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The Empirical Case for Bare Demonstratives in Vision

  • Chapter
Compositionality, Context and Semantic Values

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 85))

Abstract

This chapter draws some parallels between the study of language and the study of visual perception. In both cases there is evidence for modularity and for the productivity of the representations to which they give rise. In both cases it has been recognized that the purely conceptual representations that have been discussed in language and in computational vision are not the whole story. What is missing is some direct connection with token individuals in the world that they describe. In language this connection may be established by a demonstrative term (e.g., this). In the case of vision the parallel would be a singular term that has reference but no descriptive content. I develop a theory of such direct (or demonstrative) reference in vision called Visual Index or FINST theory. I motivate the need for a mechanism of direct reference in vision by describing a number of empirical phenomena. These include the phenomena of single-object advantage, detecting patterns by selecting relevant parts (and executing “visual routines”), and keeping track of individual objects that move among identical distractors (in Multiple Object Tracking experiments). I also discuss the need for a mechanism of direct reference to solve such classical problems of vision as the correspondence problem (computing when several proximal tokens correspond to the same distal object) and the binding problem (establishing when several properties that occur in a visual scene are properties of the same object).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ 08854, USA

    Zenon Pylyshyn

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  1. Zenon Pylyshyn
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Correspondence to Zenon Pylyshyn .

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario Talbot College, London Ontario, N6A 3K7, Canada

    Robert J. Stainton  & Christopher Viger  & 

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Pylyshyn, Z. (2009). The Empirical Case for Bare Demonstratives in Vision. In: Stainton, R.J., Viger, C. (eds) Compositionality, Context and Semantic Values. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 85. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8310-5_11

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