Richard Gregory CBE FRS

Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, England, UK

Constructing Reality from Illusions

From earliest evolution, vision has depended on knowledge and assumptions of the world of objects. For the shadow-images in eyes are no more than ambiguous symbols of what matters. They are bottom-up bricks for constructing perceptual reality; but are meaningless and almost useless without knowledge and assumptions, which may not be appropriate to particular situations. Much as failures of individual survivals (deaths) are added to knowledge stored in the genetic code and inherited as "instinct", so errors of illusions can correct behaviour and create new realities. The role of knowledge for seeing and seeing for knowledge, will be discussed as a basis for the experimental philosophy of perception.

This page was last updated on 16 Feb 2001.

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