Is perception cognitively penetrable? (2017-)
University of Wollongong (Australia.) University Postgraduate Award, and International Postgraduate Tuition Award,
Understanding how perception and cognition relate is one of philosophy’s oldest concerns. There has been renewed interest in investigating this age-old question with the advent of new developments in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. My research examines questions such as: how can we best explain visual illusions that put perceiving at odds with cognising? Is perception distinct from other forms of cognition, such as imagination or hallucination? Are they distinct psychological kinds that carve a ‘joint in nature’? Does perception communicate freely with higher forms of cognition? Is the latter capable of informing the former? Do the newly minted predictive processing theories do away with the perception/cognition divide altogether? Are they compatible with and do they support traditional modular accounts of vision?
University of Wollongong (Australia.) University Postgraduate Award, and International Postgraduate Tuition Award,
Understanding how perception and cognition relate is one of philosophy’s oldest concerns. There has been renewed interest in investigating this age-old question with the advent of new developments in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. My research examines questions such as: how can we best explain visual illusions that put perceiving at odds with cognising? Is perception distinct from other forms of cognition, such as imagination or hallucination? Are they distinct psychological kinds that carve a ‘joint in nature’? Does perception communicate freely with higher forms of cognition? Is the latter capable of informing the former? Do the newly minted predictive processing theories do away with the perception/cognition divide altogether? Are they compatible with and do they support traditional modular accounts of vision?
Duck-rabbit
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Müller-Lyer illusion
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Modular theories have been placed to address this challenge by positing a strong perception/cognition boundary. They seek to explain the recalcitrant perceiving in such cases by positing an informational boundary between perceiving and cognising. Perception, on traditional modular accounts, is thought of as informationally encapsulated from more general forms of cognition. A defining feature of modules is that they are sensitive only to domain-specific kind of information. That is, they only have access to the information contained in inputs plus whatever information is available withinthe module. Thus Fodor (1983) characterises the module's job as being “to interpret transduced information and to make it available to central processes” (p. 45). The flow of information does not go in the other direction. On such an account, perceptual processing is informationally encapsulated from background cognising.
Those who believe that perceiving is, at least sometimes informed by cognising, have supplied philosophical arguments over the years to establish that perceiving is cognitively penetrable after all. These arguments have put pressure on the view that perception is, in fact, informationally encapsulated. It is argued that there has to be an intelligible link between the contents of perceptual experience and the contents of cognition (Macpherson 2012). These philosophical arguments are putatively supported by empirical research in neuroscience. For example, cognitive penetrability is assumed in research on the binding problem. Those working on the binding problem seek to explain how the diverse elements of perception and cognition are integrated or interact to generate or manifest a single, unified perceptual experience. One way of explaining how such binding occurs is to assume that top-down cognising binds perceptual experience using predictions or anticipations that parametrise or force conformity in lower-levels. Claiming that perceiving is informed by cognising, these predictive processing theories question the fixed boundary between perception/cognition.
Taking perceiving as a form of predicting, instead, puts pressure on the possibility that perception is strongly independent of other forms of cognition. The view that perceiving and other forms of cognition inform one another can be traced back to Kant’s analysis by synthesis (Zahavi 2018; Swanson 2016, Srinivasan et al. 1982; Rao and Ballard 1999; Huang and Rao 2011) and Helmholtz , whose ideas led to perception as hypothesis testing (Helmholtz 1860/1962; Hohwy, 2012, 2013; Clark, 2016). But it was Rao and Ballard (1999) who recently revived the idea of perception as prediction, in ways that promote perception as permeable, by offering a treatment of perceptual processing using the tools of predictive coding. The theory is still developing, but in its standard version, basically, backward connections flow from higher to lower order perceptual areas trying to predict activity in lower order areas, while the counter-stream of ascending, forward connections convey prediction errors, i.e., the discrepancy between higher and lower order levels. Error detected at lower-levels adjusts the predictions generated at higher-levels. On this account, background cognising can inform even the lowest levels of perceiving.
