Philosophical Topics, 28 (2000), 235-246

Abstract

Researchers from the 1940's through the present have found that normal, sighted people can echolocate - that is, detect properties of silent objects by attending to sound reflected from them. We argue that echolocation is a normal part of our perceptual experience and that there is something 'it is like' to echolocate. Furthermore, we argue that people are often grossly mistaken about their experience of echolocation. If so, echolocation provides a counterexample to the view that we cannot be mistaken about our own current phenomenology.

Click below to view this document as a PDF file, if you are viewing it in accord with "fair use" laws.

How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Human Echolocation

(Can't view the document because you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader?  Download it here for free.)

Or email me (eschwitz at domain- ucr.edu) for a copy of this paper.

Return to Eric Schwitzgebel's homepage.