Are perspectival shapes seen or imagined? An experimental approach

John Schwenkler; Assaf Weksler

doi:10.1007/s11097-018-9571-1

Are perspectival shapes seen or imagined? An experimental approach

John Schwenkler, Assaf Weksler

Department of Philosophy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel experimental approach that would help to determine whether perspectival shapes, such as the elliptical profile of a tilted plate or coin, are part of perceptual experience. If they are part of perceptual experience, then it should be possible to identify these shapes simply by attending appropriately to them. Otherwise, in order to identify perspectival shapes they must first be constructed in the visual imagination. We propose that these accounts of perspectival identification can be tested by measuring the interference between visual and verbal working memory load, respectively, and the identification of perspectival shapes in the appearance of a 3D object.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	855-877
Number of pages	23
Journal	Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
Volume	18
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9571-1
State	Published - 1 Dec 2019

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We wish to thank Galia Avidan, Robert Briscoe, Zohar Bronfman, Randy Clarke, Paul Conway, Baruch Eitam, Jonathan Folstein, Nurit Gronau, Sean Kelly, Arnon Keren, Ariel Meirav, Lior Shmuelof, Mark Wagner, Aaron Wilbur, Wayne Wu, Yaffa Yeshurun, and two anonymous referees for helpful feedback and discussion.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature.

Keywords

Attention
Imagination
Perception
Perspective
Vision
Working memory

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Philosophy
Cognitive Neuroscience

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10.1007/s11097-018-9571-1

Cite this

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abstract = "This paper proposes a novel experimental approach that would help to determine whether perspectival shapes, such as the elliptical profile of a tilted plate or coin, are part of perceptual experience. If they are part of perceptual experience, then it should be possible to identify these shapes simply by attending appropriately to them. Otherwise, in order to identify perspectival shapes they must first be constructed in the visual imagination. We propose that these accounts of perspectival identification can be tested by measuring the interference between visual and verbal working memory load, respectively, and the identification of perspectival shapes in the appearance of a 3D object.",

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Are perspectival shapes seen or imagined? An experimental approach

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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