Gestalt Theory

What is the epistemic significance of taking a veridical perceptual experience at face value? To first approximations, the Minimal View says that it is true belief, and the Maximal View says that it is knowledge. I sympathetically explore the prospects of the Maximal View.

The ability to perceive the shapes of things as enduring through changes in how they stimulate our sense organs is vital to our sense of stability in the world. But what sort of capacity is shape constancy, and how is it reflected in perceptual experience? This paper defends a pluralist account of shape constancy: There are multiple kinds of shape constancy centered on geometrical properties at various levels of abstraction, and properties at these various levels feature in the content of (...) perceptual experience, governing patterns of apparent shape similarity. I propose that the varieties of shape constancy are subserved by the syntactic complexity of perceptual shape representations. By assigning discrete constituents to various abstract shape parameters, these representations attune us to the preservation of certain abstract shape properties through changes in more determinate shape properties. Finally, I draw broader lessons concerning the nature and function of perceptual constancy. (shrink)

One of the dominant behavioral markers of visual-expert search strategy, Holistic Visual Processing (HVP), suggests that experts process information from a larger region of space in conjunction with a more focused gaze pattern in order to improve search speed and accuracy. To date, extant literature suggests that visual search expertise is domain specific, including HVP and its associated behaviors. The current study is the first to use eye tracking to directly measure the HVP strategies of two expert groups, radiologists and (...) architects, in comparison to one another and a novice control. In doing so, we replicated and extended this prior research: visual expertise is domain specific. However, our eye tracking data indicate that contrary to this prior work, HVP strategies are transferable across domains. Yet, despite the transfer of HVP strategies, there is neither reduced search time nor greater accuracy in visual search outside of an expert’s domain. Therefore, our data suggest that HVP behaviors are a particular form of visual search mechanism that, outside of an expert’s native search-ecology, are not necessarily conducive to more general visual search success. It is in addition to explicit knowledge of an expert’s domain, how to search, and where to search, that HVP strategies are their most effective for visual search success. (shrink)

Higher animals need to identify and track material objects because they depend on interactions with them for nutrition, reproduction, and social interaction. This paper investigates the perception of material objects. It argues, first, that material objects are tagged, in all five external senses, as bearers of the features detected by them. This happens through a perceptual process, here entitled Generalized Completion, which creates the appearance of objects that have properties that transcend the activation of sensory receptors. The paper shows, secondly, (...) that material objects are privileged subjects for perceived motion and interaction. That is, they are perceived as subjects for these properties while their parts seem to be subjects only derivatively. Material objects are the only perceptual subjects that are both multisensory and privileged. (shrink)

Summary Since at least the time of Helmholtz, the process of visual perception has been regarded as a two-stage affair consisting of an initial sensory stage corresponding to the proximal stimulus and a subsequent cognitive stage corresponding to the distal object. This construction amounts to an awkward mind body dualism wherein part of perception is done by the body and the other part is done by the mind. Gestalt theory rejected both raw sensations and their cognitive interpretation, offering a single (...) unified perceptual process that responds to an extended pattern of stimulation. They proposed organizational rules that describe how objects arise from the indifferent retinal mosaic. The same grouping principles by which objects are segmented also function to segregate regions of uniform illumination. Lightness values can then be computed by comparing luminance values within each such framework of illumination, with no need for the mystical concept of taking the illumination into account. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to an embodied-enactive account of mathematical cognition. I first identify the main points of interest in the current discussions of embodied higher cognition and explain how they relate to Merleau-Ponty and his sources, in particular Husserl’s late works. Subsequently, I explain these convergences in greater detail by more specifically discussing the domains of geometry and algebra and by clarifying the role of gestalt psychology in Merleau-Ponty’s account. Beyond that, I explain how, for Merleau-Ponty, (...) mathematical cognition requires not only the presence and actual manipulation of some concrete perceptible symbols but, more strongly, how it is fundamentally linked to the structural transformation of the concrete configurations of symbolic systems to which these symbols appertain. Furthemore, I fill a gap in the literature by explaining Merleau-Ponty’s claim that these structural transformations are operated through motor intentionality. This makes it possible, in turn, to contrast Merleau-Ponty’s approach to ontologically idealistic and realistic views on mathematical objects. On Merleau-Ponty’s account, mathematical objects are relational entities, that is, gestalts that necessarily imply situated cognizers to whom they afford a specific type of engagement in the world and on whom they depend in their eventual structural transformations. I argue that, by attributing a strongly constitutive role to phenomenal configurations and their motor transformation in mathematical thinking, Merleau-Ponty contributes to clarifying the worldly, historical, and socio-cultural aspects of mathematical truths without compromising what we perceive as their universality, certainty, and necessity. (shrink)

