Cyril Latimer (1997) Some Remarks on Wholes, Parts and Their Perception . Psycoloquy: 8(13) Part Whole Perception (1)
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Psycoloquy 8(13): Some Remarks on Wholes, Parts and Their Perception

SOME REMARKS ON WHOLES, PARTS AND THEIR PERCEPTION
Target Article be Latimer on Part-Whole-Perception

Cyril Latimer
Department of Psychology
University of Sydney
NSW 2006, Australia
URL: http://www.psych.su.oz.au/staff/cyril/

Catherine Stevens
Department of Psychology/FASS
University of Western Sydney, Macarthur
PO Box 555, Campbelltown, NSW 2560, Australia
URL: http://psy.uq.edu.au/CogPsych/Noetica/

cyril@psych.su.oz.au kj.stevens@uws.edu.au

Abstract

We emphasize the relativity of wholes and parts in whole/part perception, and suggest that consideration must be given to what the terms "whole" and "part" mean, and how they relate in a particular context. A formal analysis of the part/whole relationship by Rescher & Oppenheim, (1955) is shown to have a unifying and clarifying role in many controversial issues including illusions, emergence, local/global precedence, holistic/analytic processing, schema/feature theories and "smart mechanisms". The logic of direct extraction of holistic properties is questioned, and attention drawn to vagueness of reference to wholes and parts which can refer to phenomenal units, physiological structures or theoretical units of perceptual analysis.

Keywords

analytic versus holistic processing, emergence, feature gestalt, global versus local precedence part, whole

References