Perceptual Content Research Articles

Attention, Gestalt Principles, and the Determinacy of Perceptual Content

Theories of phenomenal intentionality have been claimed to resolve certain worries about the indeterminacy of mental content that rival, externalist theories face. Thus far, however, such claims have been largely programmatic. This paper aims to improve on prior arguments in favor of phenomenal intentionality by using attention and Gestalt principles as specific examples of factors that influence the phenomenal character of perceptual experience in ways that thereby help determine perceptual content. Some reasons are then offered for rejecting an alternative interpretation of these examples, according to which the phenomenal effects of attention and Gestalt principles play no role in the determination of perceptual content.

The Price of Twin Earth

AbstractLiberals about perceptual contents claim that perceptual experiences can represent kinds and specific, familiar individuals as such; they also claim that the representation of an individual or kind as such by a perceptual experience will be reflected in the phenomenal character of that experience. Conservatives always deny the latter and sometimes also the former claim. I argue that neither liberals nor conservatives have adequately appreciated how the content internalism/externalism debate bears on their views. I show that perceptual content internalism entails conservativism when conjoined with one other, extremely plausible premise. Hence, liberals are committed to perceptual contents externalism, yet they have failed to fully address the consequences that this has for their view. Moreover, the argument is easily adapted to perceptual experiences of Twin Earthable properties, like colour and shape. I use this last result to show why existing conservative arguments that appeal to Twin Earth plausibly overgeneralize.

Aesthetic Appreciation and the Dependence Between Deep and Surface Interpretation

Aesthetic Appreciation and the Dependence Between Deep and Surface Interpretation

Colour Relations in Form

AbstractThe orthodox monadic determination thesis holds that we represent colour relations by virtue of representing colours. Against this orthodoxy, I argue that it is possible to represent colour relations without representing any colours. I present a model of iconic perceptual content that allows for such primitive relational colour representation, and provide four empirical arguments in its support. I close by surveying alternative views of the relationship between monadic and relational colour representation.

There is Something Wrong with Raw Perception, After All: Vyāsatīrtha’s Refutation of Nirvikalpaka-Pratyakṣa

This paper analyzes the incisive counter-arguments against Gaṅgeśa’s defense of non-conceptual perception (nirvikalpakapratyakṣa) offered by the Dvaita Vedānta scholar Vyāsatīrtha (sixteenth century) in his Destructive Dance of Dialectic (Tarkatāṇḍava). The details of Vyāsatīrtha’s arguments have gone largely unnoticed by subsequent Navya Nyāya thinkers, as well as by contemporary scholars engaged in a debate over the role of non-conceptual perception in Nyāya epistemology. Vyāsatīrtha thoroughly undercuts the inductive evidence supporting Gaṅgeśa’s main inferential proof of non-conceptual perception, and shows that Gaṅgeśa has no basis for thinking that non-conceptual perception has any necessary causal role in generating concept-laden perceptual awareness. He further raises a number of internal inconsistencies and undesirable consequences for Gaṅgeśa’s claim that non-conceptual states are introspectively invisible. His own causal theory of perception is more parsimonious than the Nyāya account, and is equally compatible with direct realism. I conclude by noting several striking parallels between Vyāsatīrtha’s views and the conceptualism of John McDowell, while also suggesting that Vyāsatīrtha own conceptualism is not unduly constrained by some of McDowell’s limiting assumptions about concepts and perceptual contents.

After-effects and the reach of perceptual content

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 (for example, an emotional expression) 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 (such as orientation), 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 (such as decision biases) 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.

Sensualism and the Problem of Perceptual Content. The Case of Condillac

Sensationism and the Problem of Perceptual Content. Condillac’s Casus The aim of this article is to consider possible problems that might occur while connecting three problems of sensationism: a) source of sense knowledge; b) perceptual processes; c) real and empirical correlate of our knowledge. The juxtaposition of these three elements in Condillac’s thought leads to posing a question about the nature of perceptual content given in perception. The author of the thesis claims that Condillac’s standpoint – in spite of his declarations – contains certain proto-conceptual activity which functions simultaneously to our ability to experience sensations. The consequence of this ascertainment is that Condillac’s radical sensationism – in the version which is often presented – is very hard to defend. According to the author, Condillac may be considered one of the sources of Kant’s thought and implied as a source of the contemporary, analytic philosophy of perception.

