ABSTRACT
If perception involves the kind of active attention that not merely apprehends but somehow influences the object, the question that arises is how the object can submit to such influence. In what way, for example, can my looking at a rose affect that rose, or my observing a sky affect that sky? These are legitimate and indeed familiar questions, and we must now make some attempt to answer them. Nevertheless, before committing ourselves to a definite statement, it is important to make sure in what sense the question is being asked. When we assert that the perception of a rose affects that rose, we must not be taken to mean that the act of perception is responsible for “creating” the rose in the extreme idealist sense; nor must we be taken to mean that there are somehow two objects, the rose itself and that which we make of it in perception, because this proposition would be open to precisely the logical objections that vitiate the theory of knowledge put forward by Cook Wilson. A more reasonable suggestion, and one which we propose to elucidate, is that only in and through the act of perception does a rose become what we know a rose to be. What exactly do we mean by this statement?
