Seeing-As in the Light of Vision Science

I will discuss the issue of what we see, using the framework of Tyler Burge’s wonderful and monumental book Origins of Objectivity (Burge 2010). On Burge’s view, every percept is constituted by a “perceptual attributive” (that represents an attribute) and a singular element (that represents an individual). The format of a percept is map-like or iconic, and could be symbolized as “That F”. The most basic perceptual judgments and beliefs are conceptualized and propositionalized versions of percepts in which the attributive need not be bound to a time and place. What are the actual perceptual attributives? Vision science picks out a small set of basic low level attributives that are products of sensory transduction and are causally involved in the production of other visual attributives: shape, spatial relations (including position and size), geometrical motion, texture, brightness and color. Burge discusses a higher level attributive for objects (“integrated body”) and considers that there may be some higher level attributives for some biologically important properties like food, danger and shelter. However, he notes (and I agree) that probably there are no culture-specific higher level attributives for teacups and recessions (p. 101). Terminological note: I will abbreviate the list of low level environmental attributives with “color, shape and texture” and I will refer to all attributives that are not low level as “high level”.