Eidolons & Capricious Local Sign

Abstract

Experimental phenomenology probes the meanings and qualities that compose immediate visual experience. In contradistinction, objective methods of classical psychophysics intentionally ignore meanings and qualities, or even awareness as such. Both have their proper uses. Methods of experimental phenomenology that address 'equivalence' in a more intricate sense than 'visible not visible' or 'discriminable not discriminable', require stimuli that go beyond the mere level of magnitude-like parameters and perhaps intrude into the realm of semantics. One investigates the cloud of eidolons, or lookalikes, that mentally surround any image. 'Eidolon factories' are based on models of the psychogenesis of visual awareness. The intentional fuzziness of eidolons may derive from a variety of processes. We explore the effects of capricious 'local sign'. Elsewhere, we formally proposed explicit eidolon factories based on such notions. Here we illustrate some of the effects of capricious local sign.