The Question (recap)

Fact to be explained: of all the objects that exist, you can think about some but not others. Why? What sort of relation between a subject and an object has to obtain if the subject is able to think about the object?

--- do one micro task for this unit

Next Steps: Acquaintance and Cognitive Penetration

In what follows, we will first consider, briefly and superficially, alternatives to the idea that acquaintance is what links your thoughts to their objects. We will then turn to the main topic of week 2: cognitive penetration and the question of there is a distinction between cognition and perception which would enable us to explain the possibility of thought about an object by appeal to acquaintance with it.

Pragmatists

A quick, superficial look at the pragmatists’ core idea about how thoughts relate to the things they are about. This is an alternative to the Acquaintance View.

Reading (optional):

• Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, truth and history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Dewey, J. (1907). The control of ideas by facts i. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 4(8):197–203.
• James, W. (1909). The Meaning of Truth : a Sequel to ”Pragmatism”. Longmans Green, London.

--- do one micro task for this unit

What Is Perception?

Before we can think clearly about whether there are top-down effects of perception, we need some kind of handle on the notion of perception.

Reading (optional):

• Davidson, D. (1999). Replies to critics. In Hahn, L. E., editor, The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Open Court, Chicago.
• Davidson, D. (1997). Seeing through language. In Preston, J., editor, Thought and Language, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, vol. 42. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Dretske, F. (2000). Simple seeing. In Perception, Knowledge and Belief. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Dretske, F. (1969). Seeing and Knowing. Routledge, London.

--- do one micro task for this unit

What Is Cognitive Penetration?

For the purposes of this course, you may assume that to say that vision is cognitively penetrated is to say that ‘our beliefs, desires, emotions, actions, and even the languages we speak can directly influence what we see’ (Firestone & Scholl, 2016 p. 5). An alternative of thinking about cognitive penetration is introduced. (Because this is a first-year course, we skip over Pylyshyn’s two attempts to characterise the notion: although these are interesting, we lack time to get into the details.)

Reading (optional):

• Fodor, Jerry. ‘Observation Reconsidered’. Philosophy of Science 51, no. 1 (1984): 23–43.
• Firestone, C. and Scholl, B. J. (2016). Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39.
• Dustin Stokes. ‘Cognitive Penetrability of Perception’. Philosophy Compass 8, no. 7 (2013): 646–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12043.

--- do 2 micro tasks for this unit

The Significance of Cognitive Penetration

Why care whether cognition penetrates vision? One reason is that this issue influences how we think about the relation between theory and observation (a theme we return to later in the course).

Reading (optional):

• Fodor, Jerry. ‘Observation Reconsidered’. Philosophy of Science 51, no. 1 (1984): 23–43.
• Dustin Stokes. ‘Cognitive Penetrability of Perception’. Philosophy Compass 8, no. 7 (2013): 646–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12043.
• Peirce, C. (1877). The fixation of belief. In Hartshorne, C. and Weiss, P., editors, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, volume 5. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
• Dewey, J. (1907). Reality and the criterion for the truth of ideas. Mind, 16(63):317–342.

--- do one micro task for this unit

The Further Significance of Cognitive Penetration

Why care whether cognition penetrates vision? Another reason is that this issue influences whether we should accept the Acquaintance View.

Reading (optional): Dustin Stokes. ‘Cognitive Penetrability of Perception’. Philosophy Compass 8, no. 7 (2013): 646–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12043.

Interim Conclusion: Cognitive Penetration

This is an interim conclusion because our work on cognitive penetration is incomplete (we still have to evaluate the evidence for and against its occurence). We have: got a fix on the notion of perception which is relevant to debates about cognitive penetration; considered how to characterise cognitive penetration; and explored why the question of whether cognition penetrates perception is significant.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.