When our eyes are closed, what, if anything, do we visually experience?
Draft Available on Author's Homepage; Final Version in 2011 Monograph (2009)
| Abstract | This chapter raises a number of questions, not adequately addressed by any researcher to date, about what we see when our eyes are closed. In the historical literature, the question most frequently discussed was what we see when our eyes are closed in the dark (and so entirely or almost entirely deprived of light). In 1819, Purkinje, who was the first to write extensively about this, says he sees "wandering cloudy stripes" that shrink slowly toward the center of the field. Other later authors also say such stripes are commonly seen, but they differ about their characteristics. In 1897, for example, Scripture describes them as spreading violet rings. After Scripture, the cloudy stripes disappear from psychologists' reports. Other psychologists describe the darkened visual field as typically -- not just idiosyncratically, for themselves -- very nearly black (e.g., Fechner), mostly neutral gray (e.g., Hering), or bursting with color and shape (e.g., Ladd). I loaned beepers to five subjects and collected their reports about randomly sampled moments of experience with their eyes closed. Their reports were highly variable, and one subject denied ever having any visual experience at all (not even of blackness or grayness) in any of his samples. I also briefly discuss a few other issues: whether we can see through our eyelids, whether the closed-eye visual field is "cyclopean", whether the field is flat or has depth or distance, and whether we can control it directly by acts of will. The resolution of such questions, I suggest, will not be straightforward. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | No categories specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesMatthew Nudds (2001). Experiencing the Production of Sounds. European Journal of Philosophy 9 (2):210-229.
Peter Murphy (2006). A Strategy for Assessing Closure (Epistemic Closure Principle). Erkenntnis 65 (3):365-383.
Carol Wood (1979). Notes on the Stability of Separably Closed Fields. Journal of Symbolic Logic 44 (3):412-416.
Peter Murphy (2006). A Strategy for Assessing Closure. Erkenntnis 65 (3):365 - 383.
Sven Ove Hansson (1992). In Defense of Base Contraction. Synthese 91 (3):239 - 245.
Alicia Ouellette (2009). Eyes Wide Open: Surgery to Westernize the Eyes of an Asian Child. Hastings Center Report 39 (1):15-18.
Frederick T. Travis & R. K. Wallace (1999). Autonomic and EEG Patterns During Eyes-Closed Rest and Transcendental Meditation (TM) Practice: The Basis for a Neural Model of TM Practice. Consciousness and Cognition 8 (3):302-318.
Michael G. F. Martin (1998). Setting Things Before the Mind. In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind. Oxford University Press.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads37 ( #31,859 of 548,984 )Recent downloads (6 months)3 ( #25,729 of 548,984 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
