What makes this work so important is that it returned the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato.

Different explanations of color vision favor different philosophical positions: Computational vision is more compatible with objectivism (the color is in the object), psychophysics and neurophysiology with subjectivism (the color is in the head). Comparative research suggests that an explanation of color must be both experientialist (unlike objectivism) and ecological (unlike subjectivism). Computational vision's emphasis on optimally prespecified features of the environment (i.e., distal properties, independent of the sensory-motor capacities of the animal) is unsatisfactory. Conceiving of visual perception instead as the (...) visual guidance of activity in an environment that is determined largely by that very activity suggests new directions for research. (shrink)

Most cognitive scientists are committed to some version of representationalism, the view that intelligent behavior is caused by internal processes that involve computations over representations. Phenomenologists, however, argue that certain types of intelligent behavior, engaged coping skills, are nonrepresentational. Recent neuroscientific work on multiple memory systems indicates that while many types of intelligent behavior are representational, the types of intelligent behavior cited by phenomenologists are indeed nonrepresentational. This neuroscientific research thus vindicates a key phenomenological claim about the nature of intelligent (...) behaviour. It also provides a framework for the ongoing reconciliation of cognitive science and phenomenology. (shrink)