Visual perception, our prime source of empirical knowledge about the world, has puzzled scientists and philosophers since ancient times. Interestingly, perception scientists — psychologists and neuroscientists alike — are still divided on fundamental philosophical issues. Two related such issues are the extent to which perception involves internal representations of the perceived object and in what sense perception is indirect. Mainstream science, with cornerstone works such as Hermann Helmholz’ Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik (1867)and David Marr’s Vision (1982), has is that the brain starts with the retinal image and from it sequentially constructs ever more complex representations of the perceptual object. Therefore, perception is indirect. Since at least the 1940’s, beginning with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception (1945) and continuing via James J. Gibson’s The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979) to Alva Noë’s Action in Perception (2004) and several contemporary treatises in the same vein, an important tradition of thinkers and experimenters has emphasized the role of the perceiving subject’s bodily motion and instead played down the role of internal representations in perception. Here the “deviating” perception scientists make common cause with the many critics of mainstream cognitive science and its reliance on the idea of mental representations.

So one should not be surprised to find another book on perception that integrates science and philosophy. However, the book under review surely does it in a new way. Jan Lauwereyns, born and educated in Belgium and presently professor in the Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences at Kyushu University in Japan, has made himself a name both as a researcher in cognitive neuroscience and as an experimental poet. His recent book Brain and the Gaze  combines scientific, literary and philosophical perspectives on its subject in a way that is probably unique (not then counting Lauwereyns’ previous book The Anatomy of Bias from 2010). The reader will learn about a host of interesting experimental data on the brain’s control of the gaze and the way the gaze not only reflects but also shapes what is seen. The philosophical consequences are traced and, again interestingly, in spite of his emphasis on the active nature of vision the author is very critical to Noë and other radical “perception activists”. Indeed, Lauwereyns argues forcefully that internal representations are needed to explain perception. On the other hand he is eager to point out that mainstream representationalism has not fully appreciated the true, dynamic nature of these representations. So Lauwereyns’ position, which he names The Intensive Approach, is neither that of Noë nor that of Marr but a quite original creation.

Well, is this book to be recommended for reading? Yes and no. Yes, if you are at least a little familiar with the science and philosophy of perception, if you have a keen interest in the topic — and if you have a lot of patience. The mix of empirical data, penetrating theoretical discussions of them, quotes from Western and Japanese poetry and — not least — abundant quotes from contemporary French philosophers makes the book hard reading, if you really want to read it and not just gloss over the pages. In short, the text is overloaded, and it is difficult to follow the red thread(s). On the other hand, the author’s way of writing surely tends to stimulate the reader’s own thinking.

If you are a philosopher, you will also have to have patience with the selection of references on certain issues. I am first and foremost thinking of the fact that although Lauwereyns relies much on the philosophical concept of intentionality, and frequently refers to the “phenomenologists”, he does not refer at all to that great pioneer of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. This is really a pity since the author’s discussions of the intentionality of perception would have won much had he been familiar with Husserl’s work and/or that of Husserl’s recent American (!) commentators, for example David Woodruff Smith and Amie Thomasson. Second, although Gestalt psychology is mentioned in passing a couple of times, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler and the other principal Gestalt psychologists are not mentioned and their books are not in the list of references. Perhaps I shouldn’t blame Lauwereyns for this since the philosophical importance of Gestalt theory is recognized by rather few. Third, I feel that very few of the references to recent (post-Merleau-Ponty) French philosophers and their philosophical kin add anything but a mystical air to the discussion.

One last criticism, this time of details. Chapter 6, The gaze of others, is in my opinion one of the best in the book. But given the author’s appreciation of French philosophy I am rather surprised that he does not quote Jean-Paul Sartre here. Also, on page 216, Lauwereyns — referring to a study of seven months old infants — states that “Babies understand others’ beliefs and are even willing to adopt these alternative views in case of conflict with their own”. This is a radical view that clashes strongly with conventional wisdom, and it should not be stated as a general truth without further comments. It might be that the quoted sentence was meant just to convey the opinion of the authors that Lauwereyns refers to. But that is far from clear.

In spite of its shortcomings I do recommend the book for reading since it is a very intelligent, very stimulating and generally spoken well informed discussion of a hot topic in science and philosophy. If you read the last chapter first you will understand why the book was written in the way it was, and that may make the rest of the reading easier.

© 2014 Helge Malmgren

Helge Malmgren, Ph.D., M.D., Department of Philosophy, Göteborg University, Sweden