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Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion? (Journal of Consciousness Studies controversies in science & the humanities) Paperback – June 24, 2002

by Alva Noe (Editor)

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There is a traditional scepticism about whether the world "out there" really is as we perceive it. A new breed of hyper-sceptics now challenges whether we even have the perceptual experience we think we have. According to these writers, perceptual consciousness is a kind of false consciousness. This view grows out of the discovery of such phenomena as change blindness and inattentional blindness, which show that we can all be quite blind to changes taking place before our very eyes. Such radical scepticism has acute and widespread implications for the study of perception and consciousness. The writings collected in this volume explore these implications. The contributors are scientists and philosophers at the forefront of this research, and include well-known authors such as psychologists Susan Blackmore and Arien Mack, and philosophers Andy Clark and Daniel Dennett. They have an gift for bringing these paradoxical issues to life and sharing their excitement with the non-specialist.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a most impressive selection of essays on a central topic in cognitive science. Every essay has valuable points to make... This book is essential reading for any theorist interested in perception."

-- Paul Coates ― Human Nature Review

"Many contributions to consciousness debates have been ill informed or over subjective. This volume does not suffer from these deficiencies. The common thread of change blindness ensures that all contributions are grounded in at least one empirically robust effect. There is no doubt that this grounding advances the quality of debate about the nature of visual experience."

-- Richard Cooper ― Times Higher Education Supplement

"Noë's book is a well-balanced set of essays. There seems to be genuine controversy between the various contributors."

-- Michael L. Anderson ― Metapsychology

About the Author

Alva Noe is Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Cruz

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor's Preface

The study of perceptual consciousness must begin with an adequate phenomenology of perceptual experience. The aim of this book is to bring together new writings by philosophers and cognitive scientists that respond to the need for a better phenomenology of perceptual experience.

No writer in recent years has done more to demonstrate the importance of careful reflection on the character of experience than Francisco J. Varela. This book is dedicated to his memory.

The question which forms the title - Is the visual world a grand illusion? - is provoked by recent work in psychology on change blindness, inattentional blindness, and related phenomena. Research in this area calls into question whether we really enjoy perceptual experiences which represent the environment in rich detail. If we do not enjoy experiences of this sort, then we need to rethink the idea that perception is a process aiming at the production of such experiences. Most of the papers collected here take their start from this empirical research. All attend to its broader theoretical and philosophical implications.

Change blindness was more or less predicted by Daniel Dennett in his 1991 book Consciousness Explained (see, for example, pp. 467-8). His philosophical work forms the natural backdrop against which to try to understand its significance as well as that of the title question. My own interest in these questions began while a postdoc at his Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. As far as I know, he is the first philosopher to recognize the importance of the then brand-new change blindness literature. The debate would not unfold as it has if not for his work.

The first use of the phrase 'the grand illusion' in reference to this domain was, as far as I know, in a paper published in 2000 by Evan Thompson, Luiz Pessoa and myself ('Beyond the grand illusion: What change blindness really teaches us about vision', Visual Cognition, 7, 1/2/3, pp. 93-106). I find it hard to believe we really were the first, however, to use this term in the way we did. Certainly when David Chalmers organized a session with the same title as this book at the 2000 Tucson Conference 'Towards a Science of Consciousness', he was able to do so with no particular thought of our paper. The term seemed to be in wide use already. In any case, it was this conference session that led Anthony Freeman, the managing editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and myself to conceive the idea of this volume. I would like, therefore, to express my gratitude not only to Anthony Freeman and David Chalmers, but also to Luiz Pessoa and Evan Thompson.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Imprint Academic (June 24, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0907845231
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0907845232
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.32 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.85 x 0.59 x 10.24 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,340,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,786 in Medical Cognitive Psychology
- #5,071 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy
- #6,239 in Social Work (Books)

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Alva Noë

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Alva Noë is an author and philosopher based in Berkeley and New York City.

His new book Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature is due out in September 2015 from Hill and Wang/FSG).

He is the author of Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness (Hill and Wang, 2009), Action In Perception (MIT 2004), as well as Varieties of Presence, which was published by Harvard University Press in February 2012.

Alva Noë is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, in Berkeley, where he is also a member of the Center for New Media and the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

Noë blogs weekly at NPR's 13.7: Culture and Cosmos (www.npr.org/13.7) -- on topics ranging from cognitive science to baseball -- and he has been Philosopher-in-Residence with the Forsythe Company (a dance company based in Frankfurt, Germany).

Alva Noë is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow.

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Daniel R. Sanderman

Balanced Volume on a Radical New Breed of Scepticism

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2005

IS THE VISUAL WORLD A GRAND ILLUSION?, edited by Alva Noë, tackles an interesting "new breed" of scepticism. Unlike traditional scepticism, which asks whether the world "as it really is out there" is as we perceive it to be, this new breed of sceptics ask whether "we have the perceptual experience we think we have." Given growing work in perceptual theory, including work on illusions, change blindness, and inattentional blindness, some philosophers and perceptual theorists claim that our experience of the world must be a "Grand Illusion" insofar as we fail to "perceive" objects and events that are located smack-dab in the middle of our visual field. On a personal note, I took an upper-level seminar on this new area of perceptual theory and we used this volume as one of our textbooks.

IS THE VISUAL WORLD A GRAND ILLUSION? is a balanced sampling, containing well-written articles from camps that answer the title question both positively and negatively. All of the articles are interesting and thought provoking. If you're looking for some of the most up-to-date work in perceptual theory that connects with broad issues of consciousness, you've come to the right place. In order to save you some time from looking at the list of contributors to this volume, I've provided a list:

Alva Noë - "Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion?"

Daniel C. Dennett - "How Could I Be Wrong? How Wrong Could I Be?

Susan Blackmore - "There Is No Stream of Consciousness"

Bruce Bridgeman - "The Grand Illusion and Petit Illusions: Interactions of Perception and Sensory Coding"

Eric Schwitzgebel - "How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Visual Imagery"

Dana H. Ballard - "Our Perception of the World Has To Be an Illusion"

Davies, Hoffman, & Rodriguez - "Visual Worlds: Construction or Reconstruction?"

Frank H. Durgin - "The Tinkerbell Effect: Motion Perception and Illusion"

Arien Mack - "Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion? A Response"

Daniel T. Levin - "Change Blindness Blindness As Visual Metacognition"

Charles Siewert - "Is Visual Experience Rich or Poor"

Jonathan Cohen - "The Grand Grand Illusion Illusion"

Mark Rowlands - "Two Dogmas of Consciousness"

Andy Clark - "Is Seeing All It Seems? Action, Reason, and the Grand Illusion"

As you can see, there are some real heavy-hitters in this bunch and the volume has proved very helpful. Even if you are approaching perceptual theory for the first time, this new area of scepticism will fascinate you and many of these articles will prove accessible.

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