You can download the submitted version of my MPhil.Stud thesis here. It's called ``Seeing Objects and Spatial Perception''. If you have any comments, suggestions for improvements, etc, then please contact me by email craig[at]craigfrench.co.uk or my university address is c.french[at]ucl.ac.uk! Thanks a lot!

Abstract

This thesis is about the nature of seeing material objects and the role of spatial perception in seeing material objects. I argue that seeing a material object doesn't require the object to be visually differentiated (or differentiable) from its surroundings, as some have supposed. What is required is that the object looks some way to one. Although visual differentiation isn't involved in the way an object must look to one in order that one see it, spatiality is. I argue that if one sees an object then one must see its generic spatial properties. What this amounts to is that if one sees an object it must appear to one to have generic spatial properties, such as being shaped, extended, and located. That is, one must see it as having generic spatial properties (in a non-conceptual sense). This view of the role of spatial perception in object seeing is contrasted with the recent views offered by Cassam. I also discuss whether seeing objects requires belief or knowledge. I argue that seeing objects is non-doxastic in Dretske's sense. Roughly, for one to see a material object doesn't require that one form any belief about the object seen. It is left open, though, whether object seeing requires some primitive non-doxastic knowledge about the object seen, specifically knowledge about the generic spatial features of objects. One way of thinking of the nature of such primitive knowledge is sketched in the conclusion.