Responsibility For Perception

Adrienne Prettyman, Bryn Mawr College

Abstract: On an active view of perception, perceiving is not something that merely happens to us, but something that we shape. This paper argues for the active view of perception and examines the implications for morally problematic perception, such as cases involving sexist or racist bias in vision. I argue that, in many cases, perceptual experience is a reflection of our moral personality, and that a subject can therefore be held responsible for how things look in perception.