# [[] ## Brainstorms ### Changing bodily schema - adaptability and plasticity: While providing a constant framework, the body schema also demonstrates plasticity, as seen in cases of tool use or adaptation to prosthetics. - Pre-reflective nature: The body schema often operates at a pre-reflective level, shaping our experiences without being the direct object of our awareness. 1. Rubber Hand Illusion - Setup: Visible fake hand and hidden real hand - Synchronous stroking creates sense of ownership over fake hand - Demonstrates malleability of body schema 2. Full Body Illusion - [[Virtual reality]] setups to induce out-of-body experiences - Illustrates plasticity of whole-body representation 3. Tool Use Paradigms - Participants use tools to interact with environment - Measures changes in perceived arm length or reaching ability ### A. Experimental Techniques ## Notes - 'bodily schema' pretty much suggests an invariant [[structural property]].. - Structural consistency: The body schema offers a persistent structure that remains relatively stable across different tactile experiences, potentially serving as an invariant property of bodily awareness. - Spatial organization: It provides a framework for spatially locating bodily sensations and tactile perceptions, giving them a coherent organization within our overall bodily awareness. - Integration of multiple inputs: The body schema might serve to integrate various sensory inputs (proprioception, touch, vision) into a unified bodily experience. ## Drafts ## Resources ### Readwise ### Literature Notes ## Quotes ### Various >Here is what I call the "embedding principle": The bodily self is phenomenally represented as inhabiting a volume in space, whereas the seeing self is an extensionless point—namely, the center of projection for our perspectival visual model of reality. Normally this point of origin (behind the eyes, as if a little person were looking out of them as one looks out a window) is within the volume defined by the felt bodily self. Yet, as our experiments demonstrated, seeing and bodily self can be separated, and the fundamental sense of selfhood is found at the location of the visual body representation. ([[The Ego Tunnel]] by Metzinger, p. 101) >For example, Soteriou (2011, 2013; but see also: Martin 2004; Richardson 2010, 2014) claims that, by attending to [[the objects]] of [[the experience]], we can introspectively discern certain invariant _structural_ features, such as the [[visual field]] or its boundaries, which remain constant as objects and properties change. Such [[structural features]] are modality-specific and are responsible for _how_ we experience things within that modality. Consequently, they are not properties of _what_ we experience but of [[the experience]] itself.9 And indeed, according to Soteriou, we do not seem to be aware of them in the same way we are aware of [[the objects]] of our experiences—they cannot be targets of independent attention or scrutiny. Nonetheless, they are constituents of phenomenal character, and we can notice them _by_ performing proper introspective reflection on [[the objects]] of [[the experience]] and their properties. ([[Seeing through transparency]] by Bordini) ### Richardson on [[Structural Features]] Shaping Perception - It has seemed obvious to many that perceptual experiences are transparent: when we turn our attention to them, it ‘passes through’ to the mind-independent objects and properties that we perceive. But it is equally obvious that in so doing we find those objects and properties presented to us in certain ways: seeing a lemon and the shape of the lemon is phenomenally unlike per- ceiving those things by touch, for instance. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1mdsqcq3aecmd93cz6f2hkj)) - Though it may be that the only things to which we can directly attend, in reflecting on our per- ceptual experiences, are the lemons, tables and suchlike that we perceive, in thus attending we become aware of the sense-specific structure or form ofour perceptual experiences ofthose objects and their properties. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1mdtbb9hezp44j9a5am142k)) - At the heart of the structural explanation of ASYMMETRY is a notion of the visual field quite different to that endorsed by the proponent of the DSST explanation.17 To understand this notion, begin by thinking of the boundaries of the region of space that we are, in some way, aware of in [[visual experience]]. The boundaries in question are not best thought of as objects of awareness. They are not further things that we see, as we see the edges of objects in the field. And they are not the edges of some object or portion of stuff. Instead, they are boundaries delimited by our own visual, sensory limitations and we aware of them as such. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1meakrba9jqmjeg3pk44r7w)) - Not only do we know that there is more space beyond our left shoulders, though we cannot see anything in that space without moving, but it seems to us, visually, as if there is more space beyond the boundaries. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1mednfgkb160f2j8k3pg2c4)) - Tactile [[perceptual experience]] is quite different, spatially, from visual experience. I have, here, space only to remark positively on the spatial structure of visual experience. But (I hope) it suffices ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1mefdh1bq6qh623j3w0sem7)) - to say about tactile experience only that its spatial structure is not like this. We are not, in touch, aware of a region of space within which we tactually perceive objects in just this way. We are aware of the things we perceive, tactually, as in contact with the bounda- ries of an object, namely, one’s body. The difference between vision and touch thus described is, we have said, a structural one. Why is ‘structural’ apt? For two reasons. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1mef8ppgqvj6a0q1nh8bpx5)) - First, the difference is in how experiences are built or config- ured, independently ofwhat they are experiences of. The features in virtue of which vision has a spatial field, and in virtue of which there is not, in this way, a tactile spatial field are, as Matthew Soteriou puts it, ‘relatively invariant’.18 They stay the same when we re-arrange, change or take away the objects (and properties of such objects) of which we are aware. And, across the senses, they can differ when all the objects and their properties are the same. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1mehg62kgqdwx53j9rpkfaw)) - Vision’s having its spatial field, on this view, is not a matter of our being aware of another object, or property of an object, in addition to, say, the lemon and the table and their properties. So there is no appropriate additional object or property of an object to attend to, when reflecting upon these structural features of perceptual experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1mek0096q05feqa26z8c3ys)) - Nevertheless, we find these structural features in attending to the worldly objects and properties. This reflects the fact that structural features are features of the way we are aware of the objects of experience and their properties: in the case of vision, we are aware of the lemon and the table as occupying and extending into a region of space within which things can be seen. In touch, we are not aware of the lemon, or of anything else, in this way. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1mekahwqa89rvf8vty3qaw0)) > The structural explanation, like the DSST explanation, explains our tendency to doubt that the answer to MQ can be 'yes' in terms of a phenomenal difference between seeing and feeling shapes. The structural explanation and the DSST explanation rely on competing accounts of this difference. The former accounts for the difference not in terms of different objects and properties apparently perceived but in terms of a different way of experiencing the same objects and properties. For this reason, the structural explanation avoids the three difficulties to which the DSST explanation is subject. > First, the structural explanation is consistent with a plausible version of the transparency thesis. The explanation enthusiastically agrees that when we turn attention from the mind-independent objects of perception, to the experience we have of those objects, the objects remain the focus of attention. But in thus attending, according to the structural explanation, we find those phenomenological differences that can, we have argued, be understood as a matter of the form or structure of the experience. (p. 496) This quote suggests that structural features shape perception by providing a "different way of experiencing the same objects and properties." The structural explanation accounts for phenomenal differences in perception not through different objects being perceived, but through the structure of the experience itself. > Visually appearing (or looking) square is appearing to extend into or take up space that we are aware of as a space in which things can be seen. The same is not true of tactually appearing (or feeling) square. The phenomenology of feeling square is not that of appearing to occupy a space in which things can be seen in the square-ish way, or in any way at all. This difference in looking and feeling square, or otherwise shaped, is, according to the structural explanation, that which explains why we are reluctant to think that the answer to MQ is 'yes'. (p. 494) Here, Richardson explicitly describes how the structural features of visual and tactile experiences shape the perception of shape. The visual experience of squareness involves awareness of a space in which things can be seen, while the tactile experience does not. This structural difference explains the phenomenal difference between seeing and feeling shapes. Quote 3: From "Seeing Empty Space" > This structural feature, characteristic of visual experience generally, whether or not we seem to see any objects, is constitutive of our awareness of our visual sensory limitations. There being a field in vision is, I have argued, to be understood in terms of our being aware of our sensory limitations. And we are aware of our sensory limitations in that it always seems to us that there is more to be sensed than we are currently sensing. It seems as if the space delimited by the visual field, is a subregion of a larger space which has that region as a subregion. By way of clarification, this should not be thought of as meaning that it always seems to you that you could see further than you currently can if only the objects weren't in the way. The claim is that on a cloudless day, looking out to sea on a deserted beach, it would still seem to one that there was more to be seen than one currently could see. (p. 8) This passage illustrates how the structural feature of the visual field shapes our visual experience. The awareness of our visual sensory limitations, which is a structural feature of visual experience, influences how we perceive space and objects within it. It creates a sense that there is always more to be seen beyond what is currently visible. These quotes demonstrate that Richardson indeed argues that structural features shape how we perceive objects and properties. They do so not by altering the objects of perception themselves, but by providing the framework or structure within which those objects are experienced. This aligns with your presentation's argument about VR altering the structural features of visual perception, thereby shaping how virtual objects and environments are experienced. ## Resources ## Odds and Sods Conversation with Claude about blurriness and spatial structure