Picturing, Seeing and the Time-Lag Argument

Extract

Picture-theories of visual perception usually maintain that, when something is simply seen, then (1) the seer “has” a picture of the thing, (2) the thing is the primary cause of the picture, (3) the thing in itself is not the primary object of sight, and (4) it is the picture itself that is the primary object of visual (not thoughtful) awareness.

I shall argue in this essay that there are not only proper, but required, senses in which the first three of these propositions are true, but that the fourth is always false or that one never simply sees (even imagines or senses) the picture. Rather, what is thus seen is always in the picture, never the picture itself. The grounds on which I make this complex point will also undo the time-lag argument, at least in the standard interpretation of it associated with the false fourth proposition above.