New Perspectives on the Cognitive Penetrability of Perception (CPP_2018)

There is a long-standing debate on whether perception is caused by knowledge, beliefs, or language.

According to the traditional “modular” understanding of perception, the standard answer to such questions is no. Perceptual processing is encapsulated from higher-level cognition. However, an impressive body of theoretical and empirical work on orientation seems to suggest that states such as beliefs Many, scholars, have seen such effects as ubiquitous and defying a sharp distinction between perception and cognition.

As a result, investigating increasingly investigating to what the extent perception should be understood as a "transparent window on reality". Are top-down effects on perception real, or do they just let influences on judgment, memory, or response bias? The cognitive penetrability constrain us to epistemological coherentism? Does cognitive impenetrability lead us back to the myth of sense-data? The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers from philosophy, psychology and neuroscience to discuss these and related questions.