Against Seeing in Mirrors Without Seeing-In

In (2025), contra Voltolini (2021) in his revised endorsement of Wollheim’s theory of seeing-in as applied to mirrors, Luca Marchetti argues that mirror perception is not a seeing-in perception. Instead, for Marchetti mirror perception is a particular kind of transparency perception, since he actually departs from the standard account of transparency perception as applied to mirrors, according to which in that perception one sees the real object facing the mirror through the mirror itself. For according to Marchetti, in having to do perceptually with a mirror, one sees a virtual object through it. However, not only Marchetti’s negative arguments, though intriguing, are not ultimately convincing, since they can be resisted bya defender of the seeing-in approach to mirror perception. But also, his positive thesis that mirror perception is a particular kind of transparency perception does not ultimately serve its critical purposes.