Perception
January 1, 2015
David Rose, Dora Brown
17 citations
Koenderink claims that most perception researchers mistakenly believe in an objective reality observed by an 'All Seeing Eye.' This assertion stems from his metaphysical idealism, which has weaknesses including dualism and foundationalism. Arguments from modern philosophy of science support the existence of an objective material reality. Koenderink's enactivism is contrasted with his idealism, and phenomenology and cognitive science are shown to be complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Perception
July 1, 2022
David Rose
8 citations
Illusions are often defined as perceptions that deviate from an objective, common-sense reality, but some recent arguments claim this definition is invalid because external reality may be a fiction or cannot be truly represented by our senses. This paper first warns, drawing on George Orwell, that denying objective reality risks suppressing independent thought and critical evaluation. It then argues that anti-realists mistakenly assume their opponents hold a reductionist metaphysics where only fundamental physics is real. Instead, a non-reductive metaphysics ascribes real existence to multiple levels of dynamic systems—from subatomic to ecological—making objective reality partly accessible to our senses and allowing a definition of illusions as deviations from veridical perception.
Perception
January 1, 2009
John Smythies
8 citations
Recent experiments in neuroscience and perceptual science show that virtual reality plays a role in normal visual perception and that the visual brain uses television technology. The cholinergic system in the forebrain is involved. This research illuminates the nature of perception and the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and the brain. It directly addresses criticisms from analytical philosophers, especially their support for Naive Realism.
Perception
January 1, 2025
Myron Tsikandilakis, Persefoni Bali, Alexander Karlis et al.
4 citations
When people mistakenly report seeing a briefly presented, backward-masked emotional face that was not actually shown, these false-positive responses are linked to heightened physiological arousal before and after the trial, high confidence in the erroneous perception, and ratings of valence and arousal that match the type of face misperceived. These effects are strongest for fearful faces. The findings suggest a mechanism for partial, self-encapsulated emotional-experiential apperception and a possible fear-primacy socio-emotional response module that operates under visual ambiguity and high psychophysiological arousal.
Perception
May 13, 2026
Sarune Savickaite, Mitra Gupta, Dharshini Kannan
People with alexithymia, a trait involving difficulty identifying and describing emotions, tend to have poorer interoception—the ability to perceive internal bodily signals. Interoception helps form a coherent sense of self and contributes to body ownership, the feeling that one's body belongs to oneself. In an immersive virtual reality experiment, motor synchrony between virtual and physical movements increased body ownership. Alexithymia was negatively related to interoceptive accuracy, and interoceptive accuracy showed a trend-level positive association with body ownership when movements were aligned. Due to a modest sample size of 26 and reliance on a single cardiac measure, these preliminary results need replication.