Perceptual Misrecognition: A Kind of Illusion?

Abstract

We have the ability to recognize, immediately and effortlessly complex properties and kinds on the basis of perception. For instance, I can recognize a kind of animal, tree or car when I see an exemplar of it. Our perceptual-recognitional abilities also extend to particular persons, as when I see my friend Mary approaching. The issue I would like to address in this chapter concerns the psychological and epistemological explanation of perceptual misrecognition, especially with respect to familiar persons. When I seem to recognize Mary, who is an old friend of mine, while in fact I am facing her twin sister, Jane, whom I have never met, do I suffer from a kind of perceptual illusion or am I just making a cognitive error — a false judgment? I shall suggest, on the basis of both conceptual analysis and empirical models and results, that the dichotomy between perceptual illusions and cognitive errors is not exhaustive, and that we have to take into account a third category, namely epistemic presuppositions or “hinge” propositions that pertain to the “perceptual frame of reference”, and whose falsity is responsible for the relevant cases of misrecognition.