Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T16:31:24.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Moon Illusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Frances Egan
Frances Egan*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Ever since Berkeley discussed the problem at length in his Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision, theorists of vision have attempted to explain why the moon appears larger on the horizon than it does at the zenith. Prevailing opinion has it that the contemporary perceptual psychologists Kaufman and Rock have finally explained the illusion. This paper argues that Kaufman and Rock have not refuted a Berkeleyan account of the illusion, and have over-interpreted their own experimental results. The moon illusion remains unexplained, and a Berkeleyan account is still a contender.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 604 - 623
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Send request for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Davison Hall, Douglass Campus, P.O. Box 270, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903-0270.

‡

Thanks to Margaret Atherton, Kent Bach, Martha Bolton, Robert Matthews, Jerry Orabona, Robert Schwartz, Arnold Trehub, and audiences at CUNY Graduate Center and McGill University for helpful discussion and comments on earlier drafts. Thanks also to three anonymous referees.

References

Alhazen, Optics. Translated by A.I. Sabra in The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham (2 vols.). London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1989.Google Scholar
Armstrong, David (1960), Berkeley's Theory of Vision. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Atherton, Margaret (1990), Berkeley's Revolution in Vision. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Berkeley, George (1709), An Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision, in Michael R. Ayers (ed.), Philosophical Works (Including the Works on Vision). London: J.M. Dent, 1993.Google Scholar
Berkeley, George (1733), The Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained, in Michael R. Ayers (ed.), Philosophical Works (Including the Works on Vision). London: J. M. Dent, 1993.Google Scholar
Berman, David (1985), “Berkeley and the Moon Illusions”, Revue Internationale de la Philosophie 154: 215–222.Google Scholar
Boring, Edward G. (1943), “The Moon Illusion”, American Journal of Physics 11: 55–60.10.1119/1.1990443CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, V.R. and Tassone, E.P., (1971), “Familiar vs. Unfamiliar Size: A Theoretical Derivation and Test”, Journal of Experimental Psychology 87: 109–115.10.1037/h0030301CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Claparède, E. (1906), “L'Agrandissement et la Proximité Apparents de la Lune à l'Horizon”, Archives de Psychologie 5: 121–148.Google Scholar
Coren, Stanley (1989), “The Many Moon Illusions: An Integration Through Analysis”, in Hershenson 1989, 351–370.Google Scholar
Day, R.H. and Parks, Theodore E. (1989), “To Exorcise a Ghost from the Perceptual Machine”, in Hershenson 1989, 343–350.Google Scholar
Descartes, Rene (1985), Optics, in John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch (trans.), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 152–175.Google Scholar
Enright, J.T. (1989), “The Eye, the Brain, and the Size of the Moon: Toward a Unified Oculomotor Hypothesis for the Moon Illusion”, in Hershenson 1989, 59–121.Google Scholar
Epstein, W., Park, J., and Casey, A. (1961), “The Current Status of the Size Distance Hypothesis”, Psychological Bulletin 58: 491–514.10.1037/h0042260CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Euler, Leonhard (1762), Letters of Euler to a German Princess on Different Subjects in Physics and Philosophy. Translated by H. Hunter. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833.Google Scholar
Gogel, Walter C. and Mertz, David L. (1989), “The Contribution of Heuristic Processes to the Moon Illusion”, in Hershenson 1989, 235–258.Google Scholar
Haber, Ralph Norman and Maurice Hershenson (1980), The Psychology of Visual Perception. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.Google Scholar
Haber, Ralph Norman and Levin, Charles A. (1989), “The Lunacy of Moon Watching: Some Preconditions on Explanations of the Moon Illusion”, in Hershenson 1989, 299–318.Google Scholar
Hatfield, Gary C. and Epstein, William (1979), “The Sensory Core and Medieval Foundations of Early Modern Perceptual Theory”, Isis 70: 363–384.10.1086/352281CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hershenson, Maurice (ed.) (1989), The Moon Illusion. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas (1658), Elements of Philosophy. In English Works vol. 1. London: J. Bohn, 1839.Google Scholar
