Evidence from Audition

The reason for using vision as an example in the previous three chapters is that more is known about the human visual system and visual psychophysics than about other neural systems. But this choice begs the question of whether other systems corroborate the evidence drawn from vision. Is the same empirical strategy used in other sensory systems to contend with the same problem (i.e., the inability of animals to measure the actual properties of the world)? Based on accumulated anatomical, physiological, and psychophysical information, audition is the best bet in addressing this question in another modality. This chapter examines whether the perception of sound can also be explained empirically as a way to deal with a world in which the physical parameters of sound sources can’t be apprehended.