The Concomitant Variation of Stimuli and the Phenomenal Structures in Michotte

The experimental phenomenology of Michotte (1962; Thines, 1991: 15) shows that avoiding the stimulus error does not imply rejecting the concept of stim­ulus in experimental practice. Rather it is treated as a theoretical construct that denotes the controlled conditions that are varied to observe when and how the phenomenal structures systematically arise, which features

Phenomenal Mechanical Properties : Perception of Causality

Koffka (1955: 381) suggests that causality is one of the relationships encoun­tered in the phenomenal world that can be studied if the reductionist stance on perception is rejected, because it is unlikely that the perceived causality corresponds to a single stimulation or sensation. Earlier Stumpf (1930) had claimed that assuming that the fundamental concepts,

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Velocity and Time in the Perception of Movement in Phenomenology

From the phenomenological standpoint, the world of experience consists of perceivable things and events that display as many qualities, relations, states and changes as there are modes of appearances in Katz’s sense, of which move­ment has been the object of many phenomenological studies (see the classical Duncker, 1929; Oppenheimer, 1935). Brown’s work is devoted

Perceptual Forms of Movement and Naive Physics in Phenomenology

Kohler ([1917] 1927: 149) had already remarked that the knowledge explicitly formulated in physics has a kind of intuitive correlate in phenomenological form that is embedded in perception whose aim, however, is to fulfil the needs of a biological fit to the environment. The work of Bozzi (1958, 1959, 1961b) on the perception of

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The Logic of Experimental Phenomenology

Musatti (1958) argues that there is an analogy between mathematical and perceptual problems such that the logic of some fundamental questions of mathematical geometry can be used to account for the logic of experimental demonstrations in the phenomenology of perception. The rules of perception are derived from such evidence that the more it differs

The Phenomenal Space Continuum

Brentano (1988: ii8ff., 128) agrees with Mach (1905) that phenomenal space is distinguished from the abstract spaces of physics and geometry, but he criti­cizes Mach’s conception of pure spatial sensations. Every physical phenom­enon is individualized by the spatial element that is necessarily connected with the quality; hence, there is no space as an additional

The Self as Spatial Part in Phenomenology: Meaning and Relations in Space

Kohler (1938) argues that physical and phenomenal space must be distin­guished from the epistemological standpoint without being committed either to ontological dualism, which admits physical and psychic space as entities existing in the material and the mental domains, or to phenomenalist monism, which reduces every spatial entity to the numerically identical sensation each subject

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Forms of Visual Space in Phenomenology

Brentano argued that visual space is three-dimensional through analysis of the properties of the primary continuum that account for perceptual expe­rience. His conclusion puts the long-established claim that visual space is two-dimensional into question. Berkeley had reasoned that distance is a line directed to the eye projecting one and the same point on the

The Ordered Manifold of Depth in Phenomenology

Metzger (1957) says that the phenomenological study of visual space is in accord with the naive realism of everyday life, though this claim should not be taken as an ontological commitment. It means that if the space of expe­rience is studied solely on phenomenological grounds, the experimental evi­dence will show that it is primarily

The Kinematics of Visual Things in Space

The research into stereokinetic phenomena addresses the issue of deforma­tions through movements in visual space. Benussi called stereokinesis the phenomenon that occurs when an actual or apparent movement of a figure on a frontal-parallel plane yields a transformation, according to which it no longer appears as a plane figure but rather as a rigid

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The Intrinsic Geometry of Phenomena

I.Kohler (1953) claims that the word “space” has different denotations depend­ing on its use in physics, mathematics or psychology. Nevertheless he contends that the geometry of space might be envisaged even in the psychology of per­ception, provided the epistemological difference between these denotations is taken into account. In mathematical geometry the definition of concepts

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The Coordinate Systems of Movements and Spatial Appearances

Husserl (1907) carries out an analysis of the properties of visual space that counts as an example of the “analytic approach” to the geometry of percep­tual space (cf. Wagner, 2006: Ch. 4). Instead of assuming the axioms of one geometry (see the hierarchy of geometries in Suppes, 1977: 403) to derive the properties of

A Model of Perceptual Geometry in Phenomenology

Brentano’s reference to Beltrami raises an important question. In a conven­tionalist account of non-Euclidean geometries, the meaning and intuition of geometric concepts varies given the interpretation in a model. If it allows consistent deductions, the intuition needs to be adjusted to the interpretation of the model. Poincare (1898: 1) claimed that “sensations cannot give

Temporal Displacement and the Nature of Temporal Intervals

Temporal displacement (Zeitverschiebung) has been recognized since the dawn of scientific psychology. If subjects are asked to point at the place over which a pointer passes at the same time a synchronized sound is emitted, they seldom succeed in pointing at the right place. They often point at a place that is located either

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The Qualitative Order of Time

Rubin (1939) shows that temporal displacement is a variant of the perceptu­al structures that give appearances an order on the grounds of their qualita­tive features. Rubin presents three noises in a series of successions, varying their relative position and the temporal interval between them from 25 to about 300 msec. Two noises are identical,

Temporal Grouping

Time perception is articulated into structures in the strict sense of the term. Perceived elements are arranged in an orderly fashion by grouping factors, and this provides evidence that time perception does not consist solely in locating events according to their before/after succession in physical time. The early study of temporal grouping factors is

The Structure of Phenomenal Permanence

The work of Michotte ([1950] 1991) on phenomenal permanence shows that perceptual time consists of self-sufficient structures. Perception does convey information on properties, events and states of the perceivable world but as a function of such structures. Phenomenal permanence corresponds to per­ceiving a thing or an event as something that continues to exist or

The Phenomenological Meaning of Normal Illumination

The first example of divergence between phenomenological theories of per­ception regards the question of color constancy, which set the qualifying fea­tures of a phenomenological account since Hering. Katz (1930) quantifies the phenomenal magnitude of color constancy by designing a condition for the perceptual comparison of objects with varying illumination. A partition wall divides a

Meta-theory and Empirical Science

The second example of divergence regards the interpretation that Stumpf, Husserl and Kohler gave of the form that phenomenology as a philosophical theory should take in connection with empirical sciences. Stumpf and Kohler sided against Husserl on the question of the definition of phenomenology (cf. Fisette, 2009; Kaiser El-Safti, 2001; Rollinger, 1999: 83k). By

Perceiving the Difference and the Phenomenal Basis of Judgments

It may be quite surprising that despite a common phenomenological back­ground, Kohler (1913a) and Koffka (1917) address, contra Stumpf, arguments against the constancy hypothesis and the construct of unnoticed sensations. In fact, their criticism consists in charging Stumpf with a theory that might imply similar theoretical and methodological problems. Kohler ([1913a] 1971: 19 n.