Between Vision and Action
Guest Editors: Gabriele Ferretti, University of Urbino Carlo Bo (Italy); Silvano Zipoli Caiani, University of Florence (Italy)
Special Issue Description
In the last fifteen years, a crucial question has unified the efforts of philosophy of action and philosophy of perception in understanding what are the mental antecedents of action, that is, the mental processes that allow us to transform a given perceptual input into a proper motor output. The question is the following: what is the relation between the contents of visual experience and motor performance?
The philosophical debate concerning this question, and the related assumptions, have been strongly fueled by a major neuroscientific hodological discovery. It concerns the fact that our visual system is divided into two different pathways, separated from an anatomo-functional point of view: a ventral visual stream for conscious visual recognition and a dorsal visual stream for unconscious visual guidance of action. This idea of a twofold separation of the visual pathways is the basis for what is known as the Two Visual Systems Model. Several scholars have tried to work out the philosophical implications of this empirical proposal. Today, novel philosophical analyses and further empirical tests suggest that the dichotomy between vision and action proposed by the Two Visual Systems Model is not as deep as originally proposed. The result is that an account of how vision and action interlock is desirable, but still not completely revealed.
The debate concerning what is the real nature of the relation between vision and action is still open: this relation is so complex that we are far from having a complete and satisfactory account of it.
The most fascinating issue regarding the interlock between vision and action concerns the format of the representations involved in the processing of visuomotor information. There is an emerging consensus that the immediate mental antecedents of action have a non-propositional nature and encode information in a motor format. This assumption raises the puzzle of how is it possible that motor representations successfully coordinate with propositional states like beliefs, desires and intentions. The resolution of such an ‘interface problem’ – as it is known in the literature – is today of primary importance within the agendas of both philosophy of action and philosophy of perception.
The present special issue wants to offer new insights in our understanding of the peculiar relation between vision and action.
Papers that advance novel approaches to this debate are welcome!
Appropriate Topics for Submission include, among others:
The two visual systems model; motor representations; the relation between visual recognition and visual action guidance; the nature of content and format of vision-for-action, as well as the possibility of its conscious access and cognitive penetration; egocentric representations; affordances and action properties; the relation between vision, action and cognition; the relation between visual and motor imagery; vision/action dissociations.
Submission guidelines
Manuscripts should be submitted online through the Synthese's Electronic Editorial System (Editorial Manager): https://www.editorialmanager.
Please choose the appropriate article type for your submission by selecting “S.I. : Between Vision and Action” from the drop down menu.
Contributions must be original and not submitted elsewhere. Each submission should include a separate title page containing the author(s) contact details, a brief abstract and list of five keywords.
All papers will be subject to double-blind peer-review.
For further details on how to prepare the manuscripts, please refer to the author guidelines available on the journal’s website:
http://www.springer.com/
The deadline for submissions is December 31st, 2017.
For further information, please contact the guest editors: fairg@live.it; silvano.zipolicaiani@unifi.it
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