**3. Incorrect Assumptions**

The following three quotes from Pinna and Conti illustrate their first claim, that is, their stance about contrast polarity versus simplicity and likelihood approaches:

"The salience and visibility, derived by the largest amplitude of luminance dissimilarity imparted by contrast polarity, precedes any holist or likelihood organization due to simplicity/Prägnanz and Bayes' inference." [2] (p. 12 of 32)

"Contrast polarity was shown to operate locally, eliciting results that could be independent from any global scale and that could also be paradoxical. These results weaken and challenge theoretical approaches based on notions like oneness, unitariness, symmetry, regularity, simplicity, likelihood, priors, constraints, and past knowledge. Therefore, Helmholtz's likelihood principle, simplicity/Prägnanz, and Bayes' inference were clearly questioned since they are supposed to operate especially at a global and holistic level of vision." [2] (p. 26 of 32)

"The highlighting strength of contrast polarity determines even the grouping effectiveness against the global and holistic rules and factors expected by Helmholtz's likelihood principle, simplicity/Prägnanz, and Bayes' inference." [2] (p. 26 of 32)

It is true that simplicity and likelihood approaches may aim to arrive at global stimulus interpretations, but a general objection against the above stance is that they (can) do so by including local factors as well. For instance, van Lier [16] presented a theoretically sound and empirically adequate simplicity model for the integration of global and local aspects in amodal completion (see also [17]). A methodological objection is that Pinna and Conti introduced contrast polarity changes in stimuli but pitted these against alleged simplicity and likelihood predictions for the unchanged stimuli. As I specify next, this is unfair, and in my view, scientifically inappropriate.
