**Links to**: [[10 Bias, or Falling into Place]], [[05 Prediction]], [[Optical illusion]], [[Shepard]], [[Perception]], [[Adaptation]], [[Spiral]], [[Continuity]], [[Disillusion]], [[Hallucination]] ### [[Postulate]]: Illusions are just as veridical as any other perception, and, because of their ambiguous effects, contain _more_ information than we tend to give them credit for when we dismiss them as, um, _illusory_. An illusion, like an allegory or a mask, _invites_ knowledge: whatever seems unstable, and demands gratification/clarification/stabilization: that is what inspires thought. In our context, these supposed errors/effects of perception can be understood as physiologically _rational_. They provide evidence to the mechanics of the embodied (gravitational) reasoning of a [[Xpectator]] as they deal with spacetime: there is _more_ information than pejoratively assumed in an illusion, not less, precisely because we are able to actively infer about it, by moving and changing. Illusions can be understood to serve as “natural”, embodied experiments that reveal the actively inferential in all perception-cognition-action. Illusions demonstrate how adaptive systems engage in hypothesis-testing about environmental causes, crucially depending on dynamic engagement through action to gather evidence. Not just their effective, generative ambiguity, but also: the (in)formative nature of illusions stems from how they reveal the normally inaccessible inferential machinery underlying perception. The very fact that we can recognize something as “illusory” indicates *metacognitive monitoring*—the ability to hold multiple competing models simultaneously and evaluate their fit with incoming sensory data. This way we can reconceptualize illusions from perceptual “mistakes” to valuable windows into the active, embodied, and gravitationally-situated nature of thought. And, in many regards, we really are no more complex than moths flying towards flames. %% PP “controlled hallucination” — not even controlled, for our radical PP purposes: just hallucination. Take notes from Duerr as well, on “Can witches fly?” The problem with the authoritative predictions of the Enlightenment, compare w/ Duerr notes from Signal: ### New/critical realism, JJ Gibson, PP hallucinations/illusions “In “A Brief History of New Realism,” Maurizio Ferraris - the other founding member of twenty-first-century New Realism - traces the origins of the turn to six American philosophers who, back in the 1910s, called themselves the “New Realists,” namely, Walter Taylor Marvin, Ralph Barton Perry, Edward Gleason Spaulding, Edwin Bissel Holt, William Pepperell Montague, and Walter Boughton Pitkin: Ferraris (xoi6), p. 593. These names are unlikely to ring a bell to the reader - which speaks for the little success of the movement. New Realism had no Bertrand Russell nor any Wittgenstein or Moore. In the successive phase of “critical realism”, it had Lovejoy, Santayana, and Sellars (Roy Wood, father of the more famous Wilfrid Sellars), but the philosophical mainstream went along with analytic philosophy, which seemed to envisage a stronger break and more interesting new approaches. A few comments about this passage are in order. First, the New Realists of the early twentieth century were not doing analytic or scientific metaphysics but, rather, philosophy of perception; they were irguing with British Idealists such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Bernard Bosanquet about whether the content of perceptual episodes was confined to the mind. Second, Ferraris’s conclusion that the New Realists became extinct with the advent of the linguistic turn is a little too hasty. Although it is true that, on some narratives, New Realism was abandoned because it embraced a very demanding version of perceptual realism (one requiring that hallucinations and illusions be just as real as veridical perceptions), we should not forget that the New Realists did strongly influence the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson, who in turn influenced Hubert Dreyfus’s highly influential reading of Heidegger. From there to Harman’s object-oriented philosophy there are but a few steps. As for the “interesting new approaches” alluded to by Ferraris, in the Figure/Ground interview Priest himself identified a strong theme of realism in analytic philosophy throughout the twentieth century. The resurgence of realism in analytic metaphysics that Priest refers to is most likely the realism in the 1970s of Kripke, David Lewis, and David Armstrong, who in a way were rejecting the anti-realism of Carnap, Quine, and Nelson Goodman.p. 4 SANTAYANA AND PERCEPTION, AAAAA — DO IT! _______ An illusion is, in a way, very similar to what Nathan Brown explains in “Absent blue wax”, that is: the concept for etymonline: "illusion (n.) mid-14c., "mockery, scorning, derision;" late 14c., "act of deception; deceptive appearance, apparition; delusion of the mind," from Old French illusion "a mocking, deceit, deception" (12c.), from Latin illusionem (nominative illusio) "a mocking, jesting, jeering; irony," from past-participle stem of illudere "mock at," literally "to play with," from assimilated form of in- "at, upon" (from PIE root *en "in") + ludere "to play" (see ludicrous). Sense of "deceptive appearance" first developed in Church Latin. Related: Illusioned "full of illusions" (1920)." >"Understanding can yield objective knowledge, but it also contains a temptation to illusion. Kant tries to diagnose and criticize this temptation in his examination of ‘pure reason’. ‘The logic of illusion’ examines the idea of illusion and looks at the subjective and objective sides that form Kant's analysis. Kant describes reason in its illegitimate use and refutes claims to knowledge that this faculty tempts us to make. He divides rationalist metaphysics into three categories: rational psychology, concerning the nature of the soul; cosmology, concerning the nature of the universe and our status within it; and theology, concerning the existence of God. Each, he states, proceeds in accordance with its own version of illusory argument which leads towards fallacy." [[Kant]], a very short introduction, p 54. ### Illusion: In _ludere_: in play Illusions are supposed to be, _as if_. The logic of as if, or _als ob_ (Vaighinger), ""Deleuze attacks Hegel and others in what we can call—though Deleuze did not—the “identitarian” tradition first of all by means of a radicalized reading of Kant, whose genius, as Deleuze explains in Kant’s Critical Philosophy (1963), was to have conceived of a purely immanent critique of reason—a critique that did not seek “errors” of reason produced by external causes, but rather “illusions” that arise from within reason itself by the illegitimate (transcendent) uses of the syntheses of consciousness. Deleuze characterized his own work as a philosophy of immanence, arguing that Kant himself had failed to realize fully the ambitions of his critique, for at least two reasons: first, the failure to pursue a fully immanent critique, and second, the failure to propose a genetic account of real experience, resting content with the account of the conditions of possible experience. Continue reading: Michelle Grier - Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion (Modern European Philosophy) (2007) - libgen.li.pdf Add notes [[Nietzsche]] _will to illusion_. Deleuze and Guattari also employ, in the conclusion to [[A Thousand Plateaus]] but also in other places, the notion of illusion: "An order-word machine overcodes language, a faciality machine and overcodes the body and even the head, a machine of enslavement 8 overcodes or axiomatizes the earth: these are in no way illusions, but real machinic effects. We can no longer place the assemblages on a quantitative scale measuring how close or far they are from the plane of consistency." p. 514. ### Illusions, hallucinations, myths, fictions Non-Aristotelian account of syllogistic inferentialism: perceptual inference. A striking account of the inferential processes of perception comes from Peirce. Disappearing penny demonstration. Mind shapes intuition, as in Kant, but he assumed pre-existing mold of necessary a priori truths, a formulation which would apply at large. But we don't have that access to the mind, the mind is guessing (Bayesian updating). Space and time through Einstein, euclidean space and linear time are not to be upheld against these new visions of the world. All is inferential, nothing is direct, and there's only a pragmatic access to things. I was inspired to think about some of the contextual questions posed for this event: **Do we know what our body needs... ?** No. But since we're short on time, I will try to answer the second half of the question: "do we know what our body can do?" (Spinoza) A lot of what our body can do is inaccessible to the body as something thinking about itself. Famously: we cannot control our heartbeat, our liver enzymes, etc. These mechanisms just happen. There are, however, things that we cannot control but where we do gain access to these mechanisms, to what our body can do: it can generate illusions, and it's very good at that. The image you see behind me is of two tables. Cognitive scientist Roger Shepard introduced this illusion in his paper "Turning the tables" in 1990, though he had been working on these types of things since the 60s. Believe it or not, the two rectangles are identical, but you perceive them as drastically different because perception has a decisive relationship with dimensionality and perspective. Even though he devoted most of his career to the study of phenomena like illusions, he persistently considered them, as do most of us in everyday discourse, to be anomalies, to be exceptions to the rule. Illusions, however, are not anomalous or exceptional: they are the fabric of perception, and I am obsessed with pointing this out, which is why I thought to bring it up as something quite fundamental that our body does. We can understand illusions as the way our body copes with indecision. Indecision may be uncomfortable and feel like a waste of time, at times, but it is fundamental to everything we do, and it's something we should particularly praise in our sociality: we need to consider others before we can make decisions, especially design decisions, and this creates a lot of hesitation, a lot of indecision. How are we to make the right choice for many, many bodies at the same time? So, even though illusions are often