# SENSE, REFERENCE AND SELECTIVE ATTENTION -The shallows of the mind **Opening (not a real abstract):** ne of the most puzzling aspects of reconciling our common conception of mind and consciousness with scientific theories of cognition is to conceive of the place of our experience of the world within the latter account. Consider, for example, reversible figure-ground displays such as the Rubin vase, which can be seen either as two faces or a vase, familiar to many people as indicating an element of organisation within visual experience of the world. Such patterns, and other displays such as certain kinds of ‘Magic Eye’ stereogram bring out vividly within one’s visual experience of the world the role of segmentation of a visual scene into surfaces.1 These phenomenologically evident facts have prompted work on the representations of surfaces in visual processing, and the principles so employed: for example the suggestion that edges **Authors:** [[Martin]]