The following two things are certainly possible: 1. We can pick up information through our eyes or other sense organs without really thinking about it, and without even noticing what it is before us. As I pass through a crowded market, for example, there are many sights and sounds that affect my senses without my being conscious of them. 2. We can observe an object or a situation without using any words (even to ourselves) to describe what we see. I can study the surface of a rock, for example, without applying any labels to what I see. What is more controversial is the possibility of consciously attending to something without categorizing it in any way. Some philosophers (myself included) think that being conscious of an object and/or its properties requires us to categorize our sensations in a way that enables us to compare them with other objects and/or properties. In order to notice a strange object in the market, I must recognize it as having a particular shape, or a particular color...

If you assume that the air might really be cold, and the car might really be green, then I can think of two situations in which it is more appropriate to say "I feel cold" and "The car seems to be green": 1. You have doubts about whether the temperature really is low (perhaps you are getting sick),or whether the car really is green (perhaps the light is especially low). Conversely, you may want to assert that "It is cold" even though you do not feel it (perhaps because you just emerged from a hot bath) and "the car is green" even though you see it as blue (perhaps because you are colorblind). 2. You want to sound tentative or accommodating of other views (even though you may be quite confident of your own judgment). It may be more polite or friendly to say "I feel cold" or "It looks green" when others disagree. I suspect, though, that your concern arises from the conviction that properties like coldness and greenness do not exist independently of a subject who feels cold or sees green. ...

There are real cars, with real sizes -- five feet high, twelve feet long, for example -- and they would be these sizes even if there was no observer to notice them. When a real car appears to an observer to be smaller, or larger, than it actually is, we can speak of its apparent size as opposed to its actual size; but the notion of an apparent size only makes sense in relation to an observer to whom the car appears to be one size rather than another. That is why Prof. Moore considers the real size of a car to be an intrinsic property while the apparent size of a car is a relational property. The distance between a car and an observer does not translate into a difference in the apparent size of that car to that observer since a distant car may appear to be its real size to some observers, and a nearby car may appear to be bigger or smaller than its real size to some observers. Thus, there is no general answer to your question about what distance a car must be in order for us to see its real...