Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Path: utzoo!decvax!bellcore!ulysses!cbosgd!ucbvax!SRI-KL!PHayes From: PHayes@SRI-KL (Pat Hayes) Newsgroups: mod.ai Subject: Representationalist Perception Message-ID: <8607071749.AA26633@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: Wed, 2-Jul-86 14:07:50 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8607071749.AA26633 Posted: Wed Jul 2 14:07:50 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 7-Jul-86 23:24:06 EDT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 15 Approved: ailist@sri-ai.arpa Mozes long review of Kelleys book "The Evidence of the Senses" tells one a lot about the book. In particular, it sounds as though it makes the same basic mistake about representations that many other 'anti-computationalist' philosophers , including Gibson and his followers, make. The 'representatonalist' account of perception does NOT claim that instead of perceiving the world, we perceive internal representations of the world. That would indeed be a position with many difficulties. Rather, it says that the WAY we perceive the world is BY making representations of it. The data structures are, to put it simply, the output of the perceptual process, not its input. The question the representational position must face is how such things ( representations ) can serve as percepts in the overall cognitive framework. While there are indeed many problems here, the position is not as silly as Gibson thought it was. Pat Hayes -------