348 Perception

Here’s the deal:  there appears to be an “in here -- me” and an “out there -- other”

        Consider  Buber’s                I and Thou             versus                  I and It

        Remember his argument:  the way we relate to the other depends on which of those two stances we take.

            The I-Thou is a singularity, an indivisible unit.  The I-It is a duality.

            In I-Thou relations, the participants are not independent of one another – they form a unitary oneness.

            In I-It relations, the participants are independent of one another.

Most of western psychology, in accord with most of western science, assumes that I-It is the only possible stance;

an astounding decision, with enormous implications regarding who and what we are.

In view of that decision, we then have to decide how to describe the manner of relating between I and It.

The mediator between “Me” and “the Other” has traditional been characterized as something called perception,

which itself depends in part on what the I attends to and how the I attends. 

So we need to understand the factors that presumably affect attending.  As we noted in the preceding several days,

some of those factors seem to be inside the I – desires, hopes, fears, expectations, interests, curiosity . . .

and others seem to be outside, but with the ability to influence or even to compel me to attend – 

high contrasts, colors, motion, repeated associations, . . ..

Furthermore, there are several difficult problems specifically regarding how the I perceives the Other.

Several of these problems relate to visual perception alone:

       -- the visual image at the retina is exceedingly tiny compared to the perceived distal object

                -- the visual image at the retina is upside down relative to the perceived distal object

                -- the visual image at the retina is subject to continuous saccadic movements,

                    yet the perceived distal object does not appear to be jerking around crazily

                -- the visual image at the retina is essentially flat, and yet the distal object is three-dimensional.

                --what causes illusions?  Other animals don’t seem to be subject to them, and they are partly but                   

                   not completely subject to cultural differences.

And complicating everything is the fact that we have several sensory modalities in addition to vision. 

How does the I integrate information from utterly differing sensory modalities into one perception? 

For example, how do I know to look to the left upon hearing a sound emanating from the left?  [M Wertheimer's daughter]

The foregoing problems have plagued western psychology for several hundred years. 

The most popular solutions have revolved around assuming that the British Empiricists / Associationists are right: 

we base our knowledge on sensory information. 

But that information in its “raw” form is not “corrrect” relative to the distal object [i.e., the “real world”].

    E.g, vision is based on tiny, upside-down, flat, jerky patterns of line & color at the retina

    E.g., sound is based on vibrations at the ear drum

    Etc.

We supposedly learn via associations and other cognitive processes to transform that sensory information

into “percepts” that do match the distal object.

But wait.  Something inside must in charge of arranging the associations and directing those cognitive processes:  

that raises the problem of the homunculus.  .  .

Take depth perception, for example:

       We “see” objects as having three dimensions.  But how do we do this, since our retinal image is not 3-d?

       Proposed empiricist solution from Bishop Berkeley:  “Touch teaches vision.” 

       That is, the empiricists agreed that something had to be veridical, or else we wouldn’t have a starting               

        point to calibrate the other sensory information.

        So they decided that touch must be inherently correct from birth, and thus vision could “learn” from               

        touch that things have three dimensions.

        Hence, the nativist – empiricist debate . . . .

 – dropped babies

 – babies on visual cliffs

 – kittens bumping into table legs

 – kittens in carousels

                                 – monkeys raised in the dark, etc.

Constructive/indirect perception versus direct perception  [useful web page]      

Clearly, information in the retinal image is not veridical and is very scanty compared to the

amount of information available in the visual array.  

Because of these “problems” western psychologists are stuck.  They assume

that perception must be based on the proximal stimulus (e.g., the retinal image),  

although that image is inadequate to account for the richness of our perceptions. 

 So they are forced to make a dramatic second assumption: 

that perception is constructed via mental processes.

Thus perception is indirect in the sense that it is not based directly on information available in the world,

 as mediated by the proximal stimulus (e.g., the retinal image), and so the mind “constructs” perceptions. 

[Note "primacy of mind" assumption]

The evidence for the constructivist position comes from several sources
                             --depth perception:  since the retinal image is relatively flat . . . [Bishop Berkeley’s solution]

                                Thus fast, unconscious (Helmholtz) associations with veridical information from touch . . .

                                Also we have monocular and binocular “cues” for depth

                               (But careful here – those “cues” are “outside” the mind – a lurking, veiled hint that

 the purely constructivist account may harbor a fatal flaw)

                              --illusions:  obviously the image is simply a static array of lines, so why do we “see” it in an

 altered way?  Surely it’s because the mind alters the image.

                              --ambiguous figures:  why do we see the figure one way, and then with no change in the

                                   figure, we see it a different way? Again, it must be the work of the mind.

                              --and, of course Descartes, the mighty Descartes & the mind as primary . . .

               All together, the constructivist position seems pretty convincing, and besides, we want to believe it.

               We want to believe that mind generates & controls our perceptions, ideas, and behaviors . . ..

                The challenge:

                             Problems with the foregoing:

                             --depth perception:  by the 1970’s we knew that babies seem to have innate awareness

                                    of some aspects of depth, which is clearly counter to Berkeley’s “touch teaches vision”                                    

                                    and to Locke’s tabula rasa.

                              --monocular and binocular cues for depth:  they are “outside” the mind

                              --Gestalt organizing principles:  although the Gestaltists assumed that these principles

                                    exist “in the mind,” nevertheless they claimed the principles are “innate,” not “acquired”

                              --Furthermore, the organizing principles demonstrated that we tend to perceive the world

                                    holistically, not as a construction based on reduced bits & pieces

                James & Eleanor Gibson & direct perception.

                              They noted that science always starts with some sort of overriding assumptions, such a

                               the two noted above, and they suggested that perhaps we should start with a completely    

                               different set of assumptions, and then see which set generates a better account of

behavior & knowledge.  After all, we do want to predict [and perhaps control] behavior.

So the Gibsons proposed that visual perception is not based on the retinal image, but rather directly on information

available in the visual array:  specifically, on information specifying what the environment affords an organism

in terms of possible behaviors. 

Furthermore, we perceive holistically in terms of affordances rather than constructing the world from bits & pieces.

The retinal image exists, it’s true, but only in the sense that an image also exists on a window through which we look,

but we don’t look at the image on the window.  Rather, we look through the window . . .