Summary The analysis of social and economic phenomena has a long Gestalt-theoretical tradition but is currently seen rather as a niche subject. In this article, recent important approaches are presented that explicitly or implicitly refer to Gestalt-theoretical considerations. The particular relevance of narratives is pointed out. In addition, further analytical challenges are discussed.

Summary In this paper, the author shares his thoughts about the precedents, process, and significance of a series of “digital montage” artworks that he originated during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, he talks about the indebtedness of these works to Gestalt theory, and particularly their use of what is sometimes known as “laws of seeing,” “unit-forming factors,” or inherent “grouping tendencies.”.

The paper is focused on the concept of perceptual relation according to experimental phenomenology, belonging to Gestaltist and ecological traditions. First of all, it will be shown the meaning of “relation” in the perceptual domain, including a specific definition of object and subject. For this purpose, the paper will present the difference with the representationalist perspective, which challenges immediate experience and the perception of unified objects. Secondly, the concept of “perceptual relation” will be compared to the idea of Gestalttheorie’s “intrinsic (...) relation”. It will be sustained that perceptual relations do not concern only connections between the parts and the whole of a configuration, but they extend to otherness, namely perceptual object, other subjects, and the Umwelt. For this purpose, the paper will provide some examples of ambiguity of the relation ground-figure, especially reversible and bistable figures. (shrink)

Time-evolving tactile sensations are important in communication between animals as well as humans. In recent years, this research area has been defined as “tactileology,” and various studies have been conducted. This study utilized the tactile Gestalt theory to investigate these sensations. Since humans recognize shapes with their visual sense and melodies with their auditory sense based on the Prägnanz principle in the Gestalt theory, this study assumed that a time-evolving texture sensation is induced by a tactile Gestalt. Therefore, the operation (...) of such a tactile Gestalt was investigated. Two psychophysical experiments were conducted to clarify the operation of a tactile Gestalt using a tactile illusion phenomenon called the velvet hand illusion. It was confirmed that the VHI is induced in a tactile Gestalt when the laws of closure and common fate are satisfied. Furthermore, it was clarified that the tactile Gestalt could be formulated using the proposed factors, which included the laws of elasticity and translation, and it had the same properties as a visual Gestalt. For example, the strongest Gestalt factor had the highest priority among multiple competing factors. (shrink)

Volume 33, Issue 3, April 2020, Page 469-473.

Victor Vasarely's (1906–1997) important legacy to the study of human perception is brought to the forefront and discussed. A large part of his impressive work conveys the appearance of striking three-dimensional shapes and structures in a large-scale pictorial plane. Current perception science explains such effects by invoking brain mechanisms for the processing of monocular (2D) depth cues. Here in this study, we illustrate and explain local effects of 2D color and contrast cues on the perceptual organization in terms of figure-ground (...) assignments, i.e. which local surfaces are likely to be seen as “nearer” or “bigger” in the image plane. Paired configurations are embedded in a larger, structurally ambivalent pictorial context inspired by some of Vasarely's creations. The figure-ground effects these configurations produce reveal a significant correlation between perceptual solutions for “nearer” and “bigger” when other geometric depth cues are missing. In consistency with previous findings on similar, albeit simpler visual displays, a specific color may compete with luminance contrast to resolve the planar ambiguity of a complex pattern context at a critical point in the hierarchical resolution of figure-ground uncertainty. The potential role of color temperature in this process is brought forward here. Vasarely intuitively understood and successfully exploited the subtle context effects accounted for in this paper, well before empirical investigation had set out to study and explain them in terms of information processing by the visual brain. (shrink)

Objects are central in visual, auditory, and tactual perception. But what counts as a perceptual object? I address this question via a structural unity schema, which specifies how a collection of parts must be arranged to compose an object for perception. On the theory I propose, perceptual objects are composed of parts that participate in causally sustained regularities. I argue that this theory falls out of a compelling account of the function of object perception, and illustrate its applications to multisensory (...) perception. I also argue that the account avoids problems faced by standard views of visual and auditory objects. (shrink)

In this article I connect two concepts that played central roles in the School of Meinong: the notion of impossible objects and that of Gestalt. Ehrenfels claims that Widerspruch or incompatibility would be a temporal Gestalt quality, specifically the trying and failing to build an intuitive presentation. Where, when, and how does this process break down exactly? Meinong’s Graz students developed a more detailed production theory for the presentation of Gestalten (Vorstellungsproduktion) which can help to determine how the failure to (...) produce one Gestalt can generate another, which moreover is typical of impossible objects. There are three contributions to Meinong’s 1904 volume Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie, the ones by Mally, Benussi, and Ameseder, that provide helpful analyses to clarify the incompatibility Gestalt. These suggest three options to refine the analysis of the Gestalt of impossible objects. The conclusion is that the failure of the Vorstellungsproduktion itself is not enough, the incompatibility relation between the foundations must also play a role. (shrink)

Independently of whether an object of experience becomes a candidate for being a part of the self or a part of the external world, it is always given to us as just an object of experience. The observer-observed relation can be seen as a type of relation with many instances, both between the self and different objects of experience and between any given object of experience and different selves. The self is situated in a spatial grid, where the latter can (...) be characterised as an array of relations, of which the relata include both observers and observed. The world, understood as independent existence, including the self, is empty. However, Paolo Bozzi’s method for identifying the self and delimiting its independent existence from the external world has taught us just the opposite lesson. Bozzi’s project is to teach us how to use them, and to recognise that they allow a self to be situated in a world of objects. (shrink)

Summary The present article is a partly ontological, partly Gestalt-psychological discussion of the thinkability of structures in which parts and whole are interdependent (MI). In the first section, I show that in the framework of E. Husserl’s formal part–whole ontology, the conceptualization of such an interdependence leads to (mereo)logical problems. The second section turns to and affirms the experience of this interplay between parts and whole, exemplified with B. Pinna’s recent research on meaningful Gestalt perception. In the final section, I (...) take the experienceability of MI as a justification to suggest a way of rethinking it. This entails an implementation of the process of foregrounding and backgrounding displayed by reversible figures and originally described by E. Rubin. This can avoid both an identity relation between parts and whole and their mutual exclusion as well as hierarchization due to their apparent differences. It would also guarantee the inherent dynamics of interdependence. (shrink)

Common sense takes the physical world to be populated by mind-independent particulars. Why and with what right do we hold this view? Early phenomenologists argue that the common sense view is our natural starting point because we experience objects as mind-independent. While it seems unsurprising that one can perceive an object being red or square, the claim that one can experience an object as mind-independent is controversial. In this paper I will articulate and defend the claim that we can experience (...) mind-independence by mainly drawing on the work of the Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker who, in turn, built on Husserl’s work. In the development of this claim the notion of a limit – either a maximum or minimum – of perception will play an important role. (shrink)

Common sense takes the physical world to be populated by mind-independent particulars. Why and with what right do we hold this view? Early phenomenologists argue that the common sense view is our natural starting point because we experience objects as mind-independent. While it seems unsurprising that one can perceive an object being red or square, the claim that one can experience an object as mind-independent is controversial. In this paper I will articulate and defend the claim that we can experience (...) mind-independence by mainly drawing on the work of the Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker who, in turn, built on Husserl’s work. In the development of this claim the notion of a limit – either a maximum or minimum – of perception will play an important role. (shrink)

