Throughout the fall and winter terms, the Department of Philosophy hosts a series of lectures delivered by guest speakers/visiting and current professors. Unless otherwise noted, lectures will take place on Fridays at 1:00 P.M. in Richcraft Hall, room 3224. This schedule is subject to change.

Dr. Kevin Lande
Talk title: The Spatial Unity of Perception

Friday, November 3rd, 2023
1:00 PM EST

Abstract:
Perceptual experience seems to represent things as related within a common, unified space. Within vision, not only do I experience the pen as horizontal on my desk and a book as vertical on the shelf, I also experience the pen as right of and beneath the book. Yet the empirical consensus is that space is coded with respect to a diversity of reference frames. The pen is represented according to an origin, axes, and scale based on the desk. Likewise, the book is represented within “shelf-space," which is represented within room-space, not to mention eye-space and head-space. The puzzle of unification is: why does perceptual experience seem to be spatially unified, when space is coded with respect to multiple reference frames? One possibility is that spatial content is ultimately experienced with respect to a single, uniform spatial framework––based on my eyes, body, scene, or some more abstract “behavioral space.” Another possibility is that experience is not as spatially unified as it seems. Perhaps we simply know how to skillfully shift from one reference frame to another in navigating our world, without regularly representing things within some common reference frame. Neither of these approaches can handle what I call “multiplex experiences,” as when I experience the orientation of the book by representing it as sitting vertically on top of a tilted bookshelf. I will argue that the spatial unity of perception depends in part on our ability to compose spatial contents with different reference frames into structured representations of space.

To register for this talk, please visit our website: https://carleton.ca/philosophy/colloquium/