Resting content: Unclarity in everyday perceptual experience

This essay offers a contrast between theories of perception that endorse, explicitly or implicitly, what we call 'better grip' views, and an account of perception in which resting content with unclarity is a feature of perceptual experience. The better grip views reflect the tendency of most theorizing about perception to take it to be concerned with the veridical uptake of objects in the environment, where a drive to optimality, and thus a turning away from unclarity, is always operative. Through descriptions and analyses of non-visual, multimodal, and holistic perceptions, we identify the presence of unclarity in the regular workings of perception. This examination of cases that reveal the positive role of unclarity leads to a normative contribution: that resting content with unclarity is essential to perception as continuous engagement with the world, a world of ever-renewing possibilities.