Human beings have the ability to ‘augment’ reality by superimposing mental imagery on the visually perceived scene. For example, when deciding how to arrange furniture in a new home, one might project the image of an armchair into an empty corner or the image of a painting onto a wall. The experience of noticing a constellation in the sky at night is also perceptual-imaginative amalgam: it involves both seeing the stars in the constellation and imagining the lines that connect them (...) at the same time. I here refer to such hybrid experiences – involving both a bottom-up, externally generated component and a top-down, internally generated component – as make-perceive (Briscoe 2008, 2011). My discussion in this paper has two parts. In the first part, I show that make-perceive enables human beings to solve certain problems and pursue certain projects more effectively than bottom-up perceiving or top-down visualization alone. To this end, the skillful use of projected mental imagery is surveyed in a variety of contexts, including action planning, the interpretation of static mechanical diagrams, and non-instrumental navigation. In the second part, I address the question of whether make-perceive may help to account for the “phenomenal presence” of occluded or otherwise hidden features of perceived objects. I argue that phenomenal presence is not well explained by the hypothesis that hidden features are represented using projected mental images. In defending this position, I point to important phenomenological and functional differences between the way hidden object features are represented respectively in mental imagery and amodal completion. (shrink)

Vision is organized around material objects; they are most of what we see. But we also see beams of light, depictions, shadows, reflections, etc. These things look like material objects in many ways, but it is still visually obvious that they are not material objects. This chapter articulates some principles that allow us to understand how we see these ‘ephemera’. H.P. Grice’s definition of seeing is standard in many discussions; here I clarify and augment it with a criterion drawn from (...) Fred Dretske. This enables me to re-analyse certain ephemera that have received counter-intuitive treatments in the work of Kendall Walton (photographs), Brian O’Shaughnessy (light), and Roy Sorenson (occlusions). (shrink)

An interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity, investigating how experiential wholes can be characterized and how such characterizations can be analyzed computationally. How can we account for phenomenal unity? That is, how can we characterize and explain our experience of objects and groups of objects, bodily experiences, successions of events, and the attentional structure of consciousness as wholes? In this book, Wanja Wiese develops an interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity, investigating how experiential wholes can be characterized and how such characterization can (...) be analyzed conceptually as well as computationally. Wiese first addresses how the unity of consciousness can be characterized phenomenologically, discussing what it is like to experience wholes and what is the experiential contribution of phenomenal unity. Considering the associated conceptual and empirical issues, he draws connections to phenomenological accounts and research on Gestalt theory. The results show how the attentional structure of experience, the experience of temporal flow, and different types of experiential wholes contribute to our sense of phenomenal unity. Moreover, characterizing phenomenal unity in terms of the existence of a single global phenomenal state is neither necessary nor sufficient to adequately address the problem of phenomenal unity. Wiese then suggests that the concepts and ideas of predictive processing can be used to analyze phenomenal unity computationally. The result is both a conceptual framework and an interdisciplinary account: the regularity account of phenomenal unity. According to this account, experienced wholes correspond to a hierarchy of connecting regularities. The brain tracks these regularities by hierarchical prediction error minimization, which approximates hierarchical Bayesian inference. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s appropriation of Gestalt theory in The Structure of Behavior is central to his entire corpus. Yet commentators exhibit little agreement about what lesson is to be learned from his critique, and provide little exegesis of how his argument proceeds. I fill this exegetical gap. I show that the Gestaltist’s fundamental error is to reify forms as transcendent realities, rather than treating them as phenomena of perceptual consciousness. From this, reductivist errors follow. The essay serves not only as a helpful (...) guide through parts of The Structure of Behavior for newcomers, but also offers a corrective to recent trends in philosophy of mind. Such influential commentators as Hubert Dreyfus, Taylor Carmen, and Evan Thompson have, I argue, risked serious misunderstanding of Merleau-Ponty’s view, by mistakenly treating “circular causality” as central to Merleau-Ponty’s own acausal view of forms. -/- [The version archived at Philpapers is closer to the author's preferred format. Formatting requirements in the published version make the section/subsection hierarchy needlessly difficult to follow. There are some changes to content in the published version. Please cite only the published version.]. (shrink)

In seiner Kosmogonie bespricht Ehrenfels den Ursprung, die Entwicklung, und das endgültige Schicksal des Universums: die Gestalt der Welt. Einerseits ist sie ein Kosmos, ein Geschöpf des Ordnungsprinzips, andererseits ein Chaos, als Resultat des Prinzips des Zufalls und der Entropie. Diese beiden komplementären kosmischen Prinzipien generieren die Welt, welche nicht aus einem absichtlichen Willen, sondern einem blinden Gestalten hervorkommt. Nach Ehrenfels, nehmen wir Menschen Teil an dem Gestalten der Welt und so kommt allmählich in und durch uns das Ordnungsprinzip zum (...) Selbstbewusstsein. Nur so erhält das blinde Gestalten der Welt ein Ziel und eine Bedeutung. In seinen späteren Schriften zur Religion der Zukunft verdeutlicht Ehrenfels, dass alle Intellekte an dem göttlichen Intellekt mitpartizipieren, was er durch die Theorie der „Supraposition der Bewusstseinseinheiten“ erklärt. Wenn jede Zelle bereits eine Art „Bewusstsein“ hat, dann ist nicht nur jede einzelne meiner Gehirnzellen selbst bewusst, sondern sie konstituieren auch kollektiv mein einheitliches Gesamtbewusstsein als Mensch. Darüber hinaus konstituieren wir kollektiv ebenfalls „Persönlichkeiten höherer Ordnung“: so gestalten wir nicht nur die Welt, sondern auch ihren göttlichen Gestalter. (shrink)

A resolution must give “seeing it differently” a sense that makes it clear that it is seeing that one is doing differently and not something else that is going on at the same time. The Berlin school of gestalt psychology took the view that alongside the colors and shapes traditionally thought to compose the visual field was a similarly perceptible aspect of “organization”. Wittgenstein considers the possibility of a physiological explanation of aspect change. This chapter details the Wittgenstein's account that (...) it is worth making three general comments about what explaining a psychological concept involves, according to his later philosophy. It focuses on Wittgenstein's writings on sensory aspects and non-sensory aspects. Kant's proposal was that the intuition is of an a priori manifold; but perhaps what is more plausible is that the objects of synoptic vision are not themselves individuals but concepts. (shrink)

Pictures are 2D surfaces designed to elicit 3D-scene-representing experiences from their viewers. In this essay, I argue that philosophers have tended to underestimate the relevance of research in vision science to understanding the nature of pictorial experience. Both the deeply entrenched methodology of virtual psychophysics as well as empirical studies of pictorial space perception provide compelling support for the view that pictorial experience and seeing face-to-face are experiences of the same psychological, explanatory kind. I also show that an empirically informed (...) account of pictorial experience provides resources to develop a novel, resemblance-based account of depiction. According to what I call the deep resemblance theory, pictures work by presenting virtual models of objects and scenes in phenomenally 3D, pictorial space. (shrink)

Some philosophers have suggested that certain shifts in perceptual organization are counterexamples to representationalism about phenomenal character. Representationalism about phenomenal character is, roughly, the view that there can be no difference in the phenomenal character of experience without a difference in the representational content of experience. In this paper, I examine three of these alleged counterexamples: the dot array (Peacocke 1983), the intersecting lines (Speaks 2010), and the 3 X 3 grid (Nickel 2007). I identify the two features of their (...) phenomenology that call for explanation: grouping and prominence. I then argue that representationalists can adequately account for both of these features. I also critique some previous treatments of grouping and prominence. (shrink)

