The Physics and Psychology of Illusions
NAME: ADITI KADAM
YEAR: SYBA “B”
ROLL NO.: 247
TOPIC: THE PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSICS OF ILLUSIONS
GUIDE: PROF. MAUREEN
Sr. No: | TOPIC: | Page No: | 1. | Consciousness: An illusion? | 3. | 2. | Perception | 6. | 3. | Physics and Illusions | 13. | 4. | Color and Light illusions | 20. | 5. | Psychology and illusions | 24. | 6. | Conclusion | 32. | 7. | Bibliography | 33. |
1. CONSCIOUSNESS: AN ILLUSION?
Consciousness could be at once the most obvious and the most difficult thing we could investigate. We seem either to have to use consciousness to investigate itself, which would sound slightly weird an idea, or to have to disentangle ourselves from the very concept we want to study. Hence, we are now confronted with some tricky questions like- What does consciousness do? Could we have evolved without it? Could consciousness be an illusion? What is consciousness, anyway? What we need to consider is that how could the electric firing of millions of tiny brains produce this- our private, subjective, conscious experience?
And if we must understand consciousness, we must solve this problem seriously. This problem is a modern incarnation of the famous mind-body problem. The trouble while understanding this is that in ordinary human experiences there seem to be two entirely different kinds of thing, with no obvious way to bring the two together. On one hand, we have our own experiences. For example: take a cup of coffee or a pen- and just look, smell, and feel its texture. Do you believe there is a real objective cup there, with actual tea in it, made of atoms and molecules? Aren 't you also having a private subjective experience of the cup and the taste of the tea – the 'what it is like ' for you? What is this experience made of? It seems to be something completely different from actual tea and molecules. All these
YEAR: SYBA “B”
ROLL NO.: 247
TOPIC: THE PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSICS OF ILLUSIONS
GUIDE: PROF. MAUREEN
Sr. No: | TOPIC: | Page No: | 1. | Consciousness: An illusion? | 3. | 2. | Perception | 6. | 3. | Physics and Illusions | 13. | 4. | Color and Light illusions | 20. | 5. | Psychology and illusions | 24. | 6. | Conclusion | 32. | 7. | Bibliography | 33. |
1. CONSCIOUSNESS: AN ILLUSION?
Consciousness could be at once the most obvious and the most difficult thing we could investigate. We seem either to have to use consciousness to investigate itself, which would sound slightly weird an idea, or to have to disentangle ourselves from the very concept we want to study. Hence, we are now confronted with some tricky questions like- What does consciousness do? Could we have evolved without it? Could consciousness be an illusion? What is consciousness, anyway? What we need to consider is that how could the electric firing of millions of tiny brains produce this- our private, subjective, conscious experience?
And if we must understand consciousness, we must solve this problem seriously. This problem is a modern incarnation of the famous mind-body problem. The trouble while understanding this is that in ordinary human experiences there seem to be two entirely different kinds of thing, with no obvious way to bring the two together. On one hand, we have our own experiences. For example: take a cup of coffee or a pen- and just look, smell, and feel its texture. Do you believe there is a real objective cup there, with actual tea in it, made of atoms and molecules? Aren 't you also having a private subjective experience of the cup and the taste of the tea – the 'what it is like ' for you? What is this experience made of? It seems to be something completely different from actual tea and molecules. All these
Bibliography: Galotti, K.(2007) defines perception as the process of taking sensory input and interpreting it meaningfully. * Theories of perception: We shall consider two important theories of perception as stated by Galotti, K.(2007). The first theory is called the ‘Feature Integration theory’ by Treisman(FIT: Treisman,1986) : According to this theory, the first stage of perception is the pre-attentive stage 3. PHYSICS AND ILLUSIONS: It was the German Physicist, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) who introduced the notion that visual perceptions are unconscious inferences (von Helmholtz 1866) * Ponzo Illusion: The Ponzo illusion is a geometrical-optical illusion that was first demonstrated by the Italian psychologist Mario Ponzo (1882–1960) in 1911.