The Research Seminar Series in Philosophy invites you to a seminar with Pär Sundström, "What is low-level perception?".
By looking at an object, we can come to know all of the following: that it's yellow, that it has a certain shape, that it's a bicycle, and that it's expensive. But it's a natural thought that these properties -- being yellow, having a certain shape, being a bicycle, and being expensive -- are not on a par as far as vision is concerned. There are distinctions to draw here. Philosophers of perception and vision scientists have tended to concur with these thoughts. A relatively standard take goes as follows: we never perceive things as being expensive, even though we can come to know that things are expensive on the basis of perception; we sometimes perceive things as being bicycles but these perceptions are “high-level”; and we often perceive things as having certain colours and shapes and these perceptions are “low-level”. But what general accounts can one give of these distinctions? The focus of this talk is the distinction between low-level perception and not-low-level perception. I’ll discuss, and issue some reservations about, a “dependency view”, which says that perception is low-level iff it can be formed not on the basis of other perceptions. Then I’ll propose an “optical-sensitivity account”, which to a first approximation says that perception of a feature, formed in a certain way, is low-level iff the feature interacts with light in a unique way and the formation of the perception is sensitive to that unique way of interacting with light.
This seminar is intended primarily for presentations of PhD work and other research in philosophy conducted at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. Guest lectures sometimes take place in the seminar as well. The seminars are given in English and all interested are welcome to attend these events.
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