The thinking and picturing in seeing

Berkeley enshrined the empiricists' demand for sensory foundations in the maxim "Seeing is knowing." For any belief to count as knowledge, it must derive from a self-reflective and incorrigible mental state. Later day foundationalists, of which I am one, demand less of basic beliefs. On the other hand, foes of foundations deny that there are any epistemologically basic beliefs and that there is an exit from the circle of beliefs. A new breed of direct realists seem to concur with these two tenets of coherentism. Chisholm and Dretske typify this approach. Simply seeing something, they maintain, is not a form of awareness. I argue for an alternative characterization of seeing. This account salvages what is true in Berkeley's maxim.

I defend a "current time slice" foundational ism. The exit from the circle of beliefs is not taken to be a form of "direct awareness." Rather, it is a form—and there are many—of attention. I distinguish an objective, a nonphenomenal use of "looks" from an informational use. It is this use, rather than a "phenomenal" use which defines "simple seeing."