Images of Organization

1995 International Conference on Education in Optics, 1995

Most ofthe time, in the teaching ofgeometrical and physical optics, the visual system is not considered in the analysis of different phenomena. This situation is often reflected in the physic texts and is responsible of a limited comprehension of physic concepts involved. It is so natural for us to see that it is sometimes difficult for the physic teachers to give up intuitive conceptions about what and how we see. The authors propose that the common sense is not enough. It is necessary to start from a scientific point of view considering contributions from diverse fields of analysis, avoing the tentation of reducing the behaviour of the vision system to a photgraphic camera. To see is much more than just to record images. Vision seems effortless. Objects are recognised in the environment and actions are carried out accordingly. However, current thinking suggest that the task is performed by the cooperative action of many different modules, each with specific task. Theses modules may represent different parts ofthe brain, or different routines in a computer program. This article stands out significant contributions from different approaches: * Theory of information processing * fificial vision * Computational vision * Cognitive psychology theory of learning These interdisciplinary contributions lead to the conclusion that the vision is an intended process. It is also able to make use of light propagation in the environment. This energy is processed constructing useflill visual representations and symbols. The conclusion is that the vision is a cognitive process.

SPIE Proceedings, 1995

Most ofthe time, in the teaching ofgeometrical and physical optics, the visual system is not considered in the analysis of different phenomena. This situation is often reflected in the physic texts and is responsible of a limited comprehension of physic concepts involved. It is so natural for us to see that it is sometimes difficult for the physic teachers to give up intuitive conceptions about what and how we see. The authors propose that the common sense is not enough. It is necessary to start from a scientific point of view considering contributions from diverse fields of analysis, avoing the tentation of reducing the behaviour of the vision system to a photgraphic camera. To see is much more than just to record images. Vision seems effortless. Objects are recognised in the environment and actions are carried out accordingly. However, current thinking suggest that the task is performed by the cooperative action of many different modules, each with specific task. Theses modules may represent different parts ofthe brain, or different routines in a computer program. This article stands out significant contributions from different approaches: * Theory of information processing * fificial vision * Computational vision * Cognitive psychology theory of learning These interdisciplinary contributions lead to the conclusion that the vision is an intended process. It is also able to make use of light propagation in the environment. This energy is processed constructing useflill visual representations and symbols. The conclusion is that the vision is a cognitive process.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014

Biological visual systems cannot measure the properties that define the physical world. Nonetheless, visually guided behaviors of humans and other animals are routinely successful. The purpose of this article is to consider how this feat is accomplished. Most concepts of vision propose, explicitly or implicitly, that visual behavior depends on recovering the sources of stimulus features either directly or by a process of statistical inference. Here we argue that, given the inability of the visual system to access the properties of the world, these conceptual frameworks cannot account for the behavioral success of biological vision. The alternative we present is that the visual system links the frequency of occurrence of biologically determined stimuli to useful perceptual and behavioral responses without recovering real-world properties. The evidence for this interpretation of vision is that the frequency of occurrence of stimulus patterns predicts many basic aspects of what we actually see. This strategy provides a different way of conceiving the relationship between objective reality and subjective experience, and offers a way to understand the operating principles of visual circuitry without invoking feature detection, representation, or probabilistic inference.

This paper argues for two major revisions in the way philosophers standardly think of vision science and vision theories more generally. The first concerns mental representations and the second supervenience. The central result is that the way is cleared for an externalist theory of perception. The framework for such a theory has what are called Aristotelian representations as elements in processes the well-functioning of which is the principal object of a theory of vision.