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<span id="openzim-page-title" class="mw-page-title-main"><span class="mw-page-title-main">Unconscious inference</span></span>
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<p>In <a href="Perceptual_psychology" title="Perceptual psychology">perceptual psychology</a>, <b>unconscious inference</b> (<a href="German_language" title="German language">German</a>: <i lang="de">unbewusster Schluss</i>), also referred to as <b>unconscious conclusion</b>,<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-1"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>1<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> is a term coined in 1867 by the German physicist and polymath <a href="Hermann_von_Helmholtz" title="Hermann von Helmholtz">Hermann von Helmholtz</a> to describe an involuntary, pre-rational and <a href="Reflex" title="Reflex">reflex</a>-like mechanism which is part of the formation of visual impressions. While precursory notions have been identified in the writings of <a href="Thomas_Hobbes" title="Thomas Hobbes">Thomas Hobbes</a>, <a href="Robert_Hooke" title="Robert Hooke">Robert Hooke</a>, and <a href="Francis_North%2C_1st_Baron_Guilford" title="Francis North, 1st Baron Guilford">Francis North</a><sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-2"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>2<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> (especially in connection with <a href="Hearing" title="Hearing">auditory perception</a>) as well as in <a href="Francis_Bacon" title="Francis Bacon">Francis Bacon</a>'s <i><a href="Novum_Organum" title="Novum Organum">Novum Organum</a></i>,<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-3"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>3<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> Helmholtz's theory was long ignored or even dismissed by philosophy and psychology.<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-4"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>4<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> It has since received new attention from modern research, and the work of recent scholars has approached Helmholtz's view.
</p><p>Elaborate theoretical frameworks concerning unconscious inference have persisted for a thousand years, originating with <a href="Ibn_al-Haytham" title="Ibn al-Haytham">Ibn al-Haytham</a>, ca. 1030. These theories have enjoyed widespread acceptance for nearly four centuries, beginning with <a href="Ren%C3%A9_Descartes" title="René Descartes">René Descartes</a>' contributions in 1637.<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-5"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>5<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> In the third and final volume of his <span title="German-language text"><i lang="de">Handbuch der physiologischen Optik</i></span><sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-6"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>6<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> (1856–1867, translated as <i>Treatise on Physiological Optics</i> in 1920-1925, available <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180320133752/http://poseidon.sunyopt.edu/BackusLab/Helmholtz/">here</a>), Helmholtz discussed the psychological effects of <a href="Visual_perception" title="Visual perception">visual perception</a>. His first example is that of the illusion of the Sun rotating around the Earth:
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</style><blockquote class="templatequote"><p>Every evening apparently before our eyes the sun goes down behind the stationary horizon, although we are well aware that the sun is fixed and the horizon moves.<sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-7"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>7<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></p></blockquote>
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Optical_illusions">Optical illusions</h2></div>

<p>We are unable to do away with such <a href="Optical_illusions" class="mw-redirect" title="Optical illusions">optical illusions</a> by convincing ourselves rationally that our eyes have played tricks on us: obstinately and unswervingly, the mechanism follows its own rule and thus wields an imperious mastery over the human mind. While optical illusions are the most obvious instances of unconscious inference, people's perceptions of each other are similarly influenced by such unintended, unconscious conclusions. Helmholtz's second example refers to theatrical performance, arguing that the strong emotional effect of a play results mainly from the viewers' inability to doubt the visual impressions generated by unconscious inference:
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<blockquote class="templatequote"><p>An actor who cleverly portrays an old man is for us an old man there on the stage, so long as we let the immediate impression sway us, and do not forcibly recall that the programme states that the person moving about there is the young actor with whom we are acquainted. We consider him as being angry or in pain according as he shows us one or the other mode of countenance and demeanour. He arouses fright or sympathy in us [...]; and the deep-seated conviction that all this is only show and play does not hinder our emotions at all, provided the actor does not cease to play his part. On the contrary, a fictitious tale of this sort, which we seem to enter into ourselves, grips and tortures us more than a similar true story would do when we read it in a dry documentary report.<sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-8"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>8<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></p></blockquote>
<p>The mere sight of another person is sufficient to produce an emotional attitude without any reasonable basis whatsoever, yet highly resilient against all rational criticism. Obviously, the <a href="Impression_formation" title="Impression formation">impression</a> is based on the spontaneous, spurious attribution of traits - a process we can hardly avoid, for the human eye, so to speak, is <i>incapable of doubt</i> and thus cannot ward off the impression.
</p><p>The formation of visual impressions, Helmholtz realized, is achieved primarily by unconscious judgments, the results of which "can never once be elevated to the plane of conscious judgments" and thus "lack the purifying and scrutinizing work of conscious thinking".<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-9"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>9<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> In spite of this, the results of unconscious judgments are so impervious to conscious control, so resistant to contradiction that they are "impossible to get rid of"<sup id="cite_ref-10" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-10"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>10<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> and "the effect of them cannot be overcome".<sup id="cite_ref-11" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-11"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>11<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> So whatever impressions this unconscious inference process leads to, they strike "our consciousness as a foreign and overpowering force of nature".<sup id="cite_ref-12" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-12"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>12<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
</p><p>The reason, Helmholtz suggested, lies in the way visual <a href="Sense" title="Sense">sensory impressions</a> are processed neurologically.<sup id="cite_ref-13" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-13"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>13<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> The higher <a href="Cerebral_cortex" title="Cerebral cortex">cortical centres</a> responsible for conscious deliberation are not involved in the formation of visual impressions. However, as the process is spontaneous and automatic, we are unable to account for just how we arrived at our judgments. Through our eyes, we necessarily <i>perceive things as real</i>, for the results of the unconscious conclusions are interpretations which "are urged on our <a href="Consciousness" title="Consciousness">consciousness</a>, so to speak, as if an external power had constrained us, over which our will has no control".<sup id="cite_ref-14" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-14"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>14<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
</p><p>In recognizing these attitude-formation mechanisms underlying the human processing of nonverbal cues, Helmholtz anticipated developments in science by more than a century. As <a href="Daniel_Gilbert_(psychologist)" title="Daniel Gilbert (psychologist)">Daniel Gilbert</a> has pointed out, "Helmholtz presaged many current thinkers not only by postulating the existence of such [unconscious inferential] operations, but also by describing their general features".<sup id="cite_ref-15" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-15"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>15<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> At the same time, he added, it is "probably fair to say that Helmholtz's ideas about the social inference process have exerted no impact whatsoever on social psychology".<sup id="cite_ref-16" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-16"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>16<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> Indeed, psychologists have largely felt that Helmholtz had fallen prey to an error in reasoning. As <a href="Edwin_Boring" title="Edwin Boring">Edwin G. Boring</a> summed up the debate, "Since an inference is ostensibly a conscious process and can therefore be neither unconscious nor immediate, [Helmholtz's] view was rejected as self-contradictory".<sup id="cite_ref-17" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-17"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>17<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-18" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-18"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>18<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> However, several recent authors have since approached Helmholtz's conception under a variety of headings, such as "snap judgments",<sup id="cite_ref-19" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-19"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>19<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> "nonconscious social information processing",<sup id="cite_ref-20" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-20"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>20<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> "spontaneous trait inference",<sup id="cite_ref-21" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-21"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>21<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> "people as flexible interpreters",<sup id="cite_ref-22" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-22"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>22<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> and "unintended thought".<sup id="cite_ref-23" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-23"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>23<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> Siegfried Frey has pointed out the revolutionary quality of Helmholtz's proposition that it is from the perceiver, not the actor, whence springs the meaning-attribution process performed when we interpret a nonverbal stimulus:
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<blockquote class="templatequote"><p>By failing to distinguish appearance from reality, the psychology of expression merely perpetuated a fallacy deeply ingrained in everyday language: with unswerving belief in our perceptions, we routinely call the other person’s expression what is, in plain truth, our own impression of her or him.<sup id="cite_ref-24" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-24"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>24<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></p></blockquote>
<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Influences_in_current_computer_science_and_psychology">Influences in current computer science and psychology</h2></div>
<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="The_Helmholtz_machine">The Helmholtz machine</h3></div>
<p>Work in computer science has made use of Helmholtz's ideas of unconscious inference by suggesting the cortex contains a <a href="Generative_model" title="Generative model">generative model</a> of the world. They develop a statistical method for discovering the structure inherent in a set of patterns:
</p>
<blockquote class="templatequote"><p>Following Helmholtz, we view the human perceptual system as a statistical inference engine whose function is to infer the probable causes of sensory input. We show that a device of this kind can learn how to perform these inferences without requiring a teacher to label each sensory input vector with its underlying causes.<sup id="cite_ref-Dayan_25-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-Dayan-25"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>25<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></p></blockquote>
<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Free_energy_principle">Free energy principle</h3></div>
<p>The <a href="Free_energy_principle" title="Free energy principle">Free energy principle</a> provides an explanation for <a href="Embodied_cognition" title="Embodied cognition">embodied perception</a> in neuroscience and
tries to explain how biological systems maintain order by restricting themselves to a limited number of states or beliefs about hidden states in their environment. A biological system performs <b>active inference</b> in sampling action outcomes to maximise the evidence for its model of the world:
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<blockquote class="templatequote"><p>The notion that <a href="Self-organisation" class="mw-redirect" title="Self-organisation">self-organising</a> biological systems – like a cell or brain – can be understood as minimising variational free energy is based upon <a href="Hermann_von_Helmholtz" title="Hermann von Helmholtz">Helmholtz</a>’s observations on unconscious inference<sup id="cite_ref-Helmholtz_26-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-Helmholtz-26"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>26<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> and subsequent treatments in psychology <sup id="cite_ref-27" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-27"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>27<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> and machine learning.<sup id="cite_ref-Dayan_25-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-Dayan-25"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>25<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup></p></blockquote>
