Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-2pp2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T23:50:45.281Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reentrant Neural Pathways and the Theory-Ladenness of Perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Athanassios Raftopoulos
Athanassios Raftopoulos*
Affiliation:
University of Cyprus
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Education, University of Cyprus, P.O. Box 20537, Kallipoleos 75, Nicosia 1678, Cyprus; email: raftop@ucy.ac.cy.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper I argue for the cognitive impenetrability of perception by undermining the argument from reentrant pathways. To do that I will adduce psychological and neuropsychological evidence showing that (a) early vision processing is not affected by our knowledge about specific objects and events, and (b) that the role of the descending pathways is to enable the early-vision processing modules to participate in higher-level visual or cognitive functions. My thesis is that a part of observation, which I will call perception, is bottom-up and theory neutral. As such, perception could play the role of common ground on which a naturalized epistemology can be built and relativism avoided.

Information

Type
Theory-Ladeness and the Neurology of Perception
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 68 , Issue S3: No. 3 Supplement: Proceedings of the 2000 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 2001 , 2001 , pp. S187 - S199
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bechtel, William and Mundale, Jennifer (1999), “Multiple Realizability Revisited: Linking Cognitive and Neural States”, Philosophy of Science 66:175–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickhard, Mark H. (1993), “Representational Content in Humans and Machines”, Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 5:285–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickhard, Mark H. and Campbell, R. L. (1996), “Topologies of Learning and Development”, New Ideas in Psychology 14:111–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Harold I. (1987), Observation and Objectivity. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Churchland, Paul M. (1989), A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cussins, A. (1990), “The Connectionist Construction of Concepts”, in Boden, Margaret (ed.), The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 368–440.Google Scholar
Damasio, Hana, Grabowski, T. J., Damasio, Antonio, Tranel, Daniel, Boles-Ponto, L., Watkins, G. L., and Hichwa, R. D. (1993), “Visual Recall with Eyes Closed and Covered Activates Early Visual Cortices”, Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 19: 1603.Google Scholar
Dretske, Fred (1985), “Précis of Knowledge and the Flow of Information”, in Komblith, H. (ed.), Naturalizing Epistemology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 169–189.Google Scholar
Egeth, H. E., Virzi, R. A., and Garbart, H. (1984), “Searching for Conjuctively Defined Targets”, Journal of Experimental Psychology 10:32–39.Google ScholarPubMed
Farah, Martha J. (1984), “The Neurological Basis of Mental Imagery: A Component Analysis”, in Pinker, S. (ed.), Visual Cognition. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 245–271.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry (1984), “Observation Reconsidered”, Philosophy of Science 51:23–43. Reprinted in A. I. Goldman (ed.), Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), 119–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, J. J. (1979), The Ecological to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Goodale, Melvyn A. (1995), “The Cortical Organization of Visual Perception and Visuomotor Control”, in Kosslyn, Stephen M. and Osherson, Daniel N. (eds.). Visual Cognition, Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 167–214.Google Scholar
Gregory, Richard (1974), Concepts and Mechanisms of Perception. New York: Charles Scribners and Sons.Google Scholar
Hanson, Norwood Russell (1958), Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heinze, H. J., Mangun, G. R., Burchert, W., Hinrichs, H., Scholtz, M., Muntel, T. F., Gosel, A., Schreg, S., Johannes, S., Hundeshagen, H., Gassaniga, M. S., and Hillyard, S. A. (1994), “Combined Spatial and Temporal Imaging of Brain Activity During Visual Selective Attention in Humans”, Nature 372:543–546.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hildreth, Elen C. and Ulmann, Shimon (1989), “The Computational Study of Vision”, in Posner, Michael I. (ed.), Foundations of Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 581–630.Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark (1987), The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination. and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kosslyn, Stephen M. (1988), “Aspects of cognitive neuroscience of mental imagery”, Science 240:1621–1626.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kosslyn. Stephen M., N. M. Alpert, Thompson, William L., Malikovic, V., Weise, S. B., Chabris, C. F., Hamilton, S. E., Rauch, S. L., and Buonnano, F. S. (1993), “Visual Mental Imagery Activates Topographically Organized Visual Cortex”, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 5:263–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark (1999), Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Leopold, D. A. and Logothetis, N. K. (1996), “Activity changes in early visual cortex reflect monkeys' percepts during binocular rivalry”, Nature 379: 54910.1038/379549a0CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marr, David (1982), Vision: A Computational Investigation into Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. San Francisco, CA: Freeman.Google Scholar
McLeod, Peter, Driver, J., Dienes, Z., and Crisp, J. (1991), “Filtering by Movement in Visual Search”, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 17:55–64.Google ScholarPubMed
Perrett, D. I., Harries, M. H., Benson, P. J., Chitty, A. J., and Mistlin, A. J. (1990), “Retrieval of Structure from Rigid and Biological Motion: An Analysis of the Visual Responses of Neurones in the Macaque Temporal Cortex”, in Blake, Andrew and Troscianko, Tom (eds.), AI and the Eye. Cornwall: John Wiley & Sons, 181–200.Google Scholar
Petitot, Jean (1995), “Morphodynamics and Attractor Syntax: Constituency in Visual Perception and Cognitive Grammar”, in Port, R. E. and Gelder, T. Van (eds.), Mind as Motion. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 227–283.Google Scholar
Posner, Michael I. and Petersen, S. E. (1990), “The Attention System of the Human Brain”, Annual Review of Neuroscience 13:25–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Posner, Michael I. and Carr, Thomas H. (1992), “Lexical Access and the Brain: Anatomical Constraints on Cognitive Models of Word Recognition”, American Journal of Psychology 105:1–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Posner, Michael I. and Raichle, Marcus E. (1994), Images of Mind. New York: The American Scientific Library.Google Scholar
Pylyshyn, Zenon (1999), “Is Vision Continuous with Cognition?”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22:341–365.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Regier, T. (1996), The Human Semantic Potential: Spatial Language and Constrained Connectionism. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scholl, Brian J. and Leslie, Alan M. (1999), “Explaining the Infant's Object Concept: Beyond the Perception/Cognition Dichotomy”, in Lepore, Ernest and Pylyshyn, Zenon (eds.), What is Cognitive Science? Cambridge: Blackwell, 26–74.Google Scholar
Shrager, Jeff F. (1990), “Common-Sense Perception and the Psychology of Theory Formation”, in Shrager, J. F. and Langley, P. (eds.), Computational Models of Scientific Discovery and Theory Formation. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 437–470.Google Scholar
Spelke, Elizabeth S. (1990), “Principles of Object Perception”, Cognitive Science 14:29–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmann, Shimon (1979), The Interpretation of Visual Motion. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Essen, D. C. (1985), “Functional Organization Of Primate Visual Cortex”, in Peters, A. and Jones, E. G. (eds.), Cerebral Cortex, Vol. 3. New York: Plenum, 259–329.Google Scholar
Zeki, S. M. (1978), “Uniformity and Diversity of Structure and Function in Rhesus Monkey Prestriate Visual Cortex”, Journal of Physiology 277:273–290.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ziegler, Johannes C., Besson, Mireille, Jacobs, Arthur M., and Nazir, Tatjiana T. (1997), “Word, Pseudoword, and Nonword Processing: A Multitask Comparison Using Event-Related Brain Potentials”, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 9:758–775.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed