Author: J. Kevin O'Regan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-08-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0199777470

The book starts by analyzing the problem of how we can see so well despite what, to an engineer, might seem like horrendous defects of our eyes. An explanation is provided by a new way of thinking about seeing, the "sensorimotor" approach. In the second part of the book the sensorimotor approach is extended to all sensory experience. It is used to elucidate an outstanding mystery of consciousness, namely why, unlike today's robots, humans actually can feel things. The approach makes predictions and opens research avenues, among them the phenomena of change blindness, sensory substitution, and "looked but failed to see", as well as results on color naming and color perception and the localisation of touch on the body.