Abstract
Part I of this series used the idea, more properly hypothesis, that perception works by model fitting. The hypothesis is an important key to clarifying perennial issues about science and the arts and about, for instance, consciousness and free will. What is involved goes beyond what practical people call ‘mere semantics’ and ‘mere philosophy’. For instance, it has practical implications for scientists’ professional codes of conduct and for the social experiment we call free market democracy, a theme to be developed in the third and final part of this series. Here in Part II, the model fitting hypothesis is discussed in more detail along with some key evidence. That evidence – much of it checkable by any observant person, with no need for specialist equipment – includes a class of perceptual phenomena to be referred to here as ‘acausality illusions’, in which, in some cases, perceived times precede the arrival of relevant sensory data. Such phenomena are consistent with the model fitting hypothesis, which predicts that perceived times of outside-world events must be earlier than, and perceived times of internal decisions later than, associated physical events in the nervous system. Associated timespans are typically a few tenths of a second.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.