Unifying Physics and Psychophysics on the Basis of Symmetry, Least-Action ≈ Simplicity Principle, and Conservation Laws ≈ Veridicality

Abstract

Abstract Psychophysics is the branch of experimental psychology that deals with the study of sensation and perception. A consensus has grown up among experts in psychophysics in the last hundred years that the human being’s percepts are inferences, which are based on a minimum, or simplicity, principle that is applied to the currently available sensory data. These educated guesses play the critical role in establishing veridical perceptual representations of the three-dimensional environment, where by “veridical” we mean that the percept agrees with what is “out there.” These veridical representations cannot be achieved without making use of symmetries, much like those known in physics, where they are essential for characterizing our physical world and deriving the conservation laws. But, unlike in physics, the important role that symmetry plays in psychophysics has been demonstrated and explained only within the last 10 years. Symmetries represent regularities in our physical world. These symmetries also serve as the source of the redundancies that are inherent in 3D objects and make vision possible. The main goal of this article is to show that the similarity between the mathematical formalisms used in physics and in psychophysics is not coincidental and that exploring this similarity can benefit the sciences of perception and cognition. This article includes a brief tutorial about symmetry groups and their relationship to transformation groups as well as to their invariants. It was included to make this material available to readers who are not familiar with these topics.