There is a chasm in current analytic philosophy of perception between disjunctivists (and naïve realists), on the one hand, and ‘conjunctivists’ (intentionalists), on the other. For more than a decade, scholars of phenomenology have debated how classical phenomenologists such as Husserl and Merleau‐Ponty are to be located vis‐à‐vis this chasm. While there seems to be an emerging consensus that Merleau‐Ponty was a disjunctivist avant la lettre, how to interpret Husserl remains contested.

Topology has been characterized as an unsuitable mathematical framework for the investigation of geometric-perceptual phenomena. This has been attributed to the highly abstract nature of topology leading to failures in tasks such as making distinctions between geometrical figures (e.g., a cube versus a sphere) in which the human perceptual system succeeds easily. An alternative thesis is proposed on both philosophical and empirical grounds. The present analysis applies the Müller-Lyer (ML) illusion as a method of investigation to examine the suitability of (...) topology in raising questions about geometric-perceptual phenomena and formulating potential answers to these questions. Not only will it be concluded that topology is a suitable mathematical framework in which one can formulate relevant questions and potential answers with respect to perceptual phenomena such as the ML illusion, it will also be discussed that topology will not be replaced by other means of spatial representation consistent with the findings that indicate its contributions to our daily spatial behavior along with other means such as Euclidean geometry. In addition, the analysis will be discussed with respect to two relevant themes: 1) the implications of the proposed view in relation to Husserl’s phenomenology and 2) the effect of developmental stages and education that may change the involvement of topology in such perceptual responses over time. (shrink)

A mechanistic explanation is a desired outcome in many studies of perception. Such explanations require discovering the processes that contribute to the realization of a perceptual phenomenon at different levels of information processing. The present analysis aims at investigating the obstacles to develop such mechanistic explanations and their potential solutions in the context of psychopathology. Geometric-Optical Illusions (GOIs) are among perceptual phenomena that have been studied to understand psychopathology in various clinical populations. In the present analysis, the GOIs will be (...) discussed as a methodological tool in the investigation of the mechanistic approach to understanding perception in such populations. I will argue that the fact that most such studies are mainly focused on the investigation of susceptibility to GOIs can only lead to classifying such phenomena or to reporting some correlations between different aspects of such phenomena with certain brain activities, without formulating a mechanistic explanation. The investigation of the variables that mediate perceptual phenomena at earlier stages of information processing is required for the formulation of such explanations. Thus, the objective of the present analysis is twofold: 1) showing how ignoring such variables have prevented the formulation of mechanistic explanations of responses to GOIs in clinical populations, such as schizophrenia and autism, 2) analyzing the methodological aspects of an effective approach in which a top-down guidance based on phenomenological insights (the first-person data) along with the insights provided by the existing theories help overcome obstacles in developing mechanistic explanations of GOIs. (shrink)

There is currently no consensus about a general account of hallucination and its object. The problem of hallucination has de facto generated contrasting accounts of perception, led to opposing epistemic and metaphysical positions, and, most significantly, exposed a manifold of diverging views concerning the intentionality of experience, in general, and perceptual intentionality, in particular. In this article, I aim to clarify the controversial status, experiential possibility, and intentional structure of hallucination qua distinctive phenomenon. The analysis will first detect a phenomenological, (...) Husserlian-informed concept of hallucination in its irreducibility to other kinds and modes of sensory experience. This will set the theoretical basis to develop an account of hallucination by means of a morphological description of those diversified structures of intentional consciousness that lend themselves to generate hallucinatory appearances. I will then describe both the turning of certain kinds of intentional experience into hallucinatory perceptions and the status of hallucinatory objects. This will support the possibility of hallucination in a strict and rigorous sense, elucidate the enigmatic claim that ‘in hallucination we are conscious of something while nothing truly appears,’ and offer a seminal perspective concerning the alleged problem that hallucinations pose on perceptual intentionality. With the aid of some crucial distinctions, I will then argue that hallucinations do not affect perceptual intentionality as a dyadic, relational structure. (shrink)

Various attempts have been made recently to bring Husserl into the contemporary analytic discussion on sensory illusion and hallucination. On the one hand, this has resulted in a renewed interest in what one might call a ‘phenomenology of sense-deception.’ On the other hand, it has generated contrasting—if not utterly incompatible—readings of Husserl’s own account of sense perception. The present study critically evaluates the contemporary discourse on illusion and hallucination, reassesses its proximity to Husserl’s reflection on sensory perception, and highlights the (...) philosophical limits and structural deficiencies of the current debate in light of some of Husserl’s insights. The analysis first provides a synopsis of the argumentative structures, aims, and assumptions informing the conjunctivism-disjunctivism debate. This assessment is then critically elaborated through the lens of Husserlian phenomenology in its historical and theoretical distance from the recent debate. Contrary to certain readings of Husserl, the reconstruction of some cardinal phenomenological themes provides all the elements necessary to dislocate his own account from the conjunctivism-disjunctivism dispute, by means of both a ‘global’ and a ‘local’ analysis, and both exegetically and theoretically. Most importantly, a ‘return’ to Husserl shows the philosophical untenability of the whole controversy as not only leaving untouched the core problem of perception but also altering some of its essential traits. This critique of the image of experience portrayed in the contemporary discussion is conducted through a phenomenological clarification of perception as a distinct ‘structure of rules’ of consciousness and, more specifically, by means of a descriptive analysis centered on the core notion of horizonal-intentionality. (shrink)

Interpretations abound about Husserl’s understanding of the relationship between veridical perceptual experience and hallucination. Some read him as taking the two to share the same distinctive essential nature, like contemporary conjunctivists. Others find in Husserl grounds for taking the two to fall into basically distinct categories of experience, like disjunctivists. There is ground for skepticism, however, about whether Husserl’s view could possibly fall under either of these headings. Husserl, on the one hand, operates under the auspices of the phenomenological reduction, (...) abstaining from use of any epistemic commitments about mind-transcendent reality, whereas conjunctive and disjunctive accounts of perceptual experience, on the other hand, are both premised on some form of metaphysical realism. There seems to be a basic incompatibility between the former approach and the latter. I examine this line of thinking and argue that the incompatibility is only apparent. (shrink)