Varieties of visual perspectives

One often hears it said that our visual-perceptual contact with the world is “perspectival.” But this can mean quite different things. Three different senses in which our visual contact with the world is “perspectival” are distinguished. The first (“visual persepective1”) involves the detection or representation of behaviorally important relations, holding between a perceiving subject and the world. These include time to contact, body-scaled size, egocentric position, and direction of heading. The second perspective (“visual persepective2”) becomes at least explicitly manifest in taking up the “proximal mode” and involves the (mis)representation of relational “appearance properties,” such as, perhaps (on one currently popular alternative), angular size and angular/projective shape at or from a viewpoint. The third perspective (“visual persepective3”) is associated with the pencil of rays structured by the position and geometry of the eyes. The relationships between these three perspectives are charted, and their connection with conscious experiential awareness discussed. So, e.g., there is no simple or direct route from the detection of the relations constitutive of perspective2 to detection of the relations constitutive of perspective1. The relations definitive of perspective3 are probably not themselves detected or represented by the visual system, but define the informational arena within which detection of the relations definitive of perspective1 and perspective2 takes place.