Catherine Hochman

Imagine you’re apple picking and an apple on the branch in front of you catches your eye. Your visual system forms a representation of the apple, including not only its various properties, such as its color, shape, and texture, but also its location. Its location is specified egocentrically: you represent the apple at some distance and direction relative to yourself. This suggests that you are represented in your visual representation. But that seems strange. Intuitively, you visually represent the objects – not the subject – of perception. What’s more, it is not clear what it would mean for you to be represented in your visual representation. Does your visual representation, like the thought ‘An apple is in front of me’, include the concept of self? This case raises two questions about the relation between perception and the self. One asks whether the self is represented in perception. The other concerns how the self is represented in perception. This dissertation addresses both. I answer the first question in the affirmative. I argue that perception involves the use of first-personal contents that are represented in perceptual systems that map complex spatial relations. This suggests that nearly all perceiving creatures self-represent in perception and challenges the traditional view according to which self-representation is confined to language and thought. However, how the self is represented in perception differs from its representation in language and thought. Perception involves the use of egocentric reference frames – frameworks for specifying spatial relations relative to the perceiver – that, I argue, carry first-personal contents. I draw on work in neuroscience and perceptual psychology to offer a representational trajectory that traces how these reference frames, and thus their contents, move from being encoded in the functional architecture of our perceptual systems to explicitly represented. Each step along this path moves closer to conceptual self-representation, suggesting that our capacities for self-representation in language and thought may have their origins in perception.

A prevalent philosophical view holds that information about the self remains implicit in perceptual representation. While it correctly describes the most basic perceptual representations, I argue that this view does not hold for more complex, but still low-level, perceptual representations of space. I propose that in the course of perceptual processing, implicit information about the self is made explicit. My discussion centers on a detailed study of egocentric reference frames. I suggest that within the perceptual system of a creature, these reference frames form a hierarchy, in which each frame that is implicit at one stage of perceptual processing is explicit at the next. This hierarchy allows implicit information about the self to be articulated as processing advances. I show how standard explanations of two perceptual phenomena – gaze shifts and the illusory experience of self-motion – are committed to and thus support this hierarchical picture.