324 research outputs found
Communication and rational responsiveness to the world
Donald Davidson has long maintained that in order to be credited with the concept of objectivity â and, so, with language and thought â it is necessary to communicate with at least one other speaker. I here examine Davidsonâs central argument for this thesis and argue that it is unsuccessful. Subsequently, I turn to Robert Brandomâs defense of the thesis in Making It Explicit. I argue that, contrary to Brandom, in order to possess the concept of objectivity it is not necessary to engage in the practice of interpersonal reasoning because possession of the concept is independently integral to the practice of intrapersonal reasoning
Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception
Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the âtwo visual systemsâ hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in 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 perceiverâs bodily actions. In this paper, I carefully assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis and 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
Bodily awareness and novel multisensory features
According to the decomposition thesis, perceptual experiences resolve without remainder into their different modality-specific components. Contrary to this view, I argue that certain cases of multisensory integration give rise to experiences representing features of a novel type. Through the coordinated use of bodily awarenessâunderstood here as encompassing both proprioception and kinaesthesisâand the exteroceptive sensory modalities, one becomes perceptually responsive to spatial features whose instances couldnât be represented by any of the contributing modalities functioning in isolation. I develop an argument for this conclusion focusing on two cases: 3D shape perception in haptic touch and experiencing an objectâs egocentric location in crossmodally accessible, environmental space
Vision, Action, and Make-Perceive
In this paper, I critically assess the enactive account of visual perception recently defended by Alva NoĂ« (2004). I argue inter alia that the enactive account falsely identifies an objectâs 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 objectâs perspectival shape involves a hybrid experience combining both perceptual and imaginative elements â an act of what I call âmake-perceive.
Colour Categorization and Categorical Perception
In this chapter, I critically examine two of the main approaches to colour categorization in cognitive science: the perceptual salience theory and linguistic relativism. I then turn to reviewing several decades of psychological research on colour categorical perception (CP). A careful assessment of relevant findings suggests that most of the experimental effects that have been understood in terms of CP actually fall on the cognition side of the perception-cognition divide: they are effects of colour language, for example, on memory or decision-making
Bodily Action and Distal Attribution in Sensory Substitution
According to proponents of the sensorimotor contingency theory of perception (Hurley & NoĂ« 2003, NoĂ« 2004, OâRegan 2011), active control of camera movement is necessary for the emergence of distal attribution in tactile-visual sensory substitution (TVSS) because it enables the subject to acquire knowledge of the way stimulation in the substituting modality varies as a function of self-initiated, bodily action. This chapter, by contrast, approaches distal attribution as a solution to a causal inference problem faced by the subjectâs perceptual systems. Given all of the available endogenous and exogenous evidence available to those systems, what is the most probable source of stimulation in the substituting modality? From this perspective, active control over the cameraâs movements matters for rather different reasons. Most importantly, it generates proprioceptive and efference-copy based information about the cameraâs body-relative position necessary to make use of the spatial cues present in the stimulation that the subject receives for purposes of egocentric object localization
The Elusive Experience of Agency
I here present some doubts about whether Mandikâs (2010) proposed intermediacy and recurrence constraints are necessary and sufficient for agentive experience. I also argue that in order to vindicate the conclusion that agentive experience is an exclusively perceptual phenomenon (Prinz, 2007), it is not enough to show that the predictions produced by forward models of planned motor actions are conveyed by mock sensory signals. Rather, it must also be shown that the outputs of âcomparatorâ mechanisms that compare these predictions against actual sensory feedback are also coded in a perceptual representational format
Perceiving the Present: Systematization of Illusions or Illusion of Systematization?
Mark Changizi et al. (2008) claim that it is possible systematically to organize more than 50 kinds of illusions in a 7 Ă 4 matrix of 28 classes. This systematization, they further maintain, can be explained by the operation of a single visual processing latency correction mechanism that they call âperceiving the presentâ (PTP). This brief report raises some concerns about the way a number of illusions are classified by the proposed systematization. It also poses two general problemsâone empirical and one conceptualâfor the PTP approach
The Accidental Archivists: Lessons Learned from a Digital Archive Project
This article tells the story of the University of Colorado Law Libraryâs successful effort to develop its first digital archive. The sudden death of the Law Schoolâs Dean was the catalyst for this project, with a goal to unveil the archive at a memorial symposium scheduled nine months in the future. The Law Library staff had never tackled a project of this type or scale before. This article discusses the technological, cataloging and management issues which were encountered during the project. It also provides advice and tips on how librarians in their own institutions can accomplish such a project
The Accidental Archivists: Lessons Learned from a Digital Archive Project
This article tells the story of the University of Colorado Law Libraryâs successful effort to develop its first digital archive. The sudden death of the Law Schoolâs Dean was the catalyst for this project, with a goal to unveil the archive at a memorial symposium scheduled nine months in the future. The Law Library staff had never tackled a project of this type or scale before. This article discusses the technological, cataloging and management issues which were encountered during the project. It also provides advice and tips on how librarians in their own institutions can accomplish such a project
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