Mapping the Visual Icon

Philosophical Quarterly 72 (3):552-577 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

It is often claimed that pre-attentive vision has an ‘iconic’ format. This is seen to explain pre-attentive vision's characteristically high processing capacity and to make sense of an overlap in the mechanisms of early vision and mental imagery. But what does the iconicity of pre-attentive vision amount to? This paper considers two prominent ways of characterising pre-attentive visual icons and argues that neither is adequate: one approach renders the claim ‘pre-attentive vision is iconic’ empirically false while the other obscures its ability to do the explanatory work, which motivates positing pre-attentive visual icons in the first place. With this noted, I introduce the notion of an ‘Analogue Map’ and argue that it provides a superior characterisation of pre-attentive vision's iconicity. I then argue that this forces a reassessment of debates which have traditionally presupposed the iconicity of pre-attentive vision, emphasising ramifications for the viability of a format-based perception-thought border.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

Is Iconic Memory Iconic?Jake Quilty-Dunn - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (3):660-682.
A model of pre-attentive region definition in visual patterns.M. Pabst, H. J. Reitboeck & R. Eckhorn - 1989 - In Rodney M. J. Cotterill, Models of Brain Function. Cambridge University Press. pp. 137--150.
Compositionality and constituent structure in the analogue mind.Sam Clarke - 2023 - Philosophical Perspectives 37 (1):90-118.
Varieties of Self-Apprehension.Anna Giustina - 2019 - ProtoSociology 36:186-220.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-05-11

Downloads
1,129 (#18,256)

6 months
200 (#17,296)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Sam Clarke
University of Southern California

Citations of this work

Is there an empirical case for semantic perception?Steven Gross - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (10):3770-3795.
Contours of Vision: Towards a Compositional Semantics of Perception.Kevin J. Lande - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
Pictorial syntax.Kevin J. Lande - 2024 - Mind and Language 39 (4):518-539.

View all 12 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Vision.David Marr - 1982 - W. H. Freeman.
Origins of Objectivity.Tyler Burge - 2010 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
The origin of concepts.Susan Carey - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Image and Mind.Stephen Michael Kosslyn - 1980 - Harvard University Press.

View all 46 references / Add more references