•  86
    The Locus of Masking Shape-at-a-Slant
    with William Epstein
    Perception and Psychophysics 24 (6): 501-504. 1978.
    Twelve subjects provided shape and orientation judgments for a set of projectively equivalent, variously rotated rectangles under three viewing conditions—monoptic, dichoptic, and binocular—with and without the presence of a pattern mask. In the absence of the mask, partial constancy was exhibited under the first two conditions and near perfect constancy under the binocular condition. Orientation was discriminated. Presence of the mask produced projective shape matching and diminished orientatio…Read more
  •  74
    Functional Equivalence of Masking and Cue Reduction in Perception of Shape at a Slant
    with William Epstein
    Perception and Psychophysics 23 (2): 137-144. 1978.
    In a backward masking paradigm Epstein, Hatfield, and Muise (1977) found that presentation of a frontoparallel pattern mask caused the perceived shape of elliptical figures which were rotated in depth to conform to a projective shape function. The current study extended the masking function by examining the effect of a mask which was partially or wholly cotemporal with the target. The study also assessed the functional equivalence of the masking treatment and the conventional treatment for minim…Read more
  •  155
    This article critically examines the views that psychology first came into existence as a discipline ca. 1879, that philosophy and psychology were estranged in the ensuing decades, that psychology finally became scientific through the influence of logical empiricism, and that it should now disappear in favor of cognitive science and neuroscience. It argues that psychology had a natural philosophical phase (from antiquity) that waxed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that this psycholo…Read more
  •  114
    Visual Experience: Sensation, Cognition, and Constancy (edited book)
    with Sarah Allred
    Oxford University Press. 2012.
    Seeing happens effortlessly and yet is endlessly complex. Among the most fascinating aspects of visual perception is its stability and constancy. As we shift our gaze or move about the world, the light projected onto the retinas is constantly changing. Yet the surrounding objects appear stable in their properties. Psychologists have long been interested in the constancies. They have asked questions such as: How good is constancy? Is constancy a fact about how things look, or is it a product of o…Read more
  •  69
    Consciousness and Persons (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 59 (3): 687-688. 2006.
    Review of Michael Tye, Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity. MIT Press, 2003.
  •  85
    This chapter examines Russell’s appreciation of the relevance of psychology for the theory of knowledge, especially in connection with the problem of the external world, and the background for this appreciation in British philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Russell wrote in 1914 that “the epistemological order of deduction includes both logical and psychological considerations.” Indeed, the notion of what is “psychologically derivative” played a crucial role in his epistemolog…Read more
  •  100
    This edition of the Prolegomena presents Kant's thought clearly by paying careful attention to his original language. An extensive translator's introduction considers the origin and purpose of the Prolegomena, examines Kant's use of the analytic method, compares the structure of the Prolegomena to that of the Critique of Pure Reason, examines Kant's relation to Hume as expressed in this work, briefly surveys the work's reception, and offers a note on texts and translation. Detailed scholarly not…Read more
  •  99
    The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680–1760
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (1): 181-185. 2016.
    Review of: Stephen Gaukroger: The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760. Oxford: Clarendon, 2010, pp. ix+505. £47.00 (hb). ISBN 9780199594931. This volume is the second of a projected six-volume work on the shaping of modern cognitive values through the emergence of a scientific culture, a phenomenon that Gaukroger takes to be specific to the West. The volume ranges from Newton’s initial publications on optics to the French Enlightenme…Read more
  •  3935
    Gestalt psychology and the philosophy of mind
    with William Epstein
    Philosophical Psychology 7 (2): 163-181. 1994.
    The Gestalt psychologists adopted a set of positions on mind-body issues that seem like an odd mix. They sought to combine a version of naturalism and physiological reductionism with an insistence on the reality of the phenomenal and the attribution of meanings to objects as natural characteristics. After reviewing basic positions in contemporary philosophy of mind, we examine the Gestalt position, characterizing it m terms of phenomenal realism and programmatic reductionism. We then distinguish…Read more
  •  156
    Natural Geometry in Descartes and Kepler
    Res Philosophica 92 (1): 117-148. 2015.
    According to Kepler and Descartes, the geometry of the triangle formed by the two eyes when focused on a single point affords perception of the distance to that point. Kepler characterized the processes involved as associative learning. Descartes described the processes as a “ natural geometry.” Many interpreters have Descartes holding that perceivers calculate the distance to the focal point using angle-side-angle, calculations that are reduced to unnoticed mental habits in adult vision. This a…Read more
  •  100
    Cognition
    In Lawrence Shapiro (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition, Routledge. 2014.
