"the account offered for simultaneous contrast may be consistent with some accounts, but is not universally accepted (the author may want to consult recent work by Allan Gilchrist on this issue)"

The phenomena presented by Gilchrist goes beyond the kind of phenomena addressed by this model. But I think the reviewer does not understand that what is being proposed here is NOT a specific model to account for visual illusions, NOR a model of brightness perception, but a more general conceptual model about the implications of Gestalt theory for the kinds of computational mechanisms responsible for emergence in perception, and how the concept of emergence can be resolved with the hierarchical architecture observed in the visual cortex. It is perfectly valid to present proposals of a more general nature than the kinds of models that address very specific perceptual phenomena.

"Assertions that the subjective percept is richer in information or has more explicit spatial information does not conform to the familiar usage of the term information in perception."

No? Does our visual field not have a certain visual-angular extent, and a certain visual-angular resolution? (Even though that might be variable depending on angular distance from fovea) And does our visual experience not encode a certain gamut of colors, as quantified in the CIE chromaticity diagram? Are these not the measures of the information content of conscious experience?