A simple idea: Perception is of what is in view (before the eyes), or making noise, or the noises made, or emitting odours, or the thus emitted (etc.). What we see is, say, a pig, or its perambulations, or its rooting beneath that oak. Sight offers us a certain form of awareness of this, characterized in one way by its objects. It thus offers us occasion for another sort: we may recognize what we are aware of as, for example, a case of a pig rooting, or of an interminable drum machine. We take up the offer in exercising capacities for recognition such as they are. John McDowell has argued that this cannot be quite right (or anyway complete). For it needs to posit rational relations where there can be none. What follows argues that McDowell cannot be quite right: if he were, thought would cease to exist.