Perceptual constancy and the dimensions of perceptual experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John O’Dea
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Constancy

Art and Ambiguity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John O’Dea
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Visual Interpretation ◽  
Perceptual Constancy ◽  
Multistable Perception ◽  
State Of Affairs

This chapter defends a solution to the problem of variable appearances that co-occur with perceptual constancy. In conditions which are non-ideal, yet within the range of perceptual constancy, we see things veridically despite a puzzling “appearance” which is suggestive of a non-veridical state of affairs. For example, a tilted coin is often taken to have an “elliptical appearance”. This chapter defends Gestalt-shift approach, according to which these appearances are in fact illusory, but not part of normal perceptual experience. The experience of ellipticality when viewing a tilted coin, it is argued, arises from something like a brief and unstable Gestalt shift to a different visual interpretation of the scene, of the kind that E. H. Gombrich argued artists invoke when painting a three-dimensional scene on a flat canvas. Recent empirical work on multistable perception is used to show how this might work.

scholarly journals Daubert’s Naïve Realist Challenge to Husserl

2019 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-243
Author(s):  
Matt E.M. Bower
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Constancy ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Phenomenological Movement ◽  
Fundamental Nature ◽  
Philosophy Of Perception ◽  
Naive Realist ◽  
Realist View

Despite extensive discussion of naïve realism in the wider philosophical literature, those influenced by the phenomenological movement who work in the philosophy of perception have hardly weighed in on the matter. It is thus interesting to discover that Edmund Husserl’s close philosophical interlocutor and friend, the early twentieth-century phenomenologist Johannes Daubert, held the naive realist view. This article presents Daubert’s views on the fundamental nature of perceptual experience and shows how they differ radically from those of Husserl’s. The author argues, in conclusion, that Daubert’s views are superior to those of Husserl’s specifically in the way that they deal with the phenomenon of perceptual constancy.

Numerical symbols as explanations of human perceptual experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Number Words ◽  
The World ◽  
Symbolic Systems ◽  
Perceptual Systems

Why did humans develop precise systems for measuring experience, like numbers, clocks, andcalendars? I argue that precise representational systems were constructed by earlier generationsof humans because they recognized that their noisy perceptual systems were not capturingdistinctions that existed in the world. Abstract symbolic systems did not arise from perceptualrepresentations, but instead were constructed to describe and explain perceptual experience. Byanalogy, I argue that when children learn number words, they do not rely on noisy perceptualsystems, but instead acquire these words as units in a broader system of procedures, whosemeanings are ultimately defined by logical relations to one another, not perception.

Getting Outside of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McCarroll
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
The Self ◽  
Sources Of Information

This chapter provides an account of the spatial perspectival characteristics and the self-presence of remembering from-the-outside. The chapter develops the Constructive Encoding approach, according to which the context of encoding may play a role in the construction of observer perspectives. The Constructive Encoding approach recognizes the multiple and multiperspectival sources of information available during perception, and suggests that observer perspectives may be constructed from non-egocentric information available during perceptual experience. This chapter provides a way of understanding the idea that one need not see oneself from-the-outside in order to have a memory that is recalled from-the-outside. This chapter not only provides a better understanding of observer perspectives but also sheds light on the perspectival mind.

Attentional Engines

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Seeley
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Cognitive Systems ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Broad Base ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Perceptual Psychology ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in these often odd and abstract objects and events that we call artworks? My proposal is that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. My suggestion is that there is a lot that we can learn about art from interdisciplinary research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. These kinds of studies can reveal how we recognize artworks, how we differentiate them from other, more quotidian artifacts. In doing so they reveal how artworks function as a unique source of value. Our interactions with artworks draw on a broad base of shared artistic and cultural constitutive of different categories of art. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention, and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. Teasing out how this works can contribute valuable information to our philosophical understanding of art. Attentional Engines explores this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and the neuroscience attention and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts, including questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies.

Direct Realism and Illusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Perceptual Error ◽  
Standard Response ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
Ambiguous Stimuli ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
Apparent Problem

The supposed problem of perceptual error, including illusion and hallucination, has led most theories of perception to deny formulations of direct realism. The standard response to this apparent problem adopts the mistaken presupposition that perception is indeed liable to error. However, the prevailing conditions of observation are themselves elements of perceptual representation, functioning in the manner of predicate modifiers. They ensure that the predicates applied in perceptual representations do indeed correctly attribute properties that perceived physical objects actually instantiate. Thus, perceptual representations are immune to misrepresentation of the sort misguidedly supposed by the spurious problem of perceptual misrepresentation. Granted the possibility that perceptual attribution admits of predicate modification, it is quite possible that perceptual experience permits both rudimentary and sophisticated conceptualization. Moreover, such treatment of perceptual predication rewards by providing an account of aspect alteration exemplified by perception of ambiguous stimuli.

Infusing Perception with Imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek H. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Amodal Completion ◽  
Perceptual Constancy

This chapter explores the broad thesis that most if not all perceptual experiences are infused or soaked with imaginings. To begin, the author articulates a sense of imagination useful for this discussion, avoids some pitfalls, and incorporates the result into a schematic guidance principle. The thought behind the principle is that imaginative contributions to perceptual experiences are self-generated ingredients to perception that have a reasonably direct, ampliative impact on the relevant perceptual experiences. This framework is then applied to three sets of case studies: object-kind and object-sameness experiences (Strawson 1970); colour (Macpherson 2012); and amodal completion (Nanay 2010) and perceptual constancy. Although the case studies have interesting differences, they all conform to the guidance principle. Since each has the potential to independently justify the thesis that perceptual experiences are infused with imaginings, they collectively provide sound motive to provisionally endorse it.

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