Abstract

This chapter challenges the view that perceptual illusions are mistakes, by first of all emphasizing how the concept of illusions-as-mistakes relies on perspectives unavailable within illusory experiences and introduces norms fixed outside such experiences. A study of ‘rubber hand illusions’ suggests how illusions are not mistaken perceptions, but cases in which perceived objects makes a different kind of sense—in virtue of a norm that is not a fixed, objective standard but is ongoingly engendered within the dynamics of living, perceptual behaviour. This leads to the view that perception is not founded on readymade norms that stand as a past fixed outside living dynamics. Rather, norms are rather a past that ongoingly emerges within living behaviour—they are what I call temporal spandrels of living temporality.