Is Perceptual Space Monadic

In The Spatial Structure of Perceptual Space,' Albert Casullo argues that the relationist and substantivalist accounts commonly offered of physical space are both inadequate to account for perceptual space. On Casullo's view perceptual space cannot adequately be reduced to the relations of visual items, but neither is it some sort of special entity over and above these items. Perceptual space is reducible to visual items, so it is not substantival, but rather than being reducible to their relations it is properly reduced to their properties. Casullo holds that visual items have certain positional properties which, following Russell, he denominates 'central', 'sinister', 'dexter', 'superior' and 'inferior'.' It is only in virtue of possessing these properties that they possess spatial relations to one another and this is why perceptual space is properly reducible to the properties of visual items and not just to their relations. If he is to defend his view Casullo needs to argue that any relationist account of perceptual space must fail in that it must make some ultimate, if tacit, reference to a positional predicate which is itself simply seen, and which cannot be accounted for relationally. On this count he is willing to go some way towards relationism, granting that perceptual space may be weakly monadic in the sense that many, if not most, positions in the visual field may be defined relationally. But he insists that there must be at least one position, or set of positions, in the visual field which is

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