Ittelson, William H. (1960), Visual Space Perception. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Lloyd (1974), Sight and Mind: An Introduction to Visual Perception. New York, Oxford University Press.10.1097/00006324-197411000-00015CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, Lloyd and Rock, Irvin (1962a), “The Moon Illusion I”, Science 136: 953–961.10.1126/science.136.3520.953CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, Lloyd and Rock, Irvin (1962b), “The Moon Illusion”, Scientific American 207 (1): 120–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, Lloyd and Rock, Irvin (1989), “The Moon Illusion Thirty Years Later,” in Hershenson 1989, 193–234.Google Scholar
Leibowitz, H.W. and Harvey, Lewis O. Jr. (1967), “Size Matching as a Function of Instructions in a Natural Environment”, Journal of Experimental Psychology 74: 378–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibowitz, H.W. and Harvey, Lewis O. Jr. (1969), “Effects of Instructions, Environment, and Type of Test Object on Matched Size”, Journal of Experimental Psychology 81: 36–43.10.1037/h0027433CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindberg, David (1976), Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lockhead, Gregory R. and Woldbarsht, Myron L. (1989), “The Moon and Other Toys”, in Hershenson 1989, 259–266.Google Scholar
Lockhead, Gregory R. and Woldbarsht, Myron L. (1991), “Toying with the Moon Illusion”, Applied Optics 30: 3504–3507.10.1364/AO.30.003504CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Malebranche, Nicholas (1997), The Search After Truth. Translated by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul Olscamp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McCready, Don (1986), “Moon Illusions Redescribed”, Perception and Psychophysics 39: 64–72.10.3758/BF03207585CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Molyneux, William (1687), “Concerning the Apparent Magnitude of the Sun and Moon, or the Apparent Distance of Two Stars, when Nigh the Horizon and when Elevated”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 16: 314–323.Google Scholar
Pastore, Nicholas (1971), Selective History of Theories of Visual Perception 1650–1950. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pitcher, George (1977), Berkeley. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Plug, Cornelis (1989), “Annotated Bibliography”, in Hershenson 1989, 385–407.Google Scholar
Plug, Cornelis and Ross, Helen E. (1989), “Historical Review”, in Hershenson 1989, 5–27.Google Scholar
Predebon, John (1979), “Effects of Familiar Size on Judgments of Relative Size and Distance”, Perceptual and Motor Skills 48: 1211–1214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reimann, Eugen (1902), “Die Scheinbare Vergrösserung der Sonne und des Mondes am Horizont: Geschichte des Problems”, Zeitschrift fur Psychologie 30: 1–38.Google Scholar
Rock, Irvin and Kaufman, Lloyd (1962), “The Moon Illusion II”, Science 136: 1023–1031.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roscoe, Stanley N. (1989), “The Zoom-Lens Hypothesis”, in Hershenson 1989, 31–57.Google Scholar
Sabra, A.I. (1978), “Sensation and Inference in Alhazen's Theory of Visual Perception”, in Machamer, Peter K. and Turnbull, Robert G. (eds.), Studies in Perception. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 160–185.Google Scholar
Sabra, A.I. (1987), “Psychology versus Mathematics: Ptolemy and Alhazen on the Moon Illusion”, in Grant, Edward and Murdoch, John E. (eds.), Mathematics and its Applications to Science and Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 217–247.Google Scholar
Schur, E. (1925), “Mondtäuschung und Sehgrössen Konstanz”, Psychologische Forschung 7: 44–80.10.1007/BF02424349CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Robert (1984), Vision: Variations on Some Berkeleian Themes. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Spelke, Elizabeth (1990), “Origins of Visual Knowledge”, in Osherson, Daniel M. and Lasnik, Howard (eds.), Visual Cognition and Action: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Trehub, Arnold (1991), The Cognitive Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Weintraub, D.J. and Gardner, G.T. (1970), “Emmert's Laws: Size Constancy versus Optical Geometry”, Americal Journal of Psychology 83: 40–57.10.2307/1420854CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolbarsht, Myron L. and Lockhead, Gregory R. (1985), “Moon Illusion: A New Perspective”, Applied Optics 24 (12): 1844–1847.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zoth, O. (1899), “Ueber den Einfluss der Blickrichtung auf die Scheinbare Grösse der Gestirne und die Sheinbare Form des Himmelsgewölbes”, Pfluegers Archiv für Physiologie 78: 363–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar