Husserl Stud

DOI 10.1007/s10743-014-9152-2

Affectively Driven Perception: Toward

a Non-representational Phenomenology

Matt Bower

 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract While classical phenomenology, as represented by Edmund Husserl’s

work, resists certain forms of representationalism about perception, I argue that in
its theory of horizons, it posits representations in the sense of content-bearing
vehicles. As part of a phenomenological theory, this means that on the Husserlian
view such representations are part of the phenomenal character of perceptual
experience. I believe that, although the intuitions supporting this idea are correct, it
is a mistake to maintain that there are such representations defining the phenomenal
character of low-level perception. What these representations are called on to
explain, i.e., the phenomenal character of perceiving objects in their full presence,
can be more parsimoniously explained by appealing to certain affective states or
affect schemas that shape the intentional directedness of low-level perceptual
experience and define its phenomenal character in a non-representational way. This
revision of the Husserlian view, it is shown, also helps us understand the normative
character of perception.

1 Husserlian Phenomenology and Representationalism(s)

In a certain sense, Husserlian phenomenology obviously takes an anti-representa-

tionalist stance concerning perception. This is apparent from Edmund Husserl’s
polemical engagement with Franz Brentano’s idea of ‘‘intentional inexistence.’’
While commentators now dispute what this idea means in Brentano, Husserl clearly
took it to mean that the object of an intentional act, what the act is directed to, is
immanent to that act (Hua XIX, Investigation V, §§11, 20). The act is directed not to
the world (not directly, anyway), but to some entity within the mind’s own

M. Bower (&)
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Beloit College, 700 College St, Beloit, WI 53511,
USA
e-mail: [email protected]

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economy. This is a representationalist view in the sense that here a mental entity
serves as a stand-in or representative for some worldly matter (i.e., object, state of
affairs, event, etc.) which it perhaps also resembles as a sort of image or icon. Of
course, representationalists of this sort ultimately want to say that we make contact
with the world. But that contact is indirect, it is by way of some intra-mental way-
station(s).
Against the internal, iconic stand-in variety of representationalism, Husserl
maintains that what we perceive first and foremost are worldly matters themselves,
and it is only after the fact, upon reflection, that we come to engage with our own
mental processes and furnishings.1 Phenomenologically, we do not seem to
encounter image-like icons within our own mind when we perceive. We encounter
worldly matters ‘‘directly,’’ in the flesh (Hua XIX, Investigation VI, §47, Hua III,
pp. 185–186/218–219). I will not consider this variety of representationalism any
further, taking it for granted that Husserl rejects it, and rightly so. When it comes to
the phenomenology of perception, its target, what perception is conscious of, is
some worldly matter and not any kind of mental stand-in (Cunningham 1986).2
This assumption still leaves other interesting varieties of representationalism on
the table. Another version of representationalism focuses not on where an
intentional act’s target is located (i.e., within or without the mind), but what the
‘‘content’’ of the intentional act consists in. In this context, a representationalist
about perception is one who maintains that perceptual contact with the world must
have semantic content (e.g., Fodor 1981; see Hutto 2008; Hutto and Myin 2013).
Intentional acts of this sort involve propositional attitudes, which can be expressed
in statements attributing a predicate to a subject. If Husserl is to be taken at his
word, perceptual experience need not have semantic content, and so it is not
representational in this sense (Hua XIX, Investigation VI, §§46–48, Hua IV, §9,
Christensen 1993, p. 764). Admittedly, it has something very similar. Indeed, that is
the whole point of Husserl’s account of so-called ‘‘passive synthesis.’’ In that
context, Husserl wants to maintain that perception anticipates predicative judgment;
they are structurally analogous. Perception even has a quasi-predicative structure
(Hua XI, Division I, Hua XXXI, §§53–54, Husserl 1973, Part I).3
If it is fairly clear that Husserl is not a representationalist in the preceding two
senses, there is a third sense where the matter is not so clear. More recent
discussions of the nature of representation have importantly drawn a distinction
between a representation’s content and the vehicle or bearer of that content, namely,
the representation itself. The paradigmatic example for this is written language
(Rowlands 2006a). A written sentence is a vehicle for content, i.e., whatever the
sentence is about. The vehicle does not resemble its content as an image, but it

1
On Husserl’s view, there is some sense in which the mind is related and perhaps ‘‘directed’’ (in an
equivocal sense) to sensory data and other mental matters, but that relation is not an intentional relation, a
consciousness-of (Rowlands 2010, p. 177). More on this below.
2
As it happens, this is also a fairly widespread view in contemporary philosophy of mind, thanks to the
work of Tye (2002).
3
One may (Smith 2007) or may not (Shim 2005; Hopp 2011) think of the content of perception as
conceptual, and this pair may not even exhaust the available options (Barber 2011). I will leave this issue
to the side.

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nevertheless has a structural isomorphism with its content. If we construe

representations not as intentional contents, but, rather, as the vehicles for contents,
a novel kind of representationalism emerges that can withstand Husserl’s
phenomenological argument against the internal stand-in variety and the semantic
content variety. It may be, on this view, that the mind is filled with all manner of
vehicles for tracking worldly matters. This would entail neither that we are
intentionally directed to these vehicles nor that their content is semantically
structured. It is, nevertheless, structured isomorphically to its content. Certain
features of the vehicle correspond to certain properties of its content, and in such a
way that no content of an intentional act lacks a corresponding component in the
representational vehicle.
I believe that Husserl falls prey to this version of representationalism.4 Husserl’s
notion of ‘‘horizons’’ operative in perception commits him, either directly or
indirectly, to a species of content/vehicle representationalism.5 Because perceptual
intentional acts partly consist of horizons, they present not only sensory snapshots—
self-standing profiles capturing the surface of things—but things in their fullness.
This is because perception appresents. It somehow puts one in touch with
information about things that one is not in direct sensory contact with at present
(Kuhn 1968, p. 112). Husserl’s theory of appresentation, I will show, commits him
to a form of content/vehicle representationalism.
In Sect. 2 I will present the main features of Husserl’s account of perceptual
appresentation, i.e., his theory of horizons in perceptual experience. Continuing this
reflection, I explain in Sect. 3 why this should be understood as a kind of vehicle/
content representation on the grounds that, insofar as they inhere in a noematic
sense (in a Frege-like way) or correlate isomorphically with a noetic sense bestowal,
they render conscious perceptual experience representational. I introduce the notion
of affect and affect schemas in Sect. 4, which sets the scene for my parting of ways
with Husserl’s view of perception while highlighting my source of inspiration in
Husserl’s own work. My alternative proposal requires two basic modifications of the
Husserlian view. First, as I outline initially in Sect. 5, certain key intuitions
supporting the Husserlian view can equally well be described in purely affective
terms. Second, I suggest in Sect. 6 that part of the problem with the Husserlian view
is its abstract understanding of sensory experience. Sensation is phenomenologically

4
This is most immediately suggested by his early theory of sensory or ‘‘hyletic’’ data, as presented in the
Logical Investigations and Ideas I. In these texts, he argues that sensory information is inherently non-
intentional (Hua III, §85). It is not ‘‘about’’ anything, left to its own resources. Once one carries out an
interpretation or apprehension (Auffasung) of it, then a sensation becomes the constituent of an intentional
act aimed at some worldly matter. However, it is arguably the case that Husserl comes to see this position
as being problematic (Nuki 1998; Rabanaque 2003). There is controversy about the extent and
significance of Husserl’s change of mind on the point, and the way the controversy is negotiated will
certainly bear on the question of whether sensory data are content vehicles for Husserl. I will remain
undecided about that interpretive controversy. In fact, I will also assume, whether this is Husserl’s view or
not, that sensory information is not intramental, but rather that it is a way of talking about a peculiar kind
of mind-world (or, better, organism-world) relation. On this understanding, it would not be a content
vehicle.
5
Cunningham (1986, p. 283) makes more or less the same observation, although without specific
reference to ‘‘horizons.’’

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best described as thoroughgoingly temporally extended, in the spirit of James

Gibson’s ecological psychology. With that in mind, Sect. 7 returns to the descriptive
project of presenting a more detailed portrait of affectively driven perception.
Section 8 recapitulates the course of the argument, formulating in more general
terms the upshot of the phenomenological descriptions of Sect. 7. Finally, Sect. 9
wraps up the discussion by explaining in outline the normative character of affect in
perception.

2 Horizons in Perception

Ultimately, I want to suggest that much of our perceptual experience is driven by

affect lacking any conscious representational features marking its phenomenal
character. At first blush, this may be an odd-sounding claim for those familiar with
and sympathetic to the Husserlian project. It will make no sense without a little
explanation of what exactly is left behind when affect operates autonomously in
perception. This baggage to be lost is perceptual sense (or its corresponding sense-
bestowal), specifically insofar as this embeds within our intentional acts what
Husserl calls ‘‘horizons.’’ Horizons are supposed to give to perception its
appresentational character.
That means an intentional act consists not only of sensory information pertaining
to the present aspect of an object as it is given at a certain moment, but also of
strictly speaking non-sensory (a-modal) information.6 A-modal information con-
cerns co-present properties that are not part of the sensory makeup of perceptual
experience at a given moment. Co-present in an apperception are other, not
currently perceived, properties of objects as they would be given in other possible
perceptions (Hua IV, pp. 67–68/72). These properties, of course, are not presented
in all the clarity of the core of the fully concrete aspect as sensed at a given moment.
The properties are presented together in a ‘‘vague horizon’’ (Hua IV, p. 107/114), an
‘‘ambiguous’’ (Hua XI, p. 7/43) one that is ‘‘not completely determined [as to its
content]’’ (Husserl 1973, p. 32), which Husserl often refers to as a ‘‘predelineation’’
(Hua III, p. 49/52).7 The predelineation is characterized by its ‘‘latitude’’
(Spielraum) (Husserl 1973, p. 32). The German term for predelineation, Vorzeich-
nung, rendered literally, suggests a ‘‘sketching’’ or ‘‘planning in advance.’’ The
upshot of this is that appresented co-present properties comprise a schematic
understanding that contextualizes and fleshes out in a general way the meaning of
objects’ aspects as they are presented to the senses at a given moment (Hua I, §50;
Lohmar 2003; Balle 2008; Geniusas 2012, p. 102).

6
This Husserlian idea resembles recent proposals by Noë (2004) and Nanay (2010).
7
I would argue that this means appresented co-present properties are therefore neither concrete
particulars (individual objects, e.g., this cat, and their detachable parts, e.g., this cat’s tail) nor tropes
(abstract particulars, e.g., this shade of green). As Husserl quite often stresses, it is a consciousness of
types. Surely one can be conscious of other sorts of things, but that is not what I am trying to capture here,
i.e., what Husserl calls the ‘‘horizon’’ of our intentional acts. I think this point is underappreciated and
often not recognized, and that it could do a lot to clarify Husserl’s phenomenology of perception in a
useful way.

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Thanks to its appresentational character, an intentional act can be directed to

objects as wholly present. Objects, first of all, are presented in appresentational
schemata often called internal horizons. Such a schema is what makes strictly
sensory information into presentations of something ‘‘under an aspect,’’ so to speak.
It accounts for how something can appear in various modes of presentation. An
inner horizon8 contextualizes a presented side, for instance, as a side (i.e., and not a
two-dimensional quasi-object) by embedding it in a generic schema for dealing with
its other sides in other possible perceptual experiences. It is only in our ability to
negotiate the vicissitudes of an object’s properties that we can perceive it. We are
not able to intuit the whole thing itself, but only the aspect that it happens to share
with us at a given moment (Hua III, §43). Hence, the horizon is essential for the
intentional acts of perception to have objects for their target.
It seems as if we enjoy properly perceptual experiences of the full presence of
objects (Noë 2004), including, e.g., their occluded or non-illuminated components
(Nanay 2010). The phenomenological notion of the horizon should be understood as
explaining our convictions on these matters, an explanation that seems warranted
given the apparent paucity of information present in a single sensory snapshot of the
world. It seems we need represented content to perceive in the ways we typically do.
More specifically, to make sense of the snapshot, we need to appresent objects’ co-
present properties, their un-sensed individual properties, which make up a
substantial amount of an object’s horizon.
The phenomenological account of appresented co-present properties thus has
some explanatory leverage. It offers a plausible explanation of some important
intuitions about perceptual experience. One further point in favor of this view is
worth mentioning. From a more dynamic perspective, it seems that the notion of the
horizon helps make sense of experiences of frustrated expectations in perception.
For instance, if one catches sight of a ball, and then, while shifting perspectives to
see the ball’s other side, one discovers the coloration to be significantly altered or
the surface to be deformed (i.e., not smooth) in one way or another, one will be
surprised or experience a sort of ‘‘conflict’’ (Hua XI, pp. 26–27/65). This suggests
that at the very start of the experience, one already views the ball in a certain light,
with certain expectations (Barber 2008, p. 93; Christensen 1993, p. 761). Otherwise
there would be no disappointment, only additional information with no special
salience. Yet, all one is doing at the outset is looking at the ball, perceiving it, so that
expectation must either be perceptual or quite intimately connected with perceptual
processes. In some sense, one is inclined to think, the ball is seen along with
expectations directed at its other side and perhaps other things as well.

8
For the sake of simplicity, I will restrict myself to the internal horizon, which is precisely what I have
been describing. No account will be given here of the external horizon, i.e., what is grasped in perception
of an object’s relations to one’s own material body, to other objects, and to its environment and
surrounding conditions. Husserl discusses the distinction between ‘‘internal’’ and ‘‘external’’ horizons in
the following passages: Hua XI, pp. 43–48, 60, 108, 150, 253, 257–258, 445; Husserl 1973, pp. 33, 150,
361. See Hopp (2011, pp. 54–60) for further discussion. I will thus be using the term ‘‘horizon’’ in a
limited sense.

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3 Perceptual Sense or Sense-Bestowal as Conscious Representation

My task now is to explain how exactly, according to this theory, the horizons in
perception enabling the appresentation of co-present properties are supposed to
qualify as, or require the stipulation of, representations of the content/vehicle
variety. The basic idea is that the horizons are or require intramental (in Husserl’s
vernacular, ‘‘reell’’) structures functioning as vehicles that have co-present
properties for their content. To terminologically complicate things once more, the
horizon we have been discussing is a component of what Husserl calls the ‘‘sense’’
(Sinn) of an intentional act (Geniusas 2012, p. 33).9,10 With that in mind, consider
this statement of Husserl’s: ‘‘Each noema has a ‘content,’ that is to say, its ‘sense,’
and is related through it to its object’’ (Hua III, p. 267/309).11 The sense is distinct
from the object itself, as the vehicle for an intentional act’s determinate contact with
that object. To be clear, without further clarification the distinction between noema
and object need not commit Husserl to vehicle representationalism. Further work is
required to show how this distinctness of the noema implies that the noema is an
intramental entity.
This additional conclusion is highly contentious, and a significant literature has
arisen to address the problem. There are those, on the one hand, who take the
distinction between noema and object to be an ontological one and who thereby
adopt a representationalist stance. On occasion, it is hard to resist interpreting
Husserl along these lines. Take, for instance, the following remark: ‘‘[E]very sense
that any existent whatever has or can have for me […] is a sense in and arising from
my intentional life’’ (Hua I, p. 123/91). Again, but speaking in particular of
(‘‘noematic’’) horizons, Husserl says that they ‘‘belong to the [subjective] process
[i.e., Erlebnis] itself’’ (Hua I, p. 82/44). This view is called the West Coast
interpretation of the noema (e.g., Smith & MacIntyre 1975, 1984; Smith 2007).

9
Indeed, Husserl often speaks of the Horizontsinn of intentional acts. See, e.g., Hua I, p. 141/111, Hua
XV, pp. 46, 57, 95, 137, 209, 429, 491, 549, 603, Hua XXXIX, pp. 3–4, 27, 195–196, 430, 480, 496, 676,
Hua Mat VIII, pp. 241, 243.
10
I therefore cannot agree with Smith’s (2007, p. 236) view that distinguishes noema from horizon in
such a way that the noema occurs ‘‘within’’ a horizon. The horizon, in Smith’s reading of Husserl, is a
consciousness of possible acts. Husserl does often speak this way, so Smith’s understanding does have
textual support. I think, however, that Husserl is being loose with his language when he speaks like this.
Phenomenologically speaking, I think it is dubious to claim I am constantly aware of possible acts in
ordinary perceptual experience, not even ‘‘tacitly’’ or ‘‘implicitly.’’ (Of course, it is harder to deny claims
about ‘‘tacit’’ experiences, since it can always be said that one is simply overlooking them if one denies
their existence.) The meaning of Husserl’s talk of possible acts, I propose, is more like this: One perceives
an object, and recognizes it according to a type or generic schema (e.g., material thing, animate being,
person, etc.), and this type is a setup for the future course of experience, such that it is expected to
conform to the type. In a sense, that means the future course of experience is ‘‘implied’’ in the present
phase. Combined with protentional consciousness, the awareness of the type is projected into the future,
but that hardly counts as an awareness of other acts. It is, rather, the awareness of the continuation of a
present act. This would be more apparent from Husserl’s later analyses of passive synthesis and
association, which are not the primary textual loci for Smith’s analysis. Hopp (2011, pp. 54–55) is
similarly critical of Smith’s view.
11
This is a point that Aron Gurwitsch is especially emphatic about (Gurwitsch 2009).

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If it is correct, then there are good grounds for my allegation that Husserl is a kind of
representationalist.
On the other hand, there are those who take the distinction between noema and
object not to be between distinct entities, but to mark a difference in one’s vantage
point on the same entity. The difference is descriptive or phenomenological. This
view is called the East Coast interpretation of the noema (e.g., Drummond 1990,
2003). If it is correct, it does not follow that Husserl is a representationalist. Neither,
I would add, does it follow that he is not. Even if one adopts the East Coast
interpretation of the noema, it will still be the case that Husserl is a vehicle
representationalist. The representation is not the noematic sense. This much must be
granted to the East Coast view, and it is a step in the right direction, although
ultimately one that is not radical enough. In fact, it only pushes the problem back—
onto the noesis.
Let me explain why this is so. On Husserl’s view, there is a strict parallelism
that holds between noesis and noema. Accordingly, he says quite generally:
‘‘Corresponding in every case to the […] Data pertaining to the really inherent
noetic content, there is […] a correlative noematic content’’ (Hua III, p. 181/
214). This suggests that for every entity and every feature thereof captured in,
e.g., a perceptual intention, there will be an intramental structure, a ‘‘noetic
content,’’ to which it corresponds—and this is exactly the kind of isomorphism
characteristic of vehicle/content representationalism. We already know that the
intramental structure is not an icon or image, but it has an isomorphic structure
by virtue of which it relates to its correlative noematic content. If such
specificity is perhaps not obviously implied in the preceding quotation, Husserl is
unambiguous in the following quotations:
[T]he stuffs [i.e., ‘‘everything hyletic’’] […] are ‘‘animated’’ by noetic
moments […]. [I]t […] follows that not only the hyletic moments […], but
also the animating construals […] belong to the ‘‘really inherent’’ composition
of the mental process’’ (Hua III, pp. 203–204/238).
The object is […] always meant expectantly as having a sense yet to be
actualized; […] [i.e.,] an index, pointing to a noetic intentionality that pertains
to it according to its sense (Hua I, pp. 83/45–46).
Every intentional lived-experience […] has its real [reellen] part, e.g., like the
hyletic data included in it, […] which are really [reell] included in it. But the
character of the adumbration of the object [Objektivem] is also a real [reeller]
part, part of the immanent concrete lived-experience in the stream (Hua IX,
p. 172; my translation).
In these quotations, Husserl affirms that the minute details of noematic content—
e.g., expected sides, properties, aspects, of a perceived object—always have a noetic
counterpart, and as such point to structurally isomorphic intramental processes. It
follows that, even on the East Coast view, Husserl is committed to a kind of vehicle
representationalism, albeit with the noesis rather than the noema serving as the
vehicle.
The noematic sense or noetic sense-bestowal of a perceptual intentional act
thus works like an internal script specifying co-present properties of an object. In

