Illusion and the World We See: Imagine you are looking at a bowl of strawberries. You have a visual experience of seeing red objects at a distance. But how does that experience relate to what is in fact in front of you? This course explores recent and interdisciplinary efforts to answer one of the oldest philosophical questions: What do we see? Are our ordinary visual experiences anything like what’s “really there”? Should we understand our perceptual experiences as illusory, or at least as heavily constructed? In attempting to answer these questions, we’ll also ask: What can we learn from thinking about non-human animal visual systems? And what about the kinds of visual experiences made possible by new technologies? For example, are the experiences we have in virtual reality best thought of as accurate experiences of a real, if virtual, world? Or does a world have to be physical for it to be real? What is synesthesia (e.g. when letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored), and how does it relate to what we count as ordinary visual awareness? In striving to understand our perceptual relation with the world around us, we’ll work together to prepare you for a successful four years at Eckerd.
- Profesor: Louise Daoust