Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion?

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.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 ―metapsychologyalva noe is professor of philosophy, university of california, santa cruzexcerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved.editor's prefacethe 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. 93-10