Abstract
According to the thesis of the cognitive impenetrability of perception to thought—from now onwards, (TCI)—both the phenomenal character and the intentional content of perceptual states are impermeable to states of their subjects’ cognitive systems. This means that no change in the content of the latter states alters either feature of the former states. Now, perception of ambiguous figures is held to be a prima facie counterexample to (TCI), for what one takes to be the picture a picture of influences what experience she has when facing the picture, hence it induces two different (picture) perceptions. A defender of (TCI) may well reply that in the Gestalt switch involving ambiguous figures there is indeed a phenomenological change, yet this change is only indirectly driven by the states of the cognitive system involved. For, first, those states rather induce a shift in attention, and second, this shift of attention is responsible for the phenomenological switch. Yet let us consider first the fact that in perception of ambiguous figures attention works differently than in the ordinary perceptual cases in which there is no real cognitive penetration; namely, as an active focusing on the very same elements of the figure to be alternatively grasped rather than as a focusing on a different part of the scene one was previously facing. Moreover, let us take into account the fact that picture perception of ambiguous figures is just a borderline case of ordinary picture perception, for picture perceptions both of ambiguous figures and of ‘normal’ figures are characterized by the lighting up of aspects (different aspects in the former case, just one aspect in the latter case). Then, the above reply may be appropriately circumvented. Insofar as in picture perception attention performs a grouping job of the very same elements of the figure one is facing and such an attentive job may suit a conceptual research, concepts mobilized by the states of the cognitive system involved may well help attention to perform such a job by conceptually informing the picture perception a subject entertains.
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Notes
- 1.
In point of fact, I will focus here merely on visual perception, although the phenomena I will deal with may be found also in other sensory modalities, at least as far as picture perception also occurs in such modalities (cf. e.g. auditory picture perception or tactile picture perception). This is clearly enough for my purposes, for visual cases of cognitive penetrability are sufficient to undermine (TCI) in its generality.
- 2.
As intentionalists or representationalists claim, the phenomenal character of a perceptual state amounts to, or at least supervenes on, the intentional content of that state. I think this claim is wrong, yet for the purposes of this chapter I will remain neutral on it. Cf. my Voltolini (2013).
- 3.
Wollheim (1980 2, p. 220) holds that a way of describing things that appeals to pictures as figuring in the content of what a certain subject sees the relevant figure as is better than merely saying that the subject sees the figure either as a duck or as a rabbit. Yet the best description of the situation at stake would be to say that that subject sees the figure either as a duck or a rabbit in virtue of literally seeing the figure itself. For this is what seeing a duck or a rabbit in that figure really amounts to (for this account of the whole twofold experience of seeing-in (on which, see soon later in the text), cf. Levinson (1998) and my Voltolini (2012b), where I also apply it to the case of ambiguous figures). Once the subject further interprets the figure either as a picture of a duck or as a picture of a rabbit, then the description in question, namely that such a subject sees the figure either as a picture of a duck or as a picture of a rabbit, becomes fully legitimate. On this cf. again Voltolini (2012b).
- 4.
As Macpherson (2006) forcefully claims.
- 5.
For this way of putting the reply, cf. Macpherson (2012).
- 6.
Cf. Pylyshyn (2003, pp. 62–63, 80–82, 86). According to Raftopoulos (2009, 2011) this is the job typically performed by spatial attention, i.e. attention focusing on certain locations. Theoretically speaking, another explanation is open to Pylyshyn, namely to claim, as he also says (cf. 2003, p. 64), that cognitively induced attention here operates at a post-perceptual stage, namely after the perceptual module does its job of picking up perceptually available objects nonconceptually. Still in Raftopoulos’ (2009) account, object-centred attention works, by allowing the proto-objects early vision grasps to be apprehended as proper objects. At first blush, this is what Pylyshyn should maintain, since he holds that a conceptually penetrable perception amounts precisely to seeing-as perception (cf. 2003, pp. 51–52). Yet this explanation cannot be legitimately invoked here. For, as we will immediately see, in Gestalt groupings attention clearly plays a genuinely perceptual role in arranging in a certain way the elements of a scene.
- 7.
As Nanay (2011, pp. 558–559) underlines, in order for attention to perform that job, once eye’s fixation on a certain point is given no further eye movement is required. For attention works holistically.
- 8.
