Skip to content

The Language of Visual Phenomenology

Jody Azzouni

The Anatomy of Experience December 12, 2025 DOI: 10.1093/9780197790151.003.0004 (opens in new tab)

Relevant Not relevant

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Topics Philosophy of mind
Key points Argues that the semantics of perceptual verbs like "see" do not provide the distinctions needed to separate direct or immediate perception from the products of judgment or inference.

Abstract

Abstract With a close lexical analysis of the word “see” and the related words “perceives,” “notices,” “observes,” and so on, one can see that the purported phenomenological distinction between the sensory given and what goes beyond the sensory given fails to correspond to the language we use to describe the distinction, though not entirely. Reviewing some key mid-twentieth-century debates about “sees,” and reviewing the lexical properties of a philosophically neutral word, “climbs,” that has important lexical characteristics in common with the perceptual verbs we are considering, it becomes clear that the semantics of these words do not provide the distinctions that would underwrite separating “direct” or “immediate” perception from the products of “judgment” or “inference.” If such a distinction is to be accessible to us by introspection, it would have to come from the phenomenology directly, and to talk about it would require newly minted terminology.

Comparable studies

Other theoretical and historical papers on philosophy of mind, most cited first.

Study Year Design Participants
Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: a framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia. 2003 Theoretical or philosophical paper
From dopamine to salience to psychosis--linking biology, pharmacology and phenomenology of psychosis. 2005 Theoretical or philosophical paper
How do the brain's time and space mediate consciousness and its different dimensions? Temporo-spatial theory of consciousness (TTC). 2017 Theoretical or philosophical paper
The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. 2013 Theoretical or philosophical paper
Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution 2017 Theoretical or philosophical paper

Citations in the library

Cites 5

Related reading

Explore topics

Philosophy of mind