Measurement and Isomorphism in the Psychology of Perception: A Historical Approach to the Problem of Representation

介绍本项目将提供一个代表性问题的历史帐户。这一问题的特点是以下问题。我们的知觉经验告诉我们关于世界的什么？关于世界的信息是如何在大脑中呈现的？在过去的一百年里，已经提出了各种不同的表征哲学解释。相比之下，在同一时期，感知科学研究的方法和前提仍然令人惊讶地强大。本项目将感知科学发展的历史考察与其隐含的表征概念的哲学分析相结合。智力价值通过考察在哲学和心理学比今天更紧密联系的时候成功的方法和范式出现的历史背景，本项目将重新建立当代科学实践与其哲学根源之间的联系。两个关键的想法指导这项调查。第一个观点可以追溯到亚里士多德：我们的经验通过某种程度上与世界相似来代表世界;第二个观点认为经验与世界相似，就像测量与被测量的量相似一样。从哲学的角度来看，相似性是一个非常有问题的概念，但与测量的类比将对这些长期存在的担忧做出回应。最终目标是产生一个精确的描述，符合当代科学实践，同时回答当代哲学问题。潜在的更广泛的影响：人类的心灵/大脑如何感知世界？一个答案是，它是通过发展外部世界的内部表征来实现的。这个答案在心灵哲学、认知科学和心理科学中引发了持续的争论。该项目汇集了心理学实践和哲学理论，以开发对两个学科的需求敏感的感知表征的帐户。它将促进哲学和科学之间的交流，并鼓励跨学科的思想。如果成功，该项目将回答感知科学中长期存在的基础问题，并激发关于我们感知经验的新的经验和哲学问题。

IntroductionThis project will provide a historical account of the problem of representation. That problem is characterized by the following questions. What does our perceptual experience tell us about the world? How is information about the world represented in the brain? In the past hundred years, wildly different philosophical accounts of representation have been offered. By contrast, the methods and presuppositions of the scientific study of perception remained surprisingly robust during that same period. This project combines historical investigation of the development of perception science with philosophical analysis of its implicit notions of representation.Intellectual MeritBy investigating the historical context within which successful methods and paradigms emerged at a time when philosophy and psychology were in closer contact than today, the project will reestablish contact between contemporary scientific practice and its philosophical roots. Two key ideas guide this investigation. The first is an insight going back to Aristotle: Our experience represents the world by being somehow similar to it. The second idea is just that experience is similar to the world in the same way that a measurement is similar to the quantity measured. Similarity has been an extremely problematic notion from a philosophical standpoint, but the analogy with measurement will suggest a response to these longstanding worries. The ultimate goal is to produce a precise account of representation that conforms to contemporary scientific practice while answering contemporary philosophical questions.Potential Broader Impacts:How does the human mind/brain perceive the world? One answer is that is does so by developing internal representations of the external world. This answer has spurred ongoing debate in philosophy of mind and in cognitive and psychological science. This project brings together psychological practice and philosophical theory to develop an account of perceptual representation that is sensitive to the demands of both disciplines. It will foster communication between philosophy and the sciences and encourage interdisciplinary thought. If successful, the project will answer longstanding foundational questions in perceptual science and inspire new empirical and philosophical questions about our perceptual experience.