Investigating Subjective Structure for Objective Presence

forthcoming

While presenting us with the external world, our perceptual experiences also give us information about ourselves as perceivers. For instance, we always see the world from a perspective: when we look outward, we are not only aware of the objects and people populating our surroundings, but we are also aware of our own position relative to them. Another example is touch: when we touch an object with our hand, we perceive the object’s texture and shape, but we are also aware of our own fingers against the surface of the object. The phenomenology of many of our perceptual experiences involves, thus, subjective traces. However, perceptual experiences involve yet another dimension: what philosophers have called a “sense of presence,” namely the fact that, in them, the objects, and the external environment in general, are given as existing out there, independently of our perception. How these subjective and objective dimensions of perception fit together is one of the most puzzling aspects of our perceptual relationship with the world. I-STOP investigates this puzzle. The project will demonstrate how subjectivity structures perceptual experiences, in particular in the visual and the tactile modalities, through the involvement of a sensory field; and will identify the specific contribution that sensory fields make to the sense of presence. I-STOP will generate a systematic comparative analysis of the phenomenologies of vision and touch in order to inquire into the following hypothesis: sensory fields, while having a subjective character, structure our perceptual access to objects and, if transparent to the right amount, actually make presence possible. The project will generate a questionnaire to empirically test this conceptual framework in virtual reality settings, where the transparency of interfaces is essential to our sense that the virtual environment is real.