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reading this script, the mind does not take the script itself for its object. Just as
the mind ‘‘looks through’’ written words to what those words are about, one is
likewise normally directed right through the perceptual sense of a given
perceptual act in order to be conscious of the world itself. This is how Johannes
Balle explains Husserl’s position: ‘‘The structure of an intended object’s sense is
thus not conscious, strictly speaking. Rather, this type is a sort of instrument by
means of which the subject is put in a position to recognize an object of a
determinate sort’’ (Balle 2008, p. 92; see also Rowlands 2010, p. 174 for a
similar view).12 These considerations suffice, I think, to show that Husserl is a
representationalist of the content/vehicle variety. The noematic sense (on the
West Coast view) or noetic sense-bestowal (on the East Coast view), belonging
resolutely on the mind side of the mind/world relation brought about in the
intentional act, is the vehicle enabling perceptual contact with worldly content,
i.e., co-present properties.
Some remarks are in order to bring out the peculiarly phenomenological
character of this species of representationalism. Although one is not conscious of
a perceptual sense or sense-bestowal in the technical sense, i.e., as an intentional
object, it is nevertheless something one is aware of in its operation.13 Otherwise
it would simply be out of bounds for phenomenology. Perhaps an analogy will
help. When driving in heavy rain, one’s windshield may be bombarded all over
by rain and the rain’s runoff as it is buffeted over its surface. Now the window
is no longer a transparent medium. One cannot simply look through it as one
normally does. But neither is it entirely opaque. One can still, maybe just barely,
‘‘make out’’ what is going on ahead of one in traffic. So the distorting surface
functions like an instrument, a ‘‘vehicle’’ for content on its far side. It is in one’s
line of sight, it is perceived. But it is not the object one aims at in seeing. The
object is the traffic ahead. Merleau-Ponty makes a similar point about how a
blind person might use a cane (Merleau-Ponty 2002, p. 165). The cane can be a
vehicle passing along information about the world. The cane is not the object of
this activity, but an instrument for exploring other objects. And yet, clearly one
is aware of the cane, too. On Husserl’s view, the same can be said of one’s
consciousness of representational vehicles. These are not the targets of one’s
conscious state. They are, rather, instrumental means for making contact with
that target, and they are as such incidentally conscious.

12
The quotation is my translation. In Balle’s words: ‘‘Die Sinnstruktur des intendierten Gegenstandes ist
hierbei nicht eigens bewusst, es handelt sich beim Typus vielmehr um eine Art Instrumentarium, mittels
dessen das Subjekt in die Lage versetzt wird, einen Gegenstand als einen Bestimmten zu erkennen.’’
13
Husserl is similar to Tye (2002) in this respect. Tye claims that representational contents ‘‘contribute
to the phenomenal character of experience’’ (Tye 2002, p. 142). This is just what I have been trying to
show in Husserl. It is not clear, though, whether Husserl would agree with Tye’s (2011) view that the
phenomenal character of an intentional act is its representational content. In any case, the view I present
below will not go along with that, since I will try to paint a picture of perception without representational
content.

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4 New Horizons: Parting Ways with the Husserlian View

While I think Husserl’s representationalist position has an initial phenomenological

plausibility, I don’t believe it can withstand critical scrutiny. It is not that his view
suffers from any kind of fatal incoherence or posits anything metaphysically
impossible. Rather, his representationalism is descriptively inadequate. The
phenomenological evidence simply doesn’t warrant the conclusions Husserl wants
to draw from it. Hence, what I propose is an alternative phenomenology of
perception. This counter-proposal will serve as a critique of the Husserlian position.
In short, I maintain that a careful phenomenology of perception yields a picture of
affectively driven perception and not, as Husserl would have it, one of
representationally driven perception. Experiences of affect, I suggest, can do all
the required work of the perceptual sense or sense-bestowal of intentional acts, their
horizon putatively appresenting co-present properties.14 We are affectively directed
toward objects in their full presence in perception, but we do not represent them. We
perceive without a script.
To begin with, I should note that the kernel of this claim can already be found in
Husserl. He maintains in later texts that affection is an essential ingredient to
perception, inasmuch as perception requires a theory of perceptual attention. In one
place, he states categorically that every lived experience has both an affective
‘‘form’’ and an intentional content (a Was) (Hua Mat VIII, p. 189; p. 252).15,16 For
Husserl, nothing catches one’s attention without provoking a perceptual interest,
which, Husserl maintains, is a feeling (Hua XXXI, §4, Husserl 1973, §19). Not only
that, but this feeling or affection is structurally analogous to perceptual sense (Hua
XI, §32; Husserl 1973, §17; Hua XXXIX, p. 100). A certain affective state pertains
to what stands in the foreground. Its salience is felt, one’s attention to it is aroused in
what Husserl calls advertence (Zuwendung). On the other hand, the background is
felt as well, namely, in affective ‘‘tendencies,’’ which are so named because they
stand in a position to capture one’s focal attention. But these tendencies are
nevertheless occurent affective states. They are peripheral arousals. That is the static
perspective. Dynamically, there are also affective states articulated according to the
various phases of perceptual sense passing from intention to fulfillment. At the
outset, an intentional act is characterized by a feeling of tension, and the fulfillment
coincides with a feeling of resolution, with various shades of feeling between these
extremes (Hua XXXVIII, pp. 104–105, 186; Hua Mat VIII, p. 94). Call the complex
way that affective states map onto perceptual sense, statically and dynamically, an
affect schema.

