Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 1999 - Volume 22, Issue 03  


Open Peer Commentary
Pylyshyn: Vision and cognition

Perception, inference, and the veridicality of natural constraints

Manish Singh a1 and Donald D. Hoffman a2
a1 Perceptual Science Group, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 manish@psyche.mit.edu www-bcs.mit.edu/~manish
a2 Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-5100 ddhoff@uci.edu www.socsci.uci.edu/cogsci/personnel/hoffman/hoffman.html

Abstract

Pylyshyn's target article argues that perception is not inferential, but this is true only under a narrow construal of inference. A more general construal is possible, and has been used to provide formal theories of many visual capacities. This approach also makes clear that the evolution of natural constraints need not converge to the “veridical” state of the world.