IngentaConnect Susceptibility to the Muller-Lyer Illusion, Theory-Neutral Observ...

Authors: McCauley, Robert N.; Henrich, Joseph

Source: Philosophical Psychology, Volume 19, Number 1, Number 1/February 2006 , pp. 79-101(23)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Abstract:

Jerry Fodor has consistently cited the persistence of illusions–-especially the Müller-Lyer illusion–-as a principal form of evidence for the informational encapsulation of modular input systems. Fodor proposed that these modules' stereotypical deliverances about how the world appears could serve as a theory-neutral observational foundation for (scientific) knowledge. For a variety of reasons Fodor rejected Paul Churchland's putative counter-examples to these mental modules' cognitive impenetrability. Fodor's discussions suggest that demonstrating modules' cognitive penetrability would hinge on showing that because subjects either (a) acquire some explicit theory or (b) gain wider perceptual experience, they would, in the synchronic case, very quickly cease to experience the illusion or, at any rate, experience a mitigated version of it. Diachronic penetration, by contrast, would involve processes that deliver one of these outcomes over a decidedly longer period. Marshall Segall, Donald Campbell, and Melville Herskovits' (1966) research across seventeen cultures shows that culturally influenced differences in visual experience during the first two decades of life substantially affect how people experience the Müller-Lyer stimuli. In some of the societies most people were virtually immune to the illusion. Such findings call Fodor's showcase evidence for the cognitive impenetrability of the visual input system into question and, thereby, threaten to block the path to the theory-neutral, observational consensus that he scouts.

The full text electronic article is available for purchase. You will be able to download the full text electronic article after payment.

$38.34 plus tax Refund Policy

Susceptibility to the Müller-Lyer Illusion, Theory-Neutral Observation, and the Diachronic Penetrability of the Visual Input System