Ahissar, Ehud (2025) SCIENCE AS COLLECTIVE PERCEPTION: A CLOSED-LOOP FRAMEWORK FOR THE DYNAMICS OF KNOWLEDGE. [Preprint]
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Abstract
This paper proposes that science functions as a form of collective perception, extending the closed-loop processes that govern individual cognition to the scale of research communities. Perception and scientific inquiry share the same architecture: both generate predictions, act upon the environment, and correct error until provisional convergence is achieved. Objectivity, in this view, is operational, defined by the reliability of reproducible coherence across many partially independent perceivers rather than by direct access to a mind-independent reality. Grounded in neuroscience and control theory, the framework identifies brain–world (BW) and brain–brain (BB) loops as basic architectures of perception: BW loops are embodied and analog, BB loops symbolic and linguistic. Scaling upward, these loops become the experimental and communicative networks of science. Within this structure, idealization is understood as an internal operation that simplifies feedback to isolate causal relations before re-coupling to observation. The model explains replication crises, paradigm shifts, and interdisciplinary friction as natural outcomes of feedback mismatches within communal loops. It also yields empirical predictions linking community size, communication latency, and feedback delay to consensus formation and stability. Philosophically, the framework aligns with social epistemology, scientific pluralism, and structural realism, describing progress as the dynamic stabilization of relational structures rather than the accumulation of absolute truths. By situating science within the broader family of biological perception, the paper offers a unified, testable account of objectivity and the evolving dynamics of knowledge.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | Collective perception; Objectivity; Scientific cognition; Feedback loops; Control theory; Scientific pluralism | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > Science and Society |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. Ehud Ahissar | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 04 Dec 2025 12:25 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 04 Dec 2025 12:25 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 27353 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > Science and Society |
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| Date: | 16 November 2025 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/27353 |
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