ABSTRACT
Intellectual curiosity by humans about how they perceive the world has a very long history. The origins of this interest in perception can be traced to the concern of the earliest philosophers with epistemological questions, i.e., questions about how humans acquire knowledge about the world (see Robinson, 1976). Throughout this long history, the most common conceptualization of perception has been one based on the proposition that perceiving the world is, in essence, a problem to be solved by the perceiver. This conceptualization endures in current discussions about the nature of perception (see Uttal, 1981), but is nowhere portrayed more graphically than in Plato’s cave allegory used in The Republic (Bloom, 1968). Plato likened perceivers to prisoners bound by their necks and feet, and kept, since their early childhood, in a dimly lit cave. The prisoners had their backs to the cave entrance, and because of their bonds, were unable to turn around to look at the people and objects in the world outside the cave. Their only contact with the external world was an “indirect” contact; for example, through the shadows cast by the people and objects in the outside world onto the cave wall that the prisoners faced. The problem posed by Plato was how could the prisoners come to know about the world outside the cave.
