The objects of attention can be located anywhere along the causal link from the source of stimuli to the final output of the vision system. As causes, they attract and control attention, and as products, they constitute targets of analysis and explicit comments. Stimulus-driven indexing creates pointers that support fast and frugal cognition.

Brain activity data prove the existence of qualitatively different structures in the brain. However, the question is whether the human brain acts as linguists assume in their models. The modular architecture of grammar that has been claimed by many linguists raises some empirical questions. One of the main questions is whether the threefold abstract partition of language (into syntactic, phonological, and semantic domains) has distinct neural correlates.

Hurford claims that empty variables antedated proper names in linguistic (not merely logical) predicate-argument structure, and this had an effect on visual perception. But his evidence, drawn from proper names and the supposed inability of nonhumans to recognise individual conspecifics, is weak. So visual perception seems less relevant to the evolution of grammar than Hurford thinks.

In many cases of variation in color vision, there is no nonarbitrary way of choosing between variants. Byrne & Hilbert insist that there is an unknown standard for choosing, whereas eliminativists claim that all the variants are erroneous. A better response relativizes colors to perceivers, thereby providing a color realism that avoids the need to choose between variants.

Game-theoretic explanations of behavior need supplementation to be descriptive; behavior has multiple causes, only some governed by traditional rationality. An evolutionarily informed theory of action countenances overlapping causal domains: neurobiological, psychological, and rational. Colman's discussion is insufficient because he neither evaluates learning models nor qualifies under what conditions his propositions hold. Still, inability to incorporate emotions in axiomatic models highlights the need for a comprehensive theory of functional rationality.

Lehar's revival of phenomenology and his all-encompassing Gestalt Bubble model are ambitious and stimulating. I offer an illustrated caution about phenomenology, a more fractured alternative to his Bubble model, and two lines of phenomena that may disqualify his isomorphism. I think a perceptual-inquiry model can contend.

Aboitiz and colleagues propose that the tectorotundal pathway of birds and reptiles is homologous not to the mammalian colliculopulvinar system but to the posterior complex/intralaminar nuclei. However, as outlined below, a large amount of strong evidence points to a homology of the tectorotundal and the colliculopulvinar system. This makes it likely that DVR and isocortex might be in part homologous.

Jackendoff's “mentalistic” semantics looks more radical than it is. It can best be understood as a necessary corrective to the traditional oversimplification that holds that psychological variation “cancels out” on the path from word to world. This reform parallels the “evo-devo” reform in evolutionary biology.

The colors we perceive are the outcome of an attempt to meaningfully order the spectral information from the environment. These colors are not the result of a straightforward mapping of a physical property to a sensation, but arise from an interaction between our environment and our visual system. Thus, although one may infer from a surface’ reflectance characteristics that it will be perceived as “colored,” true colors only arise by virtue of the interaction of the reflected light with the eye (and brain) of an observer.

The first cortically based associative circuits integrated olfactory, motivational, and motor information. Many of the neural dynamics present in these evolutionarily ancient, olfactory-motor circuits, such as the broadband frequency, phase, and amplitude modulations seen during recognition of a rewarded olfactory stimulus, are also found in isocortical circuits. These results suggest that mechanisms permitting olfactory associative processing formed the basis for evolutionarily more recent large-scale couplings involving isocortical areas.

Vision scientists standardly assume that the goal of vision is to recover properties of the external world. Lehar's “miniature, virtual-reality replica of the external world inside our head” (target article, sect. 10) is an example of this assumption. I propose instead, on evolutionary grounds, that the goal of vision is simply to provide a useful user interface to the external world.

Game-theoretic rationality is not generally observed in human behavior. One important reason is that subjects do not perceive the tasks in the same way as the experimenters do. Moreover, the rich history of cooperation that participants bring into the laboratory affects the decisions they make.

Recognizing limitations of the “syntactocentric” perspective, Jackendoff proposes a model in which phonology, syntax, and conceptual systems are each independently combinatorial. We can ask, however, whether he has taken this issue to its logical conclusion. The fundamental question that is not fully addressed is whether the combinatorial aspect of syntax originated in, and derives from, the indeed “far richer” conceptual system, a question to be discussed.

Hurford's discussion also vindicates the classical empiricist program in semantics. The idea that PREDICATE(x) is the logical form of the sensory representations encoded via the dorsal and ventral streams validates empiricists' insistence on the psychological primacy of sense data, which have the same form. In addition to knowing the logical form of our primitive representations, however, we need accounts of (1) their contents and (2) how more complex thoughts are derived from them. Ideally, our semantic vocabulary would both reflect the psychological “primitiveness” of these representations and make clear how more complex representations derive from them.

The theoretical debate in linguistics during the past half-century bears an uncanny parallel to the politics of the (now defunct) Communist Bloc. The parallels are not so much in the revolutionary nature of Chomsky's ideas as in the Bolshevik manner of his takeover of linguistics (Koerner 1994) and in the Trotskyist (“permanent revolution”) flavor of the subsequent development of the doctrine of Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) (Townsend & Bever 2001, pp. 37–40). By those standards, Jackendoff is quite a party faithful (a Khrushchev or a Dubcek, rather than a Solzhenitsyn or a Sakharov) who questions some of the components of the dogma, yet stops far short of repudiating it.

I agree with the view expressed in the target article that the early structural organization of the mammalian neocortex (the primordial neocortical organization) is different from its final one and resembles the more primitive organization of reptilian cortex. During the early development of the neocortex, a distinctly mammalian multilayered pyramidal-cell plate is introduced within a more primitive reptilian-like cortex, establishing simultaneously layer I (marginal zone) above it and layer VII (subplate zone) below it. This multilayered pyramidal-cell plate represents a recent mammalian innovation in the evolution of the cerebral cortex of vertebrates. Hence, the term neocortex is preferable to isocortex.

Colman's critique of classical game theory is correct, but it is well known. Colman's proposed mechanisms are not plausible. Insufficient reason does what “team reasoning” is supposed to handle, and it applies to a broader set of coordination games. There is little evidence ruling out more traditional alternatives to Stackelberg reasoning, and the latter is implausible when applied to coordination games in general.

Reflectance physicalism only provides a partial picture of the ontology of color. Byrne & Hilbert’ account is unsatisfactory because the replacement of reflectance functions by productance functions is ad hoc, unclear, and only leads to new problems. Furthermore, the effects of color contrast and differences in illumination are not really taken seriously: Too many “real” colors are tacitly dismissed as illusory, and this for arbitrary reasons. We claim that there cannot be an all-embracing ontology for color.

Predicates involved in language and reasoning are claimed to radically differ from categories applied to objects. Human predicates are the cognitive result of a contrast between perceived objects. Object recognition alone cannot generate such operations as modification and explicit negation. The mechanism studied by Hurford constitutes at best an evolutionary prerequisite of human predication ability.

“Psychological relativity” means that “an observation is a relationship between the observer and the event observed.” It implies a profound distinction between “the internal first-person as opposed to the external third-person perspective.” That distinction, followed through, turns Lehar's discourse inside-out. This commentary elaborates the notion of “psychological relativity,” shows that whereas there is already a natural science of perceptual report, there cannot also be a science of perception per se, and draws out some implications for our understanding of phenomenal consciousness.