Predictive processing theory favour a flexible boundary between perception and cognition. Although more flexible by contingently allowing the exchange of contentful information between higher and lower levels, it ultimately rests upon modular principles of the exchange of contentful information between high and lower-levels.
Visual illusions, such as the Müller-Lyer, show however that communication between levels fails. Notoriously, what makes the illusion of such great interest, is that perceptual experience is recalcitrant in light of updated knowledge: the lines continue to look to be of different lengths even after affected viewers are informed, and come to believe and judge, that the lines are, in fact, of equal length. Hence, this optical illusion reveals that there are circumstances in which viewers cannot bring what they see – how things look to them – in line with what they think or know to be the case.
This is what makes illusions such as the Muller-Lyer such a powerful and unique cases: even when we have the most absolute (epistemological) certainty about how the world, such belief is still unable to inform (by correcting) how something will look. Which leads to the questions relating to the entailment between perception and epistemology. More specifically, to theories in favour of the idea that perception should be taken in epistemological terms.
Talk
Graphic abstract
Hilbert 24th problem (2016-)
Team member
Mathematics Department, Nova University of Lisbon, Foundation of Science and Technology funded project
- In 2000, a draft note of Hilbert was found concerning a 24th problem for his Paris problem list.
- This problem concerns simplicity of proofs.
- The aim of the project to reassess Hilbert’s 24th problem as a philosophical challenge (rather than a purely formal exercise).
- We take a closer look at the specifically mathematical examples that concerned Hilbert himself, in particular syzygies (the modern understanding of which is subsumed by the notion of Gröbner bases).
- Syzygies are, however, just a starting point for looking at Hilbert’s problem in other suitable mathematical contexts.
- Special emphasis is put on the potential impact of Hilbert’s 24th problem on contemporary philosophy of mathematics.
The Notion of Mathematical Proof” (2014-2015).
Grant Research Fellow,
Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Nova University of Lisbon, at the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) funded Project
In this project, we review the current state of the notion of mathematical proof, with special emphasis on recent developments on probabilistic proofs and computer-assisted proofs. The principle goal is to obtain a better philosophical understanding of the nature of proofs in general, and computerized proofs in particular.
The Cognitive Foundations of the Self” (2013-2014).
Grant Research Fellow,
Institute for Philosophy of Nova, Nova University of Lisbon, at the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) funded Project
These are exciting times in what the studies regarding the notion of the ‘Self’ are concerned. Nevertheless, the transdisplinary approach (phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, psychoanalysis) comes with a cost: a taxonomical confusion and fragmentation inherent to the proliferation of such distinct methodological approaches. Philosophy, given its general, far reaching, synoptic and conceptual approach, is specially suited to overcome this unfortunate scenario by providing conceptual clarification that facilitates the establishment of links between disciplines. This is the aim of the current research proposal: to adopt a general methodology suited to solve the problem of the conceptual fragmentation of the notion of ‘Self’.
Project Fund: PTDC/FIL-FCI/110978/2009
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: Re-evaluating a project” (2013)
Grant Research Fellow,
Institute for Philosophy of Nova, Nova University of Lisbon, at the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) funded Project
The project aims to trace the development of Wittgenstein’s second book project laying the foundations for a principled view of the origin of the Philosophical Investigations. The idea is to yield an adequate view of what belongs in the Philosophical Investigations corpus, while at the same time showing what its status is. In this way, the connections between the philosophy of culture and mind and the philosophy of psychology, on one hand, and between these and the philosophy of mathematics, on the other, as spread among Wittgenstein’s various projects for the Philosophical Investigations, will be re-evaluated. The majority of these sources have been available since 2000 in the Bergen Electronic Edition of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, but we are still in need of a thorough examination of them. In addition, new items have come to light in the meantime which justify a close study. It is such a philological-philosophical study that the project aims to carry out, analysing the genesis of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and also editing hitherto unpublished texts. Our understanding of the Philosophical Investigations project and its relation to other Nachlass parts and periods will be significantly improved, and this will make it possible to establish its potential for continued influence on 21st century thought in ways that are anchored to a secure text basis. This objective will be achieved in close cooperation with the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB).
