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Perceptual Systems and Perceptual Beliefs

Jack C. Lyons

in Perception and Basic Beliefs: Zombies, Modules and the Problem of the External World

This chapter articulates and defends the view that a perceptual belief is a belief that is the output of a perceptual system, i.e., a perceptual module, where the notion of a perceptual module is ... More

This chapter articulates and defends the view that a perceptual belief is a belief that is the output of a perceptual system, i.e., a perceptual module, where the notion of a perceptual module is defined in nonepistemic and nonexperiential terms. The concept of a perceptual module, like the more general concept of a cognitive system, is derived from methodological presuppositions of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. The central thesis of this chapter gives us a principled and naturalistic distinction between perceptual beliefs and other beliefs, and, it is argued, it gives us an intuitively correct one. The theory entails that “zombies” and other creatures utterly lacking in perceptual experiences can nonetheless have (justified) perceptual beliefs.Less

Perception, Ecology, and Music

Eric F. Clarke

in Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning

This chapter presents a discussion of the principal characteristics of an ecological approach to perception. Adopting many of the principles set out in the ecological work of James Gibson, it ... More

This chapter presents a discussion of the principal characteristics of an ecological approach to perception. Adopting many of the principles set out in the ecological work of James Gibson, it discusses the fundamental relationship between perceivers and their environments, and the integrated and complementary relationship between perception and action. When perceivers pick up information about the world, they do so as a result of their actions, and what they discover in turn leads to new actions. This constant process results in adaptations to the environment over the timescale of the perceiver's lifespan — in turn building upon the organism's adaptations that have taken place at an evolutionary timescale. Countering the possible objection that the adaptation of an organism to its environment seems too “convenient”, the chapter shows how work in the connectionist modelling of human musical capacities can be seen as an analogy for the way in which people adapt to their musical environments. The chapter discusses the relationship between nature and culture, and perception and cognition, and introduces a key term in ecological theory: affordance. The chapter concludes with a short discussion of the application of these ideas to three brief sound examples.Less

Hippocampal Function in Humans: Insights From Amnesia and Functional Brain Imaging

Howard Eichenbaum and Neal J. Cohen

in From Conditioning to Conscious Recollection: Memory systems of the brain

This chapter reviews cases of amnesia and evidence from functional brain imaging to provide insights about the nature of memory supported by the hippocampal memory system. The case of the famous ... More

This chapter reviews cases of amnesia and evidence from functional brain imaging to provide insights about the nature of memory supported by the hippocampal memory system. The case of the famous amnesic patient H. M. show that memory can be distinguished from other psychological faculties. Furthermore, studies on H. M. distinguish declarative memory, which was severely impaired in his case, and spared working memory and non-memory perceptual, motor, and cognitive capacities. In addition, H. M. and other patients with damage to the hippocampal region had several preserved learning capacities including intact perceptual learning, motor skill learning, cognitive skill learning, pattern classification learning, classical conditioning of motor reflexes, and repetition priming. Thus, his memory impairment has been characterized as a deficit in explicit, declarative, or relational memory. Parallel studies using functional imaging of the brain have shown that the hippocampus is activated during encoding and retrieval in declarative memory.Less

Sensory coding

Ian P. Howard

in Perceiving in Depth: Volume 1 Basic Mechanisms

The general principles of sensory coding that are common to all sensory systems are reviewed, including the nerve impulse, feature detectors, metamerism, sensory opponency, and temporal coding. This ... More

The general principles of sensory coding that are common to all sensory systems are reviewed, including the nerve impulse, feature detectors, metamerism, sensory opponency, and temporal coding. This is followed by a discussion of higher-order coding, including systems tuned to more than one stimulus feature, nested coding systems, and rules governing the perception of visual structures. The idea that the visual system embodies an intrinsic geometry is critically reviewed. The chapter ends with a review of perceptual learning, which refers to the extent to which basic visual functions can be improved with practice.Less

Connectionist Models of Development: Mechanistic Dynamical Models with Emergent Dynamical Properties

James L. McClelland and Gautam Vallabha

in Toward a Unified Theory of Development Connectionism and Dynamic System Theory Re-Consider

This chapter attempts to underscore the common ground between connectionist and dynamical systems approaches. Central to both approaches is the emergent nature of system-level behavior and changes to ... More

This chapter attempts to underscore the common ground between connectionist and dynamical systems approaches. Central to both approaches is the emergent nature of system-level behavior and changes to such behavior through development. Topics covered in this chapter include mechanistic and emergent dynamics, examples of activation and weight-change dynamics, short-term emergent dynamics in perceptual classification, and perceptual and semantic learning.Less

Is Perceptual Learning Genuinely Perceptual?

Kevin Connolly

in Perceptual Learning: The Flexibility of the Senses

This chapter argues that there are widespread changes in perception due to learning, and that these changes are genuinely perceptual rather than post-perceptual. The argument is abductive. It draws ... More

This chapter argues that there are widespread changes in perception due to learning, and that these changes are genuinely perceptual rather than post-perceptual. The argument is abductive. It draws on philosophical introspection spanning several hundred years, evidence from psychology, and evidence from neuroscience. The argument is that when we look at these three different levels of analysis, the best overall explanation for their results is that perceptual learning occurs, is fairly widespread, and is genuinely perceptual rather than post-perceptual. One key piece of the argument is that neuroscientific perceptual learning experiments repeatedly show that there are changes very early on in the primary sensory cortices after perceptual learning tasks. Coupled with behavioral evidence from psychology and convergent philosophical introspection on the perceptual learning cases, this chapter argues that perceptual learning is genuinely perceptual, rather than post-perceptual.Less

Sensory Substitution and Perceptual Learning

Kevin Connolly

Fiona Macpherson (ed.)

in Sensory Substitution and Augmentation

When a user integrates a sensory substitution device into her life, the process involves perceptual learning, that is, ‘relatively long-lasting changes to an organism’s perceptual system that improve ... More

When a user integrates a sensory substitution device into her life, the process involves perceptual learning, that is, ‘relatively long-lasting changes to an organism’s perceptual system that improve its ability to respond to its environment’. In this chapter, I explore ways in which the extensive literature on perceptual learning can be applied to help improve sensory substitution devices. I then use these findings to answer a philosophical question. Much of the philosophical debate surrounding sensory substitution devices concerns what happens after perceptual learning occurs. In particular, should the resultant perceptual experience be classified in the substituted modality (as vision), in the substituting modality (as auditory or tactile), or in a new sense modality? I propose a novel empirical test to help resolve this philosophical debate.Less

Learned Attention II: Sensory Substitution

Kevin Connolly

in Perceptual Learning: The Flexibility of the Senses

This chapter explores the relationship between sensory substitution devices and the training of attention. Sensory substitution devices, typically used by the blind, deliver information about the ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between sensory substitution devices and the training of attention. Sensory substitution devices, typically used by the blind, deliver information about the environment by converting the information normally received through one sense (e.g., vision) into information for another sense (e.g., audition or touch). When a user integrates a sensory substitution device into her life, the integration process involves perceptual learning. This chapter explores two questions. First, in what ways can sensory substitution illuminate how the training of attention works more generally? Second, how does knowledge of the way attention is trained in perceptual learning help us to better understand sensory substitution? The chapter draws on findings in these areas to answer a philosophical question: Should the post-perceptual learning experience be classified in the substituted modality (e.g., as vision), in the substituting modality (e.g., as auditory or tactile), or in a new sense modality?Less

Learning to Differentiate Properties: Speech Perception

Kevin Connolly

in Perceptual Learning: The Flexibility of the Senses

This chapter details the role perceptual learning plays in speech perception and argues that the evidence does not show that meanings come to be represented in our perception upon learning a new ... More

This chapter details the role perceptual learning plays in speech perception and argues that the evidence does not show that meanings come to be represented in our perception upon learning a new language. Specifically, it outlines the role of the perceptual learning mechanism of differentiation in speech perception. Through differentiation, we come to parse features of a language, including phonemes that we had not previously differentiated. The chapter critically evaluates Casey O’Callaghan’s and Berit Brogaards’s arguments for and against the view that meanings come to be represented in our perception upon learning a new language. It argues that the evidence from perceptual learning does not support the conclusion that meanings come to be represented in our perception.Less

Cortical and Subcortical Predictive Dynamics and Learning during Perception, Cognition, Emotion, and Action

Stephen Grossberg

in Predictions in the Brain: Using Our Past to Generate a Future

Advanced brains have an extraordinary capacity to learn autonomously in real time from changing environmental conditions. Such learning includes both perceptual/cognitive and spatial/motor processes. ... More

Advanced brains have an extraordinary capacity to learn autonomously in real time from changing environmental conditions. Such learning includes both perceptual/cognitive and spatial/motor processes. Accumulating experimental and theoretical evidence shows that perceptual/cognitive and spatial/motor processes both need predictive mechanisms to control learning. Thus, there is an intimate connection between learning and predictive dynamics in the brain. However, neural models of these processes have proposed, and many experiments have supported, the hypothesis that perceptual/cognitive and spatial/motor processes use different types of predictive mechanisms to regulate the learning that they carry out. Because of their different types of matching and learning, perceptual and cognitive learning provide a self-stabilizing front end to control the more labile spatial and motor learning that enables changing bodies to effectively act upon recognized objects in the world. This chapter reviews and synthesizes data and models of these processes and outlines a unified theory of predictive brain processing.Less

Learned Attention and the Contents of Perception

Kevin Connolly

in Perceptual Learning: The Flexibility of the Senses

This chapter argues that when we learn to recognize natural kinds, such as pine trees, this should be understood not in terms of kind properties coming to be represented in our perception, but simply ... More

This chapter argues that when we learn to recognize natural kinds, such as pine trees, this should be understood not in terms of kind properties coming to be represented in our perception, but simply in terms of a shift in our attention, which causes us to represent new low-level properties, such as colors, shapes, and textures. Susanna Siegel has argued that kinds, such as pine trees, can look phenomenally different to someone once that person becomes disposed to recognize them, and that the best explanation for this is that kind properties, such as being a pine tree, can become represented in perception. The chapter details an alternative explanation for the different look of the pine tree: a shift in one’s attentional pattern onto other low-level properties. Philosophers have alluded to this alternative before, but the chapter provides a comprehensive account of the view, drawing on the science of perceptual learning.Less

Perceptual Learning beyond Philosophy of Mind

Kevin Connolly

in Perceptual Learning: The Flexibility of the Senses

The concluding chapter argues that perceptual learning has relevance for philosophy far beyond philosophy of mind—in epistemology, philosophy of science, and social philosophy, among other domains. ... More

The concluding chapter argues that perceptual learning has relevance for philosophy far beyond philosophy of mind—in epistemology, philosophy of science, and social philosophy, among other domains. The goal of this chapter is to extend one major focus of the book, which is to identify the scope of perceptual learning. Chapters 3 through 7 argued that perceptual learning occurs in all sorts of domains in the philosophy of mind, including natural kind recognition, sensory substitution, multisensory perception, speech perception, and color perception. This chapter extends that scope beyond philosophy of mind and offers some initial sketches of ways in which we can apply knowledge of perceptual learning to those domains.Less

Learning to Differentiate Objects: The Case of Memory Color

Kevin Connolly

in Perceptual Learning: The Flexibility of the Senses

This chapter explains memory color as an enhancement of perceptual learning, which enables us to better differentiate objects from their backgrounds. In cases of memory color, faded types of objects ... More