Awareness as inference in a higher-order state space.

Humans have the ability to report the contents of their subjective experience—we can say to each other, ‘I am aware of X’. The decision processes that support these reports about mental contents remain poorly understood. In this article, I propose a computational framework that characterizes awareness reports as metacognitive decisions (inference) about a generative model of perceptual content. This account is motivated from the perspective of how flexible hierarchical state spaces are built during learning and decision-making. Internal states supporting awareness reports, unlike those covarying with perceptual contents, are simple and abstract, varying along a 1D continuum from absent to present. A critical feature of this architecture is that it is both higher-order and asymmetric: a vast number of perceptual states is nested under ‘present’, but a much smaller number of possible states nested under ‘absent’. Via simulations, I show that this asymmetry provides a natural account of observations of ‘global ignition’ in brain imaging studies of awareness reports.

Conceptualismo y experiencias contradictorias

En este trabajo ofrezco una respuesta conceptualista al argumento de la ilusión de cascada (Crane 1988a, 1988b) en el marco del debate representacionalista acerca del tipo de contenido de la experiencia perceptiva. En primer lugar, analizo la estructura general del argumento, según la cual el contenido supuestamente contradictorio de ciertas ilusiones ópticas mostraría que el contenido de la experiencia perceptiva es de tipo no-conceptual. En segundo lugar, discuto una serie de respuestas conceptualistas con el fin de mostrar por qué no resultan satisfactorias. Finalmente, defiendo una respuesta conceptualista que denomino “disociativa”, según la cual el contenido de la ilusión de cascada no es de hecho contradictorio.

Wonder as a metacognitive emotion

Although wonder has been the subject of much discussion within the philosophy and cognitive science of emotions concerning its perceptual and spiritual aspects, its cognitive aspects are not as clear. The main effort has been to clarify the effects this emotion has on cognition, notably aa broadening of its structures to accommodate a perceptual content marked by beauty, vastness, and complexity of detail. However, emotions can have the same effect on cognition without thereby being cognitive emotions themselves. In an attempt to demarcate the emotion of wonder, we will advance a thesis that aims at specifying its cognitive dimension, namely: wonder is an emotion that is a constitutive part of a metacognitive process by which the agent becomes sensitive to the limits of her conceptual apparatus. What results from this process are precisely the typical sensations which accompany this emotion, such as belonging and reverence. The paper is structured as follows. First, we will bring to the fore the problems inherent in understanding the cognitive emotion of wonder. Second, we will evince a pertinent case of metacognition and show in what way that capacity can be constituted by emotions. Third, we will elucidate the metacognitive character of wonder. Finally, we will offer a case to make clear the explanatory potential of our analysis, namely, the role of wonder in the formation and maintenance of religious belief.

What is up and down in embodied language processing? An experimental study on semantic priming of visual perception

Abstract Linguistic processing has been suggested to involve rich perceptual representations grounded in non-linguistic experiential content often straddling multiple modal cognitive systems. This distributed approach implies that the processing of words signifying perceptual content can interfere with other aspects of perceptual experience through cross-modal priming. In an experimental study, we investigated semantically activated cross-modal priming between perception of auditory verbs and visual motion illusions. Participants solved a lexical decision task involving concrete and abstract verbs while presented with the Motion Quartet Paradigm, a visual stimulus inducing the illusory experience of vertical or horizontal motion. We found that the semantic direction of verbs primed participants to experience the visual stimulus as moving in compatible directions (horizontally or vertically), supporting our predictions. Interestingly, and contrary to our hypotheses, the priming effect was mainly driven by abstract words. We suggest that these results might be due to the socially interactive semantics of the abstract words.

Two Versions of the Conceptual Content of Experience

ABSTRACTIn ‘Avoiding the Myth of the Given’, McDowell revisits the main themes of Mind and World in order to make two important corrections: first, he does not longer believe that the content of perceptual experience is propositional in character; second, he does not believe now that the content of an experience needs to include everything the experience enables us to know non-inferentially. In this article, I take issue with both retractions. My thesis is that McDowell’s first version of perceptual content is preferable to the latest one.

