Steven Lehar
Encyclopedia
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, and Representationalism. Although this idea is not new, having been first proposed by Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
and promoted by Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, Wolfgang Köhler
Wolfgang Köhler
Wolfgang Köhler was a German psychologist and phenomenologist who, like Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Koffka, contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology.-Early life:...
, and the Gestaltists of the Berlin School
Berlin School
The Berlin School of experimental psychology was headed by Carl Stumpf , who became professor at the University of Berlin where he founded the Berlin laboratory of experimental psychology ....
, 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 the homunculus fallacy (see his paper on Gestalt Isomorphism, and his book 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 Cartoon Epistemology).