Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin: Multimodal scene perception through echolocation and other senses

Workshop 2016/2017 | Fellow Forum

Multimodal scene perception through echolocation and other senses

02.–03. März 2017

“What is it like to be a bat?” Philosopher Thomas Nagel published an essay with this title, in which he put forth his views in the field of phenomenology. Nagel chose the bat to illustrate his points, because this animal’s perceptual world is strikingly different from our own. Although we cannot answer the question, “What is it like to be a bat?” we can draw from laboratory and field research to make inferences about the acoustic cues used by bats to represent complex environments. This observation serves as a springboard for our workshop discussions, which consider the topic of scene perception acquired through different sensory modalities in humans and other animals. Specifically, we will discuss empirical studies of human and animal vision, hearing and echolocation, with a focus on the role of movement, memory, attention and prior experience in perception.