Watching, Sight, and the Temporal Shape of Perceptual Activity

Abstract

There has been relatively little discussion, in contemporary philosophy of mind, of the active aspects of perceptual processes. This essay presents and offers some preliminary development of a view about what it is for an agent to watch a particular material object throughout a period of time. On this view, watching is a kind of perceptual activity distinguished by a distinctive epistemic role. The essay presents a puzzle about watching an object that arises through elementary reflection on the consequences of two apparent truths about watching an object throughout a period of time. It proposes that the puzzle can be resolved by a view according to which for an agent to watch an object throughout a period of time is for that agent to maintain visual awareness of that object with the aim of perceptually knowing what that object is doing. The essay goes on to make some further suggestions about how the apparatus developed in connection with the notion of watching may enable us to offer related explanations of other kinds of perceptual activity. It proposes that a useful distinction can be drawn between perceptual activities like watching which have as their aim knowledge of what an object is doing and activities like looking or visually scrutinizing which have as their aims knowledge of the states or conditions of the objects of perceptual awareness.

IX-Perceptual Activity and Bodily Awareness

“…8 The perceptual awareness or conscious perceptual contact with an object that one maintains in 7 Roughly. See Crowther (2009a) for some qualification. 8 Though this is not explicit in Crowther's published discussions of perceptual activity, it is implicit in, for example, the claim that listening to an object O is a process of 'agentially maintaining perceptual contact with … O with the aim of knowing what sound O is producing' (Crowther 2001, p. 183).…”

Spatial attention and perception: seeing without paint

“…These deeds have success conditions since they can fail in their contribution to the overall activity. Whilst exploring the picture one might mistakenly saccade onto the location of a fly on the adjacent wall, when descending a staircase 17 For the distinction between these two kinds of activity see Crowther (2009) who deploys it to explain the idea of perception itself being an activity. 18 O'Shaughnessy refers to such movements as deeds or subintentional acts (1980, p. 60).…”

The Philosophical Significance of Attention

“…As Gustav Fechner said: someone who focuses his attention on something “feels the increase [in prominence] as that of his own conscious activity turned upon the thing.” (approvingly quoted in James 1890/1981). Based on such observations, one might argue that PRW‐representationalism misses the way the active character of (at least) voluntary attention is reflected in the phenomenology of attention (see O’Shaughnessy 2000; Crowther 2009, 2010; Watzl 2010 for more discussion).…”