seeing doing and knowing a philosophical theory of sense perception apr 2005

[...]... IV Feature Maps and Feature Integration 54 The results of feature-extraction is recorded in the brain by a series of maps, one for each type of feature There is a colour map, a shape map, and so on, and in order to see something as having a particular shape as well as a particular colour, the relevant features from the different maps have to be bound together This act of binding is done by an operation... 272 There is a difference between the visual presentation of location and that of features like colour and texture The character of the former can be traced in large part to what Kant called a formal element in visual representation Analytic Table of Contents xxi II Seeing Objects 277 Austen Clark argues, correctly, that conjunctions of features have to be separated into separate groups according to... separately, and only then reassembled by ‘attention’ xiv Analytic Table of Contents III Analogue Conversion and Quantitative Information-Extraction 70 Receptor activity at the ‘front end’ of a sensory system is always analogue; it is, however, wrong to think that analogue content is always inherited from receptor activity It may result from numerical data extraction, as well as from how extracted and. .. drawn Relationships found in all graphical representations call for explanation: what is the source of the invariance? ‘Overall’ similarity with respect to several sensory parameters is variable across different graphical representations This shows that overall similarity is an artefact IV Representational Invariances in Sensory Similarity Spaces 117 Variation with respect to a single sensory parameter... mistakes are made, things present inconsistent appearances, and so on Thus, it is clear to us that the objects we act on are independent of us In Parts IV and V, the content of sensory states is linked to the bodily and epistemic actions with which these states are innately associated The idea is that our sensory awareness of object-features amounts to awareness of ‘epistemic affordances’, or awareness... light signal that results both from illumination and surface reflectance, and using this and other universal characteristics of scenes, it cleverly disentangles these two sources, assigning them separate values From a signal that is as much a product of the subject’s situation as it is of the condition of a distal object, sensory systems extract representations of real-world physical variables The conclusion... Similarity measures can be graphically represented in a multidimensional spatial model These methods give empirical support to Johnson’s idea of generability III Representational Invariance in Graphical Representations 112 Not all the relationships found in a graphical representation of similarity find counterparts in empirical measurements of similarity; some are merely artefacts of how such graphs are drawn... judgements’ that we make by instinct or on the basis of past experience—but, crucially, that we are always directly aware of this image as the background and basis of our added judgements What is the source of the sensory image? In a very long tradition stretching from Descartes to the present day, the central philosophical paradigm proposes that sensation corresponds in some way to the physical energy pattern... classificatory schemes Hardin’s catalogue poses a concern about the ontological status of these schemes 2 Burden Shifting: Colour as an Attribute of Sensations 192 Some argue, on the basis of the idiosyncrasy of colour classification, that colour is an attribute of sensations This mistakenly shifts the topic of investigation from the ontological status of colour classes to the xviii Analytic Table of. .. representation of mind-independent physical variables is the norm We need a framework, moreover, which is capable of accommodating the idiosyncrasies and specializations of vision as it occurs in various kinds of organisms Most importantly, we need an account of what exactly we come to know when we see or hear 8 Prelude IV The Appeal to Action This is where the doing in Seeing, Doing, and Knowing . the brain by a series of maps, one for each type of feature. There is a colour map, a shape map, and so on, and in order to see something as having a particular shape as well as a particular colour,. Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Matthen, Mohan. Seeing, doing, and knowing : a philosophical theory of sense perception / Mohan Matthen. p. cm. Includes. Toronto With of ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford