•  1735
    The number sense represents (rational) numbers
    with Jacob Beck
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44 1-57. 2021.
    On a now orthodox view, humans and many other animals possess a “number sense,” or approximate number system, that represents number. Recently, this orthodox view has been subject to numerous critiques that question whether the ANS genuinely represents number. We distinguish three lines of critique – the arguments from congruency, confounds, and imprecision – and show that none succeed. We then provide positive reasons to think that the ANS genuinely represents numbers, and not just non-numerica…Read more
  •  1262
    Jerry Fodor deemed informational encapsulation ‘the essence’ of a system’s modularity and argued that human perceptual processing comprises modular systems, thus construed. Nowadays, his conclusion is widely challenged. Often, this is because experimental work is seen to somehow demonstrate the cognitive penetrability of perceptual processing, where this is assumed to conflict with the informational encapsulation of perceptual systems. Here, I deny the conflict, proposing that cognitive penetrat…Read more
  •  1221
    Naïve realism and phenomenal similarity
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (5): 885-902. 2023.
    It has been claimed that naïve realism predicts phenomenological similarities where there are none and, thereby, mischaracterises the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If true, this undercuts a key motivation for the view. Here, we defend naïve realism against this charge, proposing that such arguments fail (three times over). In so doing, we highlight a more general problem with critiques of naïve realism that target the purported phenomenological predictions of the view. The probl…Read more
  •  906
    Beyond the icon: Core cognition and the bounds of perception
    Mind and Language 37 (1): 94-113. 2022.
    This paper refines a controversial proposal: that core systems belong to a perceptual kind, marked out by the format of its representational outputs. Following Susan Carey, this proposal has been understood in terms of core representations having an iconic format, like certain paradigmatically perceptual outputs. I argue that they don’t, but suggest that the proposal may be better formulated in terms of a broader analogue format type. Formulated in this way, the proposal accommodates the existen…Read more
  •  673
    In a recent paper, Berger and Nanay consider, and reject, three ways of addressing the phenomenon of unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. Since these three approaches seem to exhaust the options open to naïve realists, and since there is said to be excellent evidence that perception of the same fundamental kind can occur, both consciously and unconsciously, this is seen to present a problem for the view. We take this opportunity to show that all three approaches considered re…Read more
  •  664
    Mapping the Visual Icon
    Philosophical Quarterly 72 (3): 552-577. 2022.
    It is often claimed that pre-attentive vision has an ‘iconic’ format. This is seen to explain pre-attentive vision's characteristically high processing capacity and to make sense of an overlap in the mechanisms of early vision and mental imagery. But what does the iconicity of pre-attentive vision amount to? This paper considers two prominent ways of characterising pre-attentive visual icons and argues that neither is adequate: one approach renders the claim ‘pre-attentive vision is iconic’ empi…Read more
  •  480
    Investigating what felt shapes look like
    I-Perception 7 (1). 2016.
    A recent empirical study claims to show that the answer to Molyneux’s question is negative, but, as John Schwenkler points out, its findings are inconclusive: Subjects tested in this study probably lacked the visual acuity required for a fair assessment of the question. Schwenkler is undeterred. He argues that the study could be improved by lowering the visual demands placed on subjects, a suggestion later endorsed and developed by Kevin Connolly. I suggest that Connolly and Schwenkler both unde…Read more
  •  451
    Joint action goals reduce visuomotor interference effects from a partner’s incongruent actions
    with Luke McEllin, Anna Francová, Marcell Székely, Stephen Andrew Butterfill, and John Michael
    Scientific Reports 9 (1). 2019.
    Joint actions often require agents to track others’ actions while planning and executing physically incongruent actions of their own. Previous research has indicated that this can lead to visuomotor interference effects when it occurs outside of joint action. How is this avoided or overcome in joint actions? We hypothesized that when joint action partners represent their actions as interrelated components of a plan to bring about a joint action goal, each partner’s movements need not be represen…Read more
  •  448
    Does the number sense represent number?
    with Jacob Beck
    In Blair Armstrong, Stephanie Denison, Michael Mack & Yang Xu (eds.), Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, . 2020.