    What is cognition? What makes a process cognitive? These questions have been answered differently by various investigators and theoretical traditions. Even so, there are some commonalities, allowing us to specify a few contrasting answers to these questions. The main commonalities involve the notion that cognition is information processing that explains intelligent behavior. The differences concern whether early perceptual processes are cognitive, whether representations are needed to explain co…Read more
  •  109
    SeeingDretske
    Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3): 19-35. 2004.
    A commentary on Dretske, "Change Blindness" (same journal issue). Dretske analyzes standard cases of change blindness as properly being difference blindness, since the eye is in saccade when the change occurs and so the change itself (the event of the change) is not seen. He considers two models of the phenomenon, the object model and the fact model, preferring the latter. In previous work, he had affirmed the object model. I reconsider its merits, first looking more closely at the notion of dif…Read more
  •  141
    This chapter challenges the view that psychology emerged from philosophy about 1900, when each found its own proper sphere with little relation to the other. It begins by considering the notion of a discipline, defined as a distinct branch of learning. Psychology has been a discipline from the time of Aristotle, though with a wider ambit, to include phenomena of both life and mind. Empirical psychology in a narrower sense arose in the eighteenth century, through the application (in Britain and e…Read more
  •  122
    Kant is the central figure of modern philosophy. He sought to rebuild philosophy from the ground up, and he succeeded in permanently changing its problems and methods. This revised edition of the Prolegomena, which is the best introduction to the theoretical side of his philosophy, presents his thought clearly by paying careful attention to his original language. Also included are selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, which fill out and explicate some of Kant's central arguments, and in w…Read more
  •  204
    Perception and Sense Data
    In Michael Beaney (ed.) https://philpapers.org/rec/BEATOH, Oxford University Press. pp. 948-974. 2013.
    Analytic philosophy arose in the early decades of the twentieth century, with Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore leading the way. Although some accounts emphasize the role of logic and language in the origin of analytic philosophy, of equal importance is the theme of perception, sense data, and knowledge, which dominated systematic philosophical discussion in the first two decades of the twentieth century in both Britain and America. This chapter examines work on perception and sense data as well …Read more
  •  1092
    Force and Mind–Body Interaction
    In Juan Jose Saldana (ed.), Science and Cultural Diversity: Proceedings of the XXIst International Congress of the History of Science, Autonomous National University of Mexico. pp. 3074-3089. 2005.
    This article calls into question the notion that seventeenth-century authors such as Descartes and Leibniz straightforwardly conceived the mind as something "outside" nature. Descartes indeed did regard matter as distinct from mind, but the question then remains as to whether he equated the natural world, and the world of laws of nature, with the material world. Similarly, Leibniz distinguished a kingdom of final causes (pertaining to souls) and a kingdom of efficient causes (pertaining to bodie…Read more
  •  79
    Representation in perception and cognition: Connectionist affordances
    In William Ramsey, Stephen P. Stich & D. M. Rumelhart (eds.), Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 163--95. 1991.
    There is disagreement over the notion of representation in cognitive science. Many investigators equate representations with symbols, that is, with syntactically defined elements in an internal symbol system. In recent years there have been two challenges to this orthodoxy. First, a number of philosophers, including many outside the symbolist orthodoxy, have argued that "representation" should be understood in its classical sense, as denoting a "stands for" relation between representation and re…Read more
  •  158
    Metaphysics and the new science
    In David C. Lindberg & Robert S. Westman (eds.), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. by and (Cambridge:), Cambridge University Press. 1990.
    An understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and natural philosophy - or, as we might now say, between philosophy and science - is fundamental to understanding the rise of the "new science" of the seventeenth century. Twentieth-century scholarship on this relationship has been dominated by the thoughbt of Ernst Cassirer, E. A. Burtt, A. N. Whitehead, and Alexandre Koyre. These authors found a common core in the mathematization of nature, which they ascribed to a common Platonic or Py…Read more
  •  113
    Representation without symbol systems
    with Stephen M. Kosslyn
    Social Research: An International Quarterly 51 (4): 1019-1045. 1984.
    The concept of representation has become almost inextricably bound to the concept of symbol systems. the concepts is nowhere more prevalent than in descriptions of "internal representations." These representations are thought to occur in an internal symbol system that allows the brain to store and use information. In this paper we explore a different approach to understanding psychological processes, one that retains a commitment to representations and computations but that is not based on the i…Read more
  •  279
    Did Descartes have a Jamesian theory of the emotions?
    Philosophical Psychology 20 (4): 413-440. 2007.
