Visual Phenomenology
The MIT Press September 21, 2017 Michael Madary
Vision is best described as an ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment. The book argues for this claim on two grounds: descriptive evidence from first-person experience shows that vision is perspectival, temporal, and indeterminate, and that surprise occurs when appearances do not change as expected; empirical evidence from perceptual psychology, neuroscience (including predictive coding), and the two-visual-systems hypothesis supports modeling vision as anticipation and fulfillment. The book also addresses methodological questions and the link between visual perception and social cognition, with an appendix on Husserlian phenomenology.