Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The outside world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Several lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual \"filling in,\" visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception.

A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness-Authors' Response-Acting out our sensory experience

One of the aims of the ARES project is to “help to design reliable systems with embedded software that satisfy important quality requirements, evolve gracefully and may be built in-time and on-budget.” The development process should be designed to support this. If we simplify enough, each development process for product families looks like this: 
Open image in new window

Development Process

'introspectionism' and the mythical origins of scientific psychology. Commentary

After a summary of Bohr's views and their relation to Kant's theory of science, two fruitless lines of attack on the measurement problem are discussed: the way of the psi-ontologist and the way of the QBist. In the remainder of the paper the following results are obtained. (i) Because the testable correlations between outcomes of measurements of macroscopic positions are consistent with both the classical and the quantum laws, there is no conflict between the superposition principle and the existence of measurement outcomes. (ii) Intrinsically, each fundamental particle is numerically identical with every other fundamental particle. What presents itself here and now with these properties and what presents itself there and then with those properties is one and the same entity, herein called "Being." (iii) The distinction between a classical domain and a quantum domain is essentially a distinction between the manifested world and its manifestation. By entering into reflexive spatial relations, Being gives rise to (a) what looks like a multiplicity of relata if the reflexive quality of the relations is ignored, and (b) what looks like a substantial expanse if the spatial quality of the relations is reified. (iv) The reason why quantum mechanics is a calculus of correlations between measurement outcomes is that it concerns the progressive realization of distinguishable objects and distinguishable regions of space. (v) The key to the relation between quantum mechanics and experience is that Being does not simply manifest the world, Being manifests the world to itself. It is at once the single substance by which the world exists and the ultimate self or subject for which it exists. The question how we are related to this ultimate self or subject is discussed.

Quantum Mechanics and Experience

This paper addresses the question of character by thinking through how willfulness becomes a moral attribute, a way of making certain characters into problems. Reflecting on how an education in virtue became an education of the will, the paper explores how some characters become “willful parts” when they do not align their wills with the moral and general will. Drawing on readings of willfulness in novels by George Eliot, including Daniel Deronda, Mill on the Floss and Romola, the paper explores how feminist histories might involve the willful claiming of the attribite of willfulness. The paper suggests that when willfulness is reclaimed, it exceeds the very system of characterization, even when it appears to fulfill a set of expectations of what is behind an action.

Willful Parts: Problem Character or the Problem of Characters

Arguably the greatest single work in the history of psychology. James's analyses of habit, the nature of emotion, the phenomenology of attention, the stream of thought, the perception of space, and the multiplicity of the consciousness of self are still widely cited and incorporated into contemporary theoretical accounts of these phenomena.

G.P. Putnam's Sons

Papers

The Principles of Psychology