Skip to main content
The Australian National University
School of Philosophy
ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences
School of Philosophy ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences
 School of Philosophy

School of Philosophy

  • Home
  • People
  • Events
    • Event series
    • Conferences
      • Past conferences
    • Past events
  • News
    • Audio/Video Recordings
  • Research
  • Study with us
    • Prizes and scholarships
  • Visit us
  • Contact us
 Centres & Projects

Centres & Projects

  • Centre for Consciousness
  • Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory
  • Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences
  • Humanising Machine Intelligence
 Related Sites

Related Sites

  • Research School of Social Sciences
  • ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences

Centre for Consciousness

Related Sites

Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory

Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences

School of Philosophy

Administrator

Breadcrumb

HomeUpcoming EventsBrentyn Ramm (ANU): First-person Experiments
Brentyn Ramm (ANU): First-person Experiments

First-person approaches to investigating experience are often criticised for their inability to resolve phenomenological disputes. Does a tilted plate look elliptical in some sense or does it look like a tilted circle (or both)? Philosophers disagree. Are there reliable first-person methods available to decide what shows up in experience? One method proposed is that of phenomenal contrast (Siegel, 2007), that is contrasting a tilted plate with a non-tilted plate to see if there is a phenomenal difference. Whilst it is clear that there is an experiential difference, the method does not decide the original question as to whether ‘elliptical’ is an appropriate description of how the tilted plate appears to me. I propose that the method of contrast can be enhanced by using apparatus for making the contrast and for recording the outcome of the contrast. I refer to these methods as first-person experiments. The goal of this paper is to illustrate a first-person experimental methodology, and make some progress in deciding what shows up in visual experience. I investigate the following questions: (1) Does my hand look larger than my foot? (2) Does a tilted plate look elliptical? I present first-person experiments in support of these two hypotheses, in particular, showing that my hand usually takes up more space in the visual field than my foot, and that a tilted plate takes up an elliptical shaped area in the visual field. I discuss objections to the experiments, and argue against the view that these investigations just tell us about the image on the retina rather than visual experience.

Date & time

  • Tue 27 May 2014, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Location

Coombs Seminar Room B

Event Series

Philsoc seminars
Back to topicon-arrow-up-solid
The Australian National University
 
APRU
IARU
 
edX
Group of Eight Member

Acknowledgement of Country

The Australian National University acknowledges, celebrates and pays our respects to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of the Canberra region and to all First Nations Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and work, and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history.


Contact ANUCopyrightDisclaimerPrivacyFreedom of Information

+61 2 6125 5111 The Australian National University, Canberra

TEQSA Provider ID: PRV12002 (Australian University) CRICOS Provider Code: 00120C ABN: 52 234 063 906