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

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

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.

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.