Cf. Raftopoulos (2011, pp. 498–502). The attention at stake here is what in (2009) Raftopoulos labels spatial attention (see fn. 6). In (2009, chap. 2), Raftopoulos had already admitted a cognitive role to spatial attention while allowing to it not only a pre-perceptual job à la Pylyshyn, but also an interperceptual job. Yet, he had still said there, that cognitive role is merely indirect. For although such a kind of attention enhances certain stimuli and inhibits others, the percept it applies to remains the same. In (2011) he seems to allow attention a genuinely perceptual way of operating, yet this way remains not cognitively shaped.
- 9.
For, as Nanay (2011, p. 560) admits, in the case of a Gestalt switch at stake the scene’s salient elements remain the same.
- 10.
As Raftopoulos often claims (Cf. e.g. 2009, p. 296).
- 11.
For other examples of this situation, see the cases of visual puns labelled by R. Price ‘droodles’ that Pylyshyn himself quotes (cf. 2003, pp. 43–44).
- 12.
Here I agree with Raftopoulos (2011, pp. 506–507). Not accidentally, moreover, Pylyshyn also espouses Peterson’s et al. conclusion that, unlike realignments, reconstruals normally occur in mental imagery rather than in perception. For according to him in the imagery case there is no real image whose elements one can visually realign (Cf. 2003, pp. 347–349).
- 13.
According to Tye (1995, p. 140), the fact that a phenomenological change driven by certain concepts occurs in the relevant picture perception does not entail that such concepts enter into the content of that perception. This is questionable, for a subject is confronting herself with a generic picture, insofar as she sees some F or other in the figure. Yet independently of this, for the reasons just given in the text the fact that one such change is conceptually driven is enough for ruling out (TCI).
- 14.
For other examples of merely two-dimensional switches, such as seeing a figure either as a square or a as a regular diamond, cf. e.g. Peacocke (1983, pp. 24–25), Macpherson (2006, pp. 87–90). To be sure, it may well be that even such groupings involve phenomenally relevant switches that are induced by merely geometrical concepts.
- 15.
To be sure, a defender of the cognitive penetrability of picture perception may still retort that even in such cases concepts are hardly avoidable in order for the perceiver to perform a phenomenological switch. As Wittgenstein puts it: I suddenly see the solution of a puzzle-picture. Where there were previously branches, now there is a human figure. [my italics]. My visual impression has changed, and now I recognize that it has not only shape and colour, but also a quite particular “organization” (Wittgenstein 2009 4, II xi, § 131).
- 16.
The former case is sometimes described as if it were a pre-attentive, automatic way of performing grouping operations, for instance as regards many cases of figure-ground segmentation, in which a subject groups elements of a perceived scene in a foreground/background order (cf. Wolfe et al. 2002). But it would be better to allow that such operations, if there are any, involve attention without awareness. For the possibility of unaware attention cf. Lamme (2003).
- 17.
Incidentally, note that I am focusing here on the issue of cognitive penetrability of picture perception. For, as I already remarked (cf. fn. 13), if I focused directly on the issue of whether picture perception has a conceptual content, it would be hard to escape a positive conclusion on that matter. In all the above cases, the twofold ‘seeing-in’ experience that features a picture perception is a generic one: in virtue of literally seeing certain patches of colour, one nonliterally sees not a particular object (say, my favourite dalmatian Pongo), but an object of some kind or other, an object falling under such kind. How can we thus avoid the conclusion that the content of a picture perception is concept-involving?
- 18.
This is precisely what Pylyshyn would consider a post-perceptual operation of attention. cf. fn. 6.
- 19.
Along with many others, Nanay (2011, p. 560) holds that attention here may well be involuntary. If this amounts to saying that i) voluntary attention is endogenous attention and involuntary attention is exogenous attention and ii) the endogenous/exogenous distinction is meant as I did before (i.e. not as a distinction between an indirect and a direct way for attention to be mobilized but as a distinction between different forms for helping attention to perform the same grouping job), I utterly agree with him.
- 20.
See also Walton: ‘the problem of the nature of depiction is, at bottom, the problem of the nature of the relevant variety of seeing-as’ (1990, p. 300).
- 21.
This is what Hermerén (1969, pp. 4–8) labels as-if seeing-as.
- 22.
I have defended both claims in Voltolini (2012a).
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Acknowledgments
A preliminary version of this chapter has been presented to the 2010 Conference of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Universities of Bochum and Essen, August 25–28, 2010. I thank all the participants for their very stimulating questions. Let me also thank Diego Marconi and Alfredo Paternoster for their important comments.
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Voltolini, A. (2014). How Picture Perception Defies Cognitive Impenetrability. In: Reboul, A. (eds) Mind, Values, and Metaphysics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05146-8_15
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