Visual Awareness and Visual Appearances
Oxford Scholarship Online June 21, 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199666416.003.0008 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Proposes that perceptual experience involves a duality in which visual appearances supervene on low-level visual facts while the scope of visual awareness depends on context-sensitive cognitive habits or heuristics based on visual appearances. |
Abstract
Many philosophers from the traditions of both phenomenology and analytic philosophy have observed that our perceptual (e.g. visual) experience involves a certain duality. In the terminology used in this chapter, we seem to be visually aware of more than what is visually apparent to us. Such duality is present in various cases, from the perception of opaque volumetric objects to that of natural kinds, artefacts, and familiar persons. This chapter offers a general account of the duality, according to which visual appearances supervene on low-level visual facts while the scope of visual awareness depends on context-sensitive cognitive habits or heuristics based on visual appearances.