Why we see things the way we do: evidence for a wholly empirical strategy of vision

Many otherwise puzzling aspects of the way we see brightness, colour, orien tation and motion can be understood in wholly empirical terms. The evidence reviewed here leads to the conclusion that visual percepts are based on pa tterns of reflex neural activity shaped entirely by the past success (or fa ilure) of visually guided behaviour in response to the same or a similar re tinal stimulus. As a result, the images we see accord with what the sources of the stimuli have typically turned out to be, rather than with the physi cal properties of the relevant objects. If vision does indeed depend upon t his operational strategy to generate optimally useful perceptions of inevit ably ambiguous stimuli, then the underlying neurobiological processes will eventually need to be understood within this conceptual framework.