Emotion and the new epistemic challenge from cognitive penetrability

Experiences—visual, emotional, or otherwise—play a role in providing us with justification to believe claims about the world. Some accounts of how experiences provide justification emphasize the role of the experiences’ distinctive phenomenology, i.e. ‘what it is like’ to have the experience. Other accounts emphasize the justificatory role to the experiences’ etiology. A number of authors have used cases of cognitively penetrated visual experience to raise an epistemic challenge for theories of perceptual justification that emphasize the justificatory role of phenomenology rather than etiology. Proponents of the challenge argue that cognitively penetrated visual experiences can fail to provide the usual justification because they have improper etiologies. However, extant arguments for the challenge’s key claims are subject to formidable objections. In this paper, I present the challenge’s key claims, raise objections to previous attempts to establish them, and then offer a novel argument in support of the challenge. My argument relies on an analogy between cognitively penetrated visual and emotional experiences. I argue that some emotional experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their improper etiologies and conclude that analogous cognitively penetrated visual experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their etiologies, as well.     

Perceiving and desiring: a new look at the cognitive penetrability of experience

This paper considers an orectic penetration hypothesis (OPH) which says that desires and desire-like states may influence perceptual experience in a non-externally mediated way. This hypothesis is clarified with a definition, which serves further to distinguish the interesting target phenomenon from trivial and non-genuine instances of desire-influenced perception. Orectic penetration is an interesting possible case of the cognitive penetrability of perceptual experience. The OPH is thus incompatible with the more common thesis that perception is cognitively impenetrable. It is of importance to issues in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, epistemology, and general philosophy of science. The plausibility of orectic penetration can be motivated by some classic experimental studies, and some new experimental research inspired by those same studies. The general suggestion is that orectic penetration thus defined, and evidenced by the relevant studies, cannot be deflected by the standard strategies of the cognitive impenetrability theorist.     

The cognitive penetrability of perception: A blocked debate and a tentative solution

Despite the extensive body of psychological findings suggesting that cognition influences perception, the debate between defenders and detractors of the cognitive penetrability of perception persists. While detractors demand more strictness in psychological experiments, proponents consider that empirical studies show that cognitive penetrability occurs. These considerations have led some theorists to propose that the debate has reached a dead end. The issue about where perception ends and cognition begins is, I argue, one of the reasons why the debate is cornered. Another reason is the inability of psychological studies to present uncontroversial interpretations of the results obtained. To dive into other kinds of empirical sources is, therefore, required to clarify the debate. In this paper, I explain where the debate is blocked, and suggest that neuroscientific evidence together with the predictive coding account, might decant the discussion on the side of the penetrability thesis.     

Mental extrapolation and cognitive penetrability: reply to Ranney and proposals for evaluative criteria

We propose three criteria for establishing that mentally extrapolated motions are impenetrable with respect to one's knowledge, beliefs, or expectations about the nature of corresponding physical motions, and we review recent findings on mental extrapolation and representational momentum that appear to meet these criteria. We also respond to some arguments recently proposed by Ranney (1989) and Hubbard and Bharucha (1988) that representational momentum is cognitively penetrable. We conclude that mental extrapolations are governed to at least some extent by the inherent properties of the underlying internal mechanisms.     

Attention and cognitive penetrability: The epistemic consequences of attention as a form of metacognitive regulation

A recent approach to the cognitive penetrability of perception, i.e. the possibility that perception is shaped top-down by high-level cognitive states such as beliefs and desires, proposes to understand the phenomenon on the basis of its consequences, among which there is a challenge for the epistemic role of perceptual experience in justifying beliefs (Stokes, 2015). In this paper, I argue that some attentional phenomena qualify as cases of cognitive penetrability under this consequentialist approach. I present a popular theory of attention, the biased-competition theory, on which basis I establish that attention is a form of metacognitive regulation. I argue that attention (as metacognitive regulation) involves the right kind of cognitive-perceptual relation and leads to the same epistemic consequences as other more traditional versions of cognitive penetrability.     

Effects of alcohol on cognitive performance measured with Stroop's Color Word Test

An experiment was performed to test whether alcohol intoxication leads to cognitive disinhibition as measured by the Color Word Test. In psychoanalytic terms, it was hypothesized that alcohol would decrease secondary process functioning leading to disinhibition and so make it easier to perform a primary process function. 24 men and 24 women participated and were randomly assigned to an Alcohol group, a Placebo group or a Control group. The alcohol dose was 1.0 ml of 100% alcohol/kg body weight. No statistically significant differences were found on any of the three dependent measures, number of errors, number of hesitations and total time needed, except that men in the Alcohol group needed significantly longer time to complete the test. These results indicate that cognitive disinhibition is not valid as an explanation for alcohol-related changes in cognitive functioning.     

Effects of alcohol on prolonged cognitive performance measured with Stroop's Color Word Test

24 men and 24 women were randomly assigned in equal numbers to an Alcohol group, a Placebo group, or a Control group. The alcohol dose was 1.0 ml of 100% alcohol/kg of body weight. Subjects were tested three consecutive times using Stroop's Color Word Test. The dependent measures were total time needed to complete the test, number of errors made and number of hesitations. Data were grouped into three blocks of 100 words. Results indicated that number of hesitations was too insensitive a measure to yield any significant effects. On the two first measures alcohol had a detrimental effect in that the Alcohol group needed more time to complete the test and made more errors than the Placebo group. There was also a significant interaction of alcohol dose by sex by blocks on both these measures, indicating that the detrimental effect of alcohol over time was restricted to women. Different implications of the results were discussed.     

