A typology of functors and categories

Susan Steele

pp. 443-466

in: Richard T. Oehrle, Emmon Bach, Deirdre Wheeler (eds), Categorial grammars and natural language structures, Berlin, Springer, 1988

Abstract

Recent work on visual cognition by Hoffman (e.g. 1983) challenges the traditional notion that the basic units in visual analysis, the cognitive primitives, are geometric figures.² He argues, rather, that the cognitive primitives for vision are properties of boundaries. For example, a region of a planar image will be interpreted in one way if it is analyzed with a convex edge and in another way if it is analyzed with a concave edge. Consider Figure 1 (from Hoffman's paper), where the rings can be taken to trace the trough or the crest of the waves, and the lines defining the waves are interpreted accordingly.