Albertazzi - Handbook of Experimental Phenomenology

Table of Contents

Systematic concern with visual appearances is as old as modern science but it has not been pursued with the consistency accorded to visual processing. Galileo interrogated appearances in contrast to the optical approach heralded in his day by Kepler and Scheiner. Now the study of appearances is enjoying a renaissance due in no small part to the novel techniques of experimental phenomenology so clearly expounded in this book.

Nicholas Wade, Emeritus Professor, University of Dundee

Liliana Albertazzis Handbook of Experimental Phenomenology is the first of its kind, and brings together an internationally distinguished group of researchers. Experimental phenomenology was primarily a development within European psychology, and includes the pioneering research of David Katz on color vision and touch, of Albert Michotte on perceived causality, permanence, and reality, and of Edgar Rubin on reversible figures. As a distinctive school, it has continued to flourish in Italy, thanks to the leadership of Gaetano Kanizsa and Paolo Bozzi.

Although several of the contributors to this handbook would not identify themselves with experimental phenomenology, they do share, as Albertazzi rightly points out, a fundamental concern: a focus on the subjective, valence, and meaningful aspects of experience and their endeavor to provide a scientific explanation of them which is as rigorous as those of the kindred disciplines of psychophysics and neuroscience. This handbook will be a significant resource both for phenomenological psychology and for the psychology of perception.

Alan Costall, Professor of Theoretical Psychology, University of Portsmouth

This handbook brings together a distinguished collection of thinkers and researchers who address the subjective nature of visual perception as a science in its own right and who have developed a variety of new methods and concepts to investigate it. This could become an important book that redresses the balance of discussion and debate about what seeing is, and its role in our mental lives.

Mark Georgeson, Professor of Vision Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham

This edition first published 2013

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Handbook of Experimental Phenomenology : Visual Perception of Shape, Space and Appearance / Edited by Liliana Albertazzi.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-119-95468-2 (cloth)

1. Visual perception. 2. Psychophysics. 3. Phenomenological psychology. I. Albertazzi, Liliana.

BF241.H33 2013

152.14'2dc23

2012045560

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Franz Marc, Fighting Forms (Abstract Forms I), 1914. Pinakothek der Moderne Kunst, Munich / Photo akg-images.

Cover design by Cyan Design

About the Editor

Liliana Albertazzi is Principal Investigator at the University of Trento Center for the Mind and Brain (CIMeC), where she coordinates studies and a series of events on the analysis of cognitive spaces, and Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities. While her primary training was in philosophy, with a focus on phenomenology, during the past 20 years she has laid the foundations of the science of appearances from both the theoretical and the experimental point of view. Her research interests include the emergence of semantic structures, visual awareness, and qualitative perceiving. She has published five books, about 150 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, and has been editor of 21 books.

About the Contributors

Irving Biederman is the Harold W. Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California where he is a member of the Departments of Psychology, Computer Science, and the Neuroscience Program and Director of the Image Understanding Laboratory.

Luigi Burigana is Professor of Psychometrics at the University of Padua (Department of General Psychology). His main scientific interests and contributions are in discrete mathematical modeling, combinatorial data analysis, and research on spatial vision.

Luisa Canal is Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Trento (Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences). Her research interests are focused on statistical models of social and perceptual phenomena.

Gideon P. Caplovitz is Assistant Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Nevada at Reno.

Osvaldo Da Pos is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Padua (Department of General Psychology). His present research deals with psychological aspects of color perception, like color constancy, color contrast and assimilation, color transparency, color harmony, color and illumination, color and emotion.

Agns Desolneux is Researcher for the French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in the Applied Mathematics Department of the Ecole Normale Suprieure de Cachan. She works on stochastic models for image analysis.

Katja Drschner is Assistant Professor at Bilkent University (Department of Psychology). Her research spans human and computer vision, and includes topics such as the visual perception of motion, surface material qualities, and object shape.

Lewis D. Griffin is Senior Lecturer at University College, London (Department of Computer Science). He is a co-director of CoMPLEX, UCLs Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology. His research interests are image structure, color vision, and computer vision.