AN INTRODUCTION TO REFLECTIVE SEEING .1.

The human visual system allows a number of molar activities, among the m straightforward seeing and reflective seeing. Both of these activiti es include, as product and part of them, a stream of first-order, visu al perceptual consciousness (experience, awareness) of the ecological environment and of the perceiver himself or herself as inhabiting the environment and acting or moving within it. The two respective compone nt streams of first-order consciousness both proceed at certain brain centers and, in Gibson's sense, they are resonatings to the stimulus e nergy flux at the photoreceptors. But the two streams differ in that o nly the one that proceeds during reflective seeing involves inner (sec ond-order) consciousness of the component first-order, visual perceptu al consciousness (experience, awareness). In this sense, perceptual co nsciousness proceeds entirely nonconsciously during straightforward se eing. This is because inner (second-order) consciousness is not a kind of response to first-order consciousness, but is an intrinsic dimensi on of the latter when it is proceeding consciously as opposed to nonco nsciously. The content of first-order, visual perceptual consciousness during reflective seeing is importantly different from the content du ring straightforward seeing, notwithstanding their both being kinds of seeing in the literal, nonmetaphorical sense as characterized by Gibs on's ecological approach to visual perception.