Abstract

The visual guidance of bodily motion is conducted by a system, here entitled ‘motion-guiding vision‘, that is separate from the system that furnishes us with visual qualia. The latter is called ‘descriptive vision‘. Vision scientists commonly hold that motion-guiding vision makes no contribution to sensory consciousness. Here it is argued that by giving us the wherewithal physically to make contact with external objects, motion-guiding vision supports perceptual demonstratives and accounts for the ‘feeling of presence‘ that distinguishes seen physical objects from those that are merely pictured or imagined. In this way, motion-guiding vision contributes to our experience of seeing something, though sensory qualia such as colour or shape cannot be traced to it. The visual representation of space is assembled from descriptive and motion-guiding vision.