I think it's interesting that our brains rely on certain assumptions about how the world works to make sense of what we're seeing. These rules seem pretty effective most of the time, but I imagine they could also lead us to misinterpret things that don't follow the patterns we're used to. This could help explain why visual illusions happen, since our brains might be applying the same rules that normally help us perceive the world accurately, just in situations where those rules don't quite work.

I think this brings up an interesting issue with how researchers study cognition. If people aren't always aware of the processes their brains are using, then asking them to explain their thinking might not be the most reliable way to understand what's actually happening. I think Sternberg's study shows why it's important to use other kinds of evidence, like reaction times, rather than relying entirely on what participants say. Otherwise, researchers could end up drawing conclusions about cognition based on how people think their minds work instead of how they actually work.

I think this points out an important weakness in Gibson’s explanation. Saying that we resonate to information sounds like it explains perception, but unless we can explain what is actually happening to make that possible it almost just gives the process a new name. I like this criticism because it seems possible to agree with Gibson that information in the environment is richer than we assume while still thinking that we need an explanation of how the brain detects and uses it.

I like the idea of perception being based on active exploration because it challenges the assumption that the brain is just given incomplete information and has to figure out what is out there. Moving through an environment actually changes the information available to us, so perception might depend just as much on what we do as on what the brain does with the information afterward.

This made the debate over connectionism make more sense to me because it seems like the real test is whether a network can explain complex thinking without secretly relying on the same kinds of rules and symbols it is supposed to replace. The example of language especially makes me question whether patterns of activity alone can explain something as structured as a sentence, or if some form of symbolic organization is still needed.

I thought it was interesting that Shapiro describes vision as the brain having to make assumptions about what we are seeing. If the information our eyes take in isn’t enough on its own, then our perception depends on the brain filling in some of what’s missing. I think this supports the computational view because we aren’t just passively taking in information from the world, our brain is actually processing and interpreting that information to create what we see.