Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
  •  8
    Measuring up the World in Size and Distance Perception
    Erkenntnis 89 (2): 521-543. 2024.
    An empirically based view of size and distance perceptual content and phenomenology is introduced, in which perceivers measure worldly size and distance against their bodies. Central principles of the formal, representational theory of the measurement of extensive magnitudes are then applied in framing the account in a precise way. The question of whether spatial-perceptual experience is “unit-free” is clarified. The framework is used to assess Dennis Proffitt's proposal that spatial setting is …Read more
  •  9
    Mid-Range Action-Driving Visual Information
    with Patrick Foo
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 16 (2): 98-116. 2010.
    Milner and Goodale have advanced a justly influential theory of the structure of the human visual system. In broad outline, Milner and Goodale hold that the ventral neural pathway is associated with recognition and experiential awareness, and with a kind of indirect control of action. And they hold that, by contrast, the dorsal neural stream is associated with the non-conscious, direct control of visually informed action. Most of the relevant empirical research has focused on the visual control …Read more
  •  5
    Varieties of visual perspectives
    Philosophical Psychology 22 (3): 329-352. 2009.
    One often hears it said that our visual-perceptual contact with the world is “perspectival.” But this can mean quite different things. Three different senses in which our visual contact with the world is “perspectival” are distinguished. The first involves the detection or representation of behaviorally important relations, holding between a perceiving subject and the world. These include time to contact, body-scaled size, egocentric position, and direction of heading. The second perspective bec…Read more
  •  121
    This volume focuses on philosophical problems concerning sense perception in the history of philosophy. It consists of thirteen essays that analyse the philosophical tradition originating in Aristotle’s writings. Each essay tackles a particular problem that tests the limits of Aristotle’s theory of perception and develops it in new directions. The problems discussed range from simultaneous perception to causality in perception, from the representational nature of sense-objects to the role of con…Read more
  •  10
    Sensory Integration and the Unity of Consciousness (edited book)
    with David J. Bennett and Christopher Hill
    MIT Press. 2014.
    Philosophers and cognitive scientists address the relationships among the senses and the connections between conscious experiences that form unified wholes. In this volume, cognitive scientists and philosophers examine two closely related aspects of mind and mental functioning: the relationships among the various senses and the links that connect different conscious experiences to form unified wholes. The contributors address a range of questions concerning how information from one sense influen…Read more
  •  15
    Seeing Shape: Shape Appearances and Shape Constancy
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (3): 487-518. 2012.
    A coin rotating back in depth in some sense presents a changing, elliptical shape. How are we to understand such (in this case) ‘appearances of ellipticality’? How is the experiential sense of such shifting shape appearances related to the experiential sense of enduring shape definitive of perceived shape constancy? Is the experiential recovery of surface shape based on the prior (perhaps more fundamental) recovery of point or element 3D spatial locations?—or is the perception of shape a largely…Read more
  •  11
    Long tradition in philosophy and in empirical psychology has it that the perceptual recovery of enduring objective size and shape proceeds through initial spatial appearance experiences—like the sensed changing visual field size of a receding car, or the shifting shape appearance of a coin as it rotates in depth. The present paper carefully frames and then critically examines such proposals. It turns out that these are contingent, empirical matters, requiring close examination of relevant resear…Read more
  •  12
    The perception of size and shape
    Philosophical Issues 18 (1): 294-315. 2008.
    No Abstract
  •  9
    How the World Is Measured Up in Size Experience
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (2): 345-365. 2011.
    I develop a Russellian representationalist account of size experience that draws importantly from contemporary vision science research on size perception. The core view is that size is experienced in ‘body-scaled’ units. So, an object might, say, be experienced as two eye-level units high. The view is sharpened in response to Thompson’s (forthcoming) Doubled Earth example. This example is presented by Thompson as part of an argument for a Fregean view of size experience. But I argue that the Rus…Read more