Ecological Perception and the Notion of a Nonconceptual Point of View
Ecological Perception and the Notion of a Nonconceptual Point of View
One of the attractions of Gibson’s concept of ecological perception is that it seems to provide a basic awareness of the bodily self that can serve as the core of a comprehensive account of full-fledged self-consciousness in thought and action. On the ecological understanding of perception, sensitivity to self-specifying information is built into the very structure of perception in such a way that, as Gibson famously put it, all perception involves co-perception of the (bodily) self and the environment. This paper shows how Gibson’s ecological account is not itself sufficient for self-awareness, even of a primitive form, but suggests what needs to be added to it in order to yield the basic awareness of the bodily self that I term possessing a nonconceptual point of view.
Keywords: J. J. Gibson, Self-consciousness, Nonconceptual content, Christopher Peacocke, Point of view, Ecological perception
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