Perspectival Structure and Agentive Self-location

Perceptual experience is perspectivally structured, in at least two respects. It has characteristic sensory limitations relative to a given location (limitation-structure) and it presents objects as spatially related to a given location (egocentric-structure). Perceptual experience is also self-locating, in the sense that an episode of perceptual experience may be sufficient for thoughts about one’s location. In this chapter, I argue that perceptual experience can conceivably be perspectivally structured without locating its subject and that any account of spatial self-consciousness based upon a simple inference from the perspectival structure of perceptual experience faces serious difficulties. If this is correct, then we ought to look beyond the perspectival structure of perceptual experience in order to account for its self-locating content. The Agentive Self-Location Thesis, as developed here, suggests that we look to the relationship between perceptual experience and bodily action, and the unity of the body in mediating that relationship.