Ivan Havel: Cognitive Science and Perception

Abstract:

In the last two or three decades Cognitive Science has become highly developed transdisciplinary field on the borderlines of computer science, brain and neural sciences, psychology, linguistics and, last but not least, philosophy of human cognition. Originating from psychologically motivated stream in AI aiming at computational models of cognition, Cognitive Science is now in the stage when, based on extensive knowledge of human mental processes, it can pay back by offering some new insights and ideas also in the area of machine perception and thought. In the lecture I will survey several of the new trends in Cognitive Science that perhaps may be of interest to researchers in machine perception. In particular, I will highlight a new approach that views our (human) perception, especially vision, as something we do, or are ready to do, rather than something that happens to us, or in us. This yields a non-representationalist theory of perception in which the world itself serves as an external memory.