Download Project 2: The situated view of perception and action conceives of

Project 2:
The situated view of perception and action conceives of these phenomena and capacities in
quite a different way than traditional accounts developed in the classical paradigm of cognitive
science. The serial and linear character of information processing which is so prominent in
models based on Marr’s (1982) theory of vision is given up in favor of more dynamical models
which introduce at least the following important features with respect to perceptual processing,
leading to associated specific research programs: (a) Given the basic assumption that
cognition in general must be explained in terms of the dynamics of brain, body, and world, the
body and bodily actions are now supposed to play an indispensable role for perception in
situated approaches (Noë 2004). Is this merely an enabling or a constitutive role? If the
embodied action in question is merely the exercise of a basic kind of knowledge how, it must
be clarified whether knowledge how is different from or reducible to propositional knowledge
(for opposing view compare Jung & Newen 2010 with Stanley 2011). (b) The serial character
is given up in an additional sense in so-called predictive coding frameworks according to which
perception starts with top-down hypotheses and expectations, which are in turn compared to
the actual sensory input (Clark 2013). These approaches are still sketchy and leave open the
question to which extent perception is situated and how exactly this is manifested. This project
uses the predictive coding perspective to investigate this question with an approach according
to which the task of perception is not to build up a rich and detailed model of the world but to
enable pragmatically important behavior. Can we develop an adequate theory of perceptual
phenomena if we use a pragmatic view concerning the functional role of perception and
combine this with the architecture of predictive coding? How would such a theory look like,
what follows for the situatedness of perception and what are the benefits and limits of such an
approach? This project will also provide input for PhD project 1 since it enables us to ask what
role the notion of representation can or should play in a situated account of perception.