Keith A. Wilson

• Wilson, Keith A. (2022). The Temporal Structure of Olfactory Experience. In Young, Benjamin & Keller, Andreas (Ed.), Theoretical Perspectives on Smell. Routledge. ISSN 0000000000.
• Wilson, Keith A. (2022). Does Property-Perception Entail the Content View? Erkenntnis: An International Journal of Scientific Philosophy. ISSN 0165-0106. doi: 10.1007/s10670-022-00559-1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Visual perception is widely taken to present properties such as redness, roundness, and so on. This in turn might be thought to give rise to accuracy conditions for experience, and so content, regardless of which metaphysical view of perception one endorses. An influential version of this argument—Susanna Siegel’s ‘Argument from Appearing’—aims to establish the existence of content as common ground between representational and relational views of perception. This goes against proponents of ‘austere’ relationalism who deny that content plays a substantive role in philosophical explanations of conscious perceptual experience. Though Siegel’s argument purports to be neutral with respect to the metaphysics of perception, it relies upon an equivocation between the presentation of property-types and property-instances. Consequently, the argument begs the question against the austere relational view, and so fails to establish the desired conclusion. So while relationalists can and should allow that experiences have accuracy conditions, it does not follow from this that they have contents of any philosophically interesting or significant kind.

• Wilson, Keith A. (2022). Windows on Time: Unlocking the Temporal Microstructure of Experience. Review of Philosophy and Psychology. ISSN 1878-5158. doi: 10.1007/s13164-022-00632-2. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Each of our sensory modalities—vision, touch, taste, etc.—works on a slightly different timescale, with differing temporal resolutions and processing lag. This raises the question of how, or indeed whether, these sensory streams are co-ordinated or ‘bound’ into a coherent multisensory experience of the perceptual ‘now’. In this paper I evaluate one account of how temporal binding is achieved: the temporal windows hypothesis, concluding that, in its simplest form, this hypothesis is inadequate to capture a variety of multisensory phenomena. Rather, the evidence suggests the existence of a more complex temporal structure in which multiple overlapping windows support distinct functional mechanisms. To aid in the precise formulation of such views, I propose a taxonomy of temporal window types and their characteristics that in turn suggests promising avenues for future empirical and philosophical research. I conclude by examining some philosophical implications of multi-window models for the metaphysics of perception and perceptual experience more generally.

• Wilson, Keith A. (2022). The Auditory Field: The Spatial Character of Auditory Experience. Ergo - An Open Access Journal of Philosophy. ISSN 2330-4014. In press. Show summary

  It is generally accepted that there is a visual field, but the analogous notion of an auditory field is rejected by many philosophers on the grounds that the metaphysics or phenomenology of audition lack the necessary spatial structure. In this paper, I argue that many of the common objections to the existence of an auditory field are misguided and that, contrary to a tradition of philosophical scepticism about the spatiality of auditory experience, it is as richly spatial as visual experience — and in some ways even more so. By carefully considering the spatiality and boundedness of audition, along with how sounds or their sources are experienced as occurring within the surrounding acoustic environment, we can gain a better understanding of (i) our auditory experience of space and (ii) the conditions for the existence of spatial sensory fields in general in a way that does not privilege vision over the other senses. http://keithwilson.net/research/the-auditory-field

• Wilson, Keith A. (2021). Individuating the Senses of ‘Smell’: Orthonasal versus Retronasal Olfaction. Synthese. ISSN 0039-7857. 199, p. 4217–4242. doi: 10.1007/s11229-020-02976-7. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The dual role of olfaction in both smelling and tasting, i.e. flavour perception, makes it an important test case for philosophical theories of sensory individuation. Indeed, the psychologist Paul Rozin claimed that olfaction is a “dual sense”, leading some scientists and philosophers to propose that we have not one, but two senses of smell: orthonasal and retronasal olfaction. In this paper I consider how best to understand Rozin’s claim, and upon what grounds one might judge there to be one or two distinct olfactory modalities. I conclude that while Rozin may be right that humans have dual occurrences of an olfactory ‘sense’, the concept of a sense-modality, and hence the ‘sense’ of smell, is ambiguous between two different notions: a physiological sensory channel and an experiential modality, along the lines suggested by J. J. Gibson. Furthermore, recognising that these are complementary rather than competing conceptions of a sense-modality enables the formulation of a powerful ‘dual-concept’ framework for posing and addressing questions concerning the complex architecture of human multisensory experience.

