Seeing, Thinking and Knowing: Meaning and Self-Organisation in Visual Cognition and Thought

ISBN-13: 9789048165889 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 358 str.

A. Carsetti

Opis

The world perceived at the visual level is constituted not by objects or static forms, but by processes appearing imbued with meaning. As G. Kanizsa stated, at the visual level the line per se does not exist: only the line which enters, goes behind, divides, etc., a line evolving according to a precise holistic context, in comparison with which function and meaning are indissolubly interlinked. Just as the meaning of words is connected with a universe of highly-dynamic functions and functional processes which operate syntheses, cancellations, integrations, etc. (a universe which can only be described in terms of symbolic dynamics), in the same way, at the level of vision, we must continuously unravel and construct schemata; we must assimilate and make ourselves available for selection by the co-ordinated information penetrating from external Reality. Lastly, we must interrelate all this with the internal selection mechanisms through a precise "journey" into the regions of intensionality.
In accordance with these intuitions, we may directly consider, from the more general point of view of contemporary Self-organisation theory, the network of meaningful programs living at the level of neural systems as a complex one which articulates and develops, functionally, within a "coupled universe" characterised by the existence of a double selection: external and internal, the latter regarding the universe of meaning. This network gradually posits itself as the basis for the emergence of natural and meaningful forms and the simultaneous, if indirect, surfacing of an "I-subject-": as the basic instrument, in other words, for the perception of real and meaningful processes, of "objects" possessing meaning, aims, intentions, etc.: above all, of biological objects possessing an inner plan and linked to the progressive expression of a specific cognitive action.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements. Introduction; A. Carsetti. I: Seeing and thinking: a new approach. Neural models of seeing and thinking; S. Grossberg. Functional architecture of the visual cortex and variational models for Kanizsa's modal subjective contours; J. Petitot. Gestalt theory and computer vision; A. Desolneux, L. Moisan, J.M. Morel. Towards an analytic phenomenology: the concepts of 'bodiliness' and 'grabbiness'; J.K. O'Regan, E. Myin, A. Noë. Internal representations of sensory input reflect the motor output with which organisms respond to the input; A. Di Ferdinando, D. Parisi. Movemes for modeling biological motion perception; L. Goncalves, E. Di Bernardo, P. Perona. Form constraints in motion integration, segmentation and selection; J. Lorenceau. Scintillations, extinctions and other new visual effects; J. Ninio. Commonalities between visual imagery and imagery in other modalities: an investigation by means of FMRI; M. Olivetti Belardinelli, R. Di Matteo, C. Del Gratta, A. De Nicola, A. Ferretti, G.L. Romani. II: Forms and schemes of perceptual and cognitive self-organisation. Microgenesis, immediate experience and visual processes in reading; V. Rosenthal. Language, space and the theory of semantic forms; Y.M. Visetti. Emotion-cognition interaction and language; M. Wimmer. Appearance of structure and emergence of meaning in the visual system; M. Stadler, P. Kruse. The embodied meaning: self-organisation and symbolic dynamics in visual cognition; A. Carsetti. Name index. Subject index.