Our perception of the world has to be an illusion

Author: Ballard D.

Source: Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 9, Numbers 5-6, 2002 , pp. 54-71(18)

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Abstract:

Our seamless perception of the world depends very much on the slow time scales used by conscious perception. Time scales longer than one second are needed to assemble conscious experience. At time scales shorter than one second, this seamlessness quickly deteriorates. Numerous experiments reveal the fragmentary nature of the visual information used to construct visual experience. Models of how the brain manages these fragments use the construct of a routine, which is a task-specific fragment of a sensory-motor program. This paper provides an overview of some of the experiments that test these models. Its aim is to show how the structures that they elucidate constrain the understanding of conscious perception.

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Dept of Computer Science, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627. Email: dana@cs.rochester.edu

Publication date: 2002-01-01