The property transmission hypothesis: a possible explanation for visual impressions of pulling and other kinds of phenomenal causality

Under certain circumstances, stimuli involving two moving objects that do not come into contact reliably give rise to the illusory perceptual impression that one of the objects is pulling the other, as if there is an unseen connection between them. It is proposed that the conditions determining the occurrence of this impression can be explained as cases of application of the property-transmission hypothesis. This is a general hypothesis that causal objects operate in part by transmitting some of their own properties to effect objects under conditions where the causal object is active, where there are cues to the occurrence of generative transmission between the causal object and an effect object, and where there is a time-ordered relation of resemblance between properties of the causal object and those of the effect object. This hypothesis predicts that the pulling impression should occur only when the effect object adopts kinematic properties (speed and direction) that resemble those of the causal object. An experiment is reported that supports this prediction.