摘要
关于视知觉以及语义推理活动之间的关系,有两种针锋相对的观点:“视—思连续论”和“视—思断裂论”。根据前一理论,视知觉在原则上可为语义信息所渗透,或者说,视知觉本身就是某种缄默的语义推理的产物。根据后一理论,高阶的语义推理无法渗入视知觉,视觉模块可以通过某种独立的方式运作。视觉科学家芝恩·派利夏恩系统地发展了后一种观点。本文的靶标就是派氏的观点。在派氏看来,对于“连续论”的接纳会导致我们去承诺一种“纯摹状词观点”的观点,以便解释视觉模块对于视觉表征的记录方式——而麻烦的是,这种记录方式却恰恰无法说明为何视觉系统能够以一种高效的方式完成对于视觉对象的追踪。这就会反推出“断裂论”的正确性。在笔者看来,派氏之论已经错误地预设了如下这点:一阶谓词逻辑乃是用以形式化所谓“纯摹状词观点”的唯一工具(而恰恰由于对于这种工具的运用,视觉系统对于视觉表征的记录方式才会变得非常笨拙)。笔者以为,一种可能的视觉表征记录方式,或许会对被记录到的每个摹状词的语用权重加以标签——而那些权重不高的摹状词,也就将不再在“对象追踪”的任务中扮演重要角色。根据这种假设,语义内容依然以摹状词的形式在视觉系统的追踪活动中发挥作用,并不会导致系统运作效率的全面下降——而派氏的论证并没有先天地排除这种对他不利的假设。
There are two basic positions with respect to the relation between visual perception(seeing)and inference(thinking):according to the"Continuity Thesis between Seeing and Thinking",visual perception is in principle penetrable by information(with semantic content),or itself is nothing but consequence of some tacit form of inferences.By contrast,according to the"Discontinuity Thesis between Seeing and Thinking",visual perception is impenetrable by high-level inference,or in other words,the visual module works in a manner which is independent of the central belief system.The target theorist of this article is Pylyshyn,who argued that any attempts to reject the afore-defined"Discontinuity Thesis"will inevitably result in a"pure descriptivist view of visual representations",which cannot explain why human's visual system can efficiently track the targeted visual objects.Hence,the"Discontinuity Thesis",as he concluded,should be accepted.Nonetheless,his argument has mistakenly assumed that the socalled"pure clescriptivist view of visual representations"can be only formalized by first-order predicate logic or the like,which is clumsy at diachronically recording visual representations.I will further propose another way to record visual representations,according to which the pragmatic weight of each description will be recorded,and consequently,descriptions without enough weights are supposed to contribute too little to the fulfillment of the task of tracking targeted objects.If this is the actual way in which the vision system works,semantic contents will still play an indispensable role in tracking objects.Unfortunately,Pylyshyn's theory doesn't preclude my competing hypothesis,which is still on the very track of the"pure clescriptivist view".
出处
《哲学门》
CSSCI
2013年第1期305-326,共22页
Beida Journal of Philosophy
基金
复旦大学“985工程”三期整体推进人文学科项目(2011RWXKYB038)的资助。
关键词
视知觉
视觉模块
不可穿透性
纯摹状词观点
视觉索引词
visual perception
visual module
impenetrability
the pure descriptivist view
visual index
作者简介
徐英瑾,1978年生,哲学博士,复旦大学哲学学院副教授。
