PURPLE (RED-and-BLUE) is the most frequently occurring derived (binary) basic color term (BCT), but there is never a named composite BCT meaning RED-or-BLUE. GREEN-or-BLUE is the most frequently named composite color category, but there is never a BCT for the corresponding derived (binary) category CYAN (BLUE-and-GREEN). Why?

Three forms of implicit knowledge are presented (functional, structural, and procedural). These forms differ in the way they are made explicit and hence in how they are represented by the individual. We suggest that the framework presented by Dienes & Perner does not account for these differences.

Barsalou's contribution converges with basic ideas and empirical findings of cognitive linguistics. They posit the same general architecture. The perceptual grounding of conceptual structure is a central tenet of cognitive linguistics. Our capacity to construe the same situation in alternate ways is fundamental to cognitive semantics, and numerous parallels are discernible between conceptual construal and visual perception. Grammar is meaningful, consisting of schematized patterns for the pairing of semantic and phonological structures. The meanings of grammatical elements reside primarily in the construal they impose on conceptual content. This view of linguistic structure appears to be compatible with Barsalou's proposals.

Palmer's attempt to dust off Locke's construct of “inverted spectrum” is discussed here to examine its plausibility. Perceptual inversion could be fulfilled by adopting the notion of “inverted trichromacy” rather than by the proposed existence of “red-green reversed trichromats.” Although the former alternative conforms to a hypothetical world of vampires, it fails to conform to the realities of genetics and neuroscience.

In Dienes & Perner's analysis, implicitly represented knowledge differs from explicitly represented knowledge only in the attribution of properties to specific events and to self-awareness of the knower. This commentary questions whether implicit knowledge should be thought of as being represented in the same conceptual vocabulary; rather, it may involve a quite different form of representation.

Pylyshyn defends a distinction between early visual perception and cognitive processing. But exactly where should the line between vision and cognition be drawn? Our research on object identification suggests that the construction of an object's visual description is isolated from contextually derived expectations. Moreover, the matching of constructed descriptions to stored descriptions appears to be similarly isolated.

Gender differences in aggression are highly variable; there is significant evidence that this variability is as much a function of social and cultural conditions as evolutionary processes. While some of these conditions may reflect resource scarcities as Campbell proposes, others are inconsistent with her perspective or are explained equally well by other perspectives.

We discuss our concerns associated with three assumptions upon which the model of Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer is based: assumed generalisability of decontextualised experimental programs, assumed highly modular architecture of the language production systems, and assumed symbolic computations within the language production system. We suggest that these assumptions are problematic and require further justification.

Recent aphasiological findings, not mentioned in the target article, have been accounted for by Levelt et al.'s theory and have, in turn, provided it with empirical support and new leads. This interaction is especially promising in the domain of complex word retrieval. Examples of particular categories of compounds are discussed.

Campbell's target article significantly advances the field but fails to give adequate weight to individual differences. Moreover, there is no convincing rationale why males gain by making females less aggressive than they would otherwise be. It is also as likely that patriarchal ideology serves women's interests by canalizing genetic influences on individual differences within a more adaptively circumscribed range as it is to counter their interests by preventing them from challenging male hegemony.

It is very tempting to try to reconcile perception and cognition perceptual symbol systems may be a good way to achieve this; but is there actually a perception-cognition continuum? We offer several arguments for and against the existence of such a continuum and in favor of the choice of perceptual symbol systems. One of these arguments is purely theoretical, some are based on PET-scan observations and others are based on research with handicapped subjects who have communication problems associated with cerebral lesions. These arguments suggest that modal perceptual symbols do indeed exist and that perception and cognition might have a common neuronal basis; but perceptual and cognitive activities require the activation of different neuronal structures.

Palmer describes a “subjective barrier” that limits knowledge of others' experience. We discuss how this barrier extends to all knowledge, becoming less distinct as theoretical constructs are strengthened. We provide evidence for isomorphic experience, among individuals with similar physiologies, by showing that perceived relations between colors are as similar when viewing pigments as when viewing subjective colors caused by flickering bars.

We argue that cognitive penetration in non-early vision extends beyond the special situations considered by Pylyshyn. Many situations which do not involve difficult stimuli or require expert skills nevertheless load on high-level cognitive processes. School learning effects illustrate this point: they provide a way to observe task dissociations which support the discontinuity hypothesis, but they show that the scope of visual cognition in our visual experience is often underestimated.

Dienes & Perner's target article is not a satisfactory theory of implicit knowledge because in endorsing the representational theory of knowledge, the authors also inadvertently accept that only explicit knowledge can be causally efficacious, and hence that implicit knowledge is an inert category. This conflation between causal efficacy, knowledge, and explicitness is made clear through the authors' strategy, which consists of attributing any observable effect to the existence of representations that are as minimally explicit as needed to account for behavior. In contrast, we believe that causally efficacious and fully implicit knowledge exists, and is best embodied in frameworks that depart radically from classical assumptions.

Purest points of Hering's six primary colors reside at different levels of lightness such that inversion of each hue pair would be detectable in subjects' choice of foci on the Munsell array. An inverted spectrum would not impose the isomorphism constraint on a contrast of red-green or yellow-blue, whatever we conclude about inference in functionalism.

Dienes & Perner's analysis provides a clear theoretical justification for using a demonstration of volitional control as a criterion for conscious awareness. However, in memory tasks, the converse does not hold: A phenomenological awareness of a memory episode can arise involuntarily, even when the task does not require retrieval of the episode. The varying amounts of volitional retrieval required by different memory tasks need to be recognized.

Despite several positive features, such as extensive theoretical and empirical scope, aspects of Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer's theory can be challenged on theoretical grounds (inconsistent principles for phonetic versus phonological syllables, use of sophisticated homunculi, underspecification, and lack of principled motivation) and empirical grounds (failed predictions regarding effects of syllable frequency and incompatibility with observed effects of syllable structure).

Pylyshyn could have strengthened his case by avoiding side issues and by taking a sterner, firmer line on the unresolved (and perhaps unresolvable) problems plaguing the sensitivity (d') measure of top-down, cognitive effects, as well as the general (nearly utter!) lack of convincing evidence provided by proponents of the cognitive penetrability of visual perception.

The perceptual symbol system view assumes that perceptual representations have a role-argument structure. A role-argument structure is often incorporated into amodal symbol systems in order to explain conceptual functions like abstraction and rule use. The power of perceptual symbol systems to support conceptual functions is likewise rooted in its use of structure. On Barsalou's account, this capacity to use structure (in the form of frames) must be innate.

Sociobiology has ignored the results of psychology, which is the discipline between biology and society. Campbell's target article fills some of the gaps beautifully, but the fact that women's direct and physical aggression has increased during the past 20 years, undermines Campbell's evolutionary explanation of female aggression. The two classical types of theoretical explanations of aggression are that (1) aggression is a drive and (2) aggression is instrumental behavior. Expressive aggression, assumed to be typical of women, is no more drive aggression than is men's aggression.