I defend the thesis that most or all perceptual experiences are infused with imaginative contributions. While the idea is not new, it has few supporters. I begin by developing a framework for the underlying debate. Central to that framework is the claim that a perceptual experience is infused with imagination if and only if there are self-generated contributions to that experience that have ampliative effect on its phenomenal and directed elements. Self-generated ingredients to experience are produced by the subject as (...) opposed to being received from the world. Some form of stored content is an obvious starting point. Ampliative effects are aspects of perceptual experience that outstrip the content the senses get from the world. This conceptual framework is applied to three case studies: object-sameness and object-kind recognition (section 2), memory colour (section 3), and perceptual constancy and amodal completion (section 4). If the three cases and my overall analysis are accepted (a substantive if), then we have a forceful inductive argument for perception being infused with imagination. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. Why has the examination of many different aspects of colour been a prominent feature in philosophy, to such an extent that the topic is worthy of a handbook? Here are two related answers. First, colours are exceedingly familiar, seemingly simple features that become enigmatic under scrutiny, and they are difficult to capture in any familiar-sounding, unsophisticated theory. Second, through colour one can confront various problems that span the (...) breadth of philosophy, including problems pertaining to perception, the mind-body relation, the nature of science, scepticism, vagueness, meta-ethics, and aesthetics. In this introduction we elaborate and guide the reader to the essays in the rest of this volume. (shrink)

At first pass, colour constancy occurs when one sees a thing in one’s environment to have a stable colour despite differences in the way it is illuminated. The phenomenon is intuitively grounded for example in everyday experiences in which something is partly shadowed but, in some sense, looks to be uniformly coloured. After a brief introduction to the colour constancy concept (§0) and the science of colour constancy (§1), my focus is on the significance of colour constancy for two intertwined (...) philosophical issues. The first is colour ontology, where constancy has been used to argue for the objectivity of colour, and in particular for a reductive form of it (see §2). The second is colour constancy’s complicated connection to colour experience and colour epistemology. Colour constancy is a subtle phenomenon: it is situated at the intersection of perceptual experience and judgement; it is influenced by myriad forces within our visual-cognitive systems; and is likely a composite of interestingly disparate phenomena. I approach this suite of issues from the perspective of the given in colour perception (§3). As will become plain, the ontological and epistemic issues are related in important ways. This does not, however, detract from the value of focusing on each individually. (shrink)

From David Hume's famous puzzle about 'the missing shade of blue' to current research into the science of colour, the topic of colour is an incredibly fertile region of study and debate, cutting across philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics and aesthetics as well as psychology. Debates about the nature of our experience of colour and the nature of colour itself are central to contemporary discussion and argument in philosophy of mind and psychology, and philosophy of perception. This outstanding Handbook contains (...) twenty-nine specially commissioned contributions by leading philosophers and examines the most important aspects of philosophy of colour. It is organised into six parts: The Importance of Colour to Philosophy The Science and Spaces of Colour Colour Phenomena Colour Ontology Colour Experience and Epistemology Language, Categories and Thought. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, epistemology, metaphysics and aesthetics, as well as for those interested in conceptual issues in the psychology of colour. (shrink)

Loosely put, colour constancy for example occurs when you experience a partly shadowed wall to be uniformly coloured, or experience your favourite shirt to be the same colour both with and without sunglasses on. Controversy ensues when one seeks to interpret ‘experience’ in these contexts, for evidence of a constant colour may be indicative a constant colour in the objective world, a judgement that a constant colour would be present were things thus and so, et cetera. My primary aim is (...) to articulate a viable conception of Present Constancy, of what occurs when a constant colour is present in experience, despite the additional presence of some experienced colour variation (e.g., correlating to a change in illumination). My proposed conception involves experienced colour layering – experiencing one opaque colour through another transparent one – and in particular requires one of those experienced layers to remain constant while the other changes. The aim is not to propose this layering conception of colour constancy as the correct interpretation of all constancy cases, but rather to develop the conception enough to demonstrate how it could and plausibly should be applied to various cases, and the virtues it has over rivals. Its virtues include a seamless application to constancy cases involving variations in filters (e.g., sunglasses) and illuminants; its ability to accommodate experiences of partial colours and error-free interpretations of difficult cases; and its broad theoretical-neutrality, allowing it to be incorporated into numerous perceptual epistemologies and ontologies. If layered constancy is prevalent, as I suspect it is, then our experiential access to colours is critically nuanced: we have been plunged into a world of colour without being told that we will rarely, if ever, look to a location and experience just one of them. (shrink)