    On a now orthodox view, humans and many other animals are endowed with a “number sense”, or approximate number system (ANS), that represents number. Recently, this orthodox view has been subject to numerous critiques, with critics maintaining either that numerical content is absent altogether, or else that some primitive analog of number (‘numerosity’) is represented as opposed to number itself. We distinguish three arguments for these claims – the arguments from congruency, confounds, and impre…Read more
  •  427
    Is Pain Modular?
    Mind and Language 38 (3): 828-46. 2023.
    We suggest that pain processing has a modular architecture. We begin by motivating the (widely assumed but seldom defended) conjecture that pain processing comprises inferential mechanisms. We then note that pain exhibits a characteristic form of judgement independence. On the assumption that pain processing is inferential, we argue that its judgement independence is indicative of modular (encapsulated) mechanisms. Indeed, we go further, suggesting that it renders the modularity of pain mechanis…Read more
  •  398
    The distinction between perception and cognition frames countless debates in philosophy and cognitive science. But what, if anything, does this distinction actually amount to? In this introductory article, we summarize recent work on this question. We first briefly consider the possibility that a perception-cognition border should be eliminated from our scientific ontology, and then introduce and critically examine five positive approaches to marking a perception–cognition border, framed in term…Read more
  •  383
    Compositionality and constituent structure in the analogue mind
    Philosophical Perspectives 37 (1): 90-118. 2023.
    I argue that analogue mental representations possess a canonical decomposition into privileged constituents from which they compose. I motivate this suggestion, and rebut arguments to the contrary, through reflection on the approximate number system, whose representations are widely expected to have an analogue format. I then argue that arguments for the compositionality and constituent structure of these analogue representations generalize to other analogue mental representations posited in the…Read more
  •  340
    Number adaptation: A critical look
    with Sami Yousif and Elizabeth Brannon
    It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its reported discovery,…Read more
  •  310
    The approximate number system (ANS) enables organisms to represent the approximate number of items in an observed collection, quickly and independently of natural language. Recently, it has been proposed that the ANS goes beyond representing natural numbers by extracting and representing rational numbers (Clarke & Beck, 2021a). Prior work demonstrates that adults and children discriminate ratios in an approximate and ratio-dependent manner, consistent with the hallmarks of the ANS. Here, we use…Read more
  •  306
    Do humans visually adapt to number, or just itemhood?
    with Sami Yousif and Elizabeth Brannon
    In M. Goldwater, F. K. Anggoro, B. K. Hayes & D. C. Ong (eds.), Proceedings of the 45th Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, . pp. 1-6. 2023.
    Visual number adaption is a widely accepted phenomenon. This paper advances an alternative explanation for putative cases of the phenomenon. We propose that such cases may simply reflect observers adapting to the items in perceived displays, rather than their numerical quantity. Three experiments motivate consideration of this novel proposal and call into question the evidential basis for received formulations of the number adaptation hypothesis.
  •  209
    Numbers, numerosities, and new directions
    with Jacob Beck
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44 1-20. 2021.
    In our target article, we argued that the number sense represents natural and rational numbers. Here, we respond to the 26 commentaries we received, highlighting new directions for empirical and theoretical research. We discuss two background assumptions, arguments against the number sense, whether the approximate number system represents numbers or numerosities, and why the ANS represents rational numbers.
  •  67
    Born to Count
    with Jacob Beck
    Scientific American 328 (3): 42-49. 2023.
    Imagine hosting a party. You arrange snacks, curate a playlist and place a variety of beers in the refrigerator. Your first guest shows up, adding a six-pack before taking one bottle for himself. You watch your next guest arrive and contribute a few more beers, minus one for herself. Ready for a drink, you open the fridge and are surprised to find only eight beers remaining. You haven't been consciously counting the beers, but you know there should be more, so you start poking around. Sure enoug…Read more
  •  39