Most scholars understand para. 608 of Zettel to suggest that language and thought might arise from chaos at the neural centre. However, this contradicts Wittgenstein’s signature view that the philosopher must not advance theories. The paper proposes an alternative model of Z608 based on the Austrian Gestalt-movement that influenced Wittgenstein. Z608 does not suggest that language and thought might arise from chaos in the brain but that they may arise in a different non-causal sense from the “chaos” of activities in (...) forms of human life on analogy with the way a Gestalt-image “arises” from a “chaos” of perceptions. The concepts of chaos and the centre in Z608 are not neurophysiological concepts but refer to aspects of forms of human life. The Gestalt-interpretation also clarifies why Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is quite different from “ordinary language philosophy.” Finally, the Gestalt-interpretation clarifies why Wittgenstein is not, as is often believed, making an attack on legitimate empirical psychological investigations. (shrink)

Although it is beyond doubt that there were historical connections between Whitehead and some of the proponents of Gestalt psychology, it is difficult to determine on the available body of historical evidence whether they were substantive or just marginal. A detailed comparison of Whitehead's process metaphysics and the theories of Gestalt psychology is a task yet to be undertaken. Whitehead's process philosophy and Gestalt psychology share basic similarities in their major principles. This is substantiated by two of Ehrenfels'well-known gestalt qualities: (...) superadditivity, and figure-ground relation. Both approaches can profit from one another: while Whitehead's concept of consciousness and its interrelatedness with unconscious processes seems to be more elaborate, the Gestalt psychological approach, on the other hand, shows how these topics can be investigated by using experimental research designs. This is illustrated by an experiment on complex problem solving which demonstrates that unreportable hints can improve even such sophisticated processes as complex problem solving. Since this is what should be expected from a Whiteheadian point of view, the results empirically confirm the process position on perception and thinking. Finally, further interesting possibilities of undertaking future empirical process research are outlined. (shrink)

Tertiary qualities have been studied primarily by Gestalt psychologists. My aim in this article is to revisit the theoretical assumptions regarding tertiary qualities. I start from the Galilean distinction of the qualities of experience, the Lockean subdivision of qualities, the subjectivist definition in aesthetics and the theoretical contribution of Gestalt theory, to show the theoretical value of ‘tertiary qualities’ in the current context of experimental psychological research. I conclude that tertiary qualities are a crucial keyword for an experimental psychology based (...) on the primacy of perception. Such a perspective is in favour of a neo-Gestalt Experimental Phenomenology. (shrink)

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein cites the Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Koehler almost as often as he cites William James in his posthumously published writings on the philosophy of psychology. Yet, few treatments of the Wittgenstein–Koehler relation in the philosophical literature could be called sustained discussions. Moreover, most of them treat Koehler as a mere whipping boy for Wittgenstein, one more opportunity to criticize the practice of psychologists. This article emphasizes how much the two thinkers agreed, and the extent to which some (...) of Wittgenstein’s work not only agreed with but also has a logical structure parallel to some of Koehler’s text. Both thinkers hold that the theoretician should strive to recognize and resist the impulse to step in and purify, distill, streamline, or exclude phenomena: common, everyday experience for Koehler and common, everyday uses of words for Wittgenstein. They both aim to counteract the tendency to discount and disparage what is ordinary and common. (shrink)

Poorly saturated colors are closer to a pure grey than strongly saturated ones and, therefore, appear less “colorful”. Color saturation is effectively manipulated in the visual arts for balancing conflicting sensations and moods and for inducing the perception of relative distance in the pictorial plane. While perceptual science has proven quite clearly that the luminance contrast of any hue acts as a self-sufficient cue to relative depth in visual images, the role of color saturation in such figure-ground organization has remained (...) unclear. We presented configurations of colored inducers on grey ‘test’ backgrounds to human observers. Luminance and saturation of the inducers was uniform on each trial, but varied across trials. We ran two separate experimental tasks. In the relative background brightness task, perceptual judgments indicated whether the apparent brightness of the grey test background contrasted with, assimilated to, or appeared equal (no effect) to that of a comparison background with the same luminance contrast. Contrast polarity and its interaction with color saturation affected response proportions for contrast, assimilation and no effect. In the figure-ground task, perceptual judgments indicated whether the inducers appeared to lie in front of, behind, or in the same depth with the background. Strongly saturated inducers produced significantly larger proportions of foreground effects indicating that these inducers stand out as figure against the background. Weakly saturated inducers produced significantly larger proportions of background effects, indicating that these inducers are perceived as lying behind the backgrounds. We infer that color saturation modulates figure-ground organization, both directly by determining relative inducer depth, and indirectly, and in interaction with contrast polarity, by affecting apparent background brightness. The results point towards a hitherto undocumented functional role of color saturation in the genesis of form, and in particular figure-ground percepts in the absence of chromatostereopsis. (shrink)

The laws which predict how the perceptual quality of figure-ground can be extracted from the most elementary visual signals were discovered by the Gestaltists, and form an essential part of their movement (see especially Metzger, 1930, and Wertheimer, 1923 translated and re-edited by Lothar Spillmann, 2009 and 2012, respectively). Distinguishing figure from ground is a prerequisite for perception of both form and space (the relative positions, trajectories, and distances of objects in the visual field. The human brain has an astonishing (...) capacity for selecting and combining a few critical visual signals to accurately represent both form and space. (shrink)

This paper argues that whereas philosophical discussions of first-person methods often turn on the veridicality of first-person reports, more attention should be paid to the experimental circumstances under which the reports are generated, and to the purposes of designing such experiments. After pointing to the ‘constructedness’ of first-person reports in the science of perception, I raise questions about the criteria by which to judge whether the reports illuminate something about the nature of perception. I illustrate this point with a historical (...) debate between Gestalt psychologist and atomists, both of whom used first-person methods to investigate perception. (shrink)

People can be taught to manipulate symbols according to formal mathematical and logical rules. Cognitive scientists have traditionally viewed this capacity—the capacity for symbolic reasoning—as grounded in the ability to internally represent numbers, logical relationships, and mathematical rules in an abstract, amodal fashion. We present an alternative view, portraying symbolic reasoning as a special kind of embodied reasoning in which arithmetic and logical formulae, externally represented as notations, serve as targets for powerful perceptual and sensorimotor systems. Although symbolic reasoning often (...) conforms to abstract mathematical principles, it is typically implemented by perceptual and sensorimotor engagement with concrete environmental structures. (shrink)

The essay gives an account of the aesthetics of the Graz school, focusing on the standpoint of the object as well as on that of emotions. Meinong’s reflection on aesthetics stems from a psychological background and comes subsequently to an ontological grounding. After examining the notions of imagination, phantasy-representation, relation and complexion, I show how the theory of production of representations, as well as that of higher-order objects, develops under the impulse of Ehrenfels’ concept of Gestalt qualities; both these theories (...) may be applied to aesthetics in the explanation of artistic creation and of aesthetic objects. Meinong identifies the specific object of aesthetics with the “objective” and distinguishes aesthetic feelings, which are true feelings, from imaginary ones. Witasek develops a psychological aesthetics built on the conceptual framework of Meinongian philosophy: aesthetic properties are ideal and extra-objective, they connect the aesthetic object to the subject’s mental attitude; an aesthetic object is an object endowed with aesthetic properties, such as beauty, which depends on the degree of pleasure or displeasure the object may induce in the subject. Witasek, though, parts from Meinong on both the conception of aesthetic objects and of imaginary feelings. In the last sections, I review the reactions to Witasek’s aesthetics, both positive and negative, within the Graz school itself (in particular Schwarz’ and Saxinger’s ideas on phantasy-feelings, and Ameseder’s on value beauty), and I sketch Ehrenfels’ and Veber’s aesthetic views. (shrink)

