Research

Publications and work in progress

• Retentional Direct Realism (by Daniele Cassaghi)
  
  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2025

• Amodal completion in vision and audition. A relationship between perception and mental imagery (by Elvira Di Bona)
  
  Analysis, 2025

• Do sounds occupy a different temporal location than their sources? (by Elvira Di Bona)
  
  Locating a sound helps us locate its source (for example, I become aware that the smartphone I forgot somewhere is on the shelf because I hear the alarm coming from there). But it remains an open question whether the spatial location of the sound is, strictly speaking, coincident with that of its source, or whether sounds are just located close to their sources.

• Transparent Audio Reproduction (by Donald Oxtoby)

Transparent audio reproduction is the idea of reproduced sound that is qualitatively indistinguishable from its original recorded counterpart. In the context of contemporary recordings, as in music or film soundtracks, is transparent audio reproduction possible? If so, is transparent audio reproduction a defensible aesthetic aim?

• Presentism, Perception and the Time-Lag problem (by Daniele Cassaghi)
  
  In the metaphysics of time, presentism is the idea that only objects that occupy the present time exist. Objects from the past like Napoleon and the dinosaurs are no longer part of reality. Physics and neurophysiology tell us that perception takes time: we always become aware of the objects around us with a certain delay. Therefore, if presentism is true, the objects we perceive no longer exist. Is it possible to directly perceive what surrounds us, without the aid of representations, even assuming presentism?

• The specious present: in between memory and mental imagery (by Daniele Cassaghi)

According to the doctrine of the specious present, what we perceive as the present lasts for an interval, rather than a single instant. But the specious present is a phenomenological doctrine: it describes how things appear to us. A different question is what, at the subpersonal level, allows the specious present to be realized. Mental Imagery or memory? And what type?

• How do memory and judgment support perceptual learning? (by Donald Oxtoby)
  
  Perception enables us to recognize people, places, and objects. But perception alone is not enough. Recognition involves a complex interaction of perception, memory, and judgment. For example, recognizing a face depends upon how familiar it feels, key features we recall, contextual information, and judging when these factors are sufficient for recognition.
  
  (To be continued...)