14
On the notion of appresentation in Husserl, see Rodemeyer (2006).
15
The context is worth reproducing: ‘‘We presently have this immanent stream of lived-experience
together with an egoic stratum, where affection is not externally superimposed on the particular pre[ontic]
lived-experience. […] Every lived-experience, therefore now concretely as a two-sided lived-experience,
has an egoic side and an egoless side, alien to the ego. Put differently, every unity is two-layered, having a
stratum of allure or a directional point [Richtpunktes] (the ‘form’) and the what [das Was] of this form’’
(Hua Mat VIII, p. 189; my italics).
16
This view is apparently not idiosyncratic to Husserl. Barrett and Bliss-Moreau (2009) report that
Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener likewise view affect and sensation as inseparable.

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It is crucial to note that affect does not specify any property of the object, present
or co-present. It is not a vehicle for content. An analogy may help to make this
point. The situation with affect is similar to that of kinaesthesia (which is, after all, a
kind of affect). For instance, kinaesthetic feelings—e.g., feelings of eye movement
or turning of the head—accompany visual perception. But the same series of
kinaesthetic feelings can accompany diverse perceptual experiences (Hua XVI,
§49). I can perform the same eye and neck movements in my office or in the
hallway, generating more or less the same kinaesthetic feelings.17 But the visual
experiences are quite different. Therefore, the kinaesthetic feelings, while certainly
not irrelevant, nevertheless do not specify the properties of what I perceive in these
instances, they do not represent them in the way perceptual sense or sense-bestowal
is supposed to. Similarly, one may have the same affective state(s) or schemas, that
is, the same feelings of arousal and of tension and relaxation, corresponding to very
different perceptual experiences. In other words, intentional acts with very different
perceptual senses can share the same affect schema. And, vice versa, the same
perceptual sense in different instances may be accompanied by distinct affect
schemas. Indeed, there are likely relatively few typical affect schemas in relation to
the in principle infinite set of possible perceptual senses corresponding to things one
could perceive in the world.
Now, I want to consider the possibility that in many perceptual experiences we
make contact with the world in intentional acts that are driven by affect schemas
rather than a perceptual sense or sense-bestowal. Husserl certainly allows that we
occasionally enjoy affective states that give rise to quasi-acts lacking a sense.
Moods, for instance, can instigate certain quasi-intentional behaviors that lack a
sense, since the mood is unmoored from reality. If one wakes up on the wrong side
of the bed, this foul mood says nothing at all about the world (Hua XXXVIII,
p. 180). Perhaps it says something about one’s bodily or psychological condition,
but one is in any case (phenomenologically speaking) in the dark about it. Yet, a
foul mood will determinately affect the kinds of responses one is disposed to take
toward what one sees and encounters perceptually while in that state. Something
similar is true of curiosity, Husserl notes. Curiosity concerns precisely what one
lacks familiarity with. One is blindly drawn in some direction by an ‘‘irresistible
allure,’’ a feeling lacking a corresponding sense (Hua XXXVIII, p. 186).
These examples are suggestive, and I believe they point us in the right direction.
But they do not go far enough. I think many instances of low-level perceptual
intentionality are better phenomenologically interpreted by replacing the perceptual
sense or sense-bestowal with affect or affect schemas. Instead of appresenting co-
present properties with the vehicle of a perceptual sense or sense-bestowal, we are
simply directed to, e.g., an object as the sort of object that bears those co-present
properties, without any intramental feature specifying those properties per se. It
should be noted that my claim is not that perceptual sense or sense-bestowal does
not exist at all. For that, I would need to show that there is something incoherent in
its very conception, that some other fact entailing its non-existence is the case, or
something along those lines.

17
Shim (2011) makes the converse point, which is also relevant here.

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My critique is not so strong. I want to show simply that perception is possible

without perceptual sense. (I say ‘‘simply,’’ but this is already a significant blow to
the Husserlian position, according to which perceptual sense is essential to
perception, i.e., without it perception just does not take place). Perceiving objects in
their full presence, perceiving them to be perceptually present, beyond the limited
contact one enjoys at a given moment, is possible without perceptual sense or sense-
bestowal, I will argue. This amounts to an important and quite large class of
perceptual experiences, members of which I will call instances of ‘‘low-level
perception.’’ It may be that above and beyond that, there are also types of perceptual
experience endowed with perceptual sense. Yet, it will be enough for my present
purpose to show that it is not always so, or, to put it a little more boldly, that an
entire stratum of perceptual experience has no need for perceptual sense or sense-
bestowal.

5 Getting Along Without Perceptual Sense, Part 1: Affect Schemas

Let’s begin with a simple case, the one of frustrated expectations. Recall, in the
scenario described above, one catches sight of a ball and then, upon seeing a
deformity on the other side, has an experience of surprise or a frustrated expectation.
By Husserl’s lights, what this suggests is that one has a determinate, consciously
available even if unnoticed, perceptual expectation at the outset. Otherwise there
would be no surprise or disappointment. One has to admit that in this case and cases
like it, the disruption reveals something about the interrupted intentional act. What it
highlights is the affective tone of the act, its correlative affect schema. When all
goes well, the visual or tactile scanning of the surface has a certain felt fluidity. This
felt facility or ease of scanning is broken up by the deformation in the ball’s surface.
The kind of affect schema that accompanies scanning over the deformation differs
from the preceding state. And it differs precisely in that it makes the scanning feel
more difficult, presents a challenge, so that now there is a feeling of relative tension
or strain in inspecting the object. One could call this surprise. But something like
‘‘disturbance’’ would be more accurate, since the feeling does not specify anything
in advance about the object.
This description shows that in at least some cases perceptual sense is unnecessary
to explain what is going on in perception and perhaps even overcomplicates the
process. Now consider another case illustrating how affect might better explain
perception. Imagine that the ball from the previous example was rolling when it
revealed its deformed side, and that as the ball continues to roll, it passes quickly
under a park bench, being occluded—from the perceiver’s point of view—by the
bench’s legs momentarily. One sees in this case a ball as it rolls, and perceives the
ball even as it is partially occluded in the process. The ball in its entirety seems to be
present throughout the happening, and is perceived as such. This phenomenal
character of the object’s full presence can be explained, at least in cases like this, by
appeal to affect alone. For a moment, it is true that the sensory engagement with the
ball is broken up, i.e., when the ball is partially occluded by the bench’s leg. But

