Cognitive Penetration: Inference or Fabrication?

Abstract

Cognitive penetrability refers to the possibility that perceptual experiences are influenced by our beliefs, expectations, emotions, or other personal-level mental states. In this paper, I focus on the epistemological implication of cognitive penetration and examine how exactly aetiologies matter to the justificatory power of perceptual experiences. I examine a prominent theory, according to which some cognitively penetrated perceptual experiences are like conclusions of bad inferences. Whereas one version of this theory is psychologically implausible, the other version has sceptical consequences. In the second half of the paper, I suggest an alternative theory, drawing on recent empirical research on imagining-perception interaction and the epistemology of imagining.

A metacognitive account of phenomenal force

“…The second proposal says that cognition influences perceptual experiences through triggering an imaginative process that interacts with a perceptual process (Macpherson, 2012;Teng, 2016Teng, , 2021. It is hard to see how source-monitoring mechanisms could contribute phenomenal force to perceptual experiences on either of these proposals.…”

“…The first proposal says that cognition influences perceptual experiences through object-based attention as well as feature-based attention (Mole, 2015;Stokes, 2018;Wu, 2017). The second proposal says that cognition influences perceptual experiences through triggering an imaginative process that interacts with a perceptual process (Macpherson, 2012;Teng, 2016Teng, , 2021. It is hard to see how source-monitoring mechanisms could contribute phenomenal force to perceptual experiences on either of these proposals.…”

“…2 Some challenge the immediacy thesis by warning that it would be too easy to gain justification against skeptical hypotheses or for the reliability of perceptual experiences (Cohen, 2002(Cohen, , 2005White, 2006). Others deny the phenomenal thesis by presenting counterexamples in which the perceptual experiences have phenomenal force, but lack justificatory power due to their inappropriate etiologies (McGrath, 2013;Siegel, 2012Siegel, , 2017Silins, 2016;Teng, 2016Teng, , 2021. The objections, however, leave the putative perceptual nature of phenomenal force intact.…”

The justificatory power of memory experience

“…For some recent discussions of the cognitive penetrability of perception, seeFirestone & Scholl (2016),Green (2020),Lupyan (2015), andMacpherson (2012). For some recent reviews of the epistemological implication, seeGeorgakakis & Moretti (2019),Silins (2016), and Teng(Teng, in press).6 For defenses of this position, seeGhijsen (2016),Lyons (2011;,Long (2018), McGrath (2013,Munton (2019),Siegel (2012Siegel ( , 2017,Teng (2016Teng ( , 2021,Vahid (2014), and Vance (2014). 7 This case was first presented by Siegel(Siegel, 2012)..…”

“…Earlier in section 2, I drew a comparison between the social distancing case and the preformationism case. I investigate the epistemology of cognitive penetration inTeng (2021), and my analysis of the justificatory power of memory experiences is built on that work.20 The theses presented here leave open whether the contents of a memory experience could have contribution from both personal-and entirely subpersonal-level mental processes. Regarding the justificatory power of these memory experiences, a more fine-grained analysis is needed.…”