The Muller-lyer illusion explained and its theoretical importance reconsidered
Biology and Philosophy 11 (3):321-338 (1996)
| Abstract | The Müller-Lyer illusion is the natural consequence of the construction of the vertebrate eye, retina and visual processing system. Due to imperfections in the vertebrate eye and retina and due to the subsequent processing in the system by ever increasing receptive fields, the visual information becomes less and less precise with respect to exact location and size. The consequence of this is that eventually the brain has to calculate a weighted mean value of the information, which is spread out over a population of neurons. In the case of the Müller-Lyer illusion this inevitably leads to extension of one and reduction of the other line. The arguments presented explain several published experimental results concerning the Müller-Lyer illusion and shed new light upon the philosophical neutrality of observation sentences. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesFrances Egan (1998). The Moon Illusion. Philosophy of Science 65 (4):604-23.
Jonathan Cohen (2002). The Grand Grand Illusion Illusion. Journal of Consciousness Studies 9 (5-6):141-157.
Arve Vorland Pedersen & Hermundur Sigmundsson (2004). On the Subject of Perceptual Illusions, and the Ambiguity of Perceptual Information. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (6):889-889.
Kazem Sadegh-Zadeh (1982). Perception, Illusion, and Hallucination. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 3 (2):159-191.
Doren Recker (2010). How to Confuse Organisms with Mousetraps: Machine Metaphors and Intelligent Design. Zygon 45 (3):647-664.
Wilhelm Börner (1917). V. Franz G. Müller-Lyer. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 30 (1-4):95-97.
David H. Sanford (1981). Illusions and Sense-Data. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 6 (1):371-385.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads29 ( #42,362 of 549,069 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,185 of 549,069 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