Color Eliminativism and Color Experience

Anyone who is a color eliminativist-i.e., believes that the physical world is colorless-must explain how our sense experience of color can be so systematically illusory. As it turns out, it is difficult to do this without committing oneself to dualism. In this paper I explore the options available to the color eliminativist in this regard, and argue that his/her prospects are more promising, though still far from certain, if s/he adopts the position that sense experience is strictly intentional.     

颜色词与颜色认知的关系

颜色词作为一个特殊词类,是探讨语言与认知关系的重要途径。文章综述了颜色知觉和颜色词分类等领域的研究,重点介绍了有关颜色词与认知的两种理论：颜色词的普遍进化理论和语言关联性假设,前者认为颜色词与颜色认知是相对独立的,后者认为语言与认知相互影响。文章综述了与这两种理论有关的一些最新研究进展,并对该领域研究提出一些新的研究思路,如研究颜色词的联想意义、颜色词与民族心理、复合颜色词的加工及对认知的影响、通感现象、颜色词的概念组织等。     

Cognitive penetrability,context, and aesthetics: Nanay and Danto on the Gallery of Indiscernibles

Nanay has recently argued, on the basis of the cognitive penetrability of experience, that the attribution of aesthetically relevant properties (ARPs) supervenes on perceptual experience. I argue that this claim is false as stated and cannot be salvaged. I provide a series of thought experiments as counterexamples, showing that the title of an artwork can influence its ARPs, its meaning or value, and the accurate attributions of ARPs while the character of the perceptual experience of the piece remains constant. I introduce the notions of context and appropriate context, and I argue that ARPs supervene on observable properties and appropriate contexts; there is no difference in ARPs without a difference in appropriate context or a difference in observable properties. Two paintings may share all of their observable properties and all of their context-relative perceptual properties but be ARP distinct, since each has a different appropriate context, and contexts are not usually determined or instantiated by perceptual properties.     

Bridging pure cognitive research and cognitive enrichment

Animal Cognition - Cognitive enrichment is a growing subset of environmental enrichment for captive animals. However, it has been difficult for practitioners to design, implement, and evaluate...     

Color discrimination and luminance

This experiment studied the relation between luminance level and color discrimination at 570 millimicrons. A variety ofstimuli whose luminances varied from .1 to 100 ft-L were viewed against a variety of surrounds. 1t was found that color discrimination ability was a joint function of the luminance level of the stimulus and the ratio of the luminance of the stimulus to that of the surround.     

Color and Similarity1

Similarity claims about the colors, for instance that blue is more similar to purple than to yellow, are Sometimes held to pose a serious problem for physicalism about color: the view that colors are physical properties of some kind. I examine various responses to this problem, find them wanting, and give my own solution, which appeals to the way colors are visually represented. Finally, I argue that the proposed account removes the principal motivation for Lewis's and Walker's response to Kripke's Wittgenstein, in terms of “natural” properties.     

Color constancy and dispositionalism

This article attempts to do two things. The first is to make it plausible that any adequate dispositional view of color will have to associate colors with complex functions from a wide range of normal circumstances to a wide range of (simultaneously) incompatible color appearances, so that there will be no uniquely veridical appearance of any given color. The second is to show that once this move is made, dispositionalism is in a position to provide interesting answers to some of the most challenging objections that have been pressed against it. It explains why colors do not seem to “come on” when the lights come on, and why the right thing to say seems to be that the light causes the objects to reveal their colors. It explains why the content of visual experience need not be problematically circular. It eliminates the problem of intrapersonal variation in color appearance. And it even provides resources for dealing with the problem of interpersonal variation. It is true that in moving to the more complex view, the dispositionalist becomes subject to a new objection, which has been called “the problem of unity.” The paper offers a solution to this problem as well.     

Color and Psychological Functioning

ABSTRACT— Color is a ubiquitous perceptual experience, yet little scientific information about the influence of color on affect, cognition, and behavior is available. Accordingly, we have developed a general model of color and psychological functioning, which we present in this article. We also describe a hypothesis derived from this model regarding the influence of red in achievement contexts. In addition, we report a series of experiments demonstrating that a brief glimpse of red evokes avoidance motivation and undermines intellectual performance, and that it has these effects without conscious awareness or intention. We close with thoughts on the need for rigorous scientific work on color psychology.     

Personal tempo, personality, cognitive speed and cognitive performance

One hundred young males filled in an untimed personality questionnaire. The time needed was taken to be the subjects' personal tempo. They also worked twice on a timed substitution test; their score on this test was taken to be their cognitive speed. It was hypothesized that personal tempo was related to personality and cognitive speed to performance on cognitive tests. The results confirmed the hypothesis. Those whose personal tempo was faster had higher Extraversion and lower Neuroticism and Lie-scores. Those whose cognitive speed was faster, however, did better on four out of five cognitive tests and had a higher Lie-score. It seems that the two speed factors, as hypothesized by Spearman, are indeed two separate and distinct factors, each correlated with different variables: cognitive and personality.