The geometry of visual space and the nature of visual experience

Masrour, Farid

doi:10.1007/s11098-014-0390-0

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…And just like pain grows more painful, extendedness would grow larger with a stronger excitation of nerve fibers. More often, even phenomenological studies involve a mixture of notions of internal and external space, as in Wagner [ 59 ] and Masrour [ 71 , 72 ]. According to integrated information theory, colors must correspond to causal sub-structures.…”

Section: Figure A1mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Does Space Feel the Way it Does? Towards a Principled Account of Spatial Experience

Haun

Tononi

2019

Entropy

123

179

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There must be a reason why an experience feels the way it does. A good place to begin addressing this question is spatial experience, because it may be more penetrable by introspection than other qualities of consciousness such as color or pain. Moreover, much of experience is spatial, from that of our body to the visual world, which appears as if painted on an extended canvas in front of our eyes. Because it is ‘right there’, we usually take space for granted and overlook its qualitative properties. However, we should realize that a great number of phenomenal distinctions and relations are required for the canvas of space to feel ‘extended’. Here we argue that, to be experienced as extended, the canvas of space must be composed of countless spots, here and there, small and large, and these spots must be related to each other in a characteristic manner through connection, fusion, and inclusion. Other aspects of the structure of spatial experience follow from extendedness: every spot can be experienced as enclosing a particular region, with its particular location, size, boundary, and distance from other spots. We then propose an account of the phenomenal properties of spatial experiences based on integrated information theory (IIT). The theory provides a principled approach for characterizing both the quantity and quality of experience by unfolding the cause-effect structure of a physical substrate. Specifically, we show that a simple simulated substrate of units connected in a grid-like manner yields a cause-effect structure whose properties can account for the main properties of spatial experience. These results uphold the hypothesis that our experience of space is supported by brain areas whose units are linked by a grid-like connectivity. They also predict that changes in connectivity, even in the absence of changes in activity, should lead to a warping of experienced space. To the extent that this approach provides an initial account of phenomenal space, it may also serve as a starting point for investigating other aspects of the quality of experience and their physical correspondents.

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Section: Figure A1mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Does Space Feel the Way it Does? Towards a Principled Account of Spatial Experience

Haun

Tononi

2019

Entropy

123

179

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“…If the experienced world of a neonate is unstructured, a “great blooming, buzzing confusion”, that of the adult is assuredly not. Consciously experienced visual space, for instance, has a non-Euclidean geometry [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Formal analyses of color experiences yields a variety of structures, including the RGB cube, the Schrödinger color solid, manifolds, fiber bundles, and the CIE xy-chromaticity space [ 5 , 6 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fact, Fiction, and Fitness

Prakash

Fields

Hoffman

et al. 2020

Entropy

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A theory of consciousness, whatever else it may do, must address the structure of experience. Our perceptual experiences are richly structured. Simply seeing a red apple, swaying between green leaves on a stout tree, involves symmetries, geometries, orders, topologies, and algebras of events. Are these structures also present in the world, fully independent of their observation? Perceptual theorists of many persuasions—from computational to radical embodied—say yes: perception veridically presents to observers structures that exist in an observer-independent world; and it does so because natural selection shapes perceptual systems to be increasingly veridical. Here we study four structures: total orders, permutation groups, cyclic groups, and measurable spaces. We ask whether the payoff functions that drive evolution by natural selection are homomorphisms of these structures. We prove, in each case, that generically the answer is no: as the number of world states and payoff values go to infinity, the probability that a payoff function is a homomorphism goes to zero. We conclude that natural selection almost surely shapes perceptions of these structures to be non-veridical. This is consistent with the interface theory of perception, which claims that natural selection shapes perceptual systems not to provide veridical perceptions, but to serve as species-specific interfaces that guide adaptive behavior. Our results present a constraint for any theory of consciousness which assumes that structure in perceptual experience is shaped by natural selection.

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“…Notes 16 For a brief review of some of the key findings in this research see Masrour (2015). 17 Hill (2009, ch.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Space Perception, Visual Dissonance and the Fate of Standard Representationalism

Masrour

2016

Nous

Self Cite

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This paper argues that a common form of representationalism has trouble accommodating empirical findings about visual space perception. Vision science tells us that the visual system systematically gives rise to different experiences of the same spatial property. This, combined with a naturalistic account of content, suggests that the same spatial property can have different veridical looks. I use this to argue that a common form of representationalism about spatial experience must be rejected. I conclude by considering alternatives to this view.

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The geometry of visual space and the nature of visual experience

Cited by 12 publications

References 54 publications

Why Does Space Feel the Way it Does? Towards a Principled Account of Spatial Experience

Why Does Space Feel the Way it Does? Towards a Principled Account of Spatial Experience

Fact, Fiction, and Fitness

Space Perception, Visual Dissonance and the Fate of Standard Representationalism

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