Question

Discuss in what ways phenomenologists criticize the representational view of perception. What do they offer as an alternative? What is your opinion about it?

Answer 1

A phenomenon is anything which manifests itself. Phenomena are often but not always understood as things that appear or experiences for sentient being. Edmund Husserl a German philosopher wanted to build up a new philosophical method which would lend absolute certainty to a disintegrating civilization. He tried to oppose the idea and do not believe that objects in the external world exist independently and that the

Information about objects is reliable. He believes that people can be certain about how things appear in their consciousness and to be certain about this we must ignore anything that is outside of our immediate experiences and in this way the external world is reduced to the contents of personal consciousness. When we talk about perception we are actually describing the sensory experiences of an individual about in the world. Perception consists of recognizing environmental stimuli and acting in responses to these stimuli. With the help of perceptual process we get to know about the properties and elements of the individual environment that are essential for one’s survival. Phenomenology is concerned with providing a direct description of human experience. Perception is the background of experience which guides every conscious action. The world is a field for perception, and human consciousness assigns meaning to the world. Merleau-Ponty abandons the idea of a “thought of seeing or feeling,” of a tacit cogito that is self-given as a singular entity with a singular stream of isolatable meanings. He does not abandon the description of perceptual experience or the body’s perceptual awareness of the world, that, as we will see, is required to carry or support language. Saussure’s insight into language thus helps Merleau-Ponty gain greater insight into the gestalt structure of language and of perception. Just as language forms a system, with all words and significations interconnected, but which is never fully explicit and never fully present to a reflective consciousness, so perception forms a system, a field with implied background elements that are never fully grasped but that nevertheless help to articulate a more explicit foreground.