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Perception
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/03/22, SPi

Perception
First Form of Mind

T Y L E R BU R G E

1
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1
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/03/22, SPi

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature,
© 1950, 1951, 1952, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1969, 1970, 1972,
1977, 1978, 1986, 1997 by Iris Murdoch. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint
of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights
reserved.

Chapter 3: Stephen E. Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology, The MIT Press,
1999, p. 32.

Chapter 6: W.G. Sebald, translated by Michael Hulse, from The Rings of Saturn, © 1995 by
Vito von Eichborn GmbH & Co Verlag KG. Translation © 1998 by The Harvill Press.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Chapter 11: William Blake, Notebook, British Library Add MS 49460, 3rd and 4th lines
from first draft of the poem.

Chapter 16: Excerpt from Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited
© 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1967 by Vladimir Nabokov. Used by permission of
Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of
Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Chapter 19: Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence,
© 1988 by Hans Moravec. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/03/22, SPi

Contents

Preface xi
Animal Eyes xxi
Figures xxii
Abbreviations xxiv

PA RT I . P E R C E P T IO N

1. Introduction 3
Biological Function, Action, Sensing, and Perception—The Emergence of Mind 3
Principal Aims of the Book 10
The Fregean Source of Key Semantical Notions for Perception 15
2. Perception 19
Perceptual States as Sensory States 20
Representation and Information Registration 21
Representation and Veridicality Conditions 28
Representations and Representational Contents 30
The Three Fundamental Representational Constituents in Perceptual States 36
The Basic Representational Form of Perceptual States 49
Perception as Objectification 50
Perceptual Constancy—First Mark of Representational Mind 60
3. Perceptual Constancy: A Central Natural Psychological Kind 64
Scientific Practice Demarcates Perceptual Constancies from
Other Invariances 65
Two Misguided Ways of Thinking About Perceptual Constancies 70
Even Non-­Perceptual Invariances Contribute to the Fitness of Individuals
that Sense 74
Efference Copy: An Example of a Non-­Perceptual Invariance 76
Path Integration: Another Non-­Perceptual Invariance 78
Very Simple Perceptual Color and Lightness Constancies 80
Retinal Image Contour Registration and Surface Contour Perception 82
Visual Spatial Property and Relation Constancies 90
Visual Body Categorization 91
Visual Spatial Perceptual Constancies and Body Categorization 94
Visual Temporal Perceptual Constancies 99

PA RT I I . F O R M

4. Some Basics about Perceptual Systems 109

Principles Governing Transitions Contrasted with Representational Contents 109
Perception, Computation, and the Language-­of-­Thought Hypothesis 111
Representational-­Dependence Hierarchies in Perceptual Attribution 118
Two Methodological Points About Natural-­Kind and Functional Attributives 120
Taxonomic Hierarchies in Perception 124
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viii contents

5. Perceptual Reference Requires Perceptual Attribution 131

Basic Form of Perceptual Contents 131
Perceptual Reference is Partly Guided by Perceptual Attribution 133
Support for (AA1) 134
Support for (AA2) 143
General Remarks on Attributives and Perceptual Discrimination 146
Criticism of Two Attempted Rejections of (AA1) and (AA2) 148
6. Form and Semantics of Representational Contents of Perceptual States 156
Review of Basic Form of Perceptual Representation 156
Perception of Property-­Instances 159
Betokening and Four Types of Perceptual Attribution 169
Perceptual Attribution of Relations 175
Scope Hierarchies in Perceptual Content 179
Scope and Modificational Attribution Hierarchy 185
Absence in Perception of Negations, Conditionals, Disjunctions,
Quantifiers 190
Perceptual Contents, Propositions, and Noun Phrases 201
7. Perceptual Attributives and Referential Applications in Perceptual
Constancies 208
Perceptual Constancies and Frege’s Sense–Bedeutung Distinction: Similarities 208
Perceptual Constancies and Frege’s Sense–Bedeutung Distinction:
Differences 213
Minimalism: Defocus and Color Constancy 214
Minimalism and Iconic Representation in a Spatial Coordinate System 219
Perceptual Units in Packages in Iconic Visual Spatial Representation 233
Linkage of Different Perceptual Attributives in Perceptual Constancies 237
The Form of Perceptual Attributives in Linkages 241
Accuracy Conditions for Perceptual Attributives in Perceptual Constancies 244
Referential Applications in Accuracy Conditions for Tracking Particulars 248
8. Egocentric Indexing in Perceptual Spatial and Temporal Frameworks 255
Egocentric Spatial Indexes in Perception 255
Egocentric Temporal Frameworks and Perceptual Representation of Motion 264
Is Temporal Representation Constitutive to Perceptual Representation? 275
9. The Iconic Nature of Perception 293
Noun-­Phrase-­Like Structure and Iconic Representation in Perception 296
Iconic Aspects of Perceptual Spatial Representation 304
Temporal, Qualitative, and Packaging Iconic Aspects of Visual Perception 312
Iconic Visual Perception and Maps or Pictures 314
Some Ways Not to Think about Iconic Representation 315
Iconic Perception, Iconic Concepts, Iconic Representation in Propositional
Thought 331
Part–Whole Representation in Pictures and Visual Perception 334
Compositionality in Iconic Perceptual Representation 347
Spatial Mapping in Visual Perception Again: The Non-­Planar Surface
of the Scene 350
Relations Between Iconic Format and Representational Content 355
The Tractability of Iconic Attributional Complexity 360
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contents ix

PA RT I I I . F O R M AT IO N

10. First-­Formed Perception: Its Richness and Autonomy 367

What are First-­Formed Perceptual States Like?: Three Limitative Views 367
Framework 372
Marr’s 2½-D Sketch 378
Change Detection 380
Treisman’s Binding Theory 383
Two Lines of Empirical Criticism of Treisman’s Theory 391
Philosophical Views Influenced by Treisman’s Binding Theory 401
Two Types of First-­Formed Perception 405
11. Intra-­Saccadic Perception and Recurrent Processing 409
Two Changes in Scientific Understanding of Perception-­Formation 409
Some Main Brain Areas Involved in Visual Processing 413
Timing of Visual Processing; Some Main Types of Representation 420
Categorization and Timing 423
Levels of Specificity in Perceptual Categorization 427
Perceptual Constancies in Categorization Processing 431
12. Further Attributives: Primitive Attribution of Causation, Agency 433
Methodology for Finding Perceptual Attributives 433
Primitive Attribution of Mechanical Causation 446
Primitive Attribution of Agency 466
Attribution of Further Structural Elements of Agency 475

PA RT I V. SYS T E M

13. Perceptual-­Level Representation and Categorization 483

Perceptual Categorization is Perceptual 487
Richer Perceptual Categorization and Perceptual Processing that
Contributes to It 493
14. Conation: Relatively Primitive, Perceptually Guided Action 502
Action Imperialism 502
Relatively Primitive Action 504
Form of Relatively Primitive Conative States 508
Broader Structure of Conation in Causing Relatively Primitive Action 512
Summary: Philosophical Issues 526
15. Perceptual Attention 531
Forms of Perceptual Attention 532
Attention and Accuracy 537
Sources and Levels of Attention 545
Perceptual-­Level Attention Commands and Guidance of Saccades 547
The Executive Control System and Propositional Drivers 556
Supra-­Perceptual Effects on Perceptual-­Level Operations: An Example 565
16. Perceptual Memory I: Shorter Term Systems 567
Perceptual Memory and Consciousness 569
Priming and Memory 570
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x contents

Visual Sensory Memory 572

Fragile Visual Short-­Term Memory 575
Trans-­Saccadic Memory 576
Visual Working Memory 584
Conceptual Short-­Term Memory 599
17. Perceptual Memory II: Visual Perceptual Long-­Term Memory 609
Overview 609
Ability-­General Long-­Term Visual Perceptual Memory 613
Episodic Visual Memory; De Re Long-­Term Non-­Episodic Visual Memory 619
Perceptual and Conceptual Attributives in Long-­Term Memory 622
Summary of Relations Among Major Types of Visual Perceptual Memory 623
18. Perceptual Learning, Perceptual Anticipation, Perceptual Imagining 625
Perceptual Learning 625
Perceptual Anticipation 630
Perceptual Imagining 641
19. Perception and Cognition 647
The Original Epistemic Grounds for Reflecting on Cognitive Influence
on Perception 649
Fodor and Pylyshyn’s Conceptions of Modularity; The Visual System
as a Module 655
Uses and Misuses of the Term ‘Cognition’ 662
The Issue of Cognitive Penetration 677
Framework Issues 680
Conceptions of Penetration 684
The Cognitive Penetration Controversy 693
A Computational Construal of Modularity 701
Psychological Systems and Psychological Kinds 710
The Empiricist Model of Perception and Conception: Degrees of Abstraction 714
What Should Count as Cognition? 722
20. Conclusion 735
Emergence of Representational Mind 735
Empirical Characteristics of First-­Formed Perceptions 738
Changes in the Science; Reading the Changes Philosophically 740
Perception: Form and Representational Content 744
Perception: The Seed of New Things to Live and Die For 746

Bibliography 749
Author Index 813
Subject Index 839
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Preface

This book is not the one that I set out to write over twelve years ago. I had intended to fol-
low Origins of Objectivity with an account of what is distinctive about the main represen-
tational capacity more advanced than perception. I thought, and still think, that that
capacity is propositional representation. I took some steps in that direction in the Petrus
Hispanus Lectures, Lisbon, 2009, and the Nicod Lectures, Paris, 2010, and developed an
argument for connecting propositionality, constitutively, with propositional deductive
inference. I remain interested in that other book, and hope to complete it. But it was
pre-­empted.
In writing a lead-­up to discussing propositional capacities, I wanted to elaborate an
account of perception. Perception is, I think, the first representational capacity to evolve. It
is the main pre-­propositional representational capacity. The lead-­up was intended to be a
relatively concise refinement of the account of perception in the last chapters of Origins of
Objectivity, a refinement that now occupies approximately Chapters 1–3 of this book.
I became interested in vision just before I spent a semester teaching at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982. My interest resulted in part from reading David
Marr’s important book, Vision. Although Marr died before I arrived at MIT, I audited
courses in perceptual psychology by Marr’s former colleagues during the visit. I later wrote
some articles on vision and made it a central theme of Origins of Objectivity (2010).
During work on that book and later, I benefitted from discussions of vision science with
my son, Johannes Burge, who is currently a vision scientist at the University of
Pennsylvania. After 2010, I came to understand the science more thoroughly, and devel-
oped ideas about structural and semantical issues associated with perception. I did so
through giving a series of graduate seminars at University of California Los Angeles
(UCLA), and through discussing the science with various scientists—especially in person
with David Brainard, Bill Geisler, and Shimon Ullman, and via correspondence with
Jeffrey Schall and Yaffa Yeshurun—and with Ned Block, one of few philosophers who ser­
ious­ly engages with the science. In writing the refinement of the Origins account of visual
perception, I soon realized that I had too much material to present in a run-­up to another
topic, in a single book. The preliminary became the whole.
The book is about first form of representational mind. I take perception to be the most
primitive type of representational mind. Relevant first form is three-­fold.
One type of first form is the representational structure of perception. Here, first form is
the first representational form that emerges in the evolution of representational mind.
This form is center-­stage in Chapters 1–9. I had the main ideas about this structure when I
wrote Origins, but I discovered much more in thinking through its details, applying it to
cases, developing a semantics for it, and reflecting on how it is embedded in the iconic
format of perception.
A central theme in the book, centered in Parts I and II, is developing the foundations
for a systematic semantics for perceptual states. Perceptual psychology takes perceptual
states to be accurate or inaccurate. One of its main aims is to explain, causally, how
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xii preface

accurate and inaccurate perceptual states are formed. It has, however, paid little attention
to explaining what it is for such states to be accurate or inaccurate, or to reflecting on how
representational capacities combine to yield a form of representation. Nor have these
issues been related to the obvious iconic nature of perceptual representation. I take steps
toward remedying this situation. In the course of doing so, I think that I have discovered
some basic aspects of attribution, the root of predication. Predication in language and
thought has been a longstanding topic of philosophical reflection, beginning with Aristotle
and Kant, and developing mainly in Frege, but also in Tarski and Strawson. Traditionally,
the topic has been pursued by reflection on logic. I have found it enlightening to reflect on
its roots in perception.
The second type of first form of representational mind is the first-­formed states in the
order of perceptual processing. What is the nature of the perceptual states that are formed
fastest? What properties in the environment do they represent? What sort of processing
leads to them? There are empirical answers to these questions, at least for mammalian
vision. These answers provide a starting point for reflecting on what the fastest-­formed
perceptual states are like in lower animals and even in evolutionary history. Of course,
each species must be considered on its own. I do not much discuss lower animals, nor do I
provide an evolutionary account, although I occasionally comment on those topics. This
second type of first form is center-­stage in Chapters 10–11. Issues about later-­formed per-
ceptual representations, such as those used in perceptual recognition of individuals, and
perhaps for causation, agency, and functional attributes, such as mate or edible, are
touched on in Chapter 12.
The third type of first form of representational mind is a natural-­kind system of repre-
sentational capacities, with perception at the representational center of the system. The
systems that I highlight are the visual-­perceptual system and the visuo-motor system.
The two systems intersect and overlap. What it is to be part of these systems is the
­central theme of Part IV, Chapters 13–19. I believe that perception shares its representa-
tional structure and content, outlined in Chapters 2–12, with several other representational
capacities. Generically, the capacities are conation, attention-­initiation, memory, affect,
learning, anticipation, and imagining. I think that the listed generic capacities have
perceptual-­level species—species that have representational structures and contents that are
essentially those of perception. These capacities differ from perception in mode (memory
vs. perception) and transition-­operations, not in form or content. The notion of represen-
tational level is explained in Chapter 1, the section The Principal Aims of the
B ook, and again, more fully, at the beginning of Chapter 13.
Perceptual-­level species of the listed capacities share attributional content with percep-
tion. They share attributional and iconic structure with perception. And they involve
operations or transformations that are either similar to those in perception-­formation
itself, or at least not more sophisticated than they are. These sub-­species join with percep-
tion to form two large, natural-­kind psychological systems—the perceptual system and
the perceptual-­motor system. These systems are unified (a) in sharing a function (contrib-
uting to perception in the first case, contributing to perceptually guided action in the sec-
ond), and (b) in sharing the representational structure of perception. They are also unified
(c) in using only representational attributive contents in or borrowed from perception;
and (d) in being held together by computational causal processes both within perception
and between perception and the perceptual-­level species of the listed generic capacities.
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preface xiii

Again, the relevant perceptual-­level species are perception-­guided conation, perceptual-­

attention initiations (or attention commands), perceptual memory, perceptual affect, per-
ceptual learning, perceptual anticipation, and perceptual imagining.
I think that these two large, overlapping systems—the perceptual system and the
perceptual-­motor system—constitute the natural-­kind center of lower representational
mind. I conjecture that variants of these systems, sometimes perhaps omitting one or two
of the auxiliary capacities—such as perceptual imagining—or adding other auxiliary
capacities—like amodal mapping—occur in all animal perceivers, from insects to human
beings. These systems and the perceptual-­level capacity-­species are discussed in Chapters
13–19, focusing on visual perception and visually guided action.
The three notions of first form are associated with the general plan of the book. Parts I
and II discuss what perception is. Part III centers on how perception works—how it is
formed and the nature and scope of its processing. Part IV treats relations between per-
ception and satellite capacities, and wherein they form a unified perceptual system and
perceptual-­motor system.
A further theme runs through nearly all parts of the book. The theme is opposition—
sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit—to a way of thinking about perception started by
the classical empiricists, Locke and Hume. In trying to understand the main features of
perception, this approach takes too seriously intuitive groupings and senses of similarity
via introspection of conscious perceptual experience. It also errs by distinguishing percep-
tion from conception primarily in terms of differences in abstraction. Perception is sup-
posed to operate toward the concrete end. Conception, toward the abstract end. The
spectrum is intuitive—not very carefully explained. My opposition is centered in reflect-
ing on the explanatory practice of perceptual psychology. It also derives from reflecting on
the form, content, function, capacities, and uses that turn up in systematic explanation—
causal and semantical.
As with language, so with perception, understanding representational form and content
depends not on introspection of intuitively salient features of the vehicle of representation
(sentence or image-­like-­representation), but on competencies that underlie use of the rep-
resentation. Intuitive reflection on sentential structure would treat it as linear and as simply
being composed of a string of words. Reflection, in logic and linguistics, informed by sys-
tematic consideration of sentential use, reveals a hierarchical structure with words forming
phrase units that are not immediately obvious to intuition. Finding representational struc-
ture in perception is parallel. It depends not primarily on introspection of conscious per-
ceptual images, but on systematic reflection on the capacities evinced in uses and
transformations of perceptions. This reflection must consider the representational func-
tions of perception and the structures of capacities discovered in empirical science. Most of
what there is to be understood about perception is unconscious. All operations that lead to
perceptions are unconscious, and there are many unconscious perceptions. Moreover, given
the way in which perceptual discriminative capacities, and their use in guiding action, are
molded, in evolution and learning, by perceiver-­needs and by frequently unobvious causal
and statistical patterns in the environment, one cannot rely on introspection of images,
and intuitive types of image-­similarity to understand perception—even the iconic, broadly
image-­like character of vision. Perceptual grouping does not in general conform to intuitive
image-­similarity. Yet all perceptual groupings are grounded, at least partly, in shape-­size-­
motion attributions, plotted iconically in an image-­like way in perceptual representation.
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xiv preface

The book is resolutely a work in philosophy of science—specifically philosophy of

psych­ology. Perceptual psychology, centrally the psychophysics of vision, has become a
mature science in the last fifty years. It gives philosophy an opportunity to understand
important features of psychological capacities at a level of depth, rigor, and empirical
groundedness that has never before been attainable. Philosophy should leap at the oppor-
tunity to make use of such a powerful and rapidly advancing science, as a basis for philo-
sophical understanding. Some philosophy of perception makes no use at all of perceptual
psychology. Much philosophy of perception makes at best decorative use. I think that it is
no longer intellectually responsible to philosophize about perception without knowing
and seriously engaging with that science. I believe that the practice of centering philo-
sophical reflection about perception on phenomenology, or on analysis of ordinary talk
about perception, without closely connecting the reflection with what is known from sci-
ence (a centering that is a residue of the early empiricist model of perception), and the
practice of allowing epistemology to guide reflection on what perception must be like, will
all soon become museum pieces of past, misdirected philosophy.
Most of the book’s claims are, of course, supported only empirically, by interpreting the
empirical results of the science. Some of the claims are, however, supported apriori. One
should not confuse apriority with innateness, certainty, obviousness, infallibility, dogma-
tism, unrevisability, or immunity from revision based on empirical considerations. To
be apriori supported, or apriori warranted, is to have support or warrant that does not
depend for its force on perception or on sensing. Most apriori warranted judgments in
this book are warranted by reflection that yields understanding of key concepts or prin­
ciples used or presupposed in the science. All the relevant apriori judgments are synthetic,
certainly in the sense of being non-­vacuous and the sense of not being truths of logic.
I think that the judgments are also synthetic in the sense of not being the products of ana­
lysis of conceptual complexes into concepts contained in the complexes. I think that most
concepts that are central to our discussion are not complexes. They are simple. They are,
however, necessarily and apriori embedded in networks with other concepts. Reasoning
through such networks sometimes yields synthetic apriori understanding of foundations
of mind.
Apriori supported judgments can be further supported empirically, by the science. But
insofar as they are apriori warranted, they have sufficient warrant to support belief; and
the warrant derives from reasoning or understanding, independently of support from per-
ception, perceptual experience, or sensory registration. An example of an apriori war-
ranted judgment, I think, is that perceptual states can be accurate or inaccurate. Another
example is that perceptual states have a representational function—to accurately pick out
and characterize particulars via causal relations to them: perceptual states fail in some way
(representationally) if they are not accurate. I doubt that one can know apriori that any
individual has perceptual capacities. Our empirical knowledge that we do have such
capacities is, however, firm. It is more certain than some things that we know apriori about
perception. As noted, being apriori does not imply some super-­strong type of support.
Apriori warrant for belief in simple arithmetical truths is super-­strong. But much apriori
support is not stronger, often less strong, than strong empirical support.
Our firm empirical knowledge that individuals have perceptual states does not require a
detailed, reflective, philosophical understanding of what perception is. Knowing that indi-
viduals have perceptual states requires only a minimal understanding. One must be able to
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preface xv

distinguish perception, at least by some cases, from just any sensing. And one must be able
to recognize various examples of perception. Detailed philosophical understanding
requires reflection, articulation, and elaboration of a minimal understanding of the con-
cept perception and of relations between perception and other matters—semantical, func-
tional, biological, causal, and so on. Elaboration is mainly empirical, but partly apriori. Given
an elaborated understanding of what perception is, it is possible to draw, apriori, some fur-
ther conclusions about the form, semantics, and functions of perceptual states. Such con-
clusions are abstract and limited. They are important in being basic to understanding.
Again, most of the book’s claims are empirical. For example, the accounts of how per-
ceptual and perceptual-­motor systems work in Parts III and IV, and the accounts of what
these systems are in Part IV, are warranted partly by appeal to explanations in the science.
Those accounts and those explanations are certainly empirically, not apriori, warranted.
I became interested in perception partly because it promises insight into basic types of
representation of the world, and partly because it is a key factor that must be understood if
one is to understand empirical knowledge. This book shows some fruits of the first mo­tiv­
ation. In investigating the structure and semantics of perceptual representation, one inves-
tigates primitive and basic types of reference and attribution. My interest in the role of
perception in empirical knowledge remains. But I take understanding perception to owe
almost nothing to epistemology, whereas understanding epistemology absolutely requires
understanding perception. Epistemology investigates epistemic norms for capacities that
can contribute to obtaining knowledge. One cannot understand the norms without under-
standing the capacities. One understands perceptual capacities by reflecting on empirical
science and its basic commitments, not by reflecting on epistemology. Understanding per-
ception is the task of this book. Epistemic use of an understanding of perception is pos­ter­
ior. For epistemic work in this direction, see my ‘Perceptual Entitlement’, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 67 (2003), 503–548; and ‘Entitlement: The Basis for Empirical
Warrant’, in P. Graham and N. Pedersen eds., Epistemic Entitlement (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2020).
I have some slight hope, even in this specialized world, that this book will interest not
only philosophers, but at least some scientists in perceptual psychology and other areas of
psychology. The best science is informed by a breadth and depth of perspective that is
philosophical. This point is particularly relevant to perceptual psychology. A central, often
stated, aim of the science is to understand conditions in which accurate perception occurs,
and conditions under which illusions occur. (See Chapter 1, note 25.) Accuracy is a
semantical concept.
So the science is committed at its very core to there being a semantics for perception—a
systematic account of relations between perceptual representation and its subject matters.
The account must explain what it is for perception to be accurate or inaccurate. Of course,
the science is mainly concerned with causal patterns and mechanisms. Much of it, indeed
probably most of it to date, focuses on pre-representational, pre-perceptual states that
regis­ter the proximal stimulus. But the point of this scientific work is partly to build
toward understanding perception of the physical environment. Part of understanding per-
ception scientifically is to understand not only the causal patterns that lead to accurate
and inaccurate perception, but also to understand the form and content of perceptual
states, and what it is for them to be accurate or inaccurate.
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xvi preface

Yet the science has paid no serious attention to these issues—specifically to semantics.
It has not developed a vocabulary or set of principles that enable it to discuss accuracy and
inaccuracy of perception with the precision and clarity of its accounts of causal, forma-
tional aspects of psychological states and processes. It provides no answers to questions
like ‘What is it for a perceptual state to be accurate or inaccurate?’, ‘What sorts of represen-
tational competencies are involved in forming a state that is accurate or inaccurate?’; ‘In
what ways can a perception be partly accurate and partly inaccurate?’; ‘What is the repre-
sentational form or structure of perceptual states?’. Such questions are addressed in Parts I
and II of the book.
Scientific understanding of perception is incomplete if it does not incorporate a system-
atic semantical understanding of perceptual states into its understanding of principles
according to which perceptual states are causally generated. Semantical understanding is
understanding of the representational contents, their forms, and their accuracy condi-
tions—the conditions for representational success. Perceptual psychology would benefit
from mastering the vocabulary necessary to think systematically about the semantics of
perception.
Philosophy is the source of modern work in semantics—first the semantics of math­em­
at­ics and logic, later the semantics of natural language. The basic semantical concepts, in
something like their modern form, come from Gottlob Frege, about 130 years ago. In the
last section of Chapter 1, I explain some of Frege’s basic concepts. I think that these con-
cepts, with some modification, are valuable in understanding perception, even though
they were first developed for understanding much higher-­level representation—represen-
tation in mathematics.
I think that parts of the science need not only a deeper grip on semantics, but a much
more rigorous terminology. Uses of terms like ‘representation’, ‘knowledge’, ‘cognition’,
‘recognition’, ‘judgment’, ‘belief ’, ‘concept’, ‘prediction’, ‘intention’, ‘voluntary’ are far from
reflective, much less standardized, in the science. Assimilating the whys and wherefores of
terminology, is often the beginning of better, more fruitful empirical inquiry. Centrally, in
Chapter 19, the section Uses and Misuses of the Term ‘Cognition’, but also
throughout the book, there is a concerted effort to emphasize sharper uses of key mental-
istic terms so as to respect basic differences in representational level. Such differences cor-
respond to important differences in representational kinds—that is, representational
capacities.
This is a long, complex book. Understanding anything well requires effort and patience.
Genuine philosophical and scientific understanding cannot be grabbed off the shelf. The
time and effort required to understand this book will be considerable. One cannot get
there in a few sittings. The key point is to read and reread carefully and slowly, noting and
reflecting on nuances and qualifications, mastering terminology, reading in context, con-
necting different contexts together, reading the footnotes, going back to earlier passages—
all the while, reflecting. Few readers outside philosophy ever read this way. Most
philosophers have, I think, lost the art. Iris Murdoch, in harmony with the marvelous
quote that heads Chapter 1, wrote: ‘In philosophy, the race is to the slow’. Too many race at
high speeds. The psychological and sociological pressures to form opinions and publish
them quickly, and often, are very strong. Academic pressures and computer fluency have
yielded much more writing, with no more time to master the increasingly complex topics
written about. Careless reading, misdirected criticism, uninformed opinions, simplistic
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/03/22, SPi

preface xvii

proposals abound. Perhaps it was always so. However, as knowledge grows—and grows
more complex—lack of patience in pursuing understanding is an increasingly debilitating
vice. Given that philosophical understanding of this book’s topics has become harder—
because more is known and what is known is more complex—patience is more required
than ever.
For those who may have some interest in the book, but are not initially willing to invest
large of amounts of time in it, I set out a plan for getting some of the book’s gist. My hope
is that after achieving an overview, some readers will be tempted to go back for more—not
just noting fine points, but mastering the book’s conceptual framework and conceptual
intricacies.
For vision scientists, Parts I–II deal with the least familiar ideas—principally, the repre-
sentational form and semantics of perception. Part III and Chapters 13–18 in Part IV
mainly describe matters that many vision or visuo-motor scientists are familiar with,
although these passages cast those matters in a conceptual form that may be more unified
than specialized accounts provide. Chapter 19 of Part IV, supported by Chapters 13–18,
presents a large view of the visual system and visuo-motor system that uses perhaps famil-
iar em­pir­ic­al materials to develop a possibly less familiar, or more sharply articulated,
view of those systems as wholes.
For those, either vision scientists or others, who simply want to get a sense for the main
lines of thought, I offer the following, tentative guide.
I recommend, in Part I, the first two sections of Chapter 1 and all of Chapter 2. In
Chapter 3, I recommend the prologue and the section Retinal Image Contour
Registration and Surface Contour Perception. This section illustrates con-
cretely how I think perceptual constancies are distinguished from other invariances in
visual perception.
In Part II, I recommend the prologue at the beginning of Chapter 4, and the third and
fifth sections of the chapter (Representational-­D ependence Hierarchies in
Perceptual Attribution and Taxonomic Hierarchies in Perception). In
Chapter 5, I recommend the first two sections (Basic Form of Perceptual
Contents and Perceptual Reference is Partly Guided by Perceptual
Attribution). In Chapter 6, I recommend the first three and the last of the sections
(Review of Basic Form of Perceptual Representation; Perception of
Property Instances; Betokening and Four Types of Perceptual
Attribution; and Perceptual Contents, Propositions, and Noun
Phrase). Chapter 7 gives the central account of the semantics of perception. This may be
hard to follow if one has skipped too much of the slow development of concepts that lead
up to it. The key section is the next-­ to-­
last one (Accuracy Conditions for
Perceptual Attributives in Perceptual Constancies). Chapter 8 centers
on the way space and time are represented in visual perception. It can be skipped by those
not interested in details of perceptual representational structure. Chapter 9 connects basic
representational structure (the structure of reference and attribution) with the iconic form
of visual perception. The key sections are the first and the last two (Noun-­P hrase-­L ike
Structure and Iconic Representation in Perception; Relations
Between Iconic Format and Representational Content; and The
Tractability of Iconic Attributional Complexity).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/03/22, SPi

xviii preface

In Part III, I recommend the prologue at the beginning of Chapter 10 and the first and
last sections of that chapter (What Are First-­F ormed Perceptual States
Like?: Three Limitative Views and Two Types of First-­ F ormed
Perception). In Chapter 11, I recommend the prologue and the first section (Two
Changes in Scientific Understanding of Perception-­F ormation). The
second section is a brief run-­through of the course that visual processing takes in the
brain. The main points will be familiar to any vision scientist. The remaining sections pro-
vide basic facts about timing and about perceptual categorization. They may be skimmed
or skipped by those seeking only gist. All these sections in Chapter 11 are mainly descrip-
tive—with some improvements, I think, in conceptual rigor—of facts familiar to many
vision scientists. Chapter 12 has a methodological discussion of considerations that bear
on whether an attributive is, or should be, considered a perceptual attributive—an attribu-
tive, or characterizer, generated in the visual system (Methodology for Finding
Perceptual Attributives). That section tries to codify and state more precisely
methods already in place in the science.
Part IV treats the visual system at a level of generality far from the focused empirical
studies that make up most of the science. The prologue for Chapter 13 is recommended. It
sets the plan of Part IV. Readers trying for an overview can pick and choose within, or
skip, Chapters 13–18. These chapters discuss categorization, conation, attention, various
forms of short-­ term memory, long-­ term memory, affect, learning, anticipation, and
im­agin­ing. The chapters develop the idea that all these capacities have functions at the
representational level of perception. As noted, the notion of level is explained briefly in
Chapter 1 and in more detail at the beginning of Chapter 13. The chapters are part of an
extended argument that the perceptual-­level functions and operations of these capacities
occur within the visual system or the visuo-motor system, in a specific sense of ‘occur
within’. Chapter 19 can be read by sampling the beginning of each section, then determin-
ing how much further to read. Chapter 19 uses work in Chapters 13–18 to develop the
idea that the perceptual system—for which the visual system is paradigmatic—and the
perceptual-­motor system are lower representational mind. A proposal for understanding
the unity of lower representational mind is advanced in A Computational
Construal of Modularity. Although I explore some intermediate territory in
What Should Count as Cognition?, I think that lower representational mind
contrasts most dramatically with capacities for propositional inference and language, the
more primitive of which constitute the first capacities in upper representational mind. I
believe that the most important feature of upper representational mind is competence to
produce explanations. This capacity develops into science, moral thinking and practice,
and, most broadly, into understanding. The section The Empiricist Model of
Perception and Cognition: Degrees of Abstraction brings together criti-
cisms, which recur throughout the book, of an old way of thinking about the relation
between perception and thought that, while not prevalent in psychophysics of perception,
remains widespread in other parts of psychology and in philosophy. This section might be
useful to psychologists as well as philosophers. Chapter 20 summarizes main themes, and
concludes.
For valuable input, I am grateful to: Marty Banks, John Bartholdi, Blake Batoon, Ned
Block, David Bordeaux, David Brainard, Denis Buehler, Daniel Burge, Dorli Burge,
Johannes Burge, Susan Carey, Sam Cumming, Will Davies, Frank Durgin, Chaz Firestone,
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 22/03/22, SPi

preface xix

Julian Fischer, Bill Geisler, Katherine Gluer, Peter Godfrey-­Smith, Peter Graham, Gabe
Greenberg, Michael Hansen, Catherine Hochman, Gabby Johnson, Nancy Kanwisher, Ed
Keenan, Philip Kellman, Ela Kotkowska, Bill Kowalsky, Kevin Lande, Hakwan Lau, Gavin
Lawrence, Yannig Luthra, Tony Martin, Peter Momtchiloff, Bence Nanay, Peter Pagin, Alexi
Patsaouras, Christopher Peacocke, Sam Pensler, Atthanasios Raftopoulos, Jacob Reid,
Michael Rescorla, Pieter Roelfsema, Jeffrey Schall, Brian Scholl, Wesley Seurat, Houston
Smit, Sheldon Smith, Irene Sperandio, Galen Strawson, Paul Talma, Shimon Ullman,
Tamar Weber, Fei Xu, Yaffa Yeshurun. Thanks also to three anonymous reviewers. The two
complex drawings, Figures 9.2 and 9.3, are by Bill Kowalsky, as are the other drawings,
except for one by Johannes Burge.
My immediate family—sons and wife—has supported and taken interest. I am espe-
cially grateful to my wife, Dorli, for patience in understanding her often distracted hus-
band and for helping me to look more carefully at the world, especially appreciating details
and finding joy in the beauties of little things.

Tyler Burge
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