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there is more to the intentional act than that. In other important respects, the
continuity is preserved.18
The intentional act of tracking the ball requires movement of the body,
movement that brings with it certain affect schemas. For instance, movement of the
eyes and neck are likely to facilitate the tracking, and we are proprioceptively aware
of such movement in kinesthetic sensations, as Husserl often emphasizes.
Furthermore, one may adopt an attentive posture and even put on a certain face
appropriate to the circumstances. These attend the sensory engagement of the ball
and give it a kind of context. The sensory contact with the ball may be distorted or
disrupted, but the attendant affective schema could continue on. One will keep
moving one’s eyes, neck, etc., while in addition possibly also retaining a facial
expression tensed in a certain way. This affective context serves to give the
experience its felt continuity and sustains the perceptual act in spite of its literal
obstacles.
This appeal to affect, I will show below, explains the phenomenon of perceptual
presence, the felt presence of objects in their fullness. I take this proposal to be
complementary to Noë’s (2004, 2012) account of perceptual presence, adding a
much-needed motivational dimension to his view (Colombetti 2013 and Stapleton
2013). For Noë, perceptual presence is explained by our mastery of sensorimotor
contingencies (SMCs), i.e., of how sensory experience varies in a regular way with
purposive bodily movement. There are two differences (not incompatibilities)
between the account I will offer and that of Noë. My appeal to affect is purely
phenomenological, whereas Noë’s account is not.19 He adduces a phenomenological
premise to get the discussion going, namely, the observation that there is a peculiar
phenomenal character to perceiving something as fully present, and that this seems
related to our ability to skillfully access things in bodily movement. It by no means
follows that his explanation of this phenomenon must likewise consist of further
phenomenological appeals, a point Noë (2007) makes explicitly. As he sees it,
phenomenology is a way of getting one’s bearings on the subject matter of
consciousness, not a way of settling questions raised within that domain.20 Indeed,
the appeal to SMCs to explain perceptual presence is not obviously equivalent to a
phenomenological explanation invoking, e.g., kinaesthetic feelings, as with Husserl
and Merleau-Ponty, or, in addition, affect more broadly, as in my proposal. It is one
thing to talk about tacit knowledge or mastery of laws governing SMCs, and another
thing to describe the lived experience of bodily movement and the exercise of
perceptual capacities.

18
This point is inspired by Chemero (2009, pp. 57–66), who makes a similar point about perceptual
cognition (and not about the phenomenal character of perception).
19
There is nothing wrong with this. I think the two approaches are complimentary.
20
This is a point I agree with, as will become apparent in the final section, though I think one can do a lot
more phenomenologically than Noë tries to do.

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6 Getting Along Without Perceptual Sense, Part 2: Taking Sensation for All
It’s Worth

I think the story so far about how one might get along without perceptual sense/
sense-bestowal will not be fully convincing. It may work for the very simple cases
just described, but perceptual sense is supposed to do more work than that. It is
supposed to put us in touch with, e.g., the reverse side of objects and account for the
peculiar phenomenal character of such intentional acts. I have not explained how
this could be without perceptual sense. The materials I am working with at present
are the unassuming sensory snapshot and its concomitant affect schema. Affect by
itself can only do so much. I have already admitted, in particular, that it does not
specify determinate properties of perceived objects. So at this point we are left with
a kind of ‘‘not-so-smart perception,’’ to borrow Gallagher’s (2008) expression.
Looking in a Gibsonian direction, I think this is a surmountable difficulty. What
is needed is a reconsideration of the relation between sensation and perception,
between our sensory contact with our surroundings and the way that contact serves
to present information to a perceiver. On all accounts, a momentary sensory relation
to one’s surroundings is uninformative in and of itself. It is only a single moment of
a larger process, which may only exist as a limit concept or theoretical abstraction.
On the classic Husserlian view, the sensory snapshot has meaning from the outset
because it is embedded in an intentional act that also includes one’s awareness of a
perceptual sense. In Michael Barber’s words, ‘‘the surplus-content of a horizon
accompanies the […] experienced object from the start, it is intrinsic to the
experience of an object itself’’ (Barber 2008, p. 92). We can and do at any given
instant enjoy a genuine perception with just the snapshot and the perceptual sense.
On the other hand, Gibson (1979), and, more recently, his enactivist heirs (Noë
2004, Rowlands 2010), describe the process differently, so that the sensory snapshot
only has informational value together with other actual antecedent and/or
consequent sensory engagements. So at the start of some process of surveying
one’s surroundings, the initial sensory phase by itself tells one nothing. Indeed, no
‘‘isolated’’ phase presents information. Only temporally extended actual groupings
of such moments, e.g., in the ‘‘optic flow,’’ do so (Taraborelli & Mossio 2008; Pan
et al. 2013).
This is perhaps difficult to demonstrate with vision,21 because of the perspicuity
of its presentation of distal happenings, but I think it is much less so with touch.
When one closes one’s eyes in order to explore an unfamiliar object or surface only
by means of touch, this perceptual experience will be best captured in Gibsonian
terms.22 The groping touch follows the contours of the object, not knowing in

21
I mean the difficulty to be a phenomenological one. Recent work on prospective control (Stepp and
Turvey 2010), which relies heavily on vision, suggests the same point could be made about vision despite
this phenomenological hang-up.
22
Some phenomenologists have already emphasized certain affinities between the Husserlian and
Gibsonian views of perception. See, for instance, Sokolowski (2008) and Natsoulas (2013). Zhok (2013)
is less sanguine. I think Zhok’s reticence is not unfounded, but it would not be problematic for my
account, which emphasizes the importance of the subject-side of perceiving in ways that Gibson is
sometimes criticized for neglecting. Barrett (2011), however, suggests there is no reason in principle for

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advance where it will be led. Only as the process elapses does the object reveal itself
in the intentional act of touching. This experience can be described entirely in terms
of one’s tactile sensitivity to information present in patterns of temporally extended
sensory transactions with one’s surroundings, together with the affect schemas
discussed in the preceding section, which maintain the felt continuity of the process
and its felt trajectory, the better or worse direction it takes.

