Perceptual Illusions: Philosophical And Psychological Essays
Stephanie Dejoode
Recently, he has been writing about speech perception, the significance of interactions among sense modalities for theorizing more generally about perception, how to differentiate the senses, how perception differs from extra-perceptual cognition, and psychological explanation and taxonomy.
Beyond Vision brings together eight essays by Casey O'Callaghan. The works draw theoretical and philosophical lessons about perception, the nature of its objects, and sensory awareness through sustained attention to extra-visual and multisensory forms of perception and perceptual consciousness. O'Callaghan focuses on auditory perception, perception of spoken language, and multisensory perception.
Sounds proposes a novel theory of sounds and auditory perception. Against the widely accepted philosophical view that sounds are among the secondary or sensible qualities, O'Callaghan argues that, on any perceptually plausible account, sounds are events. But this does not imply that sounds are waves that propagate through a medium, such as air or water. Rather, sounds are events that take place in one's environment at or near the objects and happenings that bring them about. This account captures the way in which sounds essentially are creatures of time, and situates sounds in a world populated by items and events that have significance for us.
I have worked across a wide range of areas, but my primary fields of interest are philosophy of mind and philosophy of the mind/brain sciences. I have written extensively on questions to do with the nature and contents of perception, as well as memory and imagination. My work on perception includes more purely philosophical work developing and defending a naïve realist account of perceptual experience, theoretical work on such topics as visual illusions, visual adaptation, afterimages and shadows, and collaborative empirical studies, most recently on whether we perceive silence and a large-scale re-examination of inattentional blindness. A major theme in my work historically has been our perceptual encounter with time. In addition to writing multiple papers on this topic, I edited The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience.
Do we only hear sounds? Or can we also hear silence? These questions are the subject of a centuries-old philosophical debate between two camps: the perceptual view (we literally hear silence), and the cognitive view (we only judge or infer silence).
"A vital addition to the literature on perception. Macpherson and Platchias have put together a lively, informative, and provocative collection of essays on hallucination. The scientific essays take us far beyond glib philosophical examples -- Lady Macbeth's dagger and so on. The philosophical sections relate to recent controversies: the much discussed doctrine of 'naive realism' and reflections on what hallucination teaches us about the nature of perceptual experience in general." -- Mohan Matthen, Canada Research Chair in Philosophy, University of Toronto
Perception is a unanimous trait within humanity. Yet, each individual's perceptions regarding distinct aspects vary based on their knowledge and experience, among other details. Moreover, the human brain is inherent in developing perception. Optical illusions, which are perplexing and intriguing, are one example of how perception begins to manifest in the human mind. Additional factors that influence an individual's perceptions include but are not limited to cognitive levels, age, emotions, and memories. Perception encompasses five stages: stimulation, organization, interpretation, memory, and recall. This research report analyzes the scientific and psychological process of perceptual development in the human brain.
Books 335 that I was getting only part of Michotte's ideas. The final comment led me to read Michotte's La Perception de la causalite (Louvain: Pubs. Universitaires de Louvain, 2nd Ed., 1954).Since this book intrigued him enough to draw attention to it, I suppose it must have some valid ideas. To re-issue a book that comments at someconsiderable length on the work of Gibson seems to me to indicate an abysmal ignorance on the part of the publishers not to have up-dated the references to Gibson's later publications. Many criticisms that Hamlyn makes are treated by Gibson in hisSenses Consideredas Perceptual Systems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966)and in his last book An Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979). This leads me to Hamlyn's statement that 'We are not provided, in sensations, with a basic knowledge on which everything has to be built, becausesensations do not directly give us knowledge ofother things but only of ourselves' (p. 41).To say then, as he does on p, 85, that 'He [Gibson] no longer makes a distinction between sensation and perception because he assimilates the latter to the former' is to make a mockery of scholarship. Seeing Is Deceiving:The Psychologyof Visual IUusions. Stanley Coren ana Joan Stem Girgus. Wiley, London, 1978.255 pp., illus. 12.00. Reviewed by Alan Turner* In this book, two psychologists systematically survey theoretical analyses of visual illusions. With their scientific approach they cautiously avoid unqualified assertions and successfully integrate studies of illusions into the main body of work on visual perception. I found the production of the book pleasing and the text quite easy to follow. The illustrations are small, but, nonetheless, most of the illusions portrayed are easily discernable. In lesslearned, glossy books some of these illusions can be perceived more dramatically. They begin with a brief history of the study of visual illusions and then classify and examine different kinds in successive chapters according to specific factors involved. They also take into consideration the structure of the human eyeand the part of the brain involved in visual experiences of illusions. The following factors are discussed at length: cleaning up poor quality images by the eye and brain, neural tissue fatigue, analogues of force fields occurring in the brain, Helson's approach involving computed, weighted averages of present and residual stimuli, Piaget's information sampling approach and the role of the saccadic eye movement. Chapter 12 gives a brief resume of preceding chapters and is followed by a chapter entitled Toward a Taxonomy of Visual Illusions in which they take account of their classification of illusions in terms of the multiplicity of mechanisms of the nervous systems that are operative. In the last chapter they consider briefly a number of dominant contemporary hypotheses of visual perception and describe how they deal with visual illusions. To dramatize the importance of visual illusions, they cite a mid-air airplane collision in the U.S.A. in 1%4 in which four people were killed. The collision was attributed by investigators of the U.S.A. Civil Aeronautics Board to a visual misinterpretation of cloud contours by the pilot of one of the airplanes. Models: Representation and the Scientific Understanding. Marx W. Wartofsky. Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland, 1979.390pp. Paper, DFL 30.00. Reviewed by David R. Topper** One often cannot tell what a book contains by its title, or-by its subtitle. I expected Wartofsky's book to be a study of the role of analogues (visual or otherwise) in science, something comparable to Mary Hesse's provocative Forces and Fields or W. H. Leatherdale's superb The Role ofAnalogy. Model. and Metaphor *99 Hornsay Lane, London N6 5LW, England. **Dept. of History, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9, Canada. in Science. But instead it is a collection of 18 essays (mostly previously published): several of academic philosophical interest (on the ideas of Spinoza, Diderot and Hume), some on issues in the philosophy of science (e.g. on the role of metaphysics and models), and others on perception and visual art. A theme running throughout a majority of them is that in human actions (perception and thinking, art...
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