I am going to attempt to demonstrate why the relationship between science and philosophy is one of great importance. The way I want to do this is by asking this question: does ontological belief dictate how we should understand perception? For the purpose of clarity, I will define some terms and attempt to make clear the specifics of what I'm talking about.
The study of what constitutes reality or a state of being. Ok, that's vague. I understand ontology to mean a perspective or view on what gives something the status of being 'real'.
The collection, organisation and use of sensory information to understand and interpret the environment. This could be visual, haptic (using active touch), auditory, kinaesthetic... the list goes on. When we talk about perception, we are talking about the gathering of sensory information.
The online guidance of goal-directed bodily movement. This could mean a full body action such as walking, or a smaller scale movement such as reaching or grasping. When we talk about action, we are talking about what an individual can do.
Properties of objects that inform an organism about what can be done with that object. These are dependent on both the spatial nature of the object and the morphology and capacity for action of the organism doing the perceiving.
Now that's (hopefully) cleared up, I'll describe the two ontological stances that I think are relevant here. The first is relative ontology. According to this stance, reality does not exist objectively but is instead generated by an individuals interactions with the environment. Therefore, there exists not one single reality, but multiple realities which are distinctive from individual to individual. Upon this stance, the meanings attached to actions, events or thoughts create reality, and although we appear to share in one world, reality is created solely in the minds of individuals. The second is objective ontology. In contrast to relative ontology, upon this stance an objective, truthful reality exists independently of human perception, and this reality is not influenced by the meanings attached to it by people. Both of these stances can go by different names and are associated with several epistemological perspectives however, again for the sake of clarity, these terms will suffice.
I will now describe two opposing stances of perception. The first is the so-called constructivist account. According to this account, the information we receive from the environment is inadequate and requires some form of intelligent cognizance, or consciousness, to interpret it. Through learning, we create and maintain mental representations and constructs of things we perceive and interact with. For example, through the process of induction we are able to use individual instances of interactions with the environment to develop mental representations which we then draw upon in future encounters. So when we see a mug on a table, we are able to recognise it because of previous experience with mugs, glasses, hot beverages, cafes and so on. When we see the mug on the table, we are able to tap into the mental construct of what a mug is, what its function is, common places mugs are found (and so on, and so on) and we use this to successfully identify and use the mug. For a more elaborate discussion of this perspective, see here and here. The first of these links is a paper supporting this account, and the second is a paper attacking an alternative account, which I will now describe.
The ecological account of perception rejects the notions of mental representations and constructs. Instead, it is claimed that the information we obtain from the environment through perception is rich and our sensory systems pick up the information they do because they evolved to do so. When we look at a mug on a table, an ecological psychologist would say that we do not see 'a mug' as a construct, instead we see a familiar object which affords being grasped and used as a container for a hot beverage. Through experience of engaging with objects within a range of environments, we learn about affordances (see above) and also about the capabilities of our bodies to perform actions. Therefore to a healthy adult human, the mug will afford 'graspability' whereas to a dog the mug is unlikely to afford very much. This of course does not mean that the dog does not see the mug, it simply means that it will not see the mug in the same way or as having the same purpose that the healthy human adult will. For a more elaborate discussion of this perspective, see here, here and here. The first link is to a book by a prominent proponent of ecological psychology. The second is a discussion of where the constructivist view may be flawed, and the third is a response to the second.
The question is then, does the view of perception we choose to endorse necessitate that we adopt one of the two ontological possibilities outlined above? As part of this thought exercise, I posit this:
Since a key argument of the constructivist account is that the information we obtain from the environment is impoverished, and thus requires the use of an internal, intelligent consciousness (e.g. the brain) to make sense of it, this suggests that the outside world need not be objective. If we create and maintain constructs and representations of objects and concepts through induction and experience, and those constructs guide our future percepts, does this mean that reality can only be created in our minds? Does the nature of the 'outside world' not matter? Is there a case for arguing that the constructivist account of perception necessitates that we adopt a relative ontological perspective?
In contrast, a key argument of the ecological account is that the environment provides us with rich, salient information and we, as active participants in the world, pick-up on that information and use it to navigate our environment. Through experience we learn about the capabilities of our bodies, which in turn change as a result of experience. Thus a feedback loop is created whereby observer and world are necessarily entangled. This suggests that there must exist a world for the active observer to engage with and learn from in the first place. Does reality centre on the properties of objects in the environment being accessible to active observers? Is there a case for arguing that the ecological account of perception necessitates that we adopt an objective ontological perspective?
Of course, it is not that simple - nothing in science or philosophy is! These are so-called hard arguments, and represent extremes of a hypothetical continuum. As such I would be surprised to hear anyone leaping to agree with either. However, this thought exercise demonstrates the intimate relationship between psychological theory and philosophy.
At this point, I would hasten to point out that this post is geared towards thinking about the philosophy of science, and is not intended to support or attack any particular theory of ontology or of perception. Of course, I have my personal notions and ideas on the topic, but those are not relevant to the thought exercise I have attempted to outline here.
In order to further demonstrate how important the relationship between science and philosophy is, I would like to briefly describe one, famous, attempt modelling the relationship between perception and action, and how this model has been used to blur the lines between the hard inferences drawn above.
The model is known as the perception-action model (PAM) - a recent discussion of which can be found here. According to this model, perception and action are interpreted by two independent but interacting visual systems, respectively the ventral system and the dorsal system. It is the job of the ventral system to gather and interpret information, which is then used to provide a representation of the environment and the objects and bodies therein. The notion of creating and maintaining representations is critical here, as this suggests that the ventral system invokes cognition and the need for interpretation of the environment. This speaks strongly to the view of constructivist perception, which suggests that the information we pick up in the environment is inadequate and in order for it to be useful, it must be interpreted by an intelligent cognizance. In contrast, it is the job of the dorsal system to guide the online control of movement, reinterpreting environmental information as guidance for successfully completing a target action. These two systems work in parallel, often overlapping and interlinking, however it is thought that they interpret sensory information in fundamentally different ways to achieve different goals. For example, in this study participants were found to look at different parts of a visual configuration depending on whether they the task engaged the ventral or dorsal stream.
It has been suggested (note: not by the original proponents of PAM) that the ventral stream described above represents the constructivist account of perception, whereas the dorsal stream represents the ecological view. For a very well written discussion of this idea, see here. Although this seems like a good idea, as each stance on perception has elements that ring true - and importantly, seem to fit the PAM model nicely. However, when we reconsider ontology, and what constitutes 'reality', the state of affairs under a model which compromises in this manner is unclear. If there exists one version of reality (which, in truth, there surely must) then can compromises such as this truly answer those questions most important to scientists? Those about the nature of the world and the nature of the mind? So, I will end this post by re-asking the initial question, but with a minor modification: does ontological belief dictate how we should understand perception, and why does it matter?
Some final remarks
This post was intended as a thought exercise to demonstrate the intimate relationship between science and philosophy, not to provide answers.
Some might argue that the truths of ontology will be revealed through scientific endeavours, not the reverse. However, this runs into the old problem that we are trapped by the limits of our own perception. An ironic state of affairs, no?
If you have any thoughts on the topic, we would love to hear them! As previously stated, this post was not designed to provide answers, but to ask questions and to highlight that science and philosophy are necessarily entangled.
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