Perception and Cognition

Chapter 19 presents a view of the perceptual and perceptual-motor systems as large, unified systems representationally dominated by perception and practically dominated by conation. Relations between perceptual-level capacities and concepts, or other cognitive capacities, are characterized with considerable specificity. The discussion lays out recent history of views about cognitive influence on perception. It criticizes aspects of the framework for the dispute over modularity and impenetrability of perceptual systems. Confusions in use of the term ‘cognition’ are canvassed, and a conception of psychological system, which is not in fact penetrated, that differs from the standard one (which focuses on any sort of non-pathological causal influence) and that features the computational character of actual patterns described in the science is developed. The computational account of perceptual and perceptual-motor systems is supplemented by functional considerations. Broadly empiricist ways of distinguishing concepts from perceptual attributives by featuring the supposed abstract nature of concepts, or that features their supposed simple, relative removal from the “here and now”, are criticized. A function-based account of the distinction that better accords with science is proposed. The proposed computational account of modularity is reconciled with the multi-layered and multi-directional nature of perceptual processing partly by looking in detail at empirical facts about perceptual processing and partly by appealing to the distinction between perceptual-level capacities and supra-perceptual-level capacities developed in Chapters 13–18. The discussion refines a notion of psychological system, postulated in psychological explanations. The chapter brings together and develops further criticisms of the empiricist approach to understanding perception, an approach that relies on introspection and distinguishes perception from conception by levels of abstraction. Territory between perceptual-level representation and propositional representation is explored.