<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Notes">Notes</h2></div>
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<li id="cite_note-1"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-1">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><i>Unconscious conclusion</i> is the term used by <a href="James_P._C._Southall" title="James P. C. Southall">James P. C. Southall</a> in his 1925 English translation of Helmholtz's <i>Handbuch der physiologischen Optik</i> (<i>Treatise on Physiological Optics</i>, available <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180320133752/http://poseidon.sunyopt.edu/BackusLab/Helmholtz/">here</a>). Today, the concept is more widely referred to as <i>unconscious inference</i>, notably by <a href="Edwin_Boring" title="Edwin Boring">Edwin G. Boring</a> in his widely received 'History of Experimental Psychology', and <a href="Daniel_Gilbert_(psychologist)" title="Daniel Gilbert (psychologist)">Daniel T. Gilbert</a>. Cf. Boring 1950, pp. 309-311.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-2"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-2">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Cf. Kassler 2004, pp. 125-126.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-3"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-3">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">"[B]y far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important" (Bacon 1620, bk. 1, aphorism L, transl.).</span>
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<li id="cite_note-4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-4">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Cf. Boring 1942, p. 289; Gilbert 1989, p. 191.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-5"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-5">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r1238218222">
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</style><cite id="CITEREFHeyerMausfeld2002" class="citation book cs1">Heyer, Dieter; Mausfeld, Rainer, eds. (2002). <i>Perception and the physical world: psychological and philosophical issues in perception</i>. Chichester, West Sussex, UK New York: J. Wiley &amp; Sons. p.&nbsp;135. <a href="ISBN_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="ISBN (identifier)">ISBN</a>&nbsp;<bdi>978-0-471-49149-1</bdi>.</cite></span>
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<li id="cite_note-6"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-6">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz 1867.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-7"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-7">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz 1925, p. 28.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-8"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-8">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz 1925, p. 28.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-9"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-9">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz 1925, p. 27.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-10"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-10">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz 1925, p. 28.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-11"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-11">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz 1925, p. 5.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-12"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-12">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz 1925, p. 28.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-13"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-13">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Edgar, Scott (2015). “The Physiology of the Sense Organs and Early Neo-Kantian Conceptions of Objectivity: Helmholtz, Lange, Liebmann,” in Flavia Padovani, Alan Richardson &amp; Jonathan Y. Tsou (eds.), Objectivity in Science: Approaches to Historical Epistemology. Boston Studies in Philosophy and History of Science. Springer.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-14"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-14">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz 1925, p. 26.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-15"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-15">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Gilbert 1989, p. 189.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-16"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-16">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Gilbert 1989, p. 191.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-17"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-17">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Boring 1942, p. 289.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-18"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-18">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz himself had justified the use of the term: "The psychic activities that lead us to infer that there in front of us at a certain place there is a certain object of a certain character, are generally not conscious activities, but unconscious ones. In their result they are equivalent to a conclusion [...]. But what seems to differentiate them from a conclusion, in the ordinary sense of that word, is that a conclusion is an act of conscious thought. [...] Still it may be permissible to speak of the psychic acts of ordinary perception as unconscious conclusions, thereby making a distinction of some sort between them and the common so-called conscious conclusions. And while it is true that there has been, and probably always will be, a measure of doubt as to the similarity of the psychic activity in the two cases, there can be no doubt as to the similarity between the results of such unconscious conclusions and those of conscious conclusions" (Helmholtz 1925, p. 4).</span>
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<li id="cite_note-19"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-19">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Schneider, Hastorf, &amp; Ellsworth 1979.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-20"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-20">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Lewicki 1986.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-21"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-21">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Newman &amp; Uleman 1989.</span>
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<li id="cite_note-22"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-22">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Newman, Moskowitz, &amp; Uleman 1996.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-23"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-23">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Uleman &amp; Bargh 1989.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-24"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-24">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Frey 2005, p. 47.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-Dayan-25"><span class="mw-cite-backlink">^ <a href="#cite_ref-Dayan_25-0"><sup><i><b>a</b></i></sup></a> <a href="#cite_ref-Dayan_25-1"><sup><i><b>b</b></i></sup></a></span> <span class="reference-text">Dayan, P., Hinton, G. E., &amp; Neal, R. (1995). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~dayan/papers/hm95.pdf">The Helmholtz machine</a>. Neural Computation, 7, 889–904.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-Helmholtz-26"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-Helmholtz_26-0">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Helmholtz, H. (1866/1962). Concerning the perceptions in general. In Treatise on physiological optics (J. Southall, Trans., 3rd ed., Vol. III). New York: Dover.</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-27"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-27">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Gregory, R. L. (1980). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2395424">Perceptions as hypotheses</a>. Phil Trans R Soc Lond B., 290, 181–197.</span>
</li>
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>
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<li>Universität Duisburg-Essen: <i><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.uni-due.de/virtuelletutoren/unbewusstesinnstiftung_en.shtml">Designing virtual humans for Web 2.0 based learning processes - Unconscious judgments</a></i>.</li></ul></div><!--htdig_noindex--><div><div class="zim-footer">
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