Abstract
I address the question of whether differences in color terminology cause differences in color experience in speakers of different languages. If linguistic representations directly affect color experience, then this is a case of what I call the linguistic penetrability of perception, which is a particular case of cognitive penetrability. I start with some general considerations about cognitive penetration and its alleged occurrence in the memory color effect. I then apply similar considerations to the interpretation of empirical studies of color perception in speakers of different languages. I argue that findings such as differences in categorical perception in speakers of different languages do not show that language affects color experience. They therefore do not support the claim that color experience is linguistically penetrable. But even if we grant that color experience is different in speakers of different languages, I argue that this might still not be a case of linguistic penetration. Finally, I consider some epistemological consequences of the assumption that speakers of different languages have different color experiences.
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Notes
Henceforth “speakers of different languages”.
This is roughly what Burnston (2017) calls “the computation condition” for the cognitive penetrability of perception, and he goes on to argue that it cannot be met, due to differences in format between perceptual and cognitive representations. That is one way to argue against one form of cognitive penetrability of perception. I here remain neutral about the format perceptual and conceptual representations take.
To be more precise, Fodor’s view seems to be a little more strict than Pylyshyn’s, for, as I read him, cognitive penetration would occur if any kind of information from outside a given module were to affect its output. For Pylyshyn, on the other hand, the penetrating information would have to come from outside the visual system. Presumably, then, modules in the visual system could interact.
Both Fodor and Pylyshyn tend to formulate the view that visual input systems, or early visual processes (such as the processing of color), are cognitively impenetrable in terms of their computations and outputs being unaffected by cognitive states. Unlike Siegel (2012) and Macpherson (2012), they tend not to be explicit about whether this should also mean that visual perceptual experience of those basic features is impenetrable (though I take they would accept that). Psychologists testing possible effects of memory, or language, on color perception are generally interested in revealing changes in conscious perceptual experience (and they tend to rely on that in their experiments), and not just in sub-personal color processing. In addition, it is cognitive penetrability in this sense that has interesting epistemological implications, which will be considered in the final part of the paper. So differences in color processing that do not generate differences in color experiences should not count as cognitive (or linguistic) penetrability for the purposes of this paper.
The topic of how attention relates to cognitive penetration is controversial. In Sect. 4 I’ll suggest why differences in attention can’t explain away an assumed difference in color experience in speakers of different languages. But I leave it open whether attentional effects on perception could amount to cognitive penetration in other situations. See Raftopoulos (2009) for a development of Pylyshyn’s view, with a discussion of different forms of attention and their role in early and late vision, and for why attention renders the latter cognitively penetrable. See Mole (2015), for a criticism of the view that attention-mediated influences of cognition on perception do not amount to cognitive penetration. For discussion, see Gross (2017).
More generally, Firestone and Scholl (2016) take it that cognitive penetration requires that higher order states affect perceptual processing, and not just the input to perception. So when our desire to experience darkness causes us to close our eyes, which leads us to experience darkeness, cognition is affecting the input to perception, but not perceptual processing. This is therefore not a case of cognitive penetration.
Color is a paradigmatic example, but the same seems to be true of other basic visual properties, such as orientation, motion, shape and contrast.
I’m not endorsing the view that one can perceive higher order properties such as Jupiter, and not merely judge a visual object to be Jupiter. I am just presenting it as a possible view, one which grants that perception of objects, but possibly not of their features, is cognitively penetrable (for discussion, see Siegel (2005), Mandelbaum (2018)).
For these and different ways to counter the claim that perception is cognitively penetrated, see Firestone and Scholl (2016), who consider a number of recent studies claiming to have found cognitive effects on perception.
This is supported by Olkkonen et al. (2008). Subjects made significant adjustments of objects’ colors to the opponent color especially when the stimuli were realistic photographs of fruits, but the effect was smaller with less realistic images (with no texture) and absent with pure outlines of shapes of fruits. Given that recognizing the object is not enough for the effect to occur (as in the outline shapes condition), Olkkonen et al. point out that memory color effect, when it occurs, must be due to information about visual properties stored in a visual representation, and not to the activation of a semantic representation. This means that these experiments don’t really show cognitive penetration, even if they show that color experience is affected, because this is likely not caused by beliefs or concepts (see also Deroy, 2013).
Other possibilities are suggested by Deroy (2013) and Brogaard and Gatzia (2017). Deroy argues that multi-modal representations containing all and only sensory information about objects can affect color experience. These representations are assumed not to be conceptual, but they are not visual either, for they integrate information from all sensory modalities. On some views (such Fodor’s and Pylyshyn’s) this would probably still count as cognitive penetration. Brogaard and Gatzia (2017) suggest that color constancy could explain the effect, and so it would not qualify as a case of cognitive penetration.
What the authors took to be the real distance between colors was the measure of discrimination distance, whose unit is a just noticeable difference between colors.
See Silins (2016) for discussion of what he calls “the belief response” to claims of cognitive penetrability and its implications for our access to our own minds.
In the verbal-interference condition, “subjects silently rehearsed digit strings while simultaneously completing the color discrimination trials” (7781). In the control, spatial interference condition, “subjects maintained a spatial pattern in memory while completing color discrimination trials.” (7781).
