Interactive Vision and Experimental Traditions: How to Frame the Relationship

In recent decades, the cognitive view has had a considerable impact on the philosophy of science, and two reasons can for this be identified. First, philosophers have increasingly tended towards naturalistic approaches, as opposed to proposals that are more a priori. Second, the cognitive sciences underwent considerable development in the second half of the twentieth century. Motivated by the cognitive view in the philosophy of science, and within a naturalistic framework, the aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between two pairs of views. On the one hand, I consider the theoretical and experimental traditions; and on the other, I examine the views of pure and interactive vision. The two pairs belong to two independent debates; one in the philosophy of science (theoretical vs. experimental traditions) and the other in cognitive psychology (pure vs. interactive vision). Theoretical traditions correspond to a conception of science according to which the goal of scientific practice is to formulate theories that represent the world, and in them experiments play only an instrumental role that is always subsidiary to theory. The model of science promoted in the program of logical empiricism is a good example of such a tradition. Experimental traditions, in contrast, challenge that conception of science by attributing a more important role to experimentation, which is said to provide its own path to knowledge.