Seeing and Visualizing: It's Not What You Think

582 Pages·2003·3.29 MB·English

by  Zenon W. Pylyshyn

Seeing and Visualizing
Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Psychology and Biology
Kim Sterelny and Rob Wilson, editors
Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution,
Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths, and Russell D. Gray, editors, 2000
Coherence in Thought and Action, Paul Thagard, 2000
The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in
the Brain, William R. Uttal, 2001
Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered,
Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew, editors, 2003
Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think, Zenon Pylyshyn,
2003
Seeing and Visualizing
It's Not What You Think
Zenon Pylyshyn
A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informa-
tion storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Sabon by SNP Best-Set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong, and
was printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pylyshyn, Zenon W., 1937– .
Seeing and visualizing : it’s not what you think / Zenon Pylyshyn.
p. cm.—(Life and mind)
“A Bradford book.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-16217-2 (hc. : alk. paper)
1. Visual perception. 2. Visualization. 3. Mental representation.
4. Recognition (Psychology). 5. Categorization (Psychology). 6. Cognitive
science. I. Title. II. Series.
BF241.P95 2003
152.4—dc21 2003046415

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my mother
and to the memory of my father

Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xvii
1 The Puzzle of Seeing 1
1.1 Why Do Things Look the Way They Do? 1
1.2 What Is Seeing? 2
1.3 Does Vision Create a “Picture” in the Head 4
1.4 Problems with the Inner-Display Assumption: Part 1, What’s in
the Display? 16
1.5 More Problems with the Inner-Display Assumption: Part 2,
Seeing or Figuring Out? 36
1.6 Where Do We Go from Here? 46
2 The Independence of Vision and Cognition 49
2.1 Is Vision Distinct from Reasoning? 49
2.2 The Case for the Continuity of Vision and Cognition 52
2.3 Some Reasons for Questioning the Continuity Thesis 64
2.4 Distinguishing Perceptual and Decision Stages: Some
Methodological Issues 73
2.5 Some Examples in Which Knowledge Is Claimed to Affect
Perception 76
2.6 Conclusions: Early Vision as a Cognitively Impenetrable
System 90
3 The Architecture of the Early-Vision System: Components and
Functions 93
3.1 Some Intrinsic Architerctural Factors Determining What
We See 93
viii Contents

3.2 What Is Computed by the Encapsulated Early-Vision
System? 122
3.3 Some Subprocesses of the Visual System 142
3.4 Visual Control of Action: An Encapsulated System? 150
3.5 Interactions among Modular Systems 156
4 Focal Attention: How Cognition Influences Vision 159
4.1 Focal Attention in Visual Perception 160
4.2 Focal Attention as Selective Filtering 161
4.3 Allocation of Visual Attention 166
4.4 Individuation: A Precursor to Attentional Allocation? 173
4.5 Visual Attention Is Directed atObjects 181
4.6 Neuropsychological Evidence for Object-Based Information
Access 194
4.7 What Is Selected in Visual Attention? 199
5 The Link between Vision and the World: Visual Indexes 201
5.1 Background: They Need to Keep Track of Individual
Distal Objects 202
5.2 Visual-Index (or FINST) Theory 209
5.3 Empirical Support for the Visual-Index Theory 223
5.4 Why Do We Need a Special Connection between Vision
and the World? 242
5.5 Indexes and the Development of the Object Concept in
Infants 259
5.6 Possible Implementations of the FINST Indexing
Mechanism 268
Appendix 5.A: Sketch of a Partial Network-
Implementation of the FINST Indexing Mechanism 275
6 Seeing with the Mind’s Eye: Part 1, The Puzzle of
Mental Imagery 281
6.1 What Is the Puzzle about Mental Imagery? 281
6.2 Content, Form, and Substance of Representations 290
6.3 What Is Responsible for the Pattern of Results Obtained in
Imagery Studies? 293
6.4 Some Alleged Properties of Images 328
6.5 Mental Imagery and Visual Perception 333
Contents ix
7 Seeing with the Mind’s Eye: Part 2, The Search for a
Spatial Display in the Brain 359
7.1 Real and “Functional” Space 359
7.2 Why Do We Think That Images Are Spatial? 368
7.3 Inheritance of Spatial Properties of Images from Perceived
Space 375
7.4 The Search for a Real Spatial Display 387
7.5 What Would It Mean If All the Neurophysiological Claims
Turned Out to Be True? 400
7.6 What, If Anything, Is Special about Mental Imagery? 419
8 Seeing with the Mind’s Eye: Part 3, Visual Thinking 427
8.1 Different “Styles” of Thinking 427
8.2 Form and Content of Thoughts: What We Think with
and What We Think about 428
8.3 How Can Visual Displays Help Us to Reason? 439
8.4 Thinking with Mental Diagrams 458
8.5 Imagery and Imagination 464
References 475
Name Index 517
Subject Index 527