Event:

Our senses provide incomplete and noisy information about the world around us. One might think that what we perceive is the situation that best matches this incomplete and noisy information, i.e. perception is the unconscious inference about the situation that most likely caused the sensory state. This approach is frequently very successful, and can explain why our perception is in some situations inconsistent with the outside world. I will, however, show that this approach cannot explain a class of visual illusions in which perception is inconsistent with itself. I will provide an account for this inconsistency, based on the notion that perception is about being able to interact with the world around us. Perception is thus giving answers to questions about the world, rather than building a representation of it. I will show how this account can explain why visual illusions influence some perceptual tasks, while leaving the performance in several motor tasks unaffected. I will show that the distinction is not between perception and motor control, but between the questions asked