| FORM: | ARTICLE |
| Author: | Natsoulas, Thomas |
| Affiliation: | U California, Dept of Psychology, Davis, CA, USA |
| Title: | Field of view. |
| Source: | Journal of Mind & Behavior, 1998 Fal, 1998. 19 (4): p.415-436Reference. |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | Thesaurus terms: Philosophies Visual Field Visual Perception Mind |
| Added Keywords: | concepts of field of view & light & visual perceiving |
| Classification Code: | PhilosophyPhysiological Psychology & Neuroscience (2630) (2500) |
| Population Terms: Human | |
| Abstract: | Two concepts of field of view (FOV) are discussed–the ordinary concept and the technical one devised by J. J. Gibson (1979) and put to work in his ecologic account of visual perceiving (VP). The ordinary concept refers to an area of the environment taken from a particular viewpoint from which there are some objects visible throughout the geographical area constituting the corresponding FOV. The technical concept refers to the total large solid angle of light that projects to an animal’s point of observation and is registrable by its ocular system. Consisting of photic energy, a Gibsonian FOV is neither a kind of experience nor a part of the ecological environment, although a FOV instantiates stimulus information specifying properties of the environment or animal and makes visual experience possible. Being a portion of the light by which we see the environment and ourselves, FOV may not be itself a possible object of experience. Our visual system picks up features of the light that make up our successive FsOV, but we thereby have visual perceptual awareness of what these photic features are nomically specific to, not the features themselves. A concept of stream of view may be preferable to a concept of FOV, for a perceiver is typically moving vs occupying a point of observation. ((c) 1999 APA/PsycINFO, all rights reserved) |