The beholder’s share is that part of perceptual experience that is contributed by the perceiver and which is not to be found in the artwork—or the world—itself. The concept of the beholder’s share cries out to be connected with predictive theories of perception—like the controlled hallucination theory. As Kandel put it: “The insight that the beholder’s perception involves a top-down inference convinced Gombrich that there is no ‘innocent eye’: that is, all visual perception is based on classifying concepts and interpreting visual information. One cannot perceive that which one cannot
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