Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion: (Philosophy of Mind Series)

The idea of a disjunctive theory of visual experiences first found expression in J.M. Hinton's pioneering 1973 book Experiences. In the first monograph in this exciting area since then, William Fish develops a comprehensive disjunctive theory, incorporating detailed accounts of the three core kinds of visual experience--perception, hallucination, and illusion--and an explanation of how perception and hallucination could be indiscriminable from one another without having anything in common. In the veridical case, Fish contends that the perception of a particular state of affairs involves the subject's being acquainted with that state of affairs, and that it is the subject's standing in this acquaintance relation that makes the experience possess a phenomenal character. Fish argues that when we hallucinate, we are having an experience that, while lacking phenomenal character, is mistakenly supposed by the subject to possess it. Fish then shows how this approach to visual experience is compatible with empirical research into the workings of the brain and concludes by extending this treatment to cover the many different types of illusion that we can be subject to.

Table of Contents:
1: Naïve Realism: The Theory and its Motivations 2: Naïve Realism: Past and Future 3: Perception 4: Hallucination 5: Consciousness and the Brain 6: Illusion

About the Author :
William Fish is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Massey University, New Zealand.

Review :
"In Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion, Fish does an admirable job of summarizing the current state of the debate about Naïve Realism, as well as advancing the dialectic beyond that state. Most importantly, he identifies a promising yet hitherto overlooked motivation for Naïve Realism, one which should bring even Naive Realism's most trenchant critics to admit that the view is worth taking seriously. ... In short, anyone on either side of the debate over Naïve Realism, and those wanting to learn what all the fuss is about, would do well to study Fish's book closely." --Philosophical Books "[Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion] is a substantial contribution. Fish communicates a clear sense of the philosophical landscape that naïve realists confront, and defends a stimulating proposal about how naïve realists should deal with key parts of this landscape.... the book as a whole is a clear presentation of an intriguing and comprehensive naïve?realist view, a work that harpens our understanding of the debate to which this theory contributes."--Matthew Kennedy, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "[Fish's] core thesis is that the phenomenal character of any visual experience- in so far as it has one-consists in being acquainted with mind-independent facts. Fish's central contentions are clearly and carefully presented, their motivations and challenges even-handedly laid out, and interesting responses to the latter are offered. His view is illuminatingly placed in relation to recent discussions in the philosophy of perceptionEL Fish's book is recommended to anyone interested in disjunctivism for providing, in a reader-friendly format, both an introduction to the state of the art in the disjunctivist approach, and a stimulating version of it."--Anders Nes, Mind