September 1972
With What do We See?
J. J. Gibson, Cornell University
The World Wide Web distribution of James Gibson’s “Purple Perils” is for scholarly use with the understanding that Gibson did not intend them for publication. References to these essays must cite them explicitly as unpublished manuscripts. Copies may be circulated if this statement is included on each copy.
Common sense asserts that one sees with his eyes. Physiology says, no, one sees only with one’s brain. Motor theorists say, no, one sees only when the muscles come into action (in radical terms, with one’smuscles). Is there not a fallacy in all these formulae?
Perhaps the fallacy lies in the notion that an observer sees with any organ or anatomical part of the body, considered as an instrument of the mind. Instead we should say that an observer can see if he has an operational visual system, defining the latter as a perceptual system that explores, adjusts, and optimizes information pickup (not as a channel of sensory input).
If so, a function like observation cannot be localized anatomically-it does not have a “seat,” as the soul was supposed to sit somewhere in the body. Different “organs” of the organism make different contributions to its various functions, and these are nested functions. Hence there is some vicarious functioning and some specialization of function of the organs of the body.
This approach implies that the sensory dichotomy in psychology, along with the stimulus-response formula, is invalid. The dichotomy arose from the convenience of the afferent-efferent distinction in neurophysiology. And now we can suggest that all the new speculations about “feedback” and “reafference” and “afference copies” and so on are not as radical as they pretend but are efforts to salvage the sensory-motor dichotomy and put off the labor of formulating a genuine “systems theory” applied to perceptual activity (so far, it has only been applied to biological activities other than perception).
It would then be true to say that one looks with his ocular system (which includes adjustments of the eyes, and the orientation of the head, and in fact the whole body) but that one sees, or perceives visually, when the oculo-neuro-muscular system, involving various levels or “centers” of the brain, reaches a state corresponding to what we call clarity in phenomenal experience.