Abstract
Properties like shape, size, and colour exhibit perceptual constancy: they appear to remain constant throughout variations in the conditions under which they are perceived. A number of writers have suggested that “apparent properties”, mind-independent relational properties that vary with the perceptual conditions, play an essential role in explaining perceptual constancy. On this view, when we see, e.g. a penny from an oblique angle, we see the circularity of the penny by or in virtue of seeing a mind-independent relational apparent property (its elliptical look). This chapter argues that views which explain the perception of constant properties of objects by appealing to perception of mind-independent apparent properties are structurally similar to sense-datum theories of perception; as such, they face many of the same challenges. It concludes that apparent properties play at best a modest explanatory role, functioning as the objects of awareness when we direct our attention in the appropriate ways.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Phenomenal Presence |
| Editors | Fabian Dorsch, Fiona Macpherson |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Chapter | 2 |
| Pages | 39-57 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780199666416 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |