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The distinction between sense perception and cognition or thought seems intuitively obvious. It also has been of momentous importance in the history of philosophy. Yet recent developments within philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience call for reassessment of the relationship between perception and cognition: both appear to provide models or representations of our environment; both appear to contribute to our conscious experience; information flows both from cognitive brain areas to the sensory ones just like it flows from the senses up to cognition; the fast and frugal responses that guide intuitive judgment seem neither clearly cognitive nor clearly perceptual; and the maps our brain uses to navigate our environment seem to fall in the same middle ground. Against the background of these developments, the Thought and Sense project has focused directly on the boundary between these two central mental capacities. Sense and Thought: is there a clear distinction at all? Is there one contrast or many? Is there continuity or discontinuity? We have looked at several dimensions: is perception characterized by a different kind of temporality than thought? Is it in some sense more immediate? Is it unstructured by concepts? Is perception a separate module of the mind? The Thought and Sense project has investigated the Perception Cognition along various dimensions, helped to build novel research areas, and has disseminated its research to the broader public. We have we collaborate closely in regular seminars and reading groups, and at the same time built and extended international networks. Our regular meetings have led to a new research group: the Oslo Mind Group that facilitates interaction in the philosophy of mind and related areas. In addition, we have organized workshops, talks and research stays also with the broader national and international research communities. The project has organized a big international conference, and two international workshops on its own. In addition, we have, co-organized three further workshops (and has been involved in organizing another workshop), a session at a large international conference, and a symposium at another such large international conference. In addition, the project has been involved in bringing 17 international researchers to Oslo for talks, and in some cases extended research stays. Through these efforts, we have helped to put Oslo on the international map for research on perception and cognition. Since the start of the project to date, we have published one monograph by the project manager and have submitted 12 articles to international journals or as chapters in anthologies. Of these articles, fives are now published in international journals or volumes, four are forthcoming or in press, and three are under review or under consideration. The PhD student hired has written and defended a dissertation on the perception of properties. In addition to these publications, the core members of the project have given forty talks on the various dimensions of the project in Norway and internationally. Our publications concern, for example, the role of time in perception, how concepts are involved in perception, whether we have a similar kind of immediate contact to properties and objects in perception, whether and how perceptual attention is unified with cognitive attention, the perception of linguistic meaning, and foreground and background structures in both conscious perception and conscious cognition. Based in part on the work done in the project, the project manager is now acting as a collaborator on three further projects: a project on spontaneous thought and mind-wandering, a project on how vision shapes language, and a project on consciousness and the brain. In addition, the project manager is heading a large interdisciplinary priority area at the University of Oslo (the Centre for Philosophy and the Sciences). A researcher at the project has, in part on the basis of his work within the project, been hired as Associate Professor at NTNU, where he contributes to their research group Consciousness, Cognition, and Reality (CCR), which carries forward several streams of research that dovetail with the project. In these ways, the project has helped to enable novel research in areas between philosophy and neighboring disciplines. In order to disseminate our research findings to a wider audience beyond scholars and researchers, the project has co-organized an exhibit at the Oslo Science Expo; the project manager has presented aspects the project's work to the Norwegian Consumer Council, clinicians working on the health benefits of meditation and in a public talk at NTNU in Trondheim; he has written a popular article on the modularity of perception. In addition, the project members taught and organized PhD courses, supervised MA students, gave lectures at the faculty of social sciences, as well as a presentation to a forum of education scholars.

The distinction between sense perception and cognition is basic to our pre-scientific conception of the mind, and has been of momentous importance in the history of philosophy. Recent developments in philosophy and the cognitive sciences, though, call for re-examination of the difference between sense and thought. In light of these new developments, a thorough investigation that focuses directly on the boundary between these two central mental capacities is called for. Is there a clear distinction at all? Is there one contrast or many? Is there continuity or discontinuity? If there is an important distinction, how is it to be characterized? In order to understand the boundary between perception and cognition, a novel and systematic approach is needed. We will consider four aspects of the boundary between perception and cognition and their interrelations. (1) Temporality: is there a difference in the temporal profile of perception and cognition? If there is, how is it to be characterized, and what are its consequences? (2) Conceptuality: in what ways are conceptual capacities involved in perception? Are there non-conceptual forms of cognition, and how - if at all - do these differ from non-conceptual forms of perception? (3) Modularity: what should we make of the alleged modularity of perception in light of findings concerning top-down processing and sensory integration? To what extent does the involvement of attention in both perception and cognition pose a threat to modularity? (4) Immediacy: is perceptual experience uniquely characterized by phenomenal immediacy, or does such immediacy also apply to some forms of cognition? How is phenomenal immediacy to be theoretically captured? In our investigation, we draw on esteemed international collaborators, the resources of CSMN in Oslo, and national connections. With our project, the University of Oslo can become a key institution for anyone interested in the interface between sense perception and cognition.