Perception and Neuroscience

Perception is often analysed as a process in which causal events from the environment act on a subject to produce states in the mind or brain. The role of the subject is an increasing feature of neuroscientific and cognitive literature. This feature is linked to the need for an account of the normative aspects of perceptual competence. A holographic model is offered in which objects are presented to the subject classified according to rules governing concepts and encoded in brain function in that form. This implies that the analysis of perception must consider not only the fact that there is an interaction between the perceiving subject and the perceived object but also that the interaction is shaped by a system of concepts which the subject uses in thought and action. Fire may burn our Bodies, with no other effect, than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the Brain, and there the sense of heat or idea of Pain, be produced in the mind wherein consists actual Perception. Locke [1689]. Locke's account of perception was a simple one. Events impinged upon the periphery of a human being, they provoked further events in nervous tissue which relayed these changes in some form to the brain where the simple events are formed into complexes and result in conscious experience. It has obvious conceptual relations to the development of mechanistic neurobiology. In an evolving form the idea that the mind receives a concatenation of elemental or primitive sensory items and these generate its picture of reality has dominated thought in the empiricist tradition.1 It has been allied to the thesis that consciousness involves access to 'inner ' experiences with a certain subjective quality and led to a 'folk psychology ' which is under some strain (Churchland [1986]). Now that our understanding of the brain and neuroscience are both developing we are in search of new models that will help us make sense of puzzling facts such as 'recognition of conspecifics is not just one aspect of th