Sleights of mind: What the neuroscience of magic reveals about our brains

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Notes

¹This goes also for at least hearing and touch. Does the same point apply for smell (not to mention taste)? I'm not sure whether anyone has a good answer to that question at this point in time. We can be deceived about what we're smelling by, say, artificial cherry flavouring. But does the olfactory system itself deliver a false representation of actual cherries, or simply an accurate indication of cherry scent? If it's the former, then the olfactory system must be making assumptions in some sense. If the latter, then not.

²I doubt a single reader of this journal will take this to suggest anything supernatural. But just to be clear, here it is: Nothing in either Sleights of Mind or the present review is meant to suggest that “magic” involves real supernatural powers. The interest lies rather in the illusion thereof, which capitalises on perfectly natural neuropsychological tendencies.

³I'm a big fan of the gender-neutral “she”—i.e., using just “she” to mean he or she. It's a simple way to combat sexism. But, I must confess, it would feel a bit forced in this context, since it appears that almost all the magicians are men. Why is that? I don't know. And I'm not sure even Larry Summers could explain. For lack of a better option, I'll go with the somewhat inelegant “he or she”. In any case, Susana Martinez-Conde herself has become a skilled amateur magician, so the “or she” part is not mere formality!

⁴There is another issue in psychological theory that the illusions in Sleights of Mind raise that I don't have space to discuss, although it's important. Fodor (1983) famously advocates that “input systems” (like vision) are modular. On Fodor's conception of modularity, this means they have at least two properties. First, they are informationally encapsulated. Second, they are “hard-wired”. But the two illusions I discuss here problematise both of those properties. If the visual system is encapsulated, at what level of processing does the clink sound in the Miser's Dream cause the (apparently perceptual) illusion that a coin was just thrown? More generally, multimodal illusions as a class are a problem for the advocate of informational encapsulation. And if the visual system is innately hard-wired, how does it “know” (in whatever sense) the shape of the spoon—information it could only have acquired from the environment?