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.

Absolute Properties of Appearances

Koffka (1917) starts from Kohler’s arguments to focus his criticism on Stumpf’s paradox. Stumpf (1883: 33-34) introduces the paradox to support the existence of noticing thresholds and to defend the view that noticing is not equivalent to attention. Stumpf conceives the paradox as an extreme case in which a series of appearances change so

Phenomenological Commitments

The divergence on empirical, theoretical and methodological issues does not affect the core of the phenomenology of perception as it has emerged through the various philosophical and scientific theories in which it is embedded. This core consists of the following minimal set of commitments. Perception is an independent cognitive function. If considered from the

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