Visual Content
The Anatomy of Experience December 12, 2025 DOI: 10.1093/9780197790151.003.0009 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that visual experience is relatively empty and that we are often unaware of the visual details determining what we see something as (epiphanies), unlike recognitions where those details are accessible. This, together with categorical perception's emptiness, explains why we fail to notice the sparseness of visual experience and mistakenly think seeing is clearly distinguishable from remembering and reasoning. |
Abstract
Abstract Here, “content” is construed broadly, as everything presented to us during an experience, not the more restrictive “propositional” content. An interesting feature of visual phenomenology is that what we are aware of and not aware of is not experientially accessible. Our experience of objects can involve epiphanies, where we are unaware of the visual details that determine our seeing something as, say, an elephant, and recognitions, where we are aware of the details that enable us to know what we are looking at. Taken together with the relative emptiness of categorical perception, our visual sense of what something is helps explain why the relative emptiness of our visual experience is not normally recognized and why (therefore) we think we can clearly distinguish seeing from remembering and reasoning. These categories don’t correspond well to what seeing involves. Notwithstanding these shortcomings, our folk-psychological ways of talking are ineliminable.