This chapter explains memory color as an enhancement of perceptual learning, which enables us to better differentiate objects from their backgrounds. In cases of memory color, faded types of objects with which we associate a prototypical color are sometimes perceived as closer to that color than they actually are. For instance, discolored hearts sometimes appear redder to us than they actually are, and discolored bananas yellower. The goal of this chapter is to understand memory color in terms of perceptual learning. The chapter argues that memory color enhances perceptual learning by enabling us to better differentiate objects from their backgrounds. This account of cases of memory color parts ways with an influential philosophical interpretation of them: that they should be understood as cases of cognitive penetration. It also parts ways with the standard interpretation of memory color cases in psychology: that they should be understood as cases of color constancy.Less

Learning to See and Conceive

Robert L. Goldstone, Alexander Gerganov, David Landy, and Michael E. Roberts

in Cognitive Biology: Evolutionary and Developmental Perspectives on Mind, Brain, and Behavior

This chapter presents several sources of evidence that point out that perceptual learning is early in several senses: neurological, functional, and developmental. It also discusses perceptual ... More

This chapter presents several sources of evidence that point out that perceptual learning is early in several senses: neurological, functional, and developmental. It also discusses perceptual learning via unitization and differentiation. The chapter also examines the basic workings of conceptual and perceptual learning by the unitization and segmentation model or CPLUS. This model applies competitive learning to the problem of segmentation by uniting complex configurations and differentiating input patterns into separate categories.Less

“Chunking” the World through Multisensory Perception

Kevin Connolly

in Perceptual Learning: The Flexibility of the Senses

This chapter argues that multisensory perceptions are learned, not the result of an automatic feature binding mechanism. For example, suppose you are at a live jazz show. The drummer begins a solo. ... More

This chapter argues that multisensory perceptions are learned, not the result of an automatic feature binding mechanism. For example, suppose you are at a live jazz show. The drummer begins a solo. You see the cymbal jolt and hear the clang. But you are also aware that the jolt and the clang are part of the same event. Psychologists have assumed that multisensory perceptions like this one are the result of an automatic feature binding mechanism. This chapter argues instead that when you experience the jolt and the clang as part of the same event, it is the result of a perceptual learning process. The jolt and the clang are best understood as a single learned perceptual unit, not as automatically bound. This chapter details the perceptual learning process of “unitization,” whereby we come to “chunk” the world into multisensory units, and argues that unitization best explains multisensory perception.Less

Pragmatic Representations

Bence Nanay

in Between Perception and Action

Pragmatic representations are the representations that mediate between sensory input and motor output. The aim of this chapter is to argue that they are perceptual states and that they play a very ... More

Pragmatic representations are the representations that mediate between sensory input and motor output. The aim of this chapter is to argue that they are perceptual states and that they play a very important role in our mental economy. More precisely, the aim is to argue that there are mental representations that are both perceptual states and (part of what constitutes) the immediate mental antecedents of actions. The strategy this chapter follows is to start out with the immediate mental antecedents of actions, explain what they are, and then show that they are (very often) perceptual states.Less

Models of memory: the case of imprinting

Patrick Bateson

in Brain, Perception, Memory: Advances in Cognitive Neuroscience

This chapter reviews recent tests of a neural net model of imprinting. The timing of imprinting, the features that most readily trigger learning, and the motor systems that are linked to ... More

This chapter reviews recent tests of a neural net model of imprinting. The timing of imprinting, the features that most readily trigger learning, and the motor systems that are linked to representations stored as a result of learning are all specific to the functional context of forming a social attachment to one or both parents. Tune plays a different role in classical or instrumental conditioning from that which it does in perceptual learning. The order in which different events are experienced may matter a lot when one event causes the other. However, the order does not matter at all when the experiences are different views of the same object. Some behavioural and physiological evidence from studies of imprinting in chicks suggests that these two broad functions are served by different subprocesses but that the subprocesses are, nevertheless, in touch with each other.Less