The perception and cognition of contraries

The inspiration for this book originated from an intention to show that in the architecture of human cognition the experience of contrariety is widespread and common to many areas of theoretical and experimental research in the Cognitive Sciences. Since the subject is approached with different operational mind-sets, the variety of meanings, applicative contexts and fields of research referring to the word "contrary" raises the issue of what is invariant in all these areas and what is the ultimate nature of contrariety. Beyond the many questions which this book raises, we might consider how many more questions we might need to ask in order to fully understand how contrariety works in our cognitive system. This is something that cannot be resolved with things as they are now, but the aim of this book is also to stimulate people into asking further questions. Preface The early roots of contrariety 1) The relation of contrariety in the ancient thought and in the Aristotelian formalization 2) The geometry of oppositions and the opposition of logic to it Contrariety in perception 3) The spatial path to contrariety 4) Investigating contraries by means of change detection 5) Contrariety in plane mirror reflections Contrariety in language and though 6) Basic qualities in naïve subjects’ perception of voice. Are they based on contrary properties? 7) Are drag and push contraries? 8) Are certain and uncertain epistemic contraries? 9) Contraries in productive thinking 10) The perception of humor: from script opposition to the phenomenological rules of contrariety The unidimensionality of contraries 11) Measuring in experimental phenomenology and carrying out phenomenological psychophysics: the case of contrary properties 12) From opposites to dimensions: filling in the gaps 13) Reverse items are NOT opposites of straightforward items