C.S. Harris is a perceptual psychologist and philosopher known for his influential work on adaptation to optically inverted and reversed vision. His research on how subjects regain fluent coping after perceptual disruption has been central to phenomenological and enactivist debates about the relationship between skillful bodily engagement and perceptual experience.
Published landmark study on perceptual adaptation to inverted, reversed, and displaced vision (1965)
Advanced the thesis that perceptual normalization after optical reversal is grounded in the recovery of fluent sensorimotor coping rather than re-mapping of sensory qualia
Contributed key empirical evidence to philosophical debates on embodied perception and enactivism
Influenced subsequent phenomenological accounts of perception by Dreyfus, Noë, and others
The proprioceptive-change theory does not imply radical introspective error
claimThings seem 'normal' after adaptation to perceptual reversal because subjects are again able to cope with the visually perceived world in a fluent and unreflective manner
premiseAccording to the proprioceptive-change theory, experience normalizes after adaptation to reversal not because things that really look leftward 'seem to look rightward', but because subjects become familiar with the way things look when reversed
The proprioceptive-change theory does not imply radical introspective error
claimThings seem 'normal' after adaptation to perceptual reversal because subjects are again able to cope with the visually perceived world in a fluent and unreflective manner
premiseAccording to the proprioceptive-change theory, experience normalizes after adaptation to reversal not because things that really look leftward 'seem to look rightward', but because subjects become familiar with the way things look when reversed
premiseOrdinary subjects can learn to read mirror-reversed writing fluently, demonstrating that familiarity with reversed perception is possible without introspective error
premiseFluent and unreflective coping with the visually perceived world is the basis for perceiving things as normal