Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The perceptual constancies are at the heart of the scientific and philosophical study of perceptual experience, forthey are responsible for our enjoying stable percepts despite fluctuating proximal stimulation. For some time, it has thereforeseemed natural to appeal to the constancies as a way of explaining the factivity of perception - how (in veridical cases) wepresent or represent our environments as they are. Notably, a number of theorists now reject the suggestion that color constancystraightforwardly allows us to track mind-independent physical properties, such as surface spectral reflectances. In the spatialliteratures, however, the constancies remain tasked with accounting for the perceptual presentation or representation of objectivevalues as they are independent of perceivers. In this presentation, I outline the unacceptable normative consequences of theselatter views, and sketch an alternative, more ecologically plausible understanding of veridicality in spatial perception.