• Wilson, Keith A. & Macpherson, Fiona (2018). The Senses. In Pritchard, Duncan (Eds.), Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy. Oxford Bibliographies. ISSN 9780195396577. doi: 10.1093/OBO/9780195396577-0368.
• Wilson, Keith A. (2018). Are the Senses Silent? Travis’s Argument from Looks. In Collins, John & Dobler, Tamara (Ed.), The Philosophy of Charles Travis: Language, Thought, and Perception. Oxford University Press. ISSN 9780198783916. p. 199–221. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780198783916.003.0010. Full text in Research Archive
• Locatelli, Roberta & Wilson, Keith A. (2017). Perception Without Representation [Guest-Edited Special Issue]. Topoi. ISSN 0167-7411. 36(2), p. 197–364. Show summary

  https://link.springer.com/journal/11245/volumes-and-issues/36-2

• Locatelli, Roberta & Wilson, Keith A. (2017). Introduction: Perception Without Representation. Topoi. ISSN 0167-7411. 36(2), p. 197–212. doi: 10.1007/s11245-017-9460-1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This special issue focuses upon the debate between representational views and emerging relational views of perception. In particular, we aim to shed light upon the commitments and motivations of the latter which, being historically more recent and less widely held, have all too often been poorly understood by their detractors, many of whom have taken such views to be wildly implausible, incompatible with current scientific theory, or simply inscrutable. Indeed, for those steeped in the representational tradition, it can be difficult to understand why one might want to deny what may seem an obvious truth about perceptual experiences: that they represent how things in the world are. Furthermore, it is unclear that representational and relational views should be considered mutually exclusive, since relationalism need not be formulated in terms of the denial of representational content, and nor do these options exhaust the field. Indeed, some variants of the views have much in common.

• Wilson, Keith A. (2013). Reid’s Direct Realism and Visible Figure. The Philosophical Quarterly. ISSN 0031-8094. 63(253), p. 783–803. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2013.02002.x. Show summary

  In his account of visual perception, Thomas Reid describes visible figure as both ‘real and external’ to the eye and as the ‘immediate object of sight’. These claims appear to conflict with Reid's direct realism, since if the ‘immediate’ object of vision is also its direct object, then sight would be perceptually indirect due to the role of visible figure as a perceptual intermediary. I argue that this apparent threat to Reid's direct realism may be resolved by understanding visible figure as the set of geometrical properties that holds between an object's visible surfaces and some particular perspective or point of view. On this relational interpretation of visible figure, and once an ambiguity over the use of the term ‘object’ is resolved, Reid's account of vision is both epistemically and perceptually direct, as well as consistent with his account of the other senses and doctrine of signs.

• Wilson, Keith (2007). Does Attention Exist? British Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy. ISSN 1748-9393. 2(2), p. 153–168. Show summary

  The introduction to the Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau‑Ponty 2002: 34)
 states that “Attention… as a general and formal activity, does not exist”. This paper examines the meaning and truth of this difficult and surprising statement, along with its implications for the account of perception given by theorists such as Fred Dretske (1988) and Christopher Peacocke (1983). In order to elucidate Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of human perception, I present two alternative models of how attention might be thought to operate. The first is derived from the works of the aforementioned theorists and is, I argue, based upon a largely inaccurate computational or mechanistic understanding of the mind. The second is drawn from the work of Merleau-Ponty and cognitive scientist and philosopher, Alva Noë, and takes into account some recent neurological theories concerning the role of attention in human consciousness. On the basis of these models I argue that attention is an essential, rather than incidental, characteristic of consciousness that is constitutive of both thought and perception, and which cannot be understood in terms of the independent faculty or ‘general and unconditioned power’ that Dretske et al.’s account requires. I conclude by considering two potential counterexamples to my argument, and evaluate the threat that these pose to the phenomenological model.

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• Wilson, Keith A. (2021). How Many Senses? Multisensory Perception Beyond the Five Senses. Sabah Ülkesi. ISSN 2195-6456. 66(January 2021), p. 76–79. Show summary

  https://philpapers.org/rec/WILMP-8 (English) https://www.sabahulkesi.com/2021/01/19/cok-duyumlu-algi/ (Turkish)

• Locatelli, Roberta & Wilson, Keith A. (2017). Erratum to Introduction: Perception Without Representation. Topoi. ISSN 0167-7411. 36(2), p. 213–213. doi: 10.1007/s11245-017-9489-1.
• Wilson, Keith (2013). Perception and Reality. New Philosopher. ISSN 2201-7151. 1(2), p. 104–107. Show summary

  Taken at face value, the picture of reality suggested by modern science seems radically opposed to the world as we perceive it through our senses. Indeed, it is not uncommon to hear scientists and others claim that much of our perceptual experience is a kind of pervasive illusion rather than a faithful presentation of various aspects of reality. On this view, familiar properties such as colours and solidity, to take just two examples, do not belong to external objects, but are fictions generated by the brain that we mistakenly ascribe to the world around us. Contrary to this view, I argue that properties like colour and solidity are as much a part of the fabric of reality as gravity and electrons, and that our scientific and common-sense world views are not as opposed to one another as it might first appear. https://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/perception-and-reality/

• Wilson, Keith A. (2013). Review of Perception: Essays after Frege by Charles Travis. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. ISSN 1538-1617.

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