Visually Perceiving the Intentions of Others

Abstract

I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied 'animacy' stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally.

Perceiving agency

“…9 See Brogaard and Chomanski (2015), Helton (2016), Smortchkova (2017), andToribio (2018). 10 Grace Helton (2017), in a similar spirit, argues that representations of, for example, fleeing-which I construe as a kind of animate motion-are perceptual from the observation that they do not have the functional profile of belief. As Helton notes, this argument is open to the objection that the relevant representations are neither beliefs nor perceptual representations.…”

“…3 I consider the proposal that animacy is life in more detail below. 4 See, for example,Proust (2003),Pacherie (2005),Spaulding (2015), andHelton (2017).…”

Epistemological solipsism as a route to external world skepticism

“…25 This argument originates in Helton (2018: 249-51). 26 See Helton (2018) for the argument that you literally visually perceive him as chasing the bus, which might help explain why correlative beliefs are difficult to resist. 27 If names rigidly designate individuals across worlds, without constraints on the kinds of individuals they can pick out, then beliefs about the mere existence of certain named social entities, such as Botswana exists, will turn out to be true in the solipsistic world.…”

Beyond the icon: Core cognition and the bounds of perception

“…10 And this should give those endorsing their PP-conformity pause for thought. For when discussing the contents of perceptual representation, theorists typically wish to avoid proposing that perceptual contents take a stand on "arcane" metaphysical issues insofar as this is possible (Farrenikova, 2013;Helton, 2018). But, given the above, this is precisely what the PP-conformity of an AMR representing, for example, speed or brightness would do; since the mereology of these magnitudes/intensities is debatable, postulating PP-conformity has the potential to leave the relevant AMRs forever misrepresenting reality in some significant sense (indeed, given the conclusions of Section 3.2, it runs the risk of doing so needlessly).…”