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Does Visual Spatial Awareness Require the Visual Awareness of Space?
Author(s) -
SCHWENKLER JOHN
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2012.01446.x
Subject(s) - space (punctuation) , object (grammar) , property (philosophy) , argumentation theory , relation (database) , subject (documents) , psychology , epistemology , cognitive psychology , absolute (philosophy) , spatial contextual awareness , cognitive science , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , linguistics , database , library science
Many philosophers have held that it is not possible to experience a spatial object, property, or relation except against the background of an intact awareness of a space that is somehow ‘absolute’. This paper challenges that claim, by analyzing in detail the case of a brain‐damaged subject whose visual experiences seem to have violated this condition: spatial objects and properties were present in his visual experience, but space itself was not. I go on to suggest that phenomenological argumentation can give us a kind of evidence about the nature of the mind even if this evidence is not absolutely incorrigible.