7 Getting Along Without Perceptual Sense, Part 3: Feeling Things’ Presence

One may still wonder whether the conception of low-level perception could
adequately take the place of perceptual sense, which is so smart that it is supposed to
enable us to grasp in perception things in their full presence, front and back, inside
and out. What is most basically at stake with regard to the issue of the ‘‘fullness’’ of
the perceived world is its specifically spatial phenomenal character. What needs to
be explained is how the austere view of perception I am proposing can account for
this, i.e., that we seem to perceive distal objects rather than something like a two-
dimensional sensory flux. One way that affect helps contextualize sensory
information in this regard is through the phenomenon of ‘‘accommodation.’’
Accommodation refers to those muscle adjustments of the eye allowing it to focus
on objects at greater or lesser distances.
As one surveys a landscape, let’s say, with objects arrayed at varying distances,
some very near, some fairly distant, one will feel, apart from attendant facial
movements (which one can inhibit), tensing and relaxing of one’s eyes (which one
cannot inhibit). The muscles contract to focus on nearby objects and relax to focus
on more distant objects. The kinesthetic feelings of tension and relaxation vary
accordingly, and one gets a feel for the spatial layout in this way. (Something quite
similar could be said of the kinesthetic feelings related to the way our eyes adjust to
one another in binocular vision.) Once one has a handle on these movements, a feel
for one’s eyes, one ipso facto has a handle on how to visually explore one’s spatial
surroundings. All that is relevant to capture the phenomenal character of this
perceptual engagement with one aspect of one’s surroundings as a spatial array is a
certain temporally extended pattern of sensory experience (e.g., motion parallax)
coupled with corresponding kinasthetic feelings.
Affect plays a role in both the experience of an array’s, as well as of an individual
object’s, perceived full presence. (Frijda 2010, see also Frijda and Parrott 2011)
claims that there is a basic class of affective states best understood in a practical
light as forms of ‘‘action readiness.’’ This is akin to Husserl’s talk of affect as
‘‘allure’’ (Reiz). Abstracting from our prior beliefs and desires about objects, we
have a sense of their being wholly present, even when they present us with just a
fleeting or superficial aspect, because they stir up in us motivation to engage further

Footnote 22 continued
ecological psychology to remain silent about the subject-side of perception. I remain neutral here on the
metaphysical status of affordances and the issue of naturalism and the transcendental, which likely would
be a serious point of contention for Husserl and Gibson.

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with them. One perhaps only catches the slightest glimpse, but it can stir up a more
elaborate response, a response to the full object, the object per se. If one incidentally
notices a tomato while walking through the grocery store, that ripe red surface may
set in motion, via affect, a response going well beyond the item’s initially rather
meager offering. I suggest that in many cases, something similar takes place to give
us a sense of the full presence of what we encounter in perception. This will occur
whenever an interest—perhaps just a little curiosity and not necessarily a voracious
hunger—is sparked that functions as the initial phase of a fuller, temporally
extended affect schema corresponding to some interaction embracing other facets of
a perceived object, even if this tendency is inhibited rather than pursued.

8 Affectively Driven Perception

I have just sketched what I would call an account of ‘‘affectively driven

perception.’’ In closing, let me try to formulate a moral of the rather diverse group
of descriptions I am including under this umbrella. The basic idea is that we can
capture certain important intuitions about low-level perception by appealing to
affect rather than Husserlian perceptual sense. Perceptual sense is called upon to
explain the phenomenal character of certain low-level perceptual experiences. With
the sensory information one has at a given moment alone, it seems one lacks the
resources to really perceive an object per se, as being wholly present. And yet we
seem to perceive them in this way.
With the addition of a perceptual sense (i.e., a horizon)—a schematic orientation
toward, or generic set of expectations concerning, what one encounters in one’s
sensory engagements—one gains a properly perceptual grasp of targeted objects’
full presence. This perceptual sense functions as, or requires the support of, an
intramental vehicle for—or a kind of representation of—information about the
world. One is not (often) directed to it, but ‘‘through’’ it. Importantly, these
conclusions are supposed to be phenomenological. Perceptual sense is not
hypothesized, it is a matter of purported description, but it bears mentioning that
this phenomenal representationalism has enjoyed a life beyond Husserlian
phenomenology, e.g., in Mark Rowland’s conception of perceptual intentionality:
‘‘[W]hat it is like to see the tomato is that in virtue of which the tomato is revealed
to the subject as red and shiny’’ (Rowlands 2010, p. 192). We are aware of our
perceptual sense and can describe it. It is a part of the phenomenal character of the
perceptual experience of fully present objects.
My contention, however, is that perceptual sense is really an inference and not
part of the phenomenal character of low-level perception, not even tacitly. One can
give a satisfactory phenomenology of low-perception without it, as I hope I’ve
illustrated above. There is still a grain of truth to this classic phenomenological
account advanced by Husserl and heartily embraced by numerous subsequent
phenomenologists. There is a peculiar phenomenal character to the kind of
perception in question. But it is not representational. It is not a vehicle, like
perceptual sense, for carrying information about things in the world, through which
one usually unwittingly relates to them. What subjectively clues one in on the fact

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that one is intentionally directed to an object that is wholly present are one’s
affective states and affect schemas. This constitutes a form of weak intentionalism
about the affective states in question, inasmuch as I take it that, with respect to
these, ‘‘[t]he phenomenal properties of our experience are intentional’’ (Hatzim-
oysis, 2003, p. 107). It is a weak intentionalism, however, because it only espouses
intentional directedness, not representation (à la Hutto 2012).
Hence, the relevant affects don’t make up a separate module of the mind. As
Husserl and, more recently, emotion researchers like Barrett and Bliss-Moreau
(2009) urge, some forms of affect can be constitutive features of perception. Yet,
affect does not go so far as to properly represent things in this way. It orients,
contextualizes, and gives indeterminate vectors to perception, but it falls short of
specifying determinate properties. I hope my descriptions in the previous section
have illustrated how this might be so. Affect drives the process of perception by the
peculiar ways it initiates it, gives it continuity, pushes it in one direction or another,
signals whether things are going well or badly with the process, and so on. It thus
defines the conscious directedness of intentional acts in some low-level but
important forms of perception. Like the perceptual sense I would have it supplant, it
is not monolithic but has a variety of functions that together serve to drive
perception and imbue it with the peculiar phenomenal character it has when we
make perceptual contact with objects in their full presence.

