Fiscal illusion is understood to be a concept that occurs where taxpayers do not always realize how much they contribute towards government revenue in the form of taxation, or how much they receive in the form of public goods and services (Dell’ Ánno&Mourao, 2011:2). The purpose of this study was to discover the originating causes of fiscal illusion amongst individual taxpayers in South Africa. To achieve this objective, available literature was reviewed, which revealed that complexity of the tax systems is argued to be one of the causes of fiscal illusion. A study conducted in South Africa suggested that taxpayer’s perception toward tax affects their attitude (Oberholzer, 2007:45). The hypothesis derived from the literature was then applied to a real life context by conducting interviews with a sample of individual taxpayers. Based on the analysis of data obtained, the study revealed that fiscal illusion of individual taxpayers in South Africa falls within four conceptual elements namely, hidden taxes, number of taxes, double taxation and, to a limited extent, tax shifting. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Taxation / unrestricted

The thesis deals with the theory of simulation and simulacra by French representative of postmodernism Jean Baudrillard. It focuses on way how Baudrillard thematises gradual extinction of signs connected with their representational function and the emergence of hyperreality which contains simulation. The attention is also focused on concept of reality, virtuality, simulation and illusion. The thesis includes Paul Virilio's thoughts and also Manuel Castells'. The basic framework of research is completed by a theory of fictional worlds. The second part of thesis includes an analysis of how this issue is reflected in present film production via analysis of content of the films The Matrix (Wachowski, 1999) and Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001). The analysis reflects different interpretation of illusive/virtual space and its relation to reality. The aim of thesis is to analyse the selected concepts which describe an emergence and interaction of simulation focusing on contemporary society which is connected with modern technology and also to point at reflection of conceptions mentioned in the films. The goal of thesis is also to explore the films, compare them and show the way how they contain the theme of reality, simulation and illusion and how much is the content of these films connected with the action...

The present work deals in one level with the issue of work and laboriousness in the arts and in the second plane perception of reality and its illusion. Here, briefly explains the function of the visual system, leading to the formation of the image, perception of light phenomena and to create visual illusions (ie. Phenomena, when our perception completely does not match with reality), which served as the basis for dealing with the formal aspects of the work.

No description available.

My purpose with this thesis is to examine Adorno’s rethinking of the aesthetic concept of form, in his last work, Ästhetische Theorie. Artistic form has in the tradition of aesthetics been quite forgotten according to Adorno. He even calls it, “the blind spot of aesthetics”. To rework the concept of form he introduces a set of conceptual relationships that takes an indispensable part in the new multifaceted concept of form. In fact, there is a plurality of concepts that is being put to work, to arrive at a new understanding of form. My methodological approach has been to trace these conceptual relationships that revolve around the aesthetic form and to highlight their connections. My contribution with this undertaking is to accentuate the weightiness of the form concept in Ästhetische Theorie. In the concept, Adorno’s materialistic thinking also becomes discernible. This aspect is especially mirrored in the theoretical attention he pays to the aesthetic material and the artifact itself. Another purpose of this thesis is to explore how the aesthetic form can be critical and to fathom what it implies. Criticism in Ästhetische Theorie is closely related to what Adorno calls aesthetic truth, which is taking shape in the artistic form. The form is thus related to many of the essential concepts in Ästhetische Theorie, such as truth and illusion. The study further examines how the critical form can be autonomous, while at the same time being deeply enmeshed in society.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>Multiple reference frames are used to interact with our surroundings. When these reference frames are in conflict, processing errors can occur. For tactile stimuli, this conflict is highlighted when the hands are crossed over the midline of the body. In this posture, vibrotactile temporal order judgments (TOJs) presented to the hands are impaired compared to an uncrossed posture. This decrease in temporal processing is known as the crossed-hands deficit. The deficit was explored in depth throughout this thesis. In Chapters 2, 3 and 4 different elements of the crossed-hands deficit were evaluated including its connections to the rod and frame test, individual and sex differences within the TOJ task, as well as the influence of vision and body position. These elements were framed with underlying goal of investigating the root cause of the deficit. The data presented here provided evidence for a conflict model of crossed hands processing. A conflict between the internal and external reference frames produced the deficit in temporal processing when the hands were crossed. The role of the body’s midline in understanding multisensory integration was further considered in Chapter 5 through the rubber hand illusion, which is a visuotactile phenomenon whereby an unseen real hand is mislocalized towards a seen rubber hand. When the real hand, rubber hand, or both were crossed over the midline the illusion did not occur. It was hypothesized that a failure to integrate the tactile information presented to the real hand with the visual rubber hand was responsible for the absence of the illusion. Taken together, the data presented in this thesis contribute to the greater understanding of how reference frame conflicts are resolved, particularly when the conflict occurs across the body’s midline.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The study of tactile illusions like visual illusions can reveal the brain's processing strategies. A famous tactile illusion is the cutaneous rabbit illusion. Fundamental to this illusion is the perceptual length contraction phenomenon: two taps that occur in rapid succession on the forearm are perceived as occurring closer together than they were physically placed. Our lab previously proposed a Bayesian probabilistic model that views perception as a compromise between expectation (prior experience) and sensation (likelihood of sensorineural data given hypothesized tap locations). The model proposes a low-speed prior, an expectation based on experience that objects tend to be stationary or to move slowly on the skin. When the sensation of space is unclear (e.g., taps are weak), the model predicts that expectation will strongly influence perception. Consistent with this prediction, our lab previously showed that the use of weaker taps causes more pronounced perceptual length contraction. Here we report psychophysical tests on 64 participants, which confirmed this finding. Our study also used stimulus sequences consisting of a weak and a strong tap, for which the Bayesian model predicts an asymmetric perceptual length contraction, such that the weaker tap location will be perceived to shift more than the stronger tap. The experimental results confirmed this prediction, providing further support for our Bayesian probabilistic model as an explanation for perceptual length contraction. However, our results revealed a discrepancy in the data at the smaller SOAs, which showed less length contraction than predicted. We hypothesized that participants might overestimate the smaller SOAs, an effect our lab defines as time dilation. Accordingly, in a second study we investigated the effects of varying SOA and lengths on perceived SOA. The model predicts more pronounced time dilation at smaller SOAs and larger lengths. The psychophysical data from 37 participants confirmed the trends predicted by the model. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

In the “rubber hand illusion,” the participant sees a displaced fake hand being touched congruently with her unseen real hand. This seems to invoke inference of an “illusory” common cause for visual, tactile, and proprioceptive sensations; as evident from a perceived embodiment of the fake hand and the perception of one’s unseen hand location closer toward the position of the fake hand—the so-named “proprioceptive drift.” Curiously, participants may sometimes move their hand in the direction of the fake hand (Asai, 2015). While this could easily be explained as participants actively trying to align the real and fake hands to experience a stronger illusion, they are not aware of these movements (cf. Abdulkarim and Ehrsson, 2018). So there may be better explanation for this observation than that participants were “cheating.” In their recent article, Lanillos et al. (2021) show that the unintentional execution of arm movement forces during a virtual reality based version of the rubber hand illusion—which the authors call “active drift”—can be reproduced by a computational model based on the active inference framework.