ARE THE SENSES SEPARATE? BBS Call for Commentary

Tue Feb 8 14:23:32 EST 2000

        Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article.

	    ON SPECIFICATION AND THE SENSES

		by Thomas A. Stoffregen
	    and Benoit G. Bardy

        http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.stoffregen.html
        ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/bbs.stoffregen.html

        *** please see also 5 important announcements about new BBS
        policies and address change at the bottom of this message) ***

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please reply by EMAIL by March 7th to:

    bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk

    or write to:

    Behavioral and Brain Sciences
    ECS: New Zepler Building
    University of Southampton
    Highfield, Southampton
    SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM

    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/
    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/

If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a
BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is
familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and
commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates.

To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection
with a WWW browser according to the instructions that follow after the
abstract.

_____________________________________________________________

    ON SPECIFICATION AND THE SENSES

	Thomas A. Stoffregen
	Department of Psychology
	P. O. Box 210376
	University of Cincinnati
	Cincinnati, OH 45221-0376 USA
	stoffrta at email.uc.edu

	Benoit G. Bardy
	Universite de Paris Sud-XI
	Division of Sport Sciences (STAPS)
	Batiment 335, 91405 Orsay Cedex
	FRANCE
	benoit.bardy at staps.u-psud.fr

    KEYWORDS: epistemology, information, intersensory, perception,
    perceptual learning, sensory neurophysiology, sensory systems,
    specification.

    ABSTRACT: In this target article we question the assumption that
    perception is divided into separate domains of vision, hearing,
    touch, taste, and smell. We review implications of this assumption
    for theories of perception, and for our understanding of ambient
    energy arrays (e.g., the optic and acoustic arrays) that are
    available to perceptual systems. We analyze three hypotheses about
    relations between ambient arrays and physical reality; (1) that
    there is an ambiguous relation between ambient energy arrays and
    physical reality; (2) that there is a unique relation between
    individual energy arrays and physical reality; (3) that there is a
    redundant but unambiguous relation, within or across arrays,
    between energy arrays and physical reality. This is followed by a
    review of the physics of motion, focusing on the existence and
    status of referents for physical motion. Our review indicates that
    it is not possible, in principle, for there to be a unique relation
    between physical motion and the structure of individual energy
    arrays. We argue that physical motion relative to different
    referents is specified only in the global array, which consists of
    higher-order relations across different forms of energy. The
    existence of specificity in the global array is consistent with the
    idea of direct perception, and so poses a challenge to traditional,
    inference-based theories of perception and cognition. However, it
    also presents a challenge to much work within the ecological
    approach to perception and action, which has accepted the
    assumption of separate senses.

___________________________________________________________

To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide
Web or by anonymous ftp from the US or UK BBS Archive.
Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on
this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant
expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the
article.

The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:

    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.stoffregen.html
	http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/

____________________________________________________________

         ***  FIVE IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS  ***

------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) There have been some very important developments in the 
    area of Web archiving of scientific papers very recently.
    Please see:

Science:
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/science.html
Nature:
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature.html
American Scientist:
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/amlet.html
Chronicle of Higher Education:
           http://www.chronicle.com/free/v45/i04/04a02901.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(2) All authors in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences are
    strongly encouraged to archive all their papers (on their
    Home-Servers as well as) on CogPrints:

http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/

    It is extremely simple to do so and will make all of our papers
    available to all of us everywhere at no cost to anyone.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(3) BBS has a new policy of accepting submissions electronically.

    Authors can specify whether they would like their submissions
    archived publicly during refereeing in the BBS under-refereeing
    Archive, or in a referees-only, non-public archive.

    Upon acceptance, preprints of final drafts are moved to the
    public BBS Archive:

ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/index.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/

--------------------------------------------------------------------
(4) BBS has expanded its annual page quota and is now appearing
    bimonthly, so the service of Open Peer Commentary can now be be
    offered to more target articles. The BBS refereeing procedure is
    also going to be considerably faster with the new electronic
    submission and processing procedures. Authors are invited to submit
    papers to:

    Email:   bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk

    Web:     http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk
             http://bbs.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/

    INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS:

http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html      

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(5) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review

    In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) journal had only
    been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because
    of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota
    will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we
    treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
    biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
    would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.

    (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
    basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
    indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
    nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
    potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
    impact!).