Perceiving Immaterial Paths

Bibliographic Data

ID10345906
AuthorsClare Mac Cumhaill (0000-0002-8830-5145, University of Geneva, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume90
Issue3
Pages687-715
Publication date2013-06-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8205 • E-ISSN: 1933-1592
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/phpr.12037
OpenAlexW2011234288
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited27

In what sense does empty space feature in visual experience? In the first part of this essay I sketch a view advanced by Soteriou (2011) and Richardson (2009) on which one's visual awareness of empty space is explained by appeal to ‘structural’ features of the phenomenology of visual experience, in particular the phenomenology of experiencing one's visual field as bounded. I suggest that although this ‘structuralist’ view is silent on whether empty space has a phenomenal appearance, the very appeal to structural features seems a natural foil to some such thought. In the second part, I outline a view on which it can be granted that empty space does, after all, have a phenomenal appearance and, so, is not best cast as a species of absence perception as the structuralist avows, at least on a certain construal of ‘absence perception’. After O'Shaughnessy (2002), I contend that although some privations have a phenomenal appearance, ‘absence perception’ should single out the putative perception of phenomena that lack phenomenal reality. I finally consider how the descriptive phenomenology that the structuralist points to, and which I urge should be embraced, can nonetheless be reconciled with the view I spell out

Aesthetics · Appeal · Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Perception · Phenomenology (philosophy · Sketch · Spell · Visual space · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology · Visual perception and processing mechanisms

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