Two Kinds of Cognitive Penetrability
If perceptual content can be influenced—and influenced in a certain way—by beliefs, then perception exhibits *cognitive penetrability*. In particular, if two distinct (token) perceptual states, instanced in two distinct subjects (i) have different content, but (ii) result from the same stimuli and from the same attentional structure, and if (iii) the difference in content can be explained in terms of some difference in the subjects’ respective belief structures, we can say that at least one of the token perceptual states is *cognitively penetrated*. We can also say that the perceptual state type to which the relevant tokens belong is *cognitively penetrable*.
In the face of increasing evidence that perception is cognitively penetrable, philosophers have taken an interest in working out the implications of penetrability for a number of debates, including the modularity debate, the theory-theory vs. simulation theory debate, and—most recently—the age-old debate over the epistemic status of perception. In this presentation, I make a distinction between two kinds of penetrability, corresponding to two ways in which beliefs can, at least in principle, influence perceptual states: on the one hand, a belief might ‘bequeath’ at least some of its content to an ‘inheriting’ perceptual state. In these sorts of cases, the kind of influence the belief exerts over the perceptual state is one of *inheritance*, where a given perceptual state inherits the content of a given belief only if that belief’s influence on the perceptual state could persist even if the belief itself should ‘perish.’ Alternatively, a belief might merely ‘lend’ its content to some perceptual state, in which case, the mechanism of influence would be one of *non-inheritance*. A given belief influences a given perceptual state via non-inheritance only if the belief’s influence on the perceptual would notpersist should the belief itself cease to exist.
After characterizing the inheritance/non-inheritance distinction in greater detail, I will give two reasons for thinking that the distinction is an important one for discussions of cognitive penetrability. First, I will argue that cases of non-inherited cognitive penetrability are much more
difficult to establish than cases of inherited cognitive penetrability. Second, I will suggest that perceptual states that have inherited some belief’s traits play a different role in epistemology than perceptual states that have been penetrated by, but have not inherited the traits of, some belief.
*Relevant Readings*
Heal, J. 1996a: ‘Simulation and Cognitive Penetrability’. *Mind and Language*, 11, 44-67.
Kriegel, Uriah. ‘The Phenomenologically Manifest.’ *Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences*. 2007. 6:115-136.
Macpherson, Fiona. ‘Cognitive Penetration of Colour Experience: Rethinking the Issue in Light of an Indirect Mechanism.’ forthcoming in *Philosophy and Phenomenological Research*.
Pryor, James. ‘The Skeptic and the Dogmatist.’ *Nous* 34:4 (2000). 517-49.
Pylyshyn, Zenon W. 1999. ‘Is vision continuous with cognition? The case for cognitive impenetrability of visual perception.<http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/149079.html>’*Behavioral and Brain Sciences*. 22 (3):341-365.
Siegel, Susanna, ‘Cognitive Penetrability and Perceptual Justification.
<http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Essiegel/papers/CogPen.htm>’Forthcoming in *Nous*. Also available here:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~ssiegel/papers/CogPen.htm<http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Essiegel/papers/CogPen.htm>
Siegel, Susanna. ‘How Can We Discover the Contents of Experience?’ *Southern Journal of Philosophy*. Vol. XLV. 2006. Also available here:
http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~ssiegel/papers/method.html<http://people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Essiegel/papers/method.html>
Siegel, Susanna. ‘Which Properties Are Represented in Perception?’ forthcoming in OUP’s *Perceptual Experience*, eds. Szabo, Gendler T. and Hawthorne, J. Also available here:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~ssiegel/papers/msKfinal.html<http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Essiegel/papers/msKfinal.html>
Wright, Richard D. & Dawson, Michael R. W. (1994). ‘To what extent do beliefs affect apparent
motion?<http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/ftinterface%7Edb=all%7Econtent=a793923185%7Efulltext=713240930>’
*Philosophical Psychology* 7 (4):471-491.
