Perception, Skill, and
Cognitive Penetrabilty
Ellen Fridland
[email protected]
Berlin School of Mind and Brain
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

What would the relation between
perception and skill have to be, if
it were to constitute a legitimate
instance of cognitive penetration?
If a skill is learned through practice and is
related to perception in an explanatorily
relevant way, then such a relationship
constitutes a genuine case of cognitive
penetration.
What is the relationship between
perception and cognition?
Is perception more like playing
the violin or digestion?

The issue is NOT whether
perception is accompanied by
cognition.

The issue IS whether the
qualitative core of a perceptual
event is influenced, impacted,
structured, or constituted by
cognition.
These lines are identical in
length.
Perception: Expectation, Belief,
& Knowledge
Cognitive Penetrability:

“If a system is cognitively penetrable
then the function it computes is
sensitive, in a semantically coherent
way, to the organism‘s goals and beliefs,
that is it can be altered in a way that
bears some logical relation to what a
person knows.”
-Zenon Pylyshyn, “Is vision continuous with
cognition?,” p. 343.
TWO ISSUES:
1) Are all
cognitive
states
propositional
states like
goals, beliefs,
thoughts, and
knowledge?
2) If NO, then how
can we make
sense of a “a
logical relation
to” or “semantic
coherence with”
nonpropositional but cognitive
states?
Why think there are
nonpropositional, cognitive states?

Knowing-how v. knowing-that
Ryle’s Regress

“The consideration of propositions is
itself an operation the execution of
which can be more or less intelligent,
less or more stupid. But if, for any
operation to be intelligently executed,
a prior theoretical operation had first
to be performed and performed
intelligently, it would be a logical
impossibility for anyone ever to break
into the circle.”
-Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind, p.30
Propositional rules can never
provide the specificity required
to govern acting en situ.
Particular rules are not rules at all.
How can perceptual processing bear a
semantically coherent or logical relation
to a cognitive state?
Dretske: Minimal rationality
Learning and cognitive content

“The reason learning is so central to
intelligent behavior, to the behavior of
people, is that learning is the process in
which internal indicators are harnessed to
output and thus become relevant—as
representations, as reasons—to the
explanation of the behavior of which they are
part. It is in the learning process that
information-carrying elements get a job to do
because of the information they carry and
hence acquire, by means of their content, a
role in the explanation of behavior.”
-Dretske, Explaining Behavior, p. 104.
Learning through Practice
What is learned through practice?

Attention and control: that which is responsible for the
manner or style in which a skill is instantiated.
Learning and not sensitization
Cognitive Penetrability of
Perception by Skill

If that part of skill which is developed
through practice (i.e., that aspect of
skill that is responsible for the
manner or style in which a skill is
performed) is related to early
perceptual processing in an
explanatorily relevant way, then we
have a legitimate case of the
cognitive penetrability of perception
by skill.
THANK YOU!