    Rene Descartes and William James had "body first" theories of the passions or emotions, according to which sensory stimulation causes a bodily response that then causes an emotion. Both held that this bodily response also causes an initial behavioral response (such as flight from a bear) without any cognitive intervention such as an "appraisal" of the object or situation. From here they differ. Descartes proposed that the initial processes that produce fear and running are entirely mechanical. E…Read more
  •  573
    This article critically examines the views that psychology first came into existence as a discipline ca. 1879, that philosophy and psychology were estranged in the ensuing decades, that psychology finally became scientific through the influence of logical empiricism, and that it should now disappear in favor of cognitive science and neuroscience. It argues that psychology had a natural philosophical phase (from antiquity) that waxed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that this psycholo…Read more
  •  173
    Descartes is widely regarded to be the father of modern philosophy and his Meditations is among the most important philosophical texts ever written. _The Routledge Guidebook to Descartes’ Meditations_ introduces the major themes in Descartes’ great book and acts as a companion for reading this key work, examining: The context of Descartes’ work and the background to his writing; Each separate part of the text in relation to its goals, meanings and impact; The reception the book received when fir…Read more
  •  115
    Attention in Early Scientific Psychology
    In Richard D. Wright (ed.), Visual Attention, Oxford University Press. pp. 3-25. 1998.
    Attention only "recently"--i.e. in the eighteenth century--achieved chapter status in psychology textbooks in which psychology is conceived as a natural science. This report first sets this entrance, by sketching the historical contexts in which psychology has been considered to be a natural science. It then traces the construction of phenomenological descriptions of attention from antiquity to the seventeenth century, noting various aspects of attention that were marked for discussion by Arist…Read more
  •  117
    Phenomenal and Cognitive Factors in Spatial Perception
    In Gary Hatfield & Sarah Allred (eds.), Visual Experience: Sensation, Cognition, and Constancy, Oxford University Press. pp. 35. 2012.
    This chapter provides an overview of the phenomenology of size perception and the use of instructions to tease apart phenomenal and cognitive aspects. It develops his own recent proposals concerning the geometry of visual space. The chapter proposes that visual space is contracted along the lines of sight. This contraction would explain the apparent convergence of railway tracks, but without invoking a “proximal mode” experience. Parallel railway tracks receding into the distance project converg…Read more
  •  1762
    In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Richard Rorty locates the perceived ills of modern philosophy in the "epistemological turn" of Descartes and Locke. This chapter argues that Rorty's accounts of Descartes' and Locke's philosophical work are seriously flawed. Rorty misunderstood the participation of early modern philosophers in the rise of modern science, and he misdescribed their examination of cognition as psychological rather than epistemological. His diagnostic efforts were there…Read more
  •  1208
    Spatial Perception and Geometry in Kant and Helmholtz
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1984. 1984.
    This paper examines Helmholtz's attempt to use empirical psychology to refute certain of Kant's epistemological positions. Particularly, Helmholtz believed that his work in the psychology of visual perception showed Kant's doctrine of the a priori character of spatial intuition to be in error. Some of Helmholtz's arguments are effective, but this effectiveness derives from his arguments to show the possibility of obtaining evidence that the structure of physical space is non-Euclidean, and these…Read more
  •  183
    Descartes entitled the Sixth Meditation "The existence of material things, and the real distinction between mind and body." But these topics take up only two paragraphs, about one-third of the way into the Sixth Meditation (which is the longest of the six). The other topics in the Meditation partly pertain to the cognitive faculties that a seeker after knowledge must employ: senses, imagination, and intellect. They also concern the mind–body relation: not only is it to be shown that mind and bod…Read more
  •  569
    Kant on the perception of space (and time)
    In Paul Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 61--93. 2006.
    Although the “Transcendental Aesthetic” is the briefest part of the first Critique, it has garnered a lion's share of discussion. This fact reflects the important implications that Kant drew from his arguments there. He used the arguments concerning space and time to display examples of synthetic a priori cognition, to secure his division between intuitions and concepts, and to support transcendental idealism. Earlier, in the years around 1770, Kant's investigations into space and time had facil…Read more
  •  83
    René Descartes
    In Steven M. Emmanuel (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to the Modern Philosophers - From Descartes to Nietzsche, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 1-27. 1991.
    An introduction to Descartes as a philosopher. Situates his philosophy within the context of Descartes' efforts to forge a new natural philosophy, including original work on the theory of the senses and the passions and emotions.
  •  138
    This chapter examines the Helmholtz's changing conceptions of the relation between scientific cognition (the thought processes of the investigator) and artistic cognition. It begins with two case studies: Helmholtz's application of sensory physiology and psychology respectively to music and to painting. Consideration of these concrete cases leads to Helmholtz's account of the methodology of aesthetics, and specifically to his formulation of the distinction between the *Geisteswissenschaften* and…Read more