Attempts to introduce Gestalt theory into the realm of visual neuroscience are discussed on both theoretical and experimental grounds. To define the framework in which these proposals can be defended, this paper outlines the characteristics of a standard model, which qualifies as a received view in the visual neurosciences, and of the research into natural images statistics. The objections to the standard model and the main questions of the natural images research are presented. On these grounds, this paper defends the (...) view that Gestalt psychology and experimental phenomenology provide a contribution to the research into perception by the construction of phenomenological models for an ecologically meaningful interpretation of the empirical evidence and the hypothetical constructs of the natural image research within the visual neuroscience. A formal framework for the phenomenological models is proposed, wherein Gestalt theoretical principles and empirical evidence are represented in terms of topological properties and relationships, which account for the order and structures that make the environment accessible to observers at a relevant behavioural level. It is finally argued that these models allow us to evaluate the principles and the empirical evidence of various natures which are integrated from different fields into the research into perception, and in particular into visual neurosciences. (shrink)

In his ontological works Kurt Grelling tries to give a rigorous analysis of the foundations of the so-called Gestalt-psychology. Gestalten are peculiar emergent qualities, ontologically dependent on their foundations, but nonetheless non reducible to them. Grelling shows that this concept, as used in psychology and ontology, is often ambiguous. He distinguishes two important meanings in which the word “Gestalt” is used: Gestalten as structural aspects available to transposition and Gestalten as causally self-regulating wholes. Gestalten in the first meaning are, according (...) to Grelling, “equivalence classes of correspondences”, while Gestalten as self-regulating wholes have more to do with relations of ontological dependence. Grelling’s clarification of the concept of Gestalt is doubtless an excellent piece of philosophical analysis, but at the end of the day it turns out that his analysis captures at best only a part of intuitions traditionally connected with the notion of Gestalt. (shrink)

The chapter deals with the notion of phenomenal realness, which was first systematically explored by Albert Michotte. Phenomenal realness refers to the impression that a perceptual object is perceived to have an autonomous existence in our mind-independent world. Perceptual psychology provides an abundance of phenomena, ranging from amodal completion to picture perception, that indicate that phenomenal realness is an independent perceptual attribute that can be conferred to perceptual objects in different degrees. The chapter outlines a theoretical framework that appears particularly (...) well-suited for dealing with corresponding phenomena. According to this framework, perception can be understood as a triggering of conceptual forms by sensor inputs. It is argued that the attribute of phenomenal realness is based on specific types of internal evaluation functions which deal with the segregation of causes conceived as ‘external’ from those conceived as ‘internal’. These evaluation functions integrate different internal sources of ‘knowledge’ about the potential causes for the activation of conceptual forms and provide markers by which conceptual forms can be tagged as ‘external world objects’. (shrink)

From his earliest work forward, phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempted to develop a new ontology of nature that would avoid the antinomies of realism and idealism by showing that nature has its own intrinsic sense which is prior to reflection. The key to this new ontology was the concept of form, which he appropriated from Gestalt psychology. However, Merleau-Ponty struggled to give a positive characterization of the phenomenon of form which would clarify its ontological status. Evan Thompson has recently taken up (...) Merleau-Ponty’s ontology as the basis for a new, “enactive” approach to cognitive science, synthesizing it with concepts from dynamic systems theory and Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoiesis. However, Thompson does not quite succeed in resolving the ambiguities in Merleau-Ponty’s account of form. This article builds on an indication from Thompson in order to propose a new account of form as asymmetry, and of the genesis of form in nature as symmetry-breaking. These concepts help us to escape the antinomies of Modern thought by showing how nature is the autoproduction of a sense which can only be known by an embodied perceiver. (shrink)

The organism against its environment. The organism against other organisms, competing and struggling for life. Antagonism and confrontment as the only possible relation in nature. The tendency to anthropomorphize nature and explain it using concepts and facts from the human sphere. A stroll through the worlds of Uexküll and Merleau-Ponty in the search of alternative knowledge that allow us to understand relation from another point of view. A counterpoint and identification of common tonalities between the research programs from both thinkers (...) as a way to demonstrate the possibilities of a more fruitful approach. Umwelt as a generative system of meaningful relations in which its participants are not mutually exclusive, but express a melody that include them all. (shrink)