Seeing and Visualizing: It's Not What You Think

by Zenon W. Pylyshyn

In Seeing and Visualizing , Zenon Pylyshyn argues that seeing is different from thinking and that to see is not, as it may seem intuitively, to create an inner replica of the world. Pylyshyn examines how we see and how we visualize and why the scientific account does not align with the way these processes seem to us "from the inside." In doing so, he addresses issues in vision science, cognitive psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive neuroscience. First, Pylyshyn argues that there is a core stage of vision independent from the influence of our prior beliefs and examines how vision can be intelligent and yet essentially knowledge-free. He then proposes that a mechanism within the vision module, called a visual index (or FINST), provides a direct preconceptual connection between parts of visual representations and things in the world, and he presents various experiments that illustrate the operation of this mechanism. He argues that such a deictic reference mechanism is needed to account for many properties of vision, including how mental images attain their apparent spatial character without themselves being laid out in space in our brains. The final section of the book examines the "picture theory" of mental imagery, including recent neuroscience evidence, and asks whether any current evidence speaks to the issue of the format of mental images. This analysis of mental imagery brings together many of the themes raised throughout the book and provides a framework for considering such issues as the distinction between the form and the content of representations, the role of vision in thought, and the relation between behavioral, neuroscientific, and phenomenological evidence regarding mental representations.

Genres: Nonfiction

582 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[George Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an illuminating book.

I must say I started with a mildly negative image of the author, following his repeated mention in a book on neural networks. I have a better view of the distinctions made between the two authors. In many ways they were agreeing, and it is a question of boundaries between mental modules. Pylyshyn did come across as mildly acerbic at times, though more often he was simply dominant in his grasp of technical details.

In all, Pylyshyn covers the process of vision and its relationship to reasoning and visualization impressively. What is intuitive to us about our own reasoning, our own mental images is so often a distraction from the reality of things. This book is an excellent corrective.

Most pointedly, Pylyshyn tears down the idea of an inner screen that is watched and used to recall. By detailed observation of the ways recall and reasoning from memory or imagination differ from our ability to observe and react to actual visual stimuli, he offers a compelling model of where "early" vision stops and where our more inference based cognition begins. In short, we require no picture in the mind, and attempts to find them are doomed to failure.

Creativity takes a brief final review, since we often equate or connect creativity and problem solving with visual imaging. He ends on a very open note, with the specifics of what makes us creative unrealized. But clearly, vision itself is only a tool, and not itself what makes us creative.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the current height of cognitive science relating to the visual strategies of the brain, both latent and learned, and how the latter impacts efficiency. He discusses how information appears to be rotationally stored (based on direction patterns in testing symbols). Read twice.

[Beth Egee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'd been hoping for something insightful, something that "opened my eyes", if you will, but this was all technical and offered little else to take away.