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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The problem of viewpoint II: Constraints on the structure of the pictorial percept
No full textThe veridicality of percepts in the context of real-world viewing makes it easy to overlook the profound gap between the visual stimulation and the resulting visual experience. The non-veridical nature of pictorial percepts forces us to address this gap more directly. Here, I try to show that the structure of the pictorial percept reflects pressure to symmetrize not only the shape of the object, but also a. the relationship of the object to the environment and b. the relationship of the viewer to the the environment, via perceptually-imposed coordinate systems. These systems ultimately (evolutionarily) derive from real-world environmental and anatomical constraints, but are not directly tied to them. Rather, they are embedded in the physiological process instigated by the visual stimulation. I analyze the structure of the relevant coordinate systems and demonstrate their mutual interactions and effects with some cases in point, to be supplemented by a more thorough set of examples in a subsequent publication in this series
The myth of visual “depth cues” III. “Occlusion/Interposition
No full textOcclusion” or “interposition” are typically described as “visual depth cues.” This is not a rational claim
The myth of visual depth cues IV: Cue integration
No full text“Visual depth cues” are conventionally invoked to explain the perception of a 3D world. They are also said to be “combined” or “integrated” for even greater effectiveness. The logical and empirical problems (Maniatis 2021a-c) that apply to the various depth cues individually and the depth cue concept generally apply to “cue integration” as well. Evidence in favor of the view is ad hoc, “models” fundamentally incomplete and contradictions never resolved
Why did Karlovich & Wallisch (2021) paste the "Gestalt" label on notions the Gestaltists rejected and disproved?
No full text“Gestalt” is a fashionable buzzword in the vision research community. The people invoking it tend to have little to no understanding of the groundbreaking ideas the term represents, and which they badly misrepresent. This is the case in Karlovich & Wallisch (2021), who misuse Gestalt citations to cover the theoretical gap left by a dominant vision research tradition uninterested in and incapable of addressing problems of shape and organization in vision
The myth of visual depth cues VI: Texture gradients
No full textThe concept of “texture gradients” as a basic factor in depth perception was introduced by James J. Gibson with the goal of “reformulating” the traditional collection of “depth cues.” He ultimately pronounced the notion to be an empirical failure; despite this, it has won a permanent place in the conventional list of “monocular depth cues.” In this article I review Gibson's jumbled and quasi-mystical reflections on 3D perception and discuss why, like the other members of the conventional list, the notion of “texture gradients” as “depth cues” lacks theoretical substance and empirical validation and is always confounded with the ever-neglected problem of shape
Mainstream neuroscience practice is explicitly homuncular. Is that alright?
No full textArticles published during the past decade bemoaning the inability of mainstream neuroscience to generate replicable or even reproducible outcomes are too many to count. The heart of the problem is inadvertently laid bare in a brief passage in Noel and Angelaki (2022), in which they express, clearly and seemingly unaware of its implications, the prevailing homuncular view of brain function. This view is a necessary companion to the idea of neural activity as constituting a “code,” since the decoding of this code is, in practice, left to the investigator, and in theory to an implicit, free-floating and unexamined homunculus. The failures of reproducibility and replication are due to the blind adoption of the ad hoc coding concept (and, indeed, a very specific ad hoc version of it) which stands in for tested theory and licenses post hoc data analysis. The post hoc approach is known to be fragile with respect to replicability, as the failures of AI (also said to be in crisis) illustrate
“Perceptual Decision-Making” and Neuroscience: A Brief Anatomy of a Pseudoscience
No full textA significant swathe of the activity labelled “neuroscience” today concerns “perceptual decision-making.” The term putatively refers to a real-world process whose features may be revealed via experiment. But the experiments in question artificially and severely constrain, a priori, the form and content of the “data,” ensuring that it is binary, categorical, and forms a rough sigmoid when correct “decisions” are plotted against stimuli treated as varying along a single, arbitrary dimension. These by-design sigmoidal datasets are then interpreted as imperfect reflections of corresponding binary, categorical, unidimensional processes in the brain. The job of the practitioner is to recover the “true” sigmoid hiding in the data - the true sigmoid being whichever of a number of standard sigmoids the practitioner chooses to fit, post hoc, with the help of free parameters. This procedure, self-insulated from real-world pushback, lacks methodological, functional and empirical validity, and its associated ad hoc assumptions cannot be reconciled with the most basic mental facts. Results have low to no replicability and reproducibility. The paradigm has been extended to individual neurons using p-hacking-type exploration of data
Pisupati et al's (2021) “Lapses in perceptual decisions reflect exploration” vividly illustrates the intellectually incoherent and formulaic character of “perceptual neuroscience.”
No full textThe “lapse rate” is an artifact of psychophysics' conventional two-alternative forced-choice method and the “signal detection theory” framework that was tailored post hoc to the method's highly contrived datasets. Though inspired by trivial facts and used as a fitting device to force-fit results to various two-parameter sigmoids, practitioners tend to treat it as a basic functional parameter. Pispati et al confer a “novel” functional significance to the “lapse” by adding the manipulation of rewards to the conventional paradigm. This means that their account, a mass of contradictions, would at best have no bearing on the original (pseudo)problem. Part of the reason for the confusion is the authors' and the field's casual, blind application of ad hoc formulas
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