The myth of visual “depth cues” II. “Occlusion”

It is standard textbook practice to refer to “occlusion” as one of the so-called a depth-cues. However, perceived occluding relationships are a consequence of the perceptual organization of the retinal point stimulation – which contains no occluded surfaces. The perception of “occlusion” always involves amodal completion of areas perceived as partially occluded. Shapes, occlusions, and relative depth relationships are all descriptions of the percept. To treat one aspect of this percept as prior to other aspects is a logical fallacy linked to a failure to distinguish between the percept and the real world, and to a preference for adopting simple, pseudo-explanations of perceptual phenomena instead of tackling the difficult problems entailed in explaining perceptual organization.