Editing Structural information theory (section)

== Modeling principles ==

In SIT's formal coding model, candidate interpretations of a stimulus are represented by [[String (computer science)|symbol strings]], in which identical symbols refer to identical perceptual primitives (e.g., blobs or edges). Every substring of such a string represents a spatially contiguous part of an interpretation, so that the entire string can be read as a reconstruction recipe for the interpretation and, thereby, for the stimulus. These strings then are encoded (i.e., they are searched for visual regularities) to find the interpretation with the simplest code.

This encoding is performed by way of symbol manipulation, which, in psychology, has led to critical statements of the sort of "SIT assumes that the brain performs symbol manipulation". Such statements, however, fall in the same category as statements such as "physics assumes that nature applies formulas such as [[Albert Einstein|Einstein's]] ''E=mc''<sup>2</sup> or [[Isaac Newton|Newton's]] ''F=ma''" and "DST models assume that dynamic systems apply differential equations".