PPIG: Philosophy, Psychology, and Informatics Reading Group
1 Nov 2016: Seminar
1 Nov 2016 17:00 – 18:30
Room G32, Psychology Building, 7 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ
Speaker: Casey O'Callaghan (Washington University, St Louis)
Title: "Enhancement Through Coordination"
Abstract: Recent work in perceptual psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy challenges the independence of our senses. What remains unsettled is how multisensory processes and mechanisms are reflected in perceptual consciousness. Some maintain that perceptual experience at each time is unisensory or minimally multisensory (Spence and Bayne 2015). In this talk, I distinguish three differing ways in which perceptual consciousness may be multisensory, and defend the claim that mature species-typical perceptual experience in humans is richly and deeply multisensory. In doing so, I explain why this matters in theorizing about perception. I argue that the coordinated use of multiple senses enhances and extends human perceptual capacities in three critical ways: (1) Crossmodal perceptual illusions reveal hidden multisensory interactions that typically make each sense more reliable as a source of evidence about the environment; (2) The joint use of multiple senses discloses more of the world, including novel features and qualities; (3) Through perceptual learning, each sense is reshaped by the influence of others. The implication is that no sense—not even vision itself—can be understood entirely in isolation from the others. This undermines the prevailing approach to perception, which proceeds sense by sense, and sets the stage for a revisionist multisensory methodology that illuminates the nature, scope, and character of perceptual consciousness. I conclude by raising two outstanding issues concerning psychological taxonomy for multisensory perception: how to type richly multisensory experiences by modality, and why multi-sensory effects involve perception rather than extra-perceptual cognition.
Further information
We are a group of researchers from diverse backgrounds in the above-mentioned groups (and beyond) who aim to gain an interdisciplinary yet deep understanding of the threads that bind the human mind and the world. Please come along!
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