Philosophy of Perception in the Psychologist’s Laboratory

Abstract

Perception is our primary means of accessing the external world. What is the nature of this core mental process? Although this question is at the center of scientific research on perception, it has also long been explored by philosophers, who ask fundamental questions about our capacity to perceive: Do our different senses represent the world in commensurable ways? How much of our environment are we aware of at one time? Which aspects of perception are “objective” and which “subjective”? What properties count as perceptual in the first place? Although these parallel research programs typically proceed independently in contemporary scholarship, previous eras recognized more active collaboration across philosophical and scientific approaches to perception. Here, we review an emerging research focus that aims to reunite these approaches by putting long-standing philosophical questions to empirical test. Unlike more general philosophical inspiration, this work draws a direct line from prominent philosophical conjectures or thought experiments about perception to key tests in the laboratory—such that the relevant experiments would not (and even could not) have proceeded as it did without the preceding philosophical discussion. Finally, we explore themes arising from these interactions and point to further philosophical questions that might be amenable to empirical approaches.