Logical Constructions Suggested By Vision
Michiel van Lambalgen, L Cavedon · 2000
this paper is to inquire into the possibility of a logic of (visual) perception, and to relate this logic to the semantics of perception reports. There are two main reasons why this endeavour goes against the trend in current semantics: it is ordinarily held, following Lewis [12], that considerations of psychology and pragmatics should be kept separate from semantics, and furthermore that in any case, due to the special nature of perception, psychological mechanisms governing perception cannot influence the logic of perception reports. This view is clearly stated in the following quotation from Barwise and Perry [1] Seeing is clearly a causal relation, but also, and more importantly, an information preserving one. The other attitudes we study are sensitive to how the information or misinformation actually influences the agent's thought and action. By contrast, epistemically neutral reports are concerned only with the nature of the situation about which information can be detected by the agent