Seeing as Landscape: a Wittgensteinian approach

In this work, the author proposes to consider landscape, place, and space as alternative aspects of perceptual environing worlds. The aspects in question have requirements in accord with those described by Ludwig Wittgenstein when discussing events of ‘seeing-as’ (hence the sub-title “a Wittgensteinian approach”). The world-making procedures leading to the ad-hoc notion of the perceptual environing world (PEW) are examined first to give it a firmer grounding. This done, the said Wittgensteinian requirements for aspects of a PEW are scrutinized using criteria derived, among others, from the rules of a game, aspect seeing as a sense- making activity, and the issue of commitment. Thus, in Chapters I and II, the foundations are laid to support a survey of the similarities and differences between seeing-as landscape/place/l-space. The suggestion is stressed that, although not necessarily so, a typical perceptual experience of an environing world involves an alternation of seeing-as each member of the triplicity; the overall aboutness of the experience depending on the relative time dedicated to each. The case when the period of time spent on seeing-as landscape is by far the longest is taken up in the last Chapter. While ‘seeing-as landscape’, a further interplay of the cognitive and affective influences on visual perception may lead to the dawning of novel landscape aspects. Evidence from findings in cognitive physiology and psychology is used to justify the argumentation. The author suggests that, in this, associative successions of thoughts play a leading role. Perhaps, the plot of the story dealt with in this book could be summarized to: from ‘seeing-as landscape’ to ‘seeing landscape as’.

Full text can be accessed with this link:

https://sites.google.com/view/landskip