# Cognitive penetrability-by Stokes in Compass **Abstract:** Perception is typically distinguished from cognition. For example, seeing is importantly different from believing. And while what one sees clearly influences what one thinks, it is debateable whether what one believes and otherwise thinks can influence, in some direct and non-trivial way, what one sees. The latter possible relation is the cognitive penetration of perception. Cognitive penetration, if it occurs, has implications for philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. This paper offers an analysis of the phenomenon, its theoretical consequences, and a variety of experimental results and possible interpretations of them. The paper concludes by proposing some constraints for analyses and definitions of cognitive penetrability. The dominant tradition in philosophy and psychology is to distinguish human perceptual experience from human cognition. Like many distinctions, this one is not readily made in an uncontroversial way. One method of distinction is to enumerate paradigmatic examples of each category. Such examples of perceiving include seeing, hearing, and touching. Examples of cognitive states or processes include believing, intending, and reasoning. Of course, we still want to know the criterion or criteria by which these mental types are put on one list rather than the other. There are at least two non-exclusive means by which this might be done: function and phenomenology. Consider vision. It functions to provide an agent with i **Authors:** [[Dustin Stokes]]