Brian McLaughlin and E.J. Green: "We contend that, contrary to what Hoffman et al. claim, the perceptual icons posited by interface theory seem best taken to be sense data."
"The brain, of course, is a complex middle-sized physical object. As such, HSP must hold that it does not exist. But if the brain does not exist, then where are visual computations carried out? HSP offer no answer to this question.”
"… We can’t justifiably appeal to evidence obtained from particle accelerators, for instance, without presupposing that there are particle accelerators."
"... We part company with HSP, however, when they tell us: “the language of space-time and physical objects is the wrong language for describing the true structure of the objective world.”
I’m grateful to Brian P. McLaughlin and E.J. Green for taking a closer look at Hoffman’s “Icons” in a way no one else has. They’ve done an excellent job of detailing the logical and scientific fallacies within Hoffman's "icons" notion.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, September 18, 2015
volume 22, pages 1541–1545 (2015)
(Original article 4000 words)
Abstract
We argue that Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash (Psychon Bull Rev, this issue) have not made the case that "the language of space-time and physical objects is the wrong language for describing the true structure of the objective world."
Further, we contend that, contrary to what Hoffman et al. claim, the perceptual icons posited by interface theory seem best taken to be sense data.
As Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash (2014) (hereafter, HSP) point out, Palmer expresses the orthodox view in vision theory when he states:
Evolutionarily speaking, visual perception is useful only if it is reasonably accurate…Indeed, vision is useful precisely because it is so accurate. By and large, what you see is what you get. When this is true, we have what is called veridical perception. (1999, 6)
