Principles of Soft Metrology and measurement procedures in humans

The current work represent both a compendium of ideas around Soft Metrology - the set of techniques and models for measuring quantities related to human perception - and a collection of personal abstracted articles on specific experiments conducted during the Ph.D. course. This thesis is not going to represent a review of all theories of perception, a key topic of the history of philosophy. Since Plato and Boethius, passing through all the history of Greek and Indian ancient philosophy, getting to the modern era with Descartes and Hume until reaching contemporary philosophy of mind, human perception has been always a central topic of thought as a key epistemological problem, i.e. deeply related to formation of knowledge. Therefore, we will not describe all these theories here. On the contrary, some specific theoretical interpretation of the relation human-physical world will be presented, exclusively depending on how much they are useful to the foundations of a specific line of reasoning pertinent to the metrological scope. The thesis is subdivided in three parts. The first one is dedicated to the background of Soft Metrology coming from the representational theory of metrology, and particularly the work of the MINET (Measuring the Impossible Network) the European cross disciplinary network for the measurement of perceptual qualities. Here, an overview of field of application and economical relevance of soft metrology is given. The second part is the core of the work and is dedicated to original hypothesis, interpretation proposals and methodological tools. Here are presented the salient findings of the research and suggestions for future advancements. The third part is dedicated to a description of the main experimental research activity done during these three year