A dual referent approach to colour theory maintains that colour names have two intended, equally legitimate referents. For example, one might argue that ‘red’ refers both to red appearances or qualia, and also to the way red objects reflect light, the spectral surface reflectance properties of red things. I argue that normal cases of perceptual relativity can be used to support a dual referent approach, yielding an understanding of colour whose natural extension includes abnormal cases of perceptual relativity. This contrasts (...) with Peacocke’s multi-referent view, according to which such abnormal cases force us to introduce a wholly distinct kind of colour experience. I also argue that the two uses of colour names, arising from their two referents, have different extensions, even in normal perceptual circumstances, a consequence which conflicts with the heart of Rosenthal’s dual referent view. (shrink)

Colour Relationalism asserts that colours are non-intrinsic or inherently relational properties of objects, properties that depend not only on a target object but in addition on some relation that object bears to other objects. The most powerful argument for Relationalism infers the inherently relational character of colour from cases in which one’s experience of a colour contextually depends on one’s experience of other colours. Experienced colour layering—say looking at grass through a tinted window and experiencing opaque green through transparent grey—demands (...) a contextual interdependency of one’s experience of one of these colours on one’s experience of the other. However, most if not all colour ontologies, and core perceptual experiential mechanisms like acquaintance and representation, can accommodate colour layering. It follows that experienced colour layering is consistent with colours being non-relational—this contextual interdependency of colours does not entail the constitutive dependency of one colour on the other. I utilize colour layering to examine the inference from the contextual to the constitutive interdependency of colours as it is employed in a well-known argument for Relationalism. I conclude that our justification for Relationalism is far weaker than Relationalists suggest. I first introduce readers to colour layering, then to Relationalism, and following this focus on the intersection of these topics. (shrink)

Projectivism is the thesis that we project at least some subjective aspects of perception into what we experience as the world outside ourselves. It is familiar from various phantom pains, afterimages, and hallucinations. Strong Projectivism asserts that all perceptual experiences involve and only involve direct awareness of projected elements. Strong Projectivism is an unpopular and I argue underappreciated variety of intentionalism (or representationalism). It straightforwardly explains the transparency of experience (section 2) and phenomena qualia theorists offer to avoid intentionalism such (...) as blurry vision and spectrum inversion (section 3). Finally, projectivism illuminates residual qualia-friendly cases involving imagination and emotion (section 4). Ultimately, instances of non-projected, non-intentional aspects of experience are hard to identify. Thus, the notion of phenomenal presence drawn from projectivism does justice to a great many of the forces at play in debates surrounding qualia and intentionalism. We should bound toward Strong Projectivism. (shrink)

© The Authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Colour is a welcome work in history and philosophy of science.1 The opening chapters offer a fresh take on the history of perceptual theory and a broad overview of contemporary philosophy of colour. This is followed by the central fourth chapter, which introduces readers to a cluster of empirical data that to this point have not received explicit (...) treatment in philosophy. The core message is that instead of thinking of colour vision as filling in or painting the experienced world of primary qualities, we should think of colour vision as helping us to experience primary qualities. The colour visual system does not colour in an experiential world of primary qualities, it uses colour for the experience of those qualities. This colouring... (shrink)

Intentionalism debates seek to uncover the relationship between the qualitative aspects of experience—phenomenal character—and the intentionality of the mind. They have been at or near center stage in the philosophy of mind for more than two decades, and in my view need to be reexamined. There are two core distinct intentionalism debates that are rarely distinguished (Sect. 1). Additionally, the characterization of spectrum inversion as involving inverted qualities and constant intentional content is mistaken (Sect. 3). These confusions can be witnessed (...) from an often-ignored and lonely perspective, that of the sense-datum theorist, and in particular of the projectivist (Sect. 2). In my view we have been so wary of sense-datum theory in recent years that we have failed to see that, even if false, it may permit perspectives on intentionalism issues difficult to occupy from other views. (shrink)

The claim that perceptual illusions can motivate the existence of sense-data is both familiar and controversial. My aim is to carve out a subclass of illusions that are up to the task, and a subclass that are not. It follows that when we engage the former we are not simply incorrectly perceiving the world outside ourselves, we are directly perceiving a subjective entity: one’s grip on the external world has been marginalized – not fully lost, but once-removed. However, admitting that (...) various illusions do not give evi¬dence for sense-data considerably limits the power of the argument from illusion (Section 6) and brings out its distinctness from the argument from perceptual relativity (Section 7). To reach these conclusions we will examine the role of ambiguity in perception (Section 3), its connection to illusion (Section 4), and the link reference has to every element of this dis¬course (Sections 2 and 5). (shrink)

Studying colour vision across various species suggests that different species perceive different colours (the Disunity Hypothesis). It is plausible that all species’ color visual systems are, at least in principle, equally correct/veridical regarding colour (Ecumenicism). Assuming that colours are mind-independent features of material objects (Objectivism), it follows that objects simultaneously have different colours for different species (Pluralism). But are all these colours compatible with one another? Some have argued that they are on grounds that, while comparisons between colours are possible (...) within a given species’ colour space, they are not possible across the colour spaces of different species. Since colours from different spaces are not comparable, they cannot be incompatible. Hence, a given object can have a colour from as many colour spaces as needed to explain interspecies variations in colour perception. I argue that this reasoning is flawed in two ways. First, colour spaces that are non-comparable in pure or abstract reasoning, may nonetheless be comparable in applied contexts. Second, in our applied context – our world – evidence suggests that incompatibilities between colours from different species’ spaces are extremely likely when Colour Objectivism is presumed. But then the Pluralist solution to interspecies variation seems unavailable to the colour objectivist. (shrink)

Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) are most familiar from their use with subjects who are deficient in a target modality (e.g. congenitally blind subjects), but there is no doubt that the use and potential value of SSDs extend to persons without such deficits. Recent work by Amedi and his team (in particular Levy-Tzedek et al. 2012) has begun to explore this. Their idea is that SSDs may facilitate behavioural transference (BT) across sense modalities. In this case, a motor skill learned through (...) visual perception might be subsequently employed in response to auditory perception, using an SSD as a mediator. They infer from the existence of such BT that the learned skill is amodally represented. After a brief overview I identify ways to more fully test for BT within this experimental paradigm and argue that their conclusion about amodal representation is premature. Additionally, I argue that their preferred SSD (Eyemusic) is of limited value for the project. While my remarks are critical, my intention is to be constructive, particularly in light of the fact that Levy-Tzedek et al. (2012), is, I believe, the first output from Amedi's lab concerning this line of research. (shrink)

This is a review of Athanassios Raftopoulos "Cognition and perception: How do psychology and neuroscience inform philosophy?" (MIT Press, 2009). Raftopoulos defends the modularity of vision, i.e. early vision not penetrable by other processes. He maintains that early vision forms and outputs a kind of nonconceptual content to subsequent stages of vision and cognition. The work is heavily informed by visual neuroscience and embedded in familiar debates about scientific realism. It is also an important contribution to the now-popular debates about (...) the cognitive penetration of perception. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

In the past two decades, reinforcement learning has become a popular framework for understanding brain function. A key component of RL models, prediction error, has been associated with neural signals throughout the brain, including subcortical nuclei, primary sensory cortices, and prefrontal cortex. Depending on the location in which activity is observed, the functional interpretation of prediction error may change: Prediction errors may reflect a discrepancy in the anticipated and actual value of reward, a signal indicating the salience or novelty of (...) a stimulus, and many other interpretations. Anterior cingulate cortex has long been recognized as a region involved in processing behavioral error, and recent computational models of the region have expanded this interpretation to include a more general role for the region in predicting likely events, broadly construed, and signaling deviations between expected and observed events. Ongoing modeling work investigating the interaction between ACC and additional regions involved in cognitive control suggests an even broader role for cingulate in computing a hierarchically structured surprise signal critical for learning models of the environment. The result is a predictive coding model of the frontal lobes, suggesting that predictive coding may be a unifying computational principle across the neocortex. (shrink)

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been the subject of intense interest as a locus of cognitive control. Several computational models have been proposed to account for a range of effects, including error detection, conflict monitoring, error likelihood prediction, and numerous other effects observed with single-unit neurophysiology, fMRI, and lesion studies. Here, we review the state of computational models of cognitive control and offer a new theoretical synthesis of the mPFC as signaling response–outcome predictions. This new synthesis has two interacting (...) components. The first component learns to predict the various possible outcomes of a planned action, and the second component detects discrepancies between the actual and intended responses; the detected discrepancies in turn update the outcome predictions. This single construct is consistent with a wide array of performance monitoring effects in mPFC and suggests a unifying account of the cognitive role of medial PFC in performance monitoring. (shrink)

This paper reports a psychological study of human categorization that looked at the procedures used by expert scientists when dealing with puzzling items. Five professional botanists were asked to specify a category from a set of positive and negative instances. The target category in the study was defined by a feature that was unusual, hence situations of uncertainty and puzzlement were generated. Subjects were asked to think aloud while solving the tasks, and their verbal reports were analyzed. A number of (...) problem solving strategies were identified, and subsequently integrated in a model of knowledge‐guided inductive categorization. Our model proposes that expert knowledge influences the subjects' reasoning in more complex ways than suggested by earlier investigations of scientific reasoning. As in previous studies, domain knowledge influenced our subjects' hypothesis generation and testing; but, additionally, it played a central role when subjects revised their hypotheses. (shrink)

Is consolidation needed to account for retroactive interference in free recall? Interfering mental activity during the retention interval of a memory task impairs performance, in particular if the interference occurs in temporal proximity to the encoding of the to-be-remembered information. There are at least two rival theoretical accounts of this temporal gradient of retroactive interference. The cognitive neuroscience literature has suggested neural consolidation is a pivotal factor determining item recall. According to this account, interfering activity interrupts consolidation processes that would (...) otherwise stabilize the memory representations of TBR items post-encoding. Temporal distinctiveness theory, by contrast, proposes that the retrievability of items depends on their isolation in psychological time. According to this theory, information processed after the encoding of TBR material will reduce the temporal distinctiveness of the TBR information. To test between these accounts, implementations of consolidation were added to the SIMPLE model of memory and learning. We report data from two experiments utilizing a two-list free recall paradigm. Modeling results imply that SIMPLE was able to model the data and did not benefit from the addition of consolidation. It is concluded that the temporal gradient of retroactive interference cannot be taken as evidence for memory consolidation. (shrink)

Science fiction is often held up as a particularly philosophical genre. For, beyond actualising mind-experiment-like fantasies, science fiction films also commonly toy with speculative ideas, or else engineer encounters with the strange and unknown. Denis Villeneuve's Arrival is a contemporary science fiction film that does exactly this, by introducing Lovecraft-esque tentacular aliens whose arrival on Earth heralds in a novel, but ultimately paralysing, inhuman perspective on the nature of time and reality. This article shows how this cerebral film invites viewers (...) to confront a counterintuitive model of time that at once recalls and reposes what Gilles Deleuze called a “third synthesis” of time, and that which J. M. E. McTaggart named the a-temporal “C series” of “unreal” time. We finally suggest that Arrival's a-temporal conception of the future as having already happened can function as a key to understanding the fate of humanity as a whole as we pass from the anthropocene, in which humans have... (shrink)

A cut or crush injury to a peripheral nerve results in the degeneration of that portion of the axon isolated from the cell body. The rapid degeneration of this distal segment was for many years believed to be a process intrinsic to the nerve. It was believed that Schwann cells both phagocytosed degenerating axons and myelin sheaths and also provided growth factors to promote regeneration of the damaged axons. In recent years, it has become apparent that the degenerating distal segment (...) is invaded by monocytes from the blood. We will review the evidence that these recruited macrophages play a role in both degeneration and regeneration of peripheral nerve axons after injury and consider whether the slow degeneration and poor monocyte recruitment in the central nervous system may contribute to the poor regeneration there. (shrink)

Before the development of the nuclear shell model estimates of the strength of the nuclear spin-orbit interaction varied widely. Wheeler was the first to conclude that the nuclear spin-orbit interaction produces splittings of several MeV. This conclusion appeared, however, to be inconsistent with some experimental results that later turned out to be faulty.

In timing perception studies, the timing of one event is usually manipulated relative to another, and participants are asked to judge if the two events were synchronous, or to judge which of the two events occurred first. Responses are analyzed to determine a measure of central tendency, which is taken as an estimate of the timing at which the two events are perceptually synchronous. When these estimates do not coincide with physical synchrony, it is often assumed that the sensory signals (...) are asynchronous, as though the transfer of information concerning one input has been accelerated or decelerated relative to the other. Here we show that, while this is a viable interpretation, it is equally plausible that such effects are driven by shifts in the criteria used to differentiate simultaneous from asynchronous inputs. Our analyses expose important ambiguities concerning the interpretation of simultaneity judgement data, which have hitherto been underappreciated. (shrink)

Taking a schizoanalytic approach to audio-visual images, this article explores some of the radical potentia for deterritorialisation found within David Fincher's Fight Club (1999). The film's potential for deterritorialisation is initially located in an exploration of the film's form and content, which appear designed to interrogate and transcend a series of false binaries between mind and body, inside and outside, male and female. Paying attention to the construction of photorealistic digital spaces and composited images, we examine the actual (and possible) (...) ways viewers relate to the film, both during and after screenings. Recognising the film as an affective force performing within our world, we also investigate some of the real-world effects the film catalysed. Finally, we propose that schizoanalysis, when applied to a Hollywood film, suggests that Deleuze underestimated the deterritorialising potential of contemporary, special effects-driven cinema. If schizoanalysis has thus been reterritorialised by mainstream products, we argue that new, ‘post-Deleuzian’ lines of flight are required to disrupt this ‘de-re-territorialisation’. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson and Philosophy: Essays on the Philosophical Cast of Jefferson’s Writings is a collection of essays on topics that relate to philosophical aspects of Jefferson’s thinking over the years. Much historical insight is given to ground the various philosophical strands in Jefferson’s thought and writing on topics such as political philosophy, moral philosophy, slavery, republicanism, wall of separation, liberty, educational philosophy, and architecture.