Event Detail

We typically experience the objects around us as occupying a unified single space. But arguably psychophysics tells us that this cannot be understood in terms of the singularity of a spatial frame in which we locate objects. How should we explain the unity of spatial experience if this is the case? I call this the spatial unity puzzle. A second puzzle has to do with the fact that although physics tell us that some spatial qualities are not intrinsic qualities of objects, perceptual experience presents these qualities as intrinsic. It therefore seems that our spatial experience massively misrepresents some spatial qualities and this is in tension with the idea that it presents these qualities at all. How can we resolve this tension? I call this the spatial mismatch puzzle. The main purpose of this talk is to sketch a unified solution to the spatial unity and mismatch puzzles. I show that we can solve these puzzles by adopting the view that our experiences of spatial qualities are grounded in experiences of relations.