Lecture 18: Turing Reductionism, Token Physicalism: The Computational System Assumption (Turvey, 2019, Lectures on Perception)

We have encountered the idea in Lectures 6 and 16 that perception might be formalised as a form of computation, and that this might be the step that enables the Cartesian programme to succeed. This Lecture spends time on work on the underpinnings of this hypothesis, namely work on what kind of thing mathematics and computation are and can do. 

Lecture 17: Pattern Recognition and Representation Bearers (Turvey, 2019, Lectures on Perception)

Last Lecture Turvey reviewed the basics of the computational approach, and highlighted again how it is just the latest iteration of the Cartesian programme. In this Lecture, he explores the specific topic of pattern recognition, which has been a major topic in the computational approach and exemplifies many of the major problems. These problems primarily boil down to systems requiring loans of intelligence to even come close to working.

Radical Embodied Memory (Wilford & Anderson, 2025)

Of all the representation-hungry problems out there, memory seems to be the hungriest. It is clearly a fact that we can organise our present behaviour with respect to things that happened previously; we learn, I can shape my talking behaviour to be about what I did last summer, and so on. In order for this to be possible, something has to persist from the past into the present, and it seems intuitive that what persists is some sort of record of that past event. That seems like it has to be a representation, by the very definition of the term. 

Obviously, I don't think that ecological psychology can't find a way to talk about memory. I've done it a bit (Rob and I had a chat on his podcast, I've thought about it a little in papers) but never anything formal; all just thinking through the problem. So I was excited to see a preprint on the topic by Robyn Wilford and Michael Anderson. In this post I want to review the basic approach (overall I like the paper and I think the basic idea is exactly right) and list a few suggestions I would make if I was reviewing this paper. It's exciting to see this topic getting some attention, even if it is still very early days.

Lecture 16: The Computational-Representational Perspective: Preliminaries (Turvey, 2019, Lectures on Perception)

The next four Lectures are specifically focused on the modern form of the Cartesian programme - the computational-representational approach. It's important to spend some time here, because this is the ecological approach's current opposition, and because the fact it is just yet another Cartesian programme matters, and is at the heart of most of our objections to it. 

In Lecture 6 we learned about the 3 grades of sense. First, there is reflex. The second is limited awareness of secondary qualities. The third is full mental awareness of what it all means. The proposed solution (Hobbes) for building the third grade out of the other two is the manipulation of symbols to do inference. In modern times, this is implemented as computation, and implemented in a representation.

Lecture 15: Gestaltism III: Experience error, CNS error, Psych-neural Isomorphism, Behavioural Environment (Turvey, 2019, Lectures on Perception)

The two previous lectures reviewed some of the changes happening in related fields to psychology that were showing up in Gestalt psychology, specifically the notion of fields, the understanding that behaviour could emerge from dynamical processes, and the limits on mechanical approaches to living systems. This chapter finally actually engages with Gestalt psychology, and discusses how it was applying these changes.

Lecture 14: Gestaltism II: Fields, Self-Organization, and the Invariance Postulate of Evolution (Turvey, 2019, Lectures on Perception)

In the previous Lecture, Turvey discussed the machine metaphor in which things are just equal to the sum of their parts. In this Lecture, Turvey introduces the Gestalt notion that wholes are different from the sum of their parts. Well, specifically, he discusses the notions of fields and self-organisation, and the kinds of physical systems that these entail; Gestalt psychology is mostly just a launching pad for the broader discussion. 

Lecture 13: Gestaltism I: Atomism, Anatomism, and Mechanical Order (Turvey, 2019, Lectures on Perception)

We are nearing the end of the Foundational Concepts section of the book, and we have arrived at one final historical attempts to explain perception; the Gestalt school. This chapter doesn't actually spend any time on Gestalt, however, but instead lays out the things Gestalt was developed to oppose. Those things are atomism, anatomism, and mechanical order.