I thank an anonymous reviewer for the suggestion.
As Winawer and Witthoft note, “when one makes a judgment or decision about color appearance, the knowledge that a color belongs to a particular category might affect the speed of the response or the content of the response without affecting the appearance of the color.” (Winawer; Witthoft, 2013, p. 08).
A similar difficulty applies to the interpretation of other findings, such as the lateralization of categorical perception of color to the right visual field (RVF). This was first observed in an influential study by Gilbert et al. (2006), and they explain the lateralization by saying that information coming from the RVF is more subject to the influence of linguistic representations, which are assumed to be stored in the left cerebral hemisphere (the same responsible for processing visual information from the RVF). Linguistic representations are accessed and interfere in discrimination when a target is presented to the RVF, but not the left. Here again, if we were to assume that categorical perception is a sign of a distortion in color experience, we would have to say that the colors participants saw in the RVF were different from the colors in the left visual field, which doesn’t seem plausible. It’s worth noting, however, that some (Witzel and Gegenfurtner 2011, Suegami et al. 2014) have failed to replicate the finding of lateralization of categorical perception. Similarly, other studies suggest that categorical perception is highly malleable and can have different patterns of occurrence with the same color stimuli depending on how they are categorized by a group of speakers of the same language (Zhong et al. 2018). But this too suggests that categorical perception is more likely an effect of color categories on post-perceptual, rather than perceptual processes. The name “categorical perception”, as some have pointed out (Clifford et al. 2012) is then misleading.
Another thing that suggests that Winawer et al. results do not really indicate perceptual differences in English and Russian speakers is that Russian speakers only showed categorical perception when colors were near (and discrimination was harder). This suggests that concepts or linguistic representations can be recruited in order to assist difficult color discrimination. If color names had permanently altered color distances, it would be natural to expect categorical perception to have occurred with far colors as well.
According to Slobin (1997), language affects how one attends and thinks about a scene in order to speak about it (what he calls thinking for speaking). Speakers of different languages might attend and describe the same scene in different ways, depending on how events are usually encoded in their language. This can result in the same event being “experienced differently by speakers of different languages – in the process of making a verbalized story out of them” (p. 88). This is one way in which language might affect perception via differences in attention. However, I take that this is not a case of linguistic penetrability, because if attention were held fixed, speakers of different languages would see the same things.
Another indication that linguistic representations might not be responsible for categorical perception is that it has also been observed, lateralized (see note 20 above), with non-basic categories of warm and cool colors, which are not frequently distinguished verbally (Holmes and Regier 2017).
Mandelbaum (2018), for instance, argues that perception outputs conceptualized representations, based on findings suggesting that categorization happens very fast.
More work needs to be done, both empirical and theoretical, in order to reconcile findings involving ERPs, which sometimes suggest that color categorization is a perceptual process, with findings of categorical perception in visual search and discrimination tasks, which are better explained, in my view, by conceptual representations (Krempel 2018).
Here I’m following Pylyshyn (1999) in accepting that not all cases of top-down effects on perception are cases of cognitive penetrability of perception, even if all cases of cognitive penetrability are cases of top-down effects. As Raftopoulos (2009) notes, “top-down flow of information is compatible with a cognitively impenetrable perception” (p. xx). Some, however, use these terms interchangeably (cf. Silins, 2016).
Lyons (2011) argues that circularity is not what is epistemically problematic with cognitive penetration. Cognitive penetration is bad when it decreases the reliability of perception. I take it that circularity can be a problem in some cases of cognitive penetrability (as in the cases just described), but I agree with Lyons that cognitive penetration can be epistemically bad even without it, such as when desires or fears penetrate perception, where presumably no circularity is involved.
Another purportedly good (or at least neutral) case of cognitive penetration is Lyons’ (2011) snake case, in which one is more likely to spot actual snakes when one believes there are snakes nearby. According to him, there is nothing epistemically bad here, even when the penetrating belief is unjustified. My own take is that this and cases of expert perception are not obvious cases of cognitive penetration. The belief that there are snakes nearby, for instance, could be affecting perceptual experience only indirectly, by directing one’s attention to signs of snakes, therefore changing only the input to perception. If it really were affecting perceptual processing and its output, it could presumably do so whether it is true or not that there is a snake in front of me. It could then make me see snakes even where there were none, which would decrease the reliability of perception. This would therefore be a bad case of cognitive penetration, according to Lyon’s own characterization. I find it hard therefore, to think of a genuine case of cognitive penetration that would be epistemically good or neutral.
Winawer et al. (2007) report that language played a role only in more difficult, near-color discrimination, and not on colors that were farther apart.
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I would like to thank Evan Keeling, Plínio Smith, the members of the groups GEMF and CLEA (especially André Abath, Marco Aurélio Alves, Eduarda Calado, Felipe Carvalho, Nara Figueiredo, Caroline Marim, Marcos Silva and Beatriz Sorrentino), audiences at an SBFA Conference and at UNICAMP, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. This research was supported by Grant #2018/12683-9, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).
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Krempel, R. Is color experience linguistically penetrable?. Synthese 199, 4261–4285 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02978-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02978-5