Dan Cavedon-Taylor is a philosopher at the Open University in the UK. Much of his current research concerns mental imagery and its roles in human cognition. His papers on this topic have appeared/are forthcoming in Frontiers in Psychology: Psychopathology, Philosophers’ Imprint, Philosophical Studies and Synthese. He is also editing a special issue of Synthese on deepfakes.
A post by Dan Cavedon-Taylor
That night, Wang sat in his study and admired the few landscape photographs, his works he was the most proud of, hanging on the wall. His eyes fell on a frontier scene: a desolate valley terminating in a snowcapped mountain. On the nearer end of the valley, half of a dead tree, eroded by the vicissitudes of many years, took up one-third of the picture. In his imagination, Wang placed the figure that lingered in his mind at the far end of the valley. Surprisingly, it made the entire scene come alive, as though the world in the photograph recognized that tiny figure and responded to it, as though the whole scene existed for her.
He then imagined her figure in each of his other photographs, sometimes pasting her two eyes into the empty sky over the landscapes. Those images also came alive, achieving a beauty that Wang had never imagined. Wang had always thought that his photographs lacked some kind of soul.
Now he understood that they were missing her.
--Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem (translated by Ken Liu)
Cognitive penetration is said to occur if what one believes or desires, or expects, etc. directly affects how one perceives. For instance, perhaps believing someone is angry makes their neutral face look as if it is expressing anger (Siegel 2012). Maybe a desire for wealth makes coins look larger than they would otherwise (Stokes 2012; Bruner & Goodman 1947). And feasibly, believing that a piece of meat came from a factory farmed animal may make it taste extra salty (Anderson & Barrett 2016).
There is substantial disagreement over whether cognitive penetration does in fact occur. But one matter on which there is not much disagreement is about how cognitive penetration ought to be defined. For instance, in her influential discussion of the rationality of perception, Susanna Siegel (2012, p.203) describes cognitive penetration as follows: “Cognitive penetrability is a kind of causal influence on visual experience.” Similarly, Edouard Machery (2015, p.61), on the side of sceptics of cognitive penetration answers the question “What counts as cognitive penetration?” with the reply “Cognitive penetration is a causal relation: the cognitive penetrability hypothesis is true only if beliefs, desires, or some other nonperceptual states causally influence what we perceive.” And Dustin Stokes (2021, p.45) claims that cognitive penetration is what happens when an antecedent non-perceptual state “causally impacts” perceptual experiences.
But is this right? Can only causal phenomenon count as cognitive penetration? I think we should reject that idea. Here are three cases for you to consider:
Precarious Passing (Cavedon-Taylor forthcoming)
You are driving at night and visibility is drastically reduced. Suddenly, a car appears on the road before you. At least, you assume it to be one; all you can make out are two headlights. In order to work out whether there is space for your car to pass on the narrow lane, you must make an educated guess as to the size of the other car, given the position of its headlights. But you need to do so in such a way that can directly guide your action. Solution: you use mental imagery to project, out into the pitch black and surrounding the headlights, the outline shape of a car that strikes you as the correct shape and size.
Skunk Skirting (Van Leeuwen 2011)
You are jogging along a road when you see a skunk. In order to work out where to move to avoid being sprayed, you must make an educated guess as to the spray’s potential distance and direction. But you must do so in a way that can directly guide your actions. Solution: you use mental imagery to project, out into the scene before you, an arc that strikes you as the length and angle that the skunk’s spray is likely to be, should the animal become riled.
Cat Completing (Nanay 2010)
A more controversial case: amodal completion. You are looking at your cat, partially occluded by picket fencing. Some parts of the cat directly stimulate your retina. Other parts, i.e. those behind the pickets, do not. Still, there looks to be a whole, complete cat before you. Question: why is that what you experience instead of discrete, detached cat-parts? Answer: you undergo projected mental imagery of the parts of the cat occluded by the pickets.
In these examples a mental image comes to partially constitute your visual experience of the scene before you. Crucially, tokening mental imagery in these cases doesn’t cause your visual experience to change. It is not that the image is tokened at one time and then brings about a change to your visual experience at a later time. (There are cases like this, but these are not them.) Rather, in these examples, imagery is “integrated into the perceptual field” (Van Leeuwen 2011, p.56) and “invades the perception itself” (Currie & Ravenscroft 2002, p.29). That is, instead of being tokened in the so-called ‘mind’s eye’, here imagery is tokened within perceptual experience itself. Consider: the time at which imagery is tokened in perceptual experience is the very same time at which perceptual content becomes altered so as to represent, e.g., the outline shape of the approaching car, the (potential) spray of the skunk and the occluded parts of the cat.
So, in the above examples (and similar ones), a non-causal relation of partial constitution holds between a non-perceptual state and a perceptual experience. As a result, we have a particularly direct relation here between the two. So shouldn’t these examples count as cognitive penetration? After all, the relation between imagery and perceptual experience involved here could hardly be more direct. But then aren’t standard definitions of cognitive penetration, which insinuate cognitive penetration is necessarily a causal phenomenon, too narrow?
References
Anderson, E. & Barrett, L. (2016). “Affective Beliefs Influence the Experience of Eating Meat.” PLoS ONE 11 (8): e0160424.
Bruner, J. & Goodman, C. (1947). “Value and Need as Organizing Factors in Perception.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2: 33-44.
Cavedon-Taylor, D. (forthcoming). Mental Imagery: Greasing the Mind’s Gears. Philosophers’ Imprint. Philpapers.org archives copy https://philpapers.org/rec/CAVMIG
Currie, G. & Ravenscroft, I. (2002). Recreative Minds. OUP.
Machery, E. (2015). “Cognitive Penetrability: A No-Progress Report.” In A. Raftopoulos and J. Zeimbekis (eds.) The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception. OUP.
Nanay, B. (2010). “Perception and Imagination: Amodal Perception as Mental Imagery.” Philosophical Studies 150: 239-254.
Siegel, S. (2012). “Cognitive Penetrability and Perceptual Justification.” Nous 46: 201-222.
Stokes, D. (2012). “Perceiving and Desiring: A New Look at the Cognitive Penetrability of Experience.” Philosophical Studies 158: 479-492.
Van Leeuwen, N. (2011). “Imagination is Where the Action Is.” Journal of Philosophy 108: 55-77.