Phenomenology of Perception

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Perception is our sensory experience of the world around us and involves both the recognition of environmental stimuli and actions in response to these stimuli. Through the perceptual process, we gain information about properties and elements of the environment that are critical to our survival. Perception not only creates our experience of the world around us; it allows us to act within our environment.

Empiricism

Empiricism regards that perception is based on experience, not the knowledge. This theory is just the opposite from the idea of Intellectualism, which regards that perception is come from the natural intelligence. Human get the information from environment, they are able to react or perceive that information    

The process of perception

The process of perception is from the stimulation of environment, detected by sensory and then translate the stimulation into electrical energy and goes to brain via nerves, this is how a “feeling” to be made. When the perspective of knowledge (could be experiences or the knowledge which has ever been learned) and the feeling go together, it will recognize the information and generate the perception. According to this, feeling can be considered as the foundation of perception.

There are some examples to examine how the perception from experience works. The experience of visualization affects the judgment while receiving similar information, yet, the perception may not be accurate. 

There are two main objects in a picture, the size of two objects are the same, we would just say object A is bigger than object B according to the concept the one at the farther location should be the smaller one, and the one that is closer should be the bigger one. This is the general concept in our knowledge, which has already built up from our experiences.

These are typical optical illusion examples. Optical illusion is the work base on the empiricism theory which regards that perception is came from experiences.

This optical illusion example can support the theory of empiricism. This picture can be two different object—a woman’s body or a glass. According to the empiricism, adults can see the both, because both two illusions are already in their experience. However, for children, they might able to recognize the glass but not the woman body, because they are not familiar with that illusion. Without the impression or the experience, they are not able to call out the data base from their brain in order to recognize a strange illusion.  

Intellectualism

“Intellectualism does not talk about the senses because for it sensations and senses appear only when I turn back to the concrete act of knowledge in order to analyse it.”

“sense—like ghosts which appear only by night—they would lack fullness of being and we could not be truly conscious of them, that is to say, posit them as true beings.’

The position of two theories(Empiricism and Intellectualism ) is the opposite.  They both explained part of ”perception” but not entirely complete. However, these two point of view are necessary to exist. Because of these hypothesis, we can know about perception in a more concrete way.