Attempts to establish the relation between salience, visual attention, and visual awareness have generally met with a distinct lack of success.  It is argued here that many (if not most) of the problems encountered are due to ontological poverty--an inadequate set of distinctions being drawn, and a failure to operationalize these distinctions clearly and correctly.  For example, there are several different meanings that can be ascribed to the term  "attention", and several of these distinctions can be matched with different perceptual mechanisms.  Likewise, various meanings can be ascribed to the term "awareness", and again, several of these can be correlated with different perceptual processes.  A large part of the problem of establishing the relation between salience, awareness and attention therefore exists because there is no single relation to be established.  Instead, there are several different relations, each of which must be established separately.  Examples will be presented of some of the relevant distinctions that can be drawn, and of the relations that can be established.