The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Sensorimotor expectations and the visual field

Sensorimotor expectations and the visual field
Sensorimotor expectations and the visual field
Sensorimotor expectations concern how visual experience covaries with bodily movement. Sensorimotor theorists argue from such expectations to the conclusion that the phenomenology of vision is constitutively embodied: objects within the visual field are experienced as 3-D because sensorimotor expectations partially constitute our experience of such objects. Critics argue that there are (at least) two ways to block the above inference: to explain how we visually experience objects as 3-D, one may appeal to such non-bodily factors as (i) expectations about movements of objects, not the perceiver, or to (ii) the role of mental imagery in visual experience. But instead of using sensorimotor expectations to explain how objects are experienced within the visual field, we can instead use them to explain our experience of the visual field itself and, in particular, our experience of its limits; that is, our ever-present visual sense of there being more to see, beyond what’s currently within the visual field. Crucially, this inference from sensorimotor expectations to the constitutive embodiment of visual phenomenology is not threatened by the above two challenges. I thus present here a sensorimotor theory of the phenomenology of the visual field, that is, our experience of our visual fields as such.
Action, mental imagery, pictorial experience, puzzle of perceptual presence, sensorimotor systems, visual field
0039-7857
1-16
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
23ff735a-7f44-437f-9f42-d2002cf8de8a
Cavedon-Taylor, Dan
23ff735a-7f44-437f-9f42-d2002cf8de8a

Cavedon-Taylor, Dan (2018) Sensorimotor expectations and the visual field. Synthese, 1-16. (doi:10.1007/s11229-018-01946-4).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Sensorimotor expectations concern how visual experience covaries with bodily movement. Sensorimotor theorists argue from such expectations to the conclusion that the phenomenology of vision is constitutively embodied: objects within the visual field are experienced as 3-D because sensorimotor expectations partially constitute our experience of such objects. Critics argue that there are (at least) two ways to block the above inference: to explain how we visually experience objects as 3-D, one may appeal to such non-bodily factors as (i) expectations about movements of objects, not the perceiver, or to (ii) the role of mental imagery in visual experience. But instead of using sensorimotor expectations to explain how objects are experienced within the visual field, we can instead use them to explain our experience of the visual field itself and, in particular, our experience of its limits; that is, our ever-present visual sense of there being more to see, beyond what’s currently within the visual field. Crucially, this inference from sensorimotor expectations to the constitutive embodiment of visual phenomenology is not threatened by the above two challenges. I thus present here a sensorimotor theory of the phenomenology of the visual field, that is, our experience of our visual fields as such.

Text
Sensorimotor Field - Final - Accepted Manuscript
Download (139kB)
Text
Cavedon-Taylor2018_Article_SensorimotorExpectationsAndThe - Version of Record
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (406kB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 17 September 2018
e-pub ahead of print date: 28 September 2018
Keywords: Action, mental imagery, pictorial experience, puzzle of perceptual presence, sensorimotor systems, visual field

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 423563
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/423563
ISSN: 0039-7857
PURE UUID: 853b46ea-cadf-4201-bf03-307b6059a475

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 26 Sep 2018 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 07:06

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Dan Cavedon-Taylor

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×