scholarly journals Impenetrability of visual perception: Implications for aesthetic analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-18
Author(s):  
Vladimir Konecni

Several very recent examples are critically discussed of philosophical aestheticians using psychological data allegedly showing the cognitive penetration of visual perception in order to build arguments on major issues in aesthetics: How art expertise functions (Stokes, 2014); the (in)validity of an important aspect of Arthur Danto?s theory that is based on his ?gallery of indiscernibles? (Nanay, 2015); and the claim of ?automatic? emotional impact of paintings (Bullot & Reber, 2013). The present critique of these aestheticians? theoretical endeavors is based largely on the recent analysis by Firestone and Scholl (2016) - sweeping, but most likely justified - to the effect that visual perception is encapsulated and that cognition does not affect visual perception. Additional theoretical and empirical support for the critique is derived from a nonemotivist theory of the effect of paintings (Konecni, 2015a).

2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Christian Lotz

Against a stream of culturally oriented scholars some scholars in aesthetics, such as Arthur Danto and Noel Carroll, have maintained that there is a sense of “seeing” and visual recognition that does not depend upon historical and cultural practices. This essay shows that Danto’s assumption of a difference between a “core” and an “extended” form of perception and visual recognition should be rejected. The underlying argument of my considerations in this essay is the following: the distinction between a “pure” and an “extended” perception or visual perception is untenable, since, as a phenomenological reflection can reveal, our normal mode of perception is always extended. In this vein, it is argued here that there is, after all, only one mode of perception and that Danto’s position is based on abstractions from the real phenomenon. Consequently, whereas Danto maintains that it makes sense to talk about a “natural” form of seeing, this essay argues that “seeing” is itself a culturally defined way of comportment, and that assumptions about naturalistically defined perceptual core processes turn out to be idealized constructions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 111-133
Author(s):  
Amalia Rodríguez-Somolinos

Abstract This article studies the evolution, from Medieval to Modern French, of three evidential markers that are semantically related from a diachronic perspective: il m’est avis que ‘I think that’, ‘it seems to me that’, apparemment ‘apparently’, and il paraît que ‘it seems that, apparently’. This study demonstrates the rise of the modal and evidential uses of the markers in question, from the Medieval period onwards, and provides a semantic characterization of these three epistemic-evidential markers in order to precisely grasp the evolution of their meaning. Using information from a number of databases, this article provides empirical support for the study of the different types of evidentiality, their evolution, and their interaction with the epistemic commitment of the speaker and the degree of certainty. The three markers have evolved towards greater subjectivity and a lower degree of certainty. Their historical semantic description shows that a marker may shift diachronically between various types of evidence.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ömer Dağlar Tanrıkulu ◽  
Andrey Chetverikov ◽  
Sabrina Hansmann-Roth ◽  
Arni Kristjansson

Recent accounts of perception and cognition propose that the brain represents informationprobabilistically. While this assumption is common, empirical support for such probabilistic representations in perception has recently been criticized (Rahnev, 2017; Block, 2018). Here, we evaluate such recent criticisms and argue that a recently proposed psychophysical methodology, Feature Distribution Learning (FDL), provides promising evidence for probabilistic representations by sidestepping these criticisms. More importantly, FDL studies allow us to demonstrate what kind of empirical evidence would be needed to support probabilistic representations as posited by the current probabilistic Bayesian theories of perception.


Author(s):  
Michael Madary

The main argument of the book is as follows: (1) The descriptive premise: The phenomenology of vision is best described as an ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment. (2) The empirical premise: There are strong empirical reasons to model vision using the general form of anticipation and fulfillment. (AF) Conclusion: Visual perception is an ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment. The book consists of three parts and an appendix. The first part of the book makes the case for premise (1) based on descriptive claims about the nature of first-person experience. The initial support for (1) in Chapter 2 is based on the fact that visual experience has the general features of being perspectival, temporal, and indeterminate. Chapter 3 includes an argument for (1) based on the possibility of surprise when appearances do not change as we expect, and Chapter 4 contains a discussion of the content of visual anticipations. The second part of the book focuses on empirical support. Chapter 5 covers a range of evidence from perceptual psychology that motivates premise (2). Chapter 6 turns to evidence from neuroscience, including recent work in predictive coding. The seventh chapter shows how evidence for the two-visual systems hypothesis can be re-interpreted in support of (2). The third part of the book turns to general methodological questions (Chapter 8) and the relationship between visual perception and social cognition (Chapter 9). The appendix addresses the ways in which Husserlian phenomenology relates to the main theme of the book.


1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zenon Pylyshyn

Although the study of visual perception has made more progress in the past 40 years than any other area of cognitive science, there remain major disagreements as to how closely vision is tied to cognition. This target article sets out some of the arguments for both sides (arguments from computer vision, neuroscience, psychophysics, perceptual learning, and other areas of vision science) and defends the position that an important part of visual perception, corresponding to what some people have called early vision, is prohibited from accessing relevant expectations, knowledge, and utilities in determining the function it computes – in other words, it is cognitively impenetrable. That part of vision is complex and involves top-down interactions that are internal to the early vision system. Its function is to provide a structured representation of the 3-D surfaces of objects sufficient to serve as an index into memory, with somewhat different outputs being made available to other systems such as those dealing with motor control. The paper also addresses certain conceptual and methodological issues raised by this claim, such as whether signal detection theory and event-related potentials can be used to assess cognitive penetration of vision.A distinction is made among several stages in visual processing, including, in addition to the inflexible early-vision stage, a pre-perceptual attention-allocation stage and a post-perceptual evaluation, selection, and inference stage, which accesses long-term memory. These two stages provide the primary ways in which cognition can affect the outcome of visual perception. The paper discusses arguments from computer vision and psychology showing that vision is “intelligent” and involves elements of “problem solving.” The cases of apparently intelligent interpretation sometimes cited in support of this claim do not show cognitive penetration; rather, they show that certain natural constraints on interpretation, concerned primarily with optical and geometrical properties of the world, have been compiled into the visual system. The paper also examines a number of examples where instructions and “hints” are alleged to affect what is seen. In each case it is concluded that the evidence is more readily assimilated to the view that when cognitive effects are found, they have a locus outside early vision, in such processes as the allocation of focal attention and the identification of the stimulus.


Author(s):  
Nidhi Mahendra

This article details the experience of two South Asian individuals with family members who had communication disorders. I provide information on intrinsic and extrinsic barriers reported by these clients in responses to a survey and during individual ethnographic interviews. These data are part of a larger study and provide empirical support of cultural and linguistic barriers that may impede timely access to and utilization of speech-language pathology (SLP) services. The purpose of this article is to shed light on barriers and facilitators that influence South Asian clients' access to SLP services. I provide and briefly analyze two case vignettes to provide readers a phenomenological perspective on client experiences. Data about barriers limiting access to SLP services were obtained via client surveys and individual interviews. These two clients' data were extracted from a larger study (Mahendra, Scullion, Hamerschlag, Cooper, & La, 2011) in which 52 racially/ethnically diverse clients participated. Survey items and interview questions were designed to elicit information about client experiences when accessing SLP services. Results reveal specific intrinsic and extrinsic barriers that affected two South Asian clients' access to SLP services and have important implications for all providers.


Author(s):  
Marta Macchi ◽  
Livia Nicoletta Rossi ◽  
Ivan Cortinovis ◽  
Lucia Menegazzo ◽  
Sandra Maria Burri ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-347
Author(s):  
Eleni Georganta ◽  
Felix C. Brodbeck

Abstract. As a response to the lack of quantitative and reliable measures of the team adaptation process, the aim of the present study was to develop and validate an instrument for assessing the four phases of the team adaptation process as described by Rosen and colleagues (2011) . Two trained raters and two subject matter expert groups contributed to the development of four behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS) that span across the spectrum of team processes involved in each team adaptation phase. To validate the four BARS, two different trained raters assessed independently the team adaptation phases of 66 four-person teams. The validation study provided empirical support for the BARS’ psychometric adequacy. The BARS measures overcame the common middle anchor problem, showed sensitivity in differentiating between teams and between the four phases, showed evidence for acceptable reliability, construct, and criterion validity, and supported the theoretical team adaptation process assumptions. The study contributes to research and praxis by enabling the direct assessment of the overall team adaptation process, thereby facilitating our understanding of this complex phenomenon. This allows the identification of behavioral strengths and weaknesses for targeted team development and comprehensive team adaptation studies.


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