The Perception/Cognition Interface

I carried out the project The Perception/Cognition Interface at the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience at the University of Glasgow, where I served as an Academic Visitor in the period from 8th April to 19th May 2010. My research and stay in the Centre were financed by the Bednarowski Trust. The project investigated how modular perceptual processes interact with central cognitive processes involved in belief formation. Taking Jerry Fodor’s modular theory of mind as its starting point, the project assumed a principled discontinuity between perception and cognition: perceptual systems are domain-specific, informationally encapsulated, and operate on non-conceptual representations, whereas belief fixation and reasoning are carried out by central, non-modular processes. The main objective was to clarify the nature of early perceptual representations by addressing three interrelated issues: their epistemological status, their representational vocabulary, and their relation to phenomenal consciousness. The project asked whether perceptual outputs should be understood as hypotheses requiring central evaluation, how non-conceptual perceptual content relates to conceptual thought, and whether early perceptual representations are identical with, or distinct from, conscious perceptual experience. Three core hypotheses structured the inquiry. First, perceptual belief formation involves three stages rather than two: a non-conceptual perceptual representation, a direct perceptual thought formed automatically and non-inferentially, and an optional, inferentially elaborated perceptual thought. Second, the traditional conceptual/non-conceptual distinction should be replaced by a finer taxonomy distinguishing categorial from non-categorial representations. Third, the phenomenal character of perceptual experience must be distinguished from the non-conceptual content of early perceptual representations, the latter constituting the proper target of psychological explanation.

The project results were disseminated through conference and seminar talks, as well as in a research paper.

Research paper