Two views on the cognitive brain

Barack, David L.; Krakauer, John W.

doi:10.1038/s41583-021-00448-6

Cited by 154 publications

(125 citation statements)

References 120 publications

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“…This conflation is perhaps invited by some of Murray et al's terminology, but the distinction is clear to the primary readership of the article. Clarifying the many usages of the term 'representation', and being thoughtful about whether a given usage applies in a given context, is an important topic in need of attention in neuroscience and related fields (Baker, Lansdell, & Kording, 2021;Barack & Krakauer, 2021;T. Burge, 2010;2014a, 2022.…”

Section: Vision Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Shape, perspective, and what is and is not perceived: Comment on Morales, Bax, and Firestone (2020)

Burge¹,

Burge²

2022

Preprint

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Psychology and philosophy have long reflected on the role of perspective in vision. Since the dawn of modern vision science—roughly, since Helmholtz in the late 1800s—scientific explanations in vision have focused on understanding the computations that transform the sensed retinal image into percepts of the three-dimensional environment. The standard view in the science is that distal properties—viewpoint-independent properties of the environment (object shape) and viewpoint-dependent relational properties (3D orientation relative to the viewer)–are perceptually represented and that properties of the proximal stimulus (in vision, the retinal image) are not. This view is woven into the nature of scientific explanation in perceptual psychology, and has guided impressive advances over the past 150 years. A recently published article suggests that in shape-perception, the standard view must be revised. It argues, on the basis of new empirical data, that a new entity—perspectival shape—should be introduced into scientific explanations of shape perception. Specifically, the article’s centrally advertised claim is that, in addition to distal shape, perspectival shape is perceived. We argue that this claim rests on a series of mistakes. Problems in experimental design entail that the article provides no empirical support for any claims regarding either perspective or the perception of shape. There are further problems in scientific reasoning and conceptual development. Detailing these criticisms and explaining how science treats these issues is meant to clarify method and theory, and to improve exchanges between the science and philosophy of perception.

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Section: Vision Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Shape, perspective, and what is and is not perceived: Comment on Morales, Bax, and Firestone (2020)

Burge¹,

Burge²

2022

Preprint

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“…For the moment, there is no sign of either the wiring diagram or circuit diagram metaphor going out of fashion. Even scientists who are critical of the emphasis on connectomics happily use the wiring diagram metaphor (e.g., Barack and Krakauer, 2021;Gomez-Marin, 2021). For the moment there is little reason why these metaphors should be dropped -they serve a useful function for both scientists and the general public, explaining anything from a connectome to a neural network in a simple way and suggesting a link between structure and function.…”

Section: Connectomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Brief History of Wires in the Brain

Cobb

2021

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Metaphors have formed a significant part of the development of neuroscience, often linked with technology. A metaphor that has been widely used for the past two centuries is that of the nervous system being like wires, either as a telegraph system or telephone exchange, or, more recently, in the more abstract metaphor of a wiring diagram. The entry of these terms into scientific writing is traced, together with the insights provided by these metaphors, in particular in relation to recent developments in the study of connectomes. Finally, the place of the wiring diagram as a modern version of Leibniz’s “mill” argument is described, as a way of exploring the limits of what insight the metaphor can provide

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“…The first example comes from a recent paper by Barack and Krakauer (2021). The thesis of this paper is to argue for the benefit of they call a Hopfieldian approach over a Sherringtonian approach to understanding cognition.…”

Section: Neuroscientists On Marrmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another example comes from (Grill-Spector and Weiner, 2014), in which the authors explicitly adopt the Marrian framework in order to characterize current understanding of the human ventral temporal cortex (VTC). The authors do not describe the RAL and the IL levels in the same terms in the manner of Barack and Krakauer (2021); rather, they characterize the RAL as an abstraction of the implementational level. Before getting into the details of what that means, let us see what they say.…”

Section: Neuroscientists On Marrmentioning

confidence: 99%

The physicality of representation

Maley¹

2021

Preprint

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Representation is typically taken to be importantly separate from its physical implementation. This is exemplified in Marr's three-level framework, widely cited and often adopted in neuroscience. However, the separation between representation and physical implementation is not a necessary feature of information-processing systems. In particular, when it comes to analog computational systems, Marr's representational/algorithmic level and implementational level collapse into a single level. Insofar as analog computation is a better way of understanding neural computation than other notions, Marr's three-level framework must then be amended into a two-level framework. However, far from being a problem or limitation, this sheds lights on how to understand physical media as being representational, but without a separate, medium-independent representational level.

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Two views on the cognitive brain

Cited by 154 publications

References 120 publications

Shape, perspective, and what is and is not perceived: Comment on Morales, Bax, and Firestone (2020)

Shape, perspective, and what is and is not perceived: Comment on Morales, Bax, and Firestone (2020)

A Brief History of Wires in the Brain

The physicality of representation

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