Perceptual organization: Gestalt phenomena, psychophysics and phenomenology

Perceptual organization is a vague term sometimes defined as the process by which we perceive our surroundings as a coherent whole. There is considerable debate about the mechanisms that accomplish perceptual organization. There is also disagreement about the methods we use to study perceptual organization. We believe that some of this disagreement is related to a commonly accepted hierarchical characterization of perception. We offer two theoretically convergent approaches to the study of perceptual organization and show that, although the results from these approaches are commensurate, they lend contrasting perspectives on perceptual organization phenomena.