Beyond Seeing

Although the focus of this book is primarily on visual verbs and their relation to perception, one cannot help but wonder to what extent any of the lessons for the case of vision carries over to other perceptual verbs. Can we learn something from the semantics of ‘sound’, ‘hear’, ‘smell’, ‘taste’, and ‘feel’ about auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and bodily experiences? The author thinks that we can. Many of the points that apply to ‘seem’ and ‘see’ seem to carry over to other perceptual verbs. For example, ‘feel’ is different from the other perceptual verbs in a number of ways, perhaps because it can be used to describe such different experiential states as touch, bodily sensation, and emotion. However, as the author explains, there is an analogous argument from the semantics of ‘feel’ to the view that touch, bodily sensation, and emotion are representational.