9 Affect and the Normativity of Low-Level Perception

Before closing, let us consider a serious concern one may have about the basic
ingredient of my proposal, namely, affect schemas. One may wonder whether there
are not serious disadvantages to excising perceptual sense or sense-bestowal from
perception. One reason representations are invoked is to secure the normativity of
perceptual experience. It cannot be claimed that a subject perceives something
unless there are criteria for success or failure embedded in the intentional act, i.e.,
thanks to its representational content. For Husserl, this representational content
would be spelled out in terms of the intentional act’s perceptual sense or sense-
bestowal. So, if low-level perception gets along without representations, some
alternative story remains to be told about the normativity of such experience.
I do not claim that affect by itself accounts for the normative character of low-
level perception, although I do think it is our primary phenomenological means for
getting a foothold on the matter. Affect is a component in other more complex
systems that give perception its goals. Those systems specify the goals whose
achievement or failure to be achieved determines the normative character of an
episode of perception. The kind of framework I have in mind is one by virtue of
which a perceiver is actively propelled to engage in its environment. Now, one way
in which perception is mobilized for action is when a decision is made to pursue
some course of action rather than others, perhaps informed by some type of
deliberative rationality. This is not what I have in mind.
Another way in which perception is integrated with behavior is as a component
of a living system as a whole, as an organism confronted with needs that must be

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satisfied in order for it to continue in a viable mode of existence. For many living
beings, including those like ourselves, perception is an indispensible ingredient in
biological self-preservation. Human biological viability requires the ability to detect
threats and exploit opportunities in the environment, and it is our rich repertoire of
sensory modalities that enables this in many diverse, complex guises, which are
extended and transformed in the course of development and social interaction as we
pick up habits, accrue new abilities, and navigate through cultural institutions.
I will restrict myself at present to indicating how affect ties into this vital-
perceptual framework, rather than trying to present a theory of how perceptual
norms are framed by biological norms.23 This will, naturally, signal a departure
from the Husserlian program. The Husserl of the Logical Investigations, at least,
was adamant that the norms manifest in conscious experience could not be grounded
in biological norms (Hua XVIII, §55). Yet, Husserl’s genetic phenomenology paves
the way for this kind of position. Indeed, it is a hidden scandal for Husserl’s late
thought that he was willing to posit in his theory of affection and instincts a
normative form of consciousness lacking in the positing of a goal, i.e., in a noematic
sense or noetic sense-bestowal (Hua XIV, pp. 333–335, Hua XV pp. 329–330, 511,
593; Hua XXXIX, pp. 317–318; Hua Mat VIII, pp. 225–226, 326–327). One can, he
says, have a purely affectively governed experience that goes well or badly with
respect to a goal of which one has no awareness.24 Since consciousness, on
Husserl’s more limited view, can be governed by such norms, his view is
incomplete as long as the normative force of such non-conscious goals goes
unexplained. My emendation and extension of his view attempts to resolve this
difficulty.
Now, a key assumption I have made importantly influences the normative role of
affect, namely, the assumption that perception is basically a form of action or a
component thereof. At bottom, perception is about exploring and making one’s way
in one’s environment. So the normative problem confronting low-level perception is
not that of reference. The typical problem confronting perception is not best
formulated as ‘‘What am I looking at?’’ Rather, the question is ‘‘How am I faring in
my current project?’’ A given project or action will, in all likelihood, co-opt objects.
Yet, securing conscious reference to such objects is not what defines success or
failure in the task at hand.
Hence, the pertinent kind of norm is determined by the interaction of the
perceiver and the perceiver’s practically pertinent and manageable surroundings. On
the one hand, it is affect that propels one along in one’s environment, even when
one has no determinate or well-defined goal. Of course, affect serves as the
endogenous or exogenous motivation for the more obvious vital tasks of self-
maintenance, e.g., eating and drinking, and self-defense, e.g., flight from predators,

23
For details about how the nature of biological norms and the integration of perception into such a
framework, see, for instance, Thompson (2007), Di Paolo et al. (2010), and Colombetti (2013).
24
The view I am proposing, recall, is for the most part an extension of Husserl’s ideas about a possible
driving role of affection in intentional acts. Only I am suggesting that we ought to extend these marginal
ideas further than Husserl was willing to do.

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fear of heights, etc. Beyond that, there is also (all things being equal) a pervasive
affective vigilance or generic interest in exploring the environment, which allows no
definitive satisfaction.25 I suggested above that such more or less discrete affects
along with the just-mentioned constant affective undercurrent of curiosity suffice to
explain the conscious experience of an object’s full presence. They arouse one’s
interest and issue in affect schemas that draw one into an action, co-opting objects
as needed along the way.
Affect can indicate how a perceiver is faring by functioning as a sort of ‘‘error
signal’’ or as a kind of negative feedback signal. An affect begins as an impulse to
act, and continues to have this motivational pull. As such, it serves as a clue that
one’s present state does not match with some possible improved state.26 (Recall, at
least in the case of curiosity, this improvement may not manifest itself in any
obvious way, by contrast with, say, the satisfaction of hunger or thirst.) Yet, the
affect remains non-representational inasmuch as it does not present for conscious
scrutiny precisely what one’s current condition is (except as affected) or what
possible state one should make adjustments in order to bring about. Nor is it in any
obvious way structurally isomorphic to these. It speaks only indirectly to any of
these matters, and its bearing on them becomes apparent primarily once the affect
schema runs its course. One need not track such details if one can more directly
follow a single variable, relying (unwittingly) on its correlation with them (Orlandi
2011).
An affect can serve not only to inaugurate perceptual behavior. More
importantly, on the subject of normativity, it is an action-guiding27 variable that
continues to influence the course of perception as the perceptual behavior elapses
and takes shape. The initial agitated or aroused state sets in motion a process aimed
at satisfaction. The trajectory aiming toward—or, if things do not go well, away
from—satisfaction is consciously monitored in affect. The affect schema will take
one shape if things go well, signaling a diminishment of the error signal or
discrepancy between the present and improved state. This will impel one to continue
on present course. It will take another form if things go badly, signaling an
augmentation of the error signal. And there are all manner of shades in between.
This will motivate one to alter course and adjust to find a better path to the goal.
Once again, the perceiver need not keep track of all the details. In that case, affect
would be superfluous. One can, instead, simply follow the affect. In the realm of
low-level perception, this will be an adequate guide to how one is faring in a given
perceptual-behavioral task, and, thus, helps us phenomenologically understand the
normative character of such experience.

25
The affect scientist Panksepp (1998) has referred to the biological underpinning of this phenomenon as
the ‘‘seeking system.’’
26
This is consistent with recent work in affective neuroscience claiming that affect has a predictive
character. See Barrett and Bar (2009) and Stapleton (2013) for discussion. Barrett and Bar (2009,
pp. 1329–1330) claim that this applies in the case of object perception and visual perception.
27
This idea is inspired in part by Anderson and Rosenberg (2008).

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