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Perception and Reality: Why a Wholly Empirical Paradigm is Needed to Understand Vision
Dale Purves1, Yaniv Morgenstern2, William T Wojtach3
1Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, Duke University Durham, NC, USA.
Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
|December 5, 2015
Summary
Perceptions often differ from reality, but vision science suggests our perceptions prioritize biological utility based on experience, not objective environmental features, for effective behavior.
Area of Science:
- Vision Science
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- A central puzzle in vision science concerns the discrepancy between perceptions and physical reality.
- Neural responses in vision typically support effective behaviors despite perceptual inaccuracies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose a new paradigm for understanding visual perception.
- To challenge the traditional view of vision as world-property recovery.
Main Methods:
- Theoretical argument and synthesis of existing evidence.
- Rejection of the assumption that vision's primary goal is to recover objective environmental properties.
Main Results:
- Perceptions are argued to reflect biological utility shaped by past experiences.
- This biological utility model offers an alternative to objective environmental feature recovery.
Conclusions:
- Conceiving vision through an empirical, utility-based lens provides a plausible framework.
- This approach helps explain how perceptions can diverge from reality yet facilitate effective action.
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