Is spatial awareness required for object perception?
pp. 67-80
in: Roxana Baiasu, Graham Bird, A. W. Moore (eds), Contemporary Kantian metaphysics, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
Is spatial awareness required for perception of objects? The idea that awareness is required gives a significant epistemological role to conscious experience; it implies that spatial awareness is a way of accessing the world. In contrast, many naturalistically inclined philosophers would take it for granted that an appeal to consciousness can have no explanatory value. Consciousness has to be an epiphenomenon, a puzzle to be explained that can itself have no explanatory role. In this chapter I set out a case for saying spatial awareness is a basic element in our epistemic access to our surroundings. I leave open whether this is a problem for naturalism, properly construed.