Edmund Husserl and his Concepts of Perception - Literature review Example

Edmund Husserl and his Concepts of Perception In the late 1800s, a philosopher and mathematician by the name of Edward Husserl (1859-1938) developed a philosophical approach known today as Phenomenology, which re-introduced the concept of subjectivity into the consideration of individual development. “As an approach within sociology, phenomenology seeks to reveal how human awareness is implicated in the production of social action, social situations and social worlds” (Natanson 1970). In proposing the phenomenological method, Husserl felt it would be especially useful as an initial inquiry to identify the major objectives of further study. One of the principle activities Husserl engaged in toward this further study was the complex description of perception. “By ‘description’, he meant the analysis of the traits and components of mental states or acts and their objects” (Mulligan, 1995: 168). Within this description, Husserl made it evident that understanding the process and meaning of perception was a key element in discovering true knowledge. Husserl felt that a close examination of a person’s perception of objects could lead to an intuitive perception of the essence of the realities thus presented. Within this approach, he rejected the divisions of perception brought forward by Brentano, specifically the concept of inner perception, as he began to focus more specifically on authentic knowledge, or knowledge that was gained directly from the source with no further intentionality involved (Moran, 2000: 130). This approach, as complicated as it sounds at first, became even more complex as Husserl himself continued to modify and refine his ideas, shifting over time from an object-oriented, mathematically based concept of perception to one that was more transcendental in nature, dealing with complex abstracts and pure methods of thought. The early years During the earlier portion of Husserl’s life, his approach to philosophy remained strongly linked with his mathematical and procedural background. His logic-based concerns regarding the theories he encountered in the mathematical realm followed him as he entered into the realm of philosophy and the studies of the mind. Terms and concepts were being used that had little or no clear definitive structure, yet individual scientists continued to use them as if they were equally understood by the entire population (Moran, 2000). As an example, the concept of perception could be taken to mean anything from physically recognizing that an object was present to actually understanding the deeper meaning of why the object was there, whether it should be there and what it meant that it was there. Issues arose in that not every individual encountered the same answers to all of the above questions even when presented with the same material. This was made evident through such experiments as the Jastrow duck/rabbit picture widely used by Wittgenstein (Follesdal, 2005). For whatever reason, some people would immediately and unquestioningly see a duck when they looked up this image while others would immediately and unquestioningly see a rabbit. Obviously, there was more to the question of perception than simple definition, yet without definition, Husserl reasoned, there could be little more discussion. It also followed that if the various elements of perception could be correctly identified and factored into the appropriate formula, predictions could begin to be made regarding not only how a person perceived the world around them, but also provide insights into their individual psychology and behavior patterns. As a result of his recent mathematical training and his goal of tracing the various elements of the perception process, Husserl’s early work focused on the traceable mechanical processes as they focused upon the material or object-oriented world. Mulligan (1995) discusses Husserl’s early work on perception in terms of what we see, the way we see it and how we see it, which is a convenient framework in which to discuss the various ideas and concepts that characterize the basis of Husserl’s thought. What we see According to Husserl, and many other scientists and philosophers, perception begins with the outside world. What we see with our eyes introduces the object as something that is not within ourselves and is thus something necessary to contemplate, which introduces the idea of further thought involvement. Thus, the process of perception is not merely the observation of an object but the observation of the object is the beginning of the process. “His central thesis concerning what we see is that the primary object of perception is public things, the things we all think we see most of the time, which stand before us in propria persona” (Mulligan, 1995: 169). Husserl himself uses the example of a blackbird flying outside his window (Husserl, 2001). The beginning of perception, what we see, is here, as we register what we are seeing. We may see the black bird, or the blue sky, or the white puffy clouds, or even ignore the bird altogether because of a focus upon some astonishingly colorful sweet peas by the garden gate. Pure seeing, then, does not involve any of the further processes of abstraction, assigning meaning or judgment or take on any other action further than the mechanistic tracking and recording of visual data. However, even as this process of seeing is taking place, so are numerous other processes that contribute to the overall activity referred to as perception. The way we see it Despite the concept that we all see things as they exist in front of us, in actual physical form, Husserl takes the concept of the mechanistic vision process further to argue that what we see is greatly dependent upon the way that we see it. At one and the same time, we see an object and we see it as we expect it to be. A physical example of how the way we see things might affect what we see can be found in the visual illusions offered by Michael Bach (2007). In illusions such as the Pinna-Brelstaff Illusion, a series of lozenge shapes situated into three circles, one inside the other, can be seen to expand and contract in a looping animation. By focusing on these lozenges, one can see how they remain constant in relative size and relative location. However, by focusing on a small red cross-hair mark in the center of the innermost circle, one begins to perceive the circles as slowly rotating against each other. Thus, two people, coming across a similar image might see two entirely different things occurring based entirely upon the way that they see it, whether they are focused on the shapes within the circles or on the empty space in the center of the circles. In Husserl’s terms, the individual focusing upon the lozenge shapes in the above experiment and therefore able to see that the three circles are in a continuous animation loop of expansion and contraction but no rotation is experiencing a proper presentation while the one who sees the rotational spin because of a focus on external signs or symbols is experiencing an improper presentation (Albertazzi et al, 1996). “According to Husserl, our consciousness structures what we experience, and our experience in a given situation can always in principle be structured in different ways. How it is structured depends on our previous experiences, the whole setting of our present experience and a number of other factors” (Follesdal, 2005: 128). Turning again to the above example, the visual illusion experiment determines whether one’s previous experience encourages them to focus first upon the highly contrasted and centrally-located red cross mark in the image as a pre-conceived symbol of a focal point, an improper presentation based upon symbols rather than the original object, thus allowing their peripheral vision to detect motion where there is none. However, if one’s previous experience encourages them to focus first upon the actual movement occurring, the object itself and thus experiencing proper presentation, it is possible to immediately and accurately determine the nature of the motion. Yet this immediate distinction, what may be more simply referred to as what we choose to focus on within the image, is made simultaneously with the physical process of seeing it. How we see How we see things, or how we interpret what we see, is based upon the assessment we make upon recognizing an object at a physical level as it is focused on based upon our previous experiences. This element requires subsequent mental involvement beyond merely recording that something is there, but occurs in such close relation with the act of seeing that such judgments regarding the state of affairs of an object cannot be avoided (Mulligan, 2000). This type of judgment, assessment or meaning can be as simple as assigning a name to a particular object or as complex as understanding that the hungry lion is leaping at you. This introduces the final element of the perception process, that of the environment, or the states of affairs, in which perception activity occurs. A great deal of how we see something, the way that we interpret what we see, is based not only on how the object is observed, judged and assessed, but also on the internal state of the observer, whether upset, content, hurried or calm and on the external state of affairs, auxiliary sounds, sights, smells and events (Mulligan, 2000). These states of internal affairs themselves help to determine whether we focus on the black of the bird outside, the beauty of the contrast between his feathers and the sky behind him, the fact that he’s flying or any other number of factors that we might choose to see. At the same time, states of external affairs, the sound of a barking dog, the speed with which the bird is flying or the appearance of the dog a moment later running through the yard, may all contribute to our perception of the moment just witnessed. While all of these examples and discussions have focused on the external perceptions of objects, Husserl turned more to the inward, metaphysical elements of perception in his later years using these early definitions and conceptions as building blocks for his later work. Later transcendentalism Husserl’s early object-oriented way of describing the process of perception and what it means to the individual or the understanding of the particular subject gradually gave way to a more idealist perspective that took on the nature of transcendental thought. “As his views changed over the years about the nature of intentionality and philosophy, the descriptive psychology of the Logical Investigations (1900-1901) gave way to descriptive programmes in which the object of perception and of judgment were conceived of in terms of a new analytic framework” (Mulligan, 1995: 168). In developing his later concepts, Husserl built off of the process he’d outlined earlier, yet relocated these ideas to the internal questions – how do we distinguish the real from the imaginary and how do we find our way to the true knowledge behind inaccuracies inherent in these fallible perceptual abilities? To answer these questions, Husserl expounded on his ideas of the intentional consciousness and the element of opinion. Intentional Consciousness In considering the world of the imaginary, Jean-Paul Sartre emphasized the importance of awareness in determining whether something was real or imaginary. The imaginary world was further defined by the flights of the consciousness away from how it relates to the outside world. Sartre’s investigation revolved upon a question that was made possible by the earlier work of Husserl regarding the nature of consciousness. “Sartre begins with the perception, adopted from Husserl’s phenomenology, that consciousness is always conscious of something other than itself. It is what Husserl had called ‘intentional consciousness’, which means that consciousness comes into being only in the act of perceiving, grasping, directing itself toward an object. It is thus always a movement beyond itself, a projection that empties itself out, leaving no ‘contents’ behind” (Kraus, 2001). This translates to indicate that man can never actually know himself because consciousness is only an outward reaching goal, it is “only what he does, only his deeds, only what unites him to his situation in the world” (Kraus, 2001). This introduces a paradox that can only be addressed through psychology as the consciousness cannot define itself without a relationship to the outer world yet, as is shown in Husserl’s earlier works, how the outer world is perceived and understood is contingent upon the presence and understanding of the consciousness. To avoid the