Perception of Absence as Value-Driven Perception

Experiences of absence are often laden with values and expectations. For example, one might notice that a job candidate is not wearing a tie, or see the absence of a wedding band on a person's ring finger. These experiences embody cultural knowledge and expectations, and therefore seem like good candidates for being a form of evaluative perception. This chapter argues that experiences of absence are evaluative apart from the social or cultural values they take on. They are evaluative in their core, solely by virtue of being experiences of absence. The chapter begins by explaining why certain experiences of absence should be treated as a case of genuine perception. It then clarifies the role of the evaluative states in experiences of absence. The chapter concludes by arguing that experiences of absence constitute a new form of evaluative perception, and presents the subjective–objective dichotomy in a new light.