be correct because, for a sensation to be perceived as similar to a remembered one, the sensation already needs to make sense. In principle, any sensation can be compared to any other in one respect or another. But for it to be compared with the “right” property, meaning the property that will allow us to identify it, the sensation already needs to have a particular sense. Hence, empiricism does not explain how we can perceive meaningful things but presupposes meaning or sense.
It is fair to say that the intellectualist account of perception thrives on empiricism’s failure to explain perceptual “illusions.” The fact that we sometimes perceive aspects of things for which there are no physical stimuli indicates that perception is a matter not of the senses, but of the mind, of judgment. Perceiving something as a square, for example, would require deciding which of the different perspectives on the geometric figure is the correct one, the frontal view, or the rotated view, in which it appears as a diamond. In the intellectualist account, this unconscious decision is the outcome of an algorithmic processing of the information about how the position of our body transforms the spectacle in front of us. It is important to note that intellectualism recognizes that in order for one perspective to be connected with another—the frontal and the rotated view of the geometric figure—the first already needs to possess a structure or sense, which the second can complement. Since intellectualists consider the sensual givens to be merely physical, they believe it is consciousness that constitutes the whole intelligible structure of what is perceived: we perceive with our mind.
Like empiricism, intellectualism presupposes what it needs to explain, namely, the fact that we perceive the geometrical figure, now as a square, then as a diamond. Before examining how we settle upon the right perception, we need to explain how we have perceptions in the first place. Moreover, intellectualism presupposes that perception is determinate or, more specifically, that it can be decomposed into a variety of determinate elements. It claims, for example, that our perception of the size of an object is determined by an algorithm that takes into account its apparent size, the retinal image, and the distance between the perceiving body and the object. But in practice, we do not make this distinction between the size something appears to have and its actual size: we immediately perceive it as being, not seeming, big. If we correct our perception—if we realize that the object is not so big—that is not because we returned to the apparent size of the object and recalculated its relation to the retinal image and distance, but because the object makes more sense if seen as small. Moreover, intellectualism presupposes that the elements upon which perception is decided are quantifiable because they can be processed. However, experiments designed to test our ability to determine the color of an object seen in colored light have shown that we can recognize a difference in the color of objects even when the numerical equivalents of both colored objects are equal. Intellectualism, in sum, seems to adhere to an atomism that contradicts daily experience, which always “sees” indivisible and nonquantifiable entities. This atomism also implies that the atoms that compose a perception are neutral and relative. They are theoretically exchangeable because they differ from one another only numerically. But this relativism is not present in perception. It is hard to make out the content of a photograph held upside down. “Up” and “down,” in other words, do not seem to be relative, and easily exchangeable, notions. However, the algorithm that calculates what is seen by taking into account the position of the body should give the same result whether the photo is held right side up or upside down. A last problem with intellectualism is that when perception is considered to be a judgment, when a pure impression is considered to be inexistent, it becomes very difficult to determine the dividing lines between perception and thought.
Merleau-Ponty thinks that, despite their surface differences, empiricist and intellectualist accounts of perception share the same presupposition: both regard perception as a construction in which different, determinate elements are brought together into a meaningful whole that is clearly separated from the perceiver, because the meaningful whole is situated opposite him. This separation between the perceiver and the perceived allows for objectivity. Whether these elements are understood as reflections of what is given in nature or as subjective constructions, they are atoms, that is, absolutely exterior parts (partes extra partes) that bear no intrinsic relation to one another or to the perceiver. Nothing in one element refers to another. They are neutral or, as we said, relative or exchangeable. The determinacy of the elements further indicates that empiricism and intellectualism see the world as being ready-made (PP, 47) and perception as a timeless process. Empiricism thinks perception is definite because it is limited to reflecting what is already there in nature, and intellectualism thinks perception reveals only what has already been constituted by consciousness.
For Merleau-Ponty, empiricism’s conception of consciousness is too poor, and intellectualism’s too rich: “Empiricism cannot see that we need to know what we are looking for, otherwise we would not be looking for it, and intellectualism fails to see that we need to be ignorant of what we are looking for, or equally again, we should not be searching” (PP, 28). As perceptual “illusions” indicate, perception cannot be limited to a sensory activity (whether combined with memory or otherwise), nor can it be reduced, as the example of the photograph held upside down makes clear, to a mental processing of neutral and determinate elements. How, then, are we to understand perception?
Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Perception
Merleau-Ponty, for his part, does not understand perception as a construction based on neutral, determinate elements.3 In his account, it is more as if the subject always immediately sees what it perceives, as if the meaning of what is perceived is already present in the world to be perceived. The perceiver seems to have a direct access to the world: “I have in perception the thing itself, and not a representation”; “the thing is at the end of my gaze and, in general, at the end of my exploration” (VI, 7). How is this possible? Let’s illustrate with an example.
When we perceive a mountain as high, we do not compare the perceived size of the mountain with the perceived size of the house at the foot of the mountain and then estimate the size of the mountain on the basis of our knowledge of the average size of a house. We perceive the mountain as high because it occupies a lot of space in our visual field, because it overwhelms us. Something is high because our body cannot reach it, because it towers above our body. Similarly, we describe an object as being far away because it presents fewer, and less identifiable, points on which our eyes can fasten. It is less variegated, less strictly geared to my powers of exploration. My gaze cannot get a grip on it. In other words: the position, the size, and the shape of a perceived object are not determined by the interpretative comparison and synthesis of various determinate, perceptual qualities, but, respectively, by the orientation, scope, and hold that the body has on the object (PP, 266, 261).
However, sometimes objects can occupy a lot of space in our field of vision, as when an object is held right in front of our eyes (PP, 300), and we still do not describe them as being big. If that is so, it is because the context of perception is always included in the perception itself. However, this context can never be identified in terms of angles, or of distances between body and perceived object; this context has to be identified, instead, in terms of the kind of hold upon the object it allows. I perceive a line as horizontal, not because it is perpendicular in relation to the verticality of my standing body, but because it forms, with my body, a unity that is perfectly balanced. The tension between my body and the line is distributed in such a way that it gives rise to a certain stability. Similarly, “the distance from me to the object is not a size which increases or decreases, but a tension which fluctuates round a norm” (PP, 302). In Merleau-Ponty, consequently, the hold our body takes upon the world does not involve neutral elements but qualities. The right distance from which to look at a painting, for example, is not determined by the relation between the size of the canvas, the size of the perceiver, and how good or bad the eyes of the perceiver are, but by the perceiver’s grip on the painted spectacle: the right distance is the distance from which the perceiver has the best grip on the painting (PP, 267). Moreover, this distance is not a neutral and measurable quantity—it is not determinate—but a quality that forces itself upon the perceiver.
