Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-h4f6x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-08T12:55:35.765Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Perception, Representation, Realism, and Function

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Alison Ann Springle
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

According to orthodox representationalism, perceptual states have constitutive veridicality or accuracy conditions. In defense of this view, several philosophers—most notably Tyler Burge—employ a realist strategy that turns on the purported explanatory ineliminability of representational posits in perceptual science. I argue that Burge’s version of the realist strategy fails as a defense of orthodox representationalism. However, it may vindicate a different kind of representationalism.

Information

Type
Cognitive Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 86 , Issue 5 , December 2019 , pp. 1202 - 1213
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

To contact the author, please write to: University of Pittsburgh, Department of Philosophy; e-mail: alisonspringle@gmail.com.

References

Aguilera, B. 2016. “Is Perception Representational? Tyler Burge on Perceptual Functions.” In An Anthology of Philosophical Studies, Vol. 7, ed. Hanna, Patricia, McEvoy, Adrianne, and Voutsina, Penelope, 59–71. Athens: Athens Institute for Education and Research.Google Scholar
Akins, K. 1996. “Of Sensory Systems and the Aboutness of Mental States.” Journal of Philosophy 93 (7): 337–72..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barlow, H. B. 1953. “Summation and Inhibition in the Frog’s Retina.” Journal of Physiology 119 (1): 69–88..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blumenfeld, Walter. 1913. “Untersuchungen über die scheinbare Grösse im Sehraume.” Zeitschrift für Psycholgie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 65:241–404.Google Scholar
Burge, T. 2010. Origins of Objectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, R. 1977. “Instructions and Perceptual Constancy Judgements.” In Stability and Constancy in Visual Perception: Mechanisms and Processes, ed. Epstein, William, 217–54. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Chirimuuta, M. 2008. “Reflectance Realism and Colour Constancy: What Would Count as Scientific Evidence for Hilbert’s Ontology of Colour?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (4): 563–82..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chirimuuta, M.. 2015. Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epistein, W., Bontrager, H., and Park, J.. 1963. “The Induction of Non-veridical Slant and the Perception of Shape.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 63:472–79.Google Scholar
Epistein, W., Hatfield, G., and Muise, G.. 1977. “Perceived Shape at a Slant as a Function of Processing Time and Processing Load.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 3:473–83.Google Scholar
Findlay, J., and Gilchrist, I.. 2003. Active Vision: The Psychology of Looking and Seeing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frisby, J., and Stone, J.. 2010. Seeing: The Computational Approach to Vision. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ganson, T., Bronner, G., and Kerr, A.. 2014. “Burge’s Defense of Perceptual Content.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (3): 556–73..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilchrist, A. L. 2006. Seeing Black and White. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granrud, C. 2004. “Visual Metacognition and the Development of Size Constancy.” In Thinking and Seeing: Visual Metacognition in Adults and Children, ed. Levin, Daniel T., 75–95. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hatfield, G. 2003. “Objectivity and Subjectivity Revisited: Color as a Psychobiological Property.” In Colour Perception: Mind and the Physical World, ed. Mausfeld, Rainer and Heyer, Dieter, 187–202. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatfield, G.. 2009. Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, C. 2014. Meaning, Mind, and Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hillebrand, F. 1902. “Theorie der cheinbaren Grösse beim binokularen Sehen.” Denskschrift der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, Mathematische-Naturwissenschaftliche Classe 72:255–307.Google Scholar
Hoffman, D. 2009. “The Interface Theory of Perception: Natural Selection Drives True Perception to Swift Extinction.” In Object Categorization: Computer and Human Vision Perspectives, ed. Dickinson, S., Tarr, M., Leonardis, A., and Schiele, B., 148–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hutto, D. D., and Myin, E.. 2012. Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Indow, T. 1982. “An Approach to Geometry of Visual Space with No a Priori Mapping Functions: Multidimensional Mapping According to Reimannian Metrics.” Journal of Mathematical Psychology 26:204–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Indow, T.. 1991. “A Critical Review of Luneburg’s Model with Regard to Global Structure of Visual Space.” Psychological Review 98:430–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Indow, T., Inoue, E., and Matsuchima, K.. 1962. “An Experimental Study of the Luneburg Theory of Binocular Space.” Pt. 2, “The Alley Experiments.” Japanese Psychological Research 4:17–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jager, G. 2007. “The Evolution of Convex Categories.” Linguistics and Philosophy 30 (5): 551–64..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knill, D., and Richards, W. A., eds. 1996. Perception as Bayesian Inference. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koenderink, J., Doorn, A. van, and Lappin, J.. 2000. “Direct Measurement of the Curvature of Visual Space.” Perception 29:69–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luneburg, R. 1947. Mathematical Analysis of Binocular Vision. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Marr, D. 1982. Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. San Francisco: Freeman.Google Scholar
Matthen, M. 2005. Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neander, K. 2006. “Content for Cognitive Science.” In Teleosemantics, ed. Macdonald, G. and Papineau, D.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
O’Connor, C. 2014. “Evolving Perceptual Categories.” Philosophy of Science 81 (5): 840–51..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olin, L. 2016. “Burge on Perception and Sensation.” Synthese 193:1479–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orlandi, N. 2014. The Innocent Eye: Why Vision Is Not a Cognitive Process. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, S. E. 1999. Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ramsey, W. M. 2007. Representation Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rescorla, M. 2015. “Bayesian Perceptual Psychology.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception, ed. Matthen, Mohan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schellenberg, S. 2018. The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, and Evidence. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoumans, N., Kappers, A., and Koenderink, J.. 2002. “Scale Invariance in Near Space: Pointing under the Influence of Context.” Acta Psychologica 110:63–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Springle, A. 2019. “Instructive Representationalism.” Unpublished manuscript, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Stich, S. 1990. The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Suppes, P. 1977. “Is Visual Space Euclidean?” Synthese 35:397–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thorndyke, P. 1981. “Distance Estimation from Cognitive Maps.” Cognitive Psychology 13:526–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thouless, R. 1931. “Phenomenal Regression to the Real Object.” British Journal of Psychology 21:339–56.Google Scholar
Thouless, R.. 1932. “Phenomenal Regression to the ‘Real’” Object.” Pt. 2. British Journal of Psychology 22:1–30.Google Scholar
Vincente, A. 2012. “Burge on Representation and Biological Function” Thought 1:125–33.Google Scholar
Wagner, M. 2006. Geometries of Visual Space. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar