Structured Seeing
September 29, 2026 DOI: 10.1093/9780197913413.003.0003 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that relationalism about perception, which treats seeing as an acquaintance relation between perceiver and object without requiring subjective awareness, is adequate to explain everyday seeing and perception shared with non-subjective beings. Proposes, adapting Ernest Sosa's terminology, calling this 'animal' perception and reserving 'reflective perception' for experiences in which subjectivity is integral. |
Abstract
Abstract There is a philosophy of perception, so-called naïve realism—now more often known as ‘relationalism’, because it is the view that perception consists in an acquaintance relation between perceiver and object—which, while eschewing any requirement on having a perceptual experience that the experience is subjective (that the perceiver be attentive to some aspect of their inner life in having such experience), is fully adequate to account for the nature of our everyday seeing, our capacities for perception insofar as they are shared with other, non-subjective but possibly conscious, percipient beings. The relationalist does not make it a requirement on seeing, for example, a tree that the perceiver is aware of anything other than the tree (perhaps from a particular point of view), which figures as a theme against a background in the field of consciousness. Adapting Ernest Sosa’s distinction between ‘animal’ and ‘reflective’ human knowledge—only the latter requiring of the knower that they have an epistemic perspective on themselves—we might call the type of seeing for which relationalism is suitable our ‘animal’ perception (there being here, of course, no claim about the empirical psychology of actual animal perception), reserving the term ‘reflective perception’ for any perceptual experience to which subjectivity is integral.