" (41) it is unclear how to understand "things are because we see them." Traditionally perception is conceived as a passive process: we open our eyes and receive input from the world. Kant suggests that perhaps it is not so passive: we "organize" the world into temporal and spatial dimensions, attribute cause and effect, etc. But what Wilde suggests here is even more radical. The "things are because" suggests a causal relationship, such that what we see exists as an effect of seeing. It would be as if looking "paints" the world. But this is completely absurd. Onto what would seeing "paint" the world? and, even weirder, notice that it wouldn't be that seeing paints the world so that we could then look at what was painted. Rather, it would be that seeing is painting, so that we always see and paint simultaneously, always just "creating" whatever we see, under...
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