Perceptual Pluralism

Abstract

Perceptual systems respond to proximal stimuli by forming mental representations of distal stimuli. A central goal for the philosophy of perception is to characterize the representations delivered by perceptual systems. It may be that all perceptual representations are in some way proprietarily perceptual and differ from the representational format of thought (Dretske 1981; Carey 2009; Burge 2010; Block ms.). Or it may instead be that perception and cognition always trade in the same code (Prinz 2002; Pylyshyn 2003). This paper rejects both approaches in favor of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perception delivers a multiplicity of representational formats, some proprietary and some shared with cognition. The argument for perceptual pluralism marshals a wide array of empirical evidence in favor of iconic (i.e., image‐like, analog) representations in perception as well as discursive (i.e., language‐like, digital) perceptual object representations.

Concepts and predication from perception to cognition

“…It is fully compatible with this modularity‐based conceptualism that some perceptual processes output representations in nonconceptual (e.g., iconic) formats. Instead of insisting on conceptual structure as a transcendental epistemological requirement, modularity‐based conceptualists can be pluralists about perceptual representation (Quilty‐Dunn, 2019b). As long as some significant component of perception is conceptual and feeds immediately into cognition, there is room for other perceptual representations to have other formats with other functional advantages.…”

“…I've argued elsewhere that perceptual object representations (“PORs”), the representations we use to perceptually detect and track objects, have a discursive/digital rather than iconic/analog format (Green & Quilty‐Dunn, 2017; Quilty‐Dunn, 2019b). I'll briefly describe these arguments now.…”

“…The best explanation of these effects is that PORs have a discursive representational format (Quilty‐Dunn, 2019b). What's most relevant for present purposes is the particular kind of discursive format such explanations appeal to.…”

“…Pepperberg et al. take Griffin's success to rely on object‐based representations in visual working memory, which are plausibly PORs (Gao, Gao, Li, Sun, & Shen, 2011; Quilty‐Dunn, 2019a; 2019b). Though Pepperberg et al.…”

On the Difference Between Realistic and Fantastic Imagining

“…For evidence that configuration is already represented at the level of perception, seeGreen (2019). Although there is ongoing work of this kind attempting to explicate the nature of visual parsing, I am not aware of any attempt sincePalmer (1978) to explain in a general way the representation relation between an imagistic representation and an external scene. (Palmer does not explicitly confine himself to imagistic representations.…”