- Steven Lehar
Steven Lehar is an independent researcher who has made a number of radical proposals on theories of philosophy, psychology, biological vision, and consciousness.
Consciousness
Perhaps Lehar's most radical theory is that the solid spatial world that we see around us in visual experience is not the world itself, but merely a miniature replica of that world in an internal representation. This is known variously as the theory of
Indirect perception ,Indirect realism ,Epistemological dualism , andRepresentationalism . Although this idea is not new, having been first proposed byImmanuel Kant and promoted byBertrand Russell ,Wolfgang Köhler , and the Gestaltists of theBerlin School , the idea has never taken hold to become generally accepted, and remains to this day a minority view. Lehar's contribution has been to refute the most common objection to Representationalism which is thehomunculus fallacy (see his paper on [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/bubw3/bubw3.html Gestalt Isomorphism] , and his book [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/book/WIYH.html The World In Your Head] ). Lehar has also argued for the indirect nature of perception by pointing out the curvature of perceived space, or phenomenal perspective, which is obviously not a property of the external world. For example when standing on a long straight road, the sides of the road are perceived to meet at a point both up ahead and back behind, while appearing straight and parallel and equidistant throughout their perceived length. (See Lehar's [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/cartoonepist/cartoonepist.html Cartoon Epistemology] ).Biological Vision
The implications of Representationalism are that there are volumetric moving colored images in the brain in an analogical representation. This however appears to be in conflict with contemporary neuroscience, because no pictures have been found in the brain. Lehar's response is to propose that the images in the brain take the form of standing waves of electrochemical oscillation, in his Harmonic Resonance Theory.
External links
* [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/ Personal website]
* [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/bubw3/bubw3.html Gestalt Isomorphism ]
* [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/book/WIYH.html The World In Your Head]
* [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/hr1/hr1.html Harmonic Resonance Theory]
* [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/dirhr1/dirhr1.html Directional Harmonic Theory]
* [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/cartoonepist/cartoonepist.html A Cartoon Epistemology]
* [http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/cartoonepist/EpistDebate.html Epistemological Debate on the PSYCHE-D mailing list]
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