treated as negative effects of perception, negative side-effects of what our bodies do, I like to treat them as fundamental conceptual moments where the body actually realizes that it's a body. We may not be able to precisely control our heartbeat, but understanding that illusions take place all over the place is a good start for understanding that a lot of the transparencies and neutralities we normally go by, are the real "illusions". Sorry for the ambiguous, or illusory, double-meaning. Illusions allow us to see perception _as_ perception, to understand that it's bound to effecting its own mechanisms onto things that do not themselves possess these effects we see. Being open to "perception as controlled hallucination" means going beyond even this idea of control: there's not even that much control; the control emerges from the collective, social decisions we make, as bodies move through spaces and clash, bond or get lost in them. Illusions are pretty revealing of what our body can do. Considering the massive ecological disruption that we're causing, maybe it's better to just slow down for a while and contemplate how our concepts, habits and attitudes function, in fact: very much like illusions: sustaining a sense of coherence, and coping with indecision. What our body can do with illusions is help us remember the fact that there is a lot of decision-making going on in perception. "language/body" stuff from Samo on Lacan) Begin with: we use illusion NOT as fiction. Fiction, myth, useful but fake, Illusion useful. Dennet presents a similar sympathy for fictions in The Self Narrative gravity: "But when I say {a center of gravity is} a fictional object, I do not mean to disparage it; it's a wonderful fictional object, and it has a perfectly legitimate place within serious, sober, _echt_ physical science." (1986, p. 3) (in the realm of caption-generation for images, it is termed hallucination: https://aclanthology.org/D18-1437/) ### Illusions are real: from the emperor's clothes to controlled hallucination https://aclanthology.org/W19-8652.pdf, https://anrg.usc.edu/www/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/A_Survey_On_GPT3.pdf Perception as controlled hallucination In arguing for the philosophical fall of identity, and the modern world as one entirely of "simulacra" (death of God, loss of origins, loss of grand narrative, etc.) Deleuze says: "All identities are only simulated, produced as an optical 'effect' by the more profound game of repetition." (preface to the French edition). All identities are simulated, insofar as they demand our focus, our _interest_. A table becomes a table due to the way it speaks to us, its affordances, as clearly exemplified by the Shepard tables below: ![[Table_shepard.preview.jpg|300]] Roger Shepard, from "Turning the Tables", 197... One of the main things this project wants to propose is that we take illusions seriously. This means engaging with the effects, as noted in e.g. optical and auditory illusions, as moments in which we are able to feel our [[Meat]] as a [[Filter]] (i.e. medium). This makes them, contrary to popular demand, more real than reality, which is filtered through other more--pardon the double down--more illusory methods. Thinkers like Metzinger argue for an "illusion" of the self in a way that shows what the above intends, however, the negative connotations of the word illusion are what should be set aside. Perhaps, following [[Joscha Bach]], we should be referring rather to _[[Simulation]]s_: actively generated models which render the real _as_ something (for a comment on _as_ see [[A Note on Awareness As]]). In the history of imagining and thinking about imagination, we already encounter the fact that illusions are not errors: [fantasy (n.)](https://www.etymonline.com/word/fantasy#etymonline_v_1122 "Origin and meaning of fantasy") early 14c., "illusory appearance," from Old French fantaisie, phantasie "vision, imagination" (14c.), from Latin phantasia, from Greek phantasia "power of imagination; appearance, image, perception," from phantazesthai "picture to oneself," from phantos "visible," from phainesthai "appear," in late Greek "to imagine, have visions," related to phaos, phōs "light," phainein "to show, to bring to light" (from PIE root [*bha-](https://www.etymonline.com/word/*bha-?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_52589 "Etymology, meaning and definition of *bha-") (1) "to shine"). Sense of "**whim**sical notion, illusion" is pre-1400, followed by that of "fantastic imagination," which is first attested 1530s. Sense of "day-dream based on desires" is from 1926. In early use in English also fantasie, phantasy, etc. As the name of a fiction genre, by 1948. Zizek sublime object of ideology, failure of classical marxist critique of ideology because now people Know the bullshit and still do it. So, new form of illusion is fantasy of ideology, the fetish: the sublime object of ideology (find quote). Search also "interest." The commodity thinks for you, like tibetan prayer. No longer subjective but objective. Rites and rituals mediate this. Could these so-called illusions all point in the direction of a prediction which fails to estimate the gains/losses between the individual and the collective (or whole, if we include all that beyond the anthropos); leading it to irresolvable contradictions? Althusser also mentioning false Illusions. But if all is illusion, or controlled hallucination. We modulate our collective hallucinations but we will never see "outside " of them. We are interpellated and interwoven through them deterministically. Zizek doesn't want an ideology that falls only within interpellation because he prefers the fantasy enabled by Lacan in the subject. Zizek and predicates search, the fantasy of joussiance "i would if I could ", the other is impeding my fantasy. But we rejoice in our own fantasies. But then: interest's whims: fancy (n.) mid-15c., fantsy "inclination, liking," contraction of fantasy. It took the older and longer word's sense of "inclination, whim, desire." Meaning "the productive imagination" is from 1580s. That of "a fanciful image or conception" is from 1660s. Meaning "fans of an amusement or sport, collectively" is attested by 1735, especially (though not originally) of the prize ring. The adjective is recorded from 1751 in the sense "fine, elegant, ornamental" (opposed to plain); later as "involving fancy, of a fanciful nature" (1800). Fancy man attested by 1811. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=whim What contains and constrains the generation of new concepts is an inevitable combinatorics of pronounciation and context, this cascading opens up new interpretative realms where cognitive work gets done: interpreters interpret. ______ [[Lara Scaglia]], [[Kant's notion of a transcendental schema]]: In elucidating Francis Bacon's presentation of the notion of _schema_, Lara Scaglia says:"In contrast with metaphysics, which looks for forms and essences beyond experience, he aims at elaborating a new method in philosophy, intended as an actual science, which works through the help of observations and experiments and aims to discover objective properties of nature. This last one is seen in its material process of formation (_natura naturans_), which has to be distinguished from all those characteristics (_idola_) added by the activity of understanding and fantasy, which have the tendency to go beyond experience, thus generating illusions and mistakes." p. 29 ___________ [[Marx]] and ideology and illusion, camera obscura in German Ideologie, and young Hegelians _____ [[Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion]], [[Michelle Grier]] ______________ ![[Pasted image 20220920125117.png]] (you used this in [[10 Bias, or Falling into Place]]:) In _Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion_ (2001), Michelle Grier explores Kant’s thoughts on illusion, citing the famous metaphorical passage on the limits of phenomenal understanding, as self-produced illusions, which cannot be escaped “... where many a fog bank and many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive appearance of farther shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer...”. This metaphor is not far from what we explored earlier in terms of gradient descent. In her introduction, for context: “Central to Kant’s arguments is clearly the view that the metaphysical conclusions {about psychology, cosmology and theology} are grounded in the “transcendental illusion,” which is itself implicit in the very nature of human reason. Kant states the problem in the following important passage: “These conclusions are . . . to be called pseudo-rational . . . they are not fictitious and have not arisen fortuitously, but have sprung from the very nature of reason. They are sophistications not of men, but of pure reason itself. Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them. After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself from actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the illusion [Schein] which unceasingly mocks and torments him. (A339/B397)”” (pp. 2-3). [[Foundations of Philosophy]], Fred file.pdf _____________ "In his attempt to finally be done with Christianity, [[Feuerbach]] had developed the concept of alienation to describe how man projected an idea outside of himself in order to find inner fulfilment." [[Social Dissonance]], p. 49. _______ Deleuze illusion quote in difference and repetition ___________ Gibson argues: “It is not an [[Illusion]] of reality that is induced in these pictures, but an awareness of being in the world. This is no illusion. It is a legitimate goal of depiction, if not the only one” (Gibson 1978) __________ [[Intuition]], [[Perception]], [[Duck-rabbit]], [[Proposition]] SEP: "An important and still largely unexplored claim of [[Husserl]]’s is that any logically consistent meaning can in principle be subjectively fulfilled, more or less adequately, by a unified intuition, such as an act of continuous perception or intuitive imagination, where the structure and other essential features of the meaning in question can be read off from the respective mode of intuitive fulfillment. Inconsistent meanings can be singled out and studied by means of (reflection upon) corresponding experiences of intuitive conflict, like for instance the discrete switching back and forth between a duck-head-imagination and a rabbit-head-imagination in the case of an attempted intuitive imagination of a duck-head that is at the same time a rabbit-head. Some meanings are inconsistent for formal-logical reasons. According to Husserl, all analytically false propositions belong to this category. Other meanings are inconsistent because they conflict with some general material a priori truth, also called “essential law”. The proposition expressed by the sentence “There are perceptual objects whose surface is both (visibly) completely green and completely red at the same time” is a case in point."" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/ _______ [[Nietzsche]], [[Hallucination]], [[Schopenhauer]] (don't forget to add Schopenhauer on boat, and classical philo ref to boat horizon) ![[Pasted image 20221114100111.png|400]] _______ ![[Pasted image 20221114115347.png]] _________ ### Illusion and schema (this is also present in [[Schema]]): Use [[Sybille Krämer]], [[Michelle Grier]] and [[Michele LeDoeuff]] --- and add [[Aura]] as well? Look at [[Sven Lütticken]]'s essay again. Argument to add aura would be: schein is the _seeming_ **illusory** 'appearance' of the thing in itself. Schemata are what is captured/capturing of it; what reveals that there is a transcendent thing in itself, because transcendental structures persist through time. Aura, then, is the schein that Hegel attributed to certain aesthetic experiences,[^1] or Nietzsche to music ("instances of its authentic and universal content, so to speak").[^2] Famously, aura for [[Walter Benjamin]].... "Central to Kant’s arguments is clearly the view that the metaphysical conclusions {about psychology, cosmology and theology} are grounded in the “transcendental illusion,” which is itself implicit in the very nature of human reason. Kant states the problem in the following important passage: >These conclusions are . . . to be called pseudo-rational . . . they are not fictitious and have not arisen fortuitously, but have sprung from the very nature of reason. They are sophistications not of men, but of pure reason itself. Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them. After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself from actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the illusion [Schein] which unceasingly mocks and torments him. (A339/B397)". ([[Michelle Grier]], [[Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion]], pp. 2-3). __________ ### Illusions without owners Pfaller __________ [[Deleuze Difference and Repetition, critical introduction]]: "For him, truth is a matter of irresolvable problems. The greatest truths are those expressing those problems in all their aspects and applications, avoiding the dangerous illusions of false simple solutions. True thinking is to respond to problems in new ways, to re-invigorate life and thought through the problems that give rise to them: 'What is essential is that there occurs at the heart of problems a genesis of truth, a production of the true in thought.' (DR, pp. 162, 210)". (p. 2). [[Truth]], [[Validity]], [[Problem]] [[Illusion]] Also add, at the end of DR he talks about free will as an illusion. ______ **Links to**: [[William Fish]], [[Hallucination]], [[Perception]], [[]], [[Spectre]] **Title**: Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion **Author**: William Fish **Year**: 2009 **Type**: book, oxford **Reason for reading**: illusion ### **Notes**: ![[naive realism.png]] “Cataphatic and apophatic mysticism Within theistic mysticism two broad tendencies can be identified. One is a tendency to understand God by asserting what He is and the other by asserting what He is not. The former leads to what is called cataphatic theology and the latter to apophatic theology. Cataphatic (imaging God, imagination or words) – e.g., The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Julian of Norwich, Francis of Assisi; and Apophatic (imageless, stillness, and wordlessness) – inspired by the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, which forms the basis of Eastern Orthodox mysticism and hesychasm, and became influential in western Catholic mysticism from the 12th century AD onward, as in The Cloud of Unknowing and Meister Eckhart.[69] Urban T. Holmes III categorized mystical theology in terms of whether it focuses on illuminating the mind, which Holmes refers to as speculative practice, or the heart/emotions, which he calls affective practice. Combining the speculative/affective scale with the apophatic/cataphatic scale allows for a range of categories:[70] Rationalism = Cataphatic and speculative Pietism = Cataphatic and affective Encratism = Apophatic and speculative Quietism = Apophatic and affective" _______ E.g. Deutsch Musical Illusions p. 29, unanimous agreement that illusions are binary affairs: 1 option of the Necker cube at a time — however, I can see them both at the same time! Some people can do stereographic vision, some can’t — I don’t think we should treat illusions are fully involuntary affairs (even though I do not believe in voluntarism). However, on p. 40 she explains how Boulez can take apart an illusion and examine it in a way which defeats the involuntary hearing proposal. But then: p 47 Rubin vase example “we cannot achieve ... both at the same time” --> not true, we can! It is, at least for me, very easy.