Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Are objects in convex passenger-side mirrors “closer than they appear”? If one adapts to inverting goggles, does the world go back to looking the way it was before, or does the world look approximately the same throughout the course of adaptation, only losing its normative sense of wrongness? The answers to these empirical, introspective questions might help cast light on the classic philosophical debate about the degree of resemblance between our visual experience of reality and things as they are in themselves.
For helpful conversation during the course of writing, thanks to Scott Bakker, Robert Briscoe, Brit Brogaard, David Chalmers, Louie Favela, Jack Lyons, Farid Masrour, David Papineau, Kevin Reuter, Susanna Siegel, Houston Smit, Maja Spener, Nathan Westbrook, commenters on relevant posts at The Splintered Mind, and audiences at University of Missouri–St. Louis, as well as the Philosophy of Science Association.