Perceiving Representations
The ‘Perceiving Representations’ project will conduct a unified examination of our perception of three different forms of representation: language, pictures and music.

Illustration: Colourbox
How does representation work?
We perceive representations in language, music and pictures by perceiving the sounds or objects that encode them. But how can perceiving one thing—a painting, for example—enable us to perceive another, e.g. the object depicted, and is there a common structure to our perception of visual and auditory representations?
In this project we draw upon recent philosophical and scientific research to evaluate the hypothesis that there is a common structure to the perception of speech, pictures and music. This affords an extraordinary opportunity to study linguistic, mimetic and musical representation together, and to develop a novel framework for understanding key issues about how representation works.
News and events
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Nordic Property-Perception Workshop Mar. 18, 2021 10:00 AM
An online workshop exploring philosophical approaches to sensory perception of properties and relations.
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Oslo Mind Group Seminar: Francesca Secco, Why is Creative Thinking Praiseworthy? Mar. 5, 2021 1:15 PM
We will be discussing a draft of ‘Why is Creative Thinking Praiseworthy?’ by Francesca Secco.
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Individuating the Senses of ‘Smell’: Orthonasal versus Retronasal Olfaction (Wilson 2021) Jan. 5, 2021 9:28 AM
Keith Wilson, Postdoctoral Researcher on the ‘Perceiving Representations’ project, has published a paper on ‘Individuating the Senses of “Smell”’ in Synthese.
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Crossmodal Aesthetics (Aasen 2020) Nov. 17, 2020 12:11 PM
A new paper entitled 'Crossmodal Aesthetics: How Music and Dance Can Match' by Solveig Aasen is published in The Philosophical Quarterly, and is available open access.
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The project ‘Perceiving Representations: A Study of Structural Commonalities between Language, Pictures and Music’ runs from 2018 to 2022 and is funded by The Research Council of Norway.
Publications
- Solveig Aasen (2020). Depicting Movement. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. ISSN 0004-8402.
- Solveig Aasen (2020). Crossmodal Aesthetics: How Dance and Music Can Match. The Philosophical Quarterly. ISSN 0031-8094.
- Keith A. Wilson (2020). Individuating the Senses of ‘Smell’: Orthonasal versus Retronasal Olfaction. Synthese. ISSN 0039-7857.
- Keith A. Wilson (2020). Multisensory Perception. Sabah Ülkesi. ISSN 2195-6456.