 Amodal completion is perceptual representation, as a vast amount of neuroscientific studies show that it happens very early in the sensory cortices, in the visual case it happens in the primary visual cortex (Lee and Nguyen 2001, Ban et al. 2013, Pan et al. 2012, see also Briscoe 2011). And it is not directly triggered by sensory input as the amodally completed shape is not directly triggered by the retinal input – the retinal input that would correspond to the amodally completed contour is empty – no contour on the retina there. In the case of the cat behind the picket fence, the shape of the occluded tail is represented in the primary visual cortex, but there is no corresponding shape on the retina that could have directly triggered this shape representation: the only thing on the part of the retina that would correspond to the shape of the tail is just the monochrome white of the picket fence. Amodal completion is, in this sense, perceptual representation that is not directly triggered by sensory input (a view widely shared among empirical researchers, see van Lier and Ekroll 2020 for a summary).