Re-examining Husserl’s Non-Conceptualism in the Logical Investigations

Abstract A recent trend in Husserl scholarship takes the Logische Untersuchungen (LU) as advancing an inconsistent and confused view of the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience. Against this, I argue that there is no inconsistency about non-conceptualism in LU. Rather, LU presents a hybrid view of the conceptual nature of perceptual experience, which can easily be misread as inconsistent, since it combines a conceptualist view of perceptual content (or matter) with a non-conceptualist view of perceptual acts. I show how this hybrid view is operative in Husserl’s analyses of essentially occasional expressions and categorial intuition. And I argue that is also deployed in relation to Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of perceptual fullness, which allows it to avoid an objection raised by Walter Hopp – that the combination of Husserl’s analysis of perceptual fullness with conceptualism about perceptual content generates a vicious regress.

The obscure content of hallucination

Michael Tye (2009) proposed a way of understanding the content of hallucinatory experiences. Somewhat independently, Mark Johnston (2004) provided us with elements to think about the content of hallucination. In this paper, their views are compared and evaluated. Both their theories present intricate combinations of conjunctivist and disjunctivist strategies to account for perceptual content. An alternative view (called “the epistemic conception of hallucination”), which develops a radically disjunctivist account, is considered and rejected. Finally, the paper raises some metaphysical difficulties that seem to threaten any conjunctivist theory and to lead the debate to a dilemma: strong disjunctivists cannot explain the subjective indistinguishability between veridical and hallucinatory experiences, whereas conjunctivists cannot explain what veridical and hallucinatory experiences have in common. This dilemma is left here as an open challenge.

Phenomenology and Perceptual Content

AbstractTerence Horgan and John Tienson argue that there is phenomenal intentionality, that is, “a kind of intentionality, pervasive in human mental life, that is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone”. However, their arguments are open to two lines of objection. First, Horgan and Tienson are not sufficiently clear as to what kind of content it is that they take to be determined by, or to supervene on, phenomenal character. Second, critics have objected that, for their conclusion to follow, Horgan and Tienson would first have to establish the covariation of phenomenology and intentional content, but even so, phenomenal intentionality would still emerge as less plausible than its converse, representationalism. I will address these two challenges by appeal to Husserlian ideas. A consideration of perceptual phenomenology (i.e., phenomenal character) shows that there is a kind of perceptual content that is, indeed, determined by phenomenal character. Such content is conceived in terms of fulfillment conditions, or what it takes to bring aspects of objects and scenes to different, and more complete, ways of givenness. We can establish the primacy of phenomenology, relative to such fulfillment‐conditional content, by tracing it back to the basic phenomenology of visual and other sensations.

ATENÇÃO E DEMONSTRATIVOS: UMA RÉPLICA AO CONCEITUALISMO

Objetiva-se no presente artigo criticar a estratégia demonstrativa dos filósofos conceitualistas da percepção, McDowell e Brewer, em resposta ao argumento da granulação fina do conteúdo da experiência. A análise baseia-se em estudos sobre o papel da atenção seletiva e dos conceitos demonstrativos na percepção visual. Levine (2010) e Pylyshyn (2003, 2007) argumentam que um sistema visual primário provê uma referência direta e rastreia objetos em um período de tempo. É fundamental que tal mecanismo seja cognitivamente opaco, e assim, não apele a conceitos de forma alguma. Se esta teoria estiver correta, então os conceitualistas falham ao responder ao argumento da granulação fina.

Distinguishing volumetric content from perceptual presence within a predictive processing framework

I argue for an overlooked distinction between perceptual presence and volumetric content, and flesh it out in terms of predictive processing. Within the predictive processing framework we can distinguish between agent-active and object-active expectations. The former expectations account for perceptual presence, while the latter account for volumetric content. I then support this position with reference to how experiences of presence are created by virtual reality technologies, and end by reflecting on what this means for the relationship between sensorimotor enactivism and predictive processing.

Detecting Pre-Stimulus Source-Level Effects on Object Perception with Magnetoencephalography.

Pre-stimulus oscillatory brain activity influences upcoming perception. The characteristics of this pre-stimulus activity can predict whether a near-threshold stimulus will be perceived or not perceived, but can they also predict which one of two competing stimuli with different perceptual contents is perceived? Ambiguous visual stimuli, which can be seen in one of two possible ways at a time, are ideally suited to investigate this question. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a neurophysiological measurement technique that records magnetic signals emitted as a result of brain activity. The millisecond temporal resolution of MEG allows for a characterization of oscillatory brain states from as little as 1 second of recorded data. Presenting an empty screen around 1 second prior to the ambiguous stimulus onset therefore provides a time window in which one can investigate whether pre-stimulus oscillatory activity biases the content of upcoming perception, as indicated by participants'reports. The spatial resolution of MEG is not excellent, but sufficient to localise sources of brain activity at the centimetre scale. Source reconstruction of MEG activity then allows for testing hypotheses about the oscillatory activity of specific regions of interest, as well as the time- and frequency-resolved connectivity between regions of interest. The described protocol enables a better understanding of the influence of spontaneous, ongoing brain activity on visual perception.

New Authentication Method for Vector Geographic Data Based on Perceptual Hash

Abstract. In the Internet era, vector data can conveniently be stored, distributed and disseminated. This make it convenience for people to use them, and also make it easier for people to edit or modify them, which can reduce the credibility of Geo-information. Traditionally, authentication is done by using a hash function to generate a digital signature for data authentication. However, this method is very sensitive for change even one bit and it is appropriate for accurate authentication such as text. For geographic data, it may experience lossy compression, filtering distortion, geometric transformation, noise pollution, etc. during transmission and application, but it is consistent with the original data perception. Therefore, the traditional cryptography authentication method is not applicable to the robust authentication of geographic data.Among various authentication techniques, perceptual hashing is a promising solution. Perceptual hashing is a type of unidirectional mapping of multimedia data sets to perceptual digest sets, that is, a multimedia digital representation with the same perceptual content is uniquely mapped into a piece of digital digest, and satisfies perceptual robustness and security. Since a perceptual hash value is a compact representation of the original content, it can be used for robust content authentication of vector geographic data. The advantage of perceptual hashing algorithms over traditional cryptographic hashing algorithms is that they can tolerate differences in quality and format. The same content is always mapped to the same hash value. This is very effective for robust authentication of geographic data.In this work, we focus on vector geographic data content authentication by perceptual hash algorithms. In the research of vector geographic data authentication, there are usually some authentication methods based on statistics, rough representation of images and extraction of mutation points based on wavelet transform. However, these methods are more or less sensitive to geometric transformation, poor anti-aggression, high complexity, and poor robustness. In order to avoid the shortcomings of traditional authentication algorithms, this paper proposes a vector geographic data authentication algorithm combining DCT and perceptual hashing. The algorithm has high robustness and security against attack, translation, rotation and two types of collusion attacks.

Dissociating the functions of superior and inferior parts of the left ventral occipito-temporal cortex during visual word and object processing

During word and object recognition, extensive activation has consistently been observed in the left ventral occipito-temporal cortex (vOT), focused around the occipito-temporal sulcus (OTs). Previous studies have shown that there is a hierarchy of responses from posterior to anterior vOT regions (along the y-axis) that corresponds with increasing levels of recognition - from perceptual to semantic processing, respectively. In contrast, the functional differences between superior and inferior vOT responses (i.e. along the z-axis) have not yet been elucidated. To investigate, we conducted an extensive review of the literature and found that peak activation for reading varies by more than 1 cm in the z-axis. In addition, we investigated functional differences between superior and inferior parts of left vOT by analysing functional MRI data from 58 neurologically normal skilled readers performing 8 different visual processing tasks. We found that group activation in superior vOT was significantly more sensitive than inferior vOT to the type of task, with more superior vOT activation when participants were matching visual stimuli for their semantic or perceptual content than producing speech to the same stimuli. This functional difference along the z-axis was compared to existing boundaries between cytoarchitectonic areas around the OTs. In addition, using dynamic causal modelling, we show that connectivity from superior vOT to anterior vOT increased with semantic content during matching tasks but not during speaking tasks whereas connectivity from inferior vOT to anterior vOT was sensitive to semantic content for matching and speaking tasks. The finding of a functional dissociation between superior and inferior parts of vOT has implications for predicting deficits and response to rehabilitation for patients with partial damage to vOT following stroke or neurosurgery.