PERCEPTION
the world around us?
Aristotle’s Theory of Perception
The most immediate difficulty for Aristotle’s approach sense perception the relevant sensory faculty becomes is reflected in clause (iii) of the general analysis article.) When he says that “what can perceive is tually” (De Anima ii 5, 418a3–4), Aristotle seems a sense organ in one way or another becomes like concerns understanding precisely how this likeness stract, it is easy to understand this claim in a variety of Aristotle’s theory of perception will need first spectrum, some commentators have understood and literal. What it takes for a person to perceive organs and to have those organs actualized on specific ities. Appropriate organs are those with, among exemplify the sensible qualities which they are structured approach a subject perceives redness when he has such that when it is exposed to a color in its environment sure, itself red. That is, on the literalist interpretation, non-representationally, the colors they perceive. approach, the eye jelly, the matter of the inner eye, shared-property exemplification. Just as a grey paint is applied to it, precisely because it is made like its object in perception when it is made to be plify the quality of its object. The eye, for instance, ent in the objects its field.
approach to perception concerns his claim that in becomes like the object it perceives. (This claim of Aristotelian perception offered in the main is potentially such as the object of sense is acto commit himself to a claim to the effect that like its object when it perceives. The difficulty likeness is supposed to be envisaged. In the abvariety of different ways. An ultimate evaluation to decide what he intends. At one end of the understood Aristotle to intend something utterly plain perceive is for him to be outfitted with the appropriate specific occasions by ambient perceptual qualother things, an ability to share by coming to structured to receive. So, for example, on this has an eye made of suitably gelatinous stuff environment it becomes, in virtue of this expointerpretation, the sense organs become literally, and perceive. More exactly, according to proponents of this eye, itself becomes red. So, likeness amounts to fence becomes like a white fence when white made to exemplify whiteness, so an eye becomes be like it, which occurs when it is made to exeminstance, simply comes to exemplify the colors pres-
As
istotle’sappliedtoAr-theoryofperception,then,asensoryorgancan bemadelikeitsobject,canreceive sensibleproperty,withoutactuallyexemplify ingthatproperty.Ifthisqualifiesas nessforAristotle,anditdoesseems suchsinceheiswilling,forexample, forminthecraftsman’ssoul” havingaformwhichisthen madetoexemplifyit,then wayforAristotleto ceptionwhichproperty7,1032a32,
What’s the relation between the objects, the surrounding that we see and how we act?
receiveitsexemplify-asaformoflikeseemstoqualifyas example,tospeakof“the soul”asawayofsomeone’s thenimpartedtosomematter thenthereisareasonablyclear toarticulateadoctrineofformrepropertywhichdoesnotcommititselftoliteral 7,1032a32,transference(cf.Metaphysicsvii b5,b22).
Can we find similarities between us and the objects that we surround ourselves with?
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Finally, we speculate on a possible function of mood-dependent modulation of this topdown processing in social perception in particular.
Conscious perception
This process of -infer ence does go astray from time to time, and may lead to illusory perception: sometimes people see things that are not there. In a recent study we have shown that this inference may also be influenced by mood. Here we present some additional data, -sug gesting that illusory percepts are the result of increased top-down processing, which is normally helpful in detecting real stimuli.
is not the result of passively processing sensory input, but to large extent of active inference based on previous knowledge.
It is tempting to think of our visual system as a sort of biological video camera, projecting images via the retina onto our mind’s eye. This view, however, is clearly oversimplified. Already in the 17th century, now legendary theorists like Descartes, Molyneux, and Berkeley postulated the idea that ‘seeing’ is not a function of the eyes, but of ‘of the soul’. It is quite clear nowadays that what we see is not just a function of ‘what is out there’, but to significant degree influenced by what is going on in our minds. Helmholtz already proposed in the late 19th that vision is an active process, and largely guided by what we already know about the world. In the past decade, Helmholtz’s idea has seen an enormous boom in theoretical and empirical support in the literature. There is growing consensus that the brain does not passively process the input it receives from the eyes in order to provide us with a visual representation of our environment, but instead continuously generates predictions about what the world should look like. These predictions, based on both memory and expectancy, are subsequently matched with actual visual input. What we are conscious of, is the result of this matching process. The computational benefits of such a strategy are clear: accurate predictions remove a large portion of redundancy from incoming sensory signals.6 Although the exact neural mechanisms of this predictive process remain somewhat elusive, it is clear that so-called top-down interactions between higher cortical areas, such as the orbitofrontal cortex, and lower-tier visual areas, possibly including the primary visual cortex , play an important role in matching predictions with ‘what is out there.
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Given the importance of accurate emotion recognition in social interaction, the brain may prioritize consciously processed information over unconscious information in non-reflexive decision making - a finding we corroborated in a recent electrophysiological study on texture discrimination. The work presented here suggests an additional benefit of recurrent, and thus conscious,visual processing:
the widespread interactions within the visual processing network allow for the integration of non-sensory information in sensory representations. Such a view fits well with a recently proposed theory by Marciano and Baumeister, who speculate that consciousness serves a special function in facilitating socio-cultural interaction. In particular, they state that consciousness serves to assign meaning and narrative to external events. Although this t heory primarily applies to conscious thought and not perception, integrating non-sensory elements within a conscious sensory representa tion would allow for quicker decision making in socio-cultural interactions.
How (and why) the visual control of action differs from visual perception
Vision provides our most direct experience of the world beyond our bodies. Although we might hear the wind whistling through the trees and a sudden clap of thunder, vision allows us to appreciate the approaching storm in all its majesty: the roiling clouds, a flash of lightning, the changing shadows on the hillside and the advancing sheets of rain. It is the immediacy of this kind of experience that has made vision the most studied and perhaps the best understood—of all the human senses. Much of what we have learned about how vision works has come from psychophysical experiments in which researchers present people with a visual display and simply ask them whether or not they can see a stimulus in the display or tell one visible stimulus from another. By recording the responses of the observers while systematically varying the physical properties of the visual stimuli, researchers have amassed an enormous amount of information about the relationship between visual phenomenology and the physics of light—as well as what goes wrong when different parts of the visual system are damaged.
Vision not only provides us with detailed knowledge of the world beyond our bodies, but it also guides our actions with respect to objects and events in that world. The computations required for vision-for-perception are quite different from those required for vision-for-action. The former uses relational metrics and scene-based frames of reference while the latter uses absolute metrics and effector-based frames of reference. These competing demands on vision have shaped the organization of the visual pathways in the primate brain, particularly within the visual areas of the cerebral cortex. The ventral ‘perceptual’ stream, projecting from early visual areas to inferior temporal cortex, helps to construct the rich and detaile visual representations of the world that allow us to identify objects and events, attach meaning and significance to them and establish their causal relations.By contrast, the dorsal ‘action’ stream, projecting from early visual areas to the posterior parietal cortex, plays a critical role in the real-time control of action, transforming information about the location and disposition of goal objects into the coordinate frames of the effectors being used to perform the action. The idea of two visual systems in a single brain might seem initially counterintuitive. Our visual experience of the world is so compelling that it is hard to believe that some other quite independent visual signal—one that we are unaware of—is guiding our movements. But evidence from a broad range of studies from neuropsychology to neuroimaging has shown that the visual signals that give us our experience of objects and events in the world are not the same ones that control our actions.
Vision not only enables us to perceive the world, it also provides exquisite control of the movements we make in that world—from the mundane act of picking up our morning cup of coffee to the expert return of a particularly, well-delivered serve in a game of tennis. Yet, with the notable exception of eye movements, which have been typically regarded as an information-seeking adjunct to visual perception, little attention has been paid to the way in which vision is used to programme and control our actions, particularly the movements of our hands and limbs.
Vision not only enables us to perceive the world, it also provides exquisite control of the movements we make in that world—from the mundane act of picking up our morning cup of coffee to the expert return of a particularly, well-delivered serve in a game of tennis. Yet, with the notable exception of eye movements, which have been typically regarded as an information-seeking adjunct to visual perception, little attention has been paid to the way in which vision is used to programme and control our actions, particularly the movements of our hands and limbs.
VISUAL
One reason why the visual control of action was ignored for so long is the prevalent belief that the same visual representation of the world that enables us to perceive objects and events also guides our actions with respect to those objects and events. As I will outline in this paper, however, this common-sense view of how vision works is not correct (for a philosophical discussion of this issue, see. Evidence from a broad range of studies has made it clear that vision is not a unitary system and the control of skilled actions depends on visual processes that are quite separate from those mediating perception. The control of action depends on visual processes that are quite distinct from those leading to perception, and these processes engage quite different neural circuits. In addition, the visual information controlling action is often inaccessible to conscious report. For all these reasons, conventional psychophysics can provide little insight into the visual control of movement—or tell us anything about the neural substrates of that control. Quite different approaches are needed in which the parameters of visual stimuli are systematically varied and the effects of those variations on the performance of skilled actions are measured. Fortunately, over the last two decades, a new ‘visuomotor psychophysics’ has emerged that is doing exactly this.
Of course, it would be convenient for researchers if vision were a single and unified system.
If this were the case, then what we have learned from psychophysical studies of visual perception would be entirely generalizable to the visual control of action.
But the reality is that visual psychophysics can tell us little about how vision controls our movements. This is because psycho
physics depends entirely on conscious report: observers in a psychophysical experiment tell the experimenter about what they are experiencing. But these experiences are not what drive skilled actions.
It seems self-evident the actions we perform on visible objects make use of the same visual representation that allows us to perceive those objects. This idea, which is commonly accepted by many philosophers and scientists, is sometimes referred to as the Assumption of Experience-based Control (Clark, 2002). According to this view, the visual system creates a single ‘general-purpose’ representation of the external world that provides a platform for both cognitive operations and the real time control of goal-directed actions. There are good reasons to believe, however, that such a monolithic account is incorrect.
The retina sends direct projections to more than a dozen separate networks in the primate brain, in which the processing has been shaped by the particular output mechanisms that each network serves.
One of the most prominent pathways runs from the eye to the dorsal part of the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus and from there to an area in the occipital lobe known variously as primary visual cortex, striate cortex, area 17, or V1. Beyond V1, visual information is conveyed to a complex network of areas extending from the occipital lobe into the parietal and temporal lobes. Despite the complexity of the interconnections be-
The actions we on visible objects use of the same representation allows us to those objects. Two Visual
we perform objects make same visual
these different areas, two broad “streams” of visual projections from area V1 and other early visual areas were identified in the primate brain over thirty years ago: a ventral stream projecting eventually to the inferior part of the temporal lobe and a dorsal stream projecting to the posterior part of the parietal lobe (Ungerleider & Mishkin, 1982).
representation that perceive objects. Visual
The two streams are not only intimately interconnected but the different areas within them send prominent projections back to area V1. Moreover, both streams also receive inputs from a number of other subcortical visual structures, such as the superior colliculus in the midbrain, which
from neurophysiological and neuroanatomical studies in the monkey, the advent of neuroimaging, particularly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revealed that the projections from area V1 to extra-striate regions in the human brain can be separated into ventral and dorsal streams similar to those seen in the monkey (Tootell, Tsao, & Vanduffel, 2003).
Streams
We spend our lives watching and responding to each other
Social influence
Spend time in any public space watching the crowds and you’ll see examples of what scientists call social influence—the varied ways people change their behavior because of the presence of others. Notice how individuals respond to orders and requests, go along with a group, mirror the actions of others, compete, and cooperate. We are finely tuned to the people around us, relying on each other for cues about how to behave so that we can efficiently navigate our social environments. The influence of others is so pervasive that we can experience it even when there is no real person there: we’ll adjust our behavior in response to an implied presence (say, a security camera and a No Trespassing sign) or an imagined one (“What would my mother say?”).
Most of us don’t like to be called conformists (at least in Western societies, where individuality and uniqueness are prized), but going along with the crowd is a natural and often useful tendency. Humans evolved to live in groups; since early on, we’ve needed ways to smooth interactions, reduce conflict, and coordinate action. For example, traffic flows better—and more safely—if cars all drive in the same direction and pedestrians all cross the street together. Conforming to the group can be a matter of survival. The tendency to conform has two different roots. Sometimes, in confusing situations, we assume that other people know more than we do, so we follow their lead. That assumption might be right—but often it’s not. Say you’re walking by a building and see smoke coming out. Do you call 911? If other people look unconcerned, you might decide it’s not an emergency. But others may decide not to phone for help because you don’t look concerned. Scientists call this potential misinterpretation by a group pluralistic ignorance. It can lead to the bystander effect, where no one from a crowd steps forward to help in a situation where action is needed. It’s a paradox: the more people who witness an emergency, the less chance that any of them will act, because they’re all conforming to the group’s behavior.
Conformity
The urban paradox
The pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human objective, and social scientists have long suggested that individual happiness depends on where one lives. Urban living has the potential to greatly affect well-being in many ways, both good and bad. Concentrating workers in densely populated urban areas creates many production advantages due to cost efficiencies from large scale production, better employer-employee job matching, and increased creation and dissemination of knowledge among skilled workers. It has become a stylized fact that average productivity and wages are higher in urban areas for the US and numerous countries around the world. Urbanization also facilitates consumption and recreational opportunities not available in less densely populated areas. Many specialized goods and services have per capita demand that is too low to support their existence in less populated areas. There simply are not enough customers in less dense areas for some producers to be able to make a profit and stay in business. However, a larger customer base increases demand and makes provision viable. Examples include live professional entertainment (such as sports, music, and theater), museums, specialized medical practices, specialized restaurants, and various boutique retailers. Similarly, a larger population also facilitates greater numbers and diversity of local clubs with shared interests such as book clubs, cooking clubs, running clubs, etc.
The bigger and denser the city you live in, the more unhappy you’re likely to be
The net effects of urban living on individual happiness are theoretically ambiguous and a source of considerable debate among researchers. We use data for the US from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to examine the overall effects of urban residence on happiness as measured by individual responses to a question asking, “In general, how satisfied are you with your life?”
Individuals choose among categories of Very satisfied, Satisfied, Dissatisfied, or Very dissatisfied. We convert these to a numeric scale for life satisfaction from one to four with one being Very dissatisfied and four being Very satisfied. We measure urbanization in two ways: 1) based on residence in urban areas of differing population sizes and 2) based on population density in the county of residence. However, packing many people into dense locations creates adverse consequences as well. The scarcity of urban land relative to its demand causes prices to be bid up reducing the affordability of housing. This also increases costs for employers and prices for other locally consumed goods and services. Some urban workers respond by finding more affordable living costs in outer suburbs and commuting long distances to work, which increases traffic, commute times, and air pollution. Additionally, the production advantages in urban areas are not distributed equally, and urbanization may adversely affect social capital, cohesion, crime, and good governance. Living in highly populated areas may also increase anonymity and alienation for some.
Results show that all of the urban categories have lower average life satisfaction than the non-urban category used as the basis for comparison, but the differences for the micropolitan areas and small metro areas are small in magnitude and not a major source of concern. However, the negative effect magnitudes increase with urban size and become sizable for the largest population groups. For example, very large metro areas reduce average resident life satisfaction in ways that move 2.6 percent of the population to a lower life satisfaction category. likely increase with age. Policies that aid migration for financially constrained households desiring to move out of large dense areas may help improve well-being both for the out-migrants and the urban residents that they leave behind as their former cities become less congested. A further question concerns why so many people continue to live in large dense areas if doing so reduces their happiness. US residents have historically exhibited high rates of internal migration compared to their European counterparts, and social scientists expect population to flow toward areas offering higher well-being. One possibility is that urban employment increases skill accumulation, wage growth, accomplishments, and social networks that are beneficial for future happiness, so that young people endure temporary unhappiness in the hopes of increasing future happiness.
how YOU feel?
how do YOU feel?
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