High-Level Perception and Multimodal Perception

Abstract

What is the correct procedure for delineating the contents of perception? Philosophers tackling the question of perception’s admissible contents have increasingly adopted empirically-oriented procedures over apriori ones. It is argued here that these approaches remain limited insofar as they are unimodal, examining the senses in isolation from one another. This paper has two goals: the first is to motivate a reorientation of the admissible contents of perception debate into a multimodal framework, charting its potential significances. The second goal is to explore whether any studies of multimodal perception support a so-called ‘high-level’ (or ‘liberal’ or ‘rich) account of perception’s admissible contents. It is argued that the stream bounce illusion, the McGurk effect and the ventriloquist effect all are explainable without the postulation of high-level content, but that at least one mutltimodal illusion may necessitate it: the rubber hand illusion.

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