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The properties of visual experience are so incredible that the great majority of theorists simply deny that there are spatial pictures in the brain at all. This raises an old epistemologcal issue which is central to Gestalt theory, the question of whether perception is direct, or indirect.
Direct perception, also known as Naive Realism, is the natural intuitive understanding of vision that we accept without question from the earliest days of childhood, i.e. that the world we see around us is the world itself.
Indirect Perception, also known as Indirect Realism or Representationalism, suggests on the other hand that the world we see around us is not the real world itself, but merely a perceptual replica of that world.
It turns out that direct perception is impossible in principle, because it is impossible to experience anything that is not explicitly represented in the brain. This is explained at length in my book:
Lehar S. (2003)The World In Your Head: A Gestalt View of the Mechanism of Conscious Experience.
It is also explained in my paper:
And it is summarized in an illustrated cartoon-like presentation available on-line at:
The Epistemology of Conscious Experience.
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