1. From perception to thought
How is it that we are able to think about what we perceive? More specifically, how are
we able to bring the resources of conceptualized thought to bear on the objects and events that
are represented to us in perception? And how much of our capacity for conceptualized thought is
undergirded by, or is an extension of, our capacities for perception and action? Addressing these
questions requires disentangling some of the more tightly woven strands linking perception,
thought, and action.
While one of the most distinctive things about human concepts is that they extend over
indefinitely many types of things that transcend perception, we can also reflect on
straightforwardly perceivable objects, and the concepts we have of these objects are often
acquired by perceptually encountering and manipulating them. Additionally, how we perceive
the world is infused or colored by the conceptual capacities that we possess. We don’t merely see
the cat, we see her as a cat, a visual state that depends on conceptualizing her in a certain way.
And in virtue of seeing her as a cat, we may come to form perceptual beliefs concerning her
presence and qualities. Thus, conceptualized perception enables conceptualized thought.
My aim here is to illuminate what happens at the interface between perception and higher
cognition. On the view I develop, observational concepts are the pivot on which this relationship
turns. Observational concepts are those that are spontaneously made available at the interface
between perception-action systems and the conceptual system. They correspond to the ways we
have of conceptually dividing the world based solely on the available perceptual information. We are able to treat what is perceived as evidence for what isn’t directly perceived (or, indeed,
perceivable at all). Observational concepts form the evidential basis for these perceptiontranscendent
inferences. And ultimately, we acquire ways of thinking about perceived things that
are not tied directly to how they are perceived; observational concepts are central to this process
insofar as they provide us with an initial way of conceptually tracking categories that we will
learn to represent in perception-transcendent ways.
In what follows, I situate observational concepts in the larger architecture of cognition,
characterize their role and content, describe how they are learned, and show how they play a key
role in learning further concepts. Along the way I distinguish them from related constructs such
as recognitional concepts and show that arguments against recognitional concepts fail to work
against observational concepts. I conclude by discussing what observational concepts can teach
us about the extent to which perceptual systems and representations may shape higher cognition.
2. Interfaces
Observational concepts are distinguished by their functional role, specifically by the
location they occupy in the overall architecture of cognition. Many issues about cognitive
architecture remain largely unsettled, but the only architectural assumption employed here is the
distinction between input-output systems and central cognitive systems. Central systems include
but need not be exhausted by the conceptual system, which is not assumed to be unitary.1
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