Perceiving pictures

Trompe l’oeil and the Dorsal/Ventral Account of Picture Perception

“…2 In sum, sometimes the ventral stream and the dorsal stream attribute very different size properties to the very same object. The main claim of the dorsal/ventral account of picture perception is that this is also what happens each time we perceive pictures: our dorsal stream attributes properties to the picture surface and our ventral stream attributes properties to the depicted scene (Nanay 2008(Nanay , 2010(Nanay , 2011(Nanay , 2014. I elaborate on 2 I focused on the 3D Ebbinghaus illiusion because of the simplicity of the results, but it needs to be noted that the experimental conditions of this experiment have been criticized recently.…”

Visual Feeling of Presence

“…However, this case involves other non‐visual features such emotions, familiarity and memory and thus I will not be interested in this case either. Hence, I think the best candidate for an investigation about the nature of visual FOP is the remaining case, namely, the debate on picture perception, where it is widely agreed that, although depicted objects foster in the onlookers a sort of visual experience similar to that obtained in face‐to‐face perception (Nanay, , but see also ; Lopes, ), they cannot foster any FOP (Nanay, ), or at least not as much as real objects can: they show up as not present (Noë, , p. 84), involving a distinct presence‐in‐absence structure (p. 86), while face‐to‐face experience is comparable to touching the object (p. 87). A good and novel strategy, as well as an important starting point in order to find out what makes objects perceivable as present by us, is the investigation of the reason why we have FOP in face‐to‐face perception and we cannot have this in the perception of depicted objects – with some exceptions (§3).…”

Depicting Depictions

“…The component that determines the content of a picture is a non‐veridical visual experience of the depicted object . This experience results from the activity of the ventral stream, that is, from the activity of the visual subsystem that is ‘responsible for the identification and recognition’ of objects (Nanay, , p. 464). The picture surface, on the other hand, is represented by the dorsal stream, that is, by the visual subsystem that is responsible for the visual control of our motor actions (Nanay, , p. 464).…”

“…This experience results from the activity of the ventral stream, that is, from the activity of the visual subsystem that is ‘responsible for the identification and recognition’ of objects (Nanay, , p. 464). The picture surface, on the other hand, is represented by the dorsal stream, that is, by the visual subsystem that is responsible for the visual control of our motor actions (Nanay, , p. 464). Nanay further argues that we have good empirical reasons to think that the surfaces of depicted pictures cannot be perceived dorsally.…”

“…If we assume that the content of this experience is a result of the engagement of the relevant visual recognitional capacities, this satisfies conditions (i) and (ii) of my account. Now Nanay states that ventral perception ‘feeds into our recognitional abilities’ (Nanay, , p. 463). One could thus say that when a viewer sees a picture in a picture as a depiction, she recognizes the scene as depicted by the picture as required by condition (iii) of my account…”