 How obvious is Brentano’s “quite obvious” justification? Let’s consider Brentano’s first premise first: perception does not involve predication. A charitable reading of Brentano should assume that by “perception” he means what philosophers following Fred Dretske now call “non-epistemic perception”. I can see something without having any beliefs about it to the effect that it is so-and-so. I see the yellow canary because it looks distinct from its immediate environment; I can’t see the chameleon because it does not look distinct from its environment. Note that it does not matter at this point whether one takes ordinary material objects such as birds or, as Brentano himself prefers, physical phenomena such as colours and shapes to be the (primary) objects of perception.