang Xu (eds.), Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
    On a now orthodox view, humans and many other animals are endowed with a “number sense”, or approximate number system (ANS), that represents number. Recently, this orthodox view has been subject to numerous critiques, with critics maintaining either that numerical content is absent altogether, or else that some primitive analog of number (‘numerosity’) is represented as opposed to number itself. We distinguish three arguments for these claims – the arguments from congruency, confounds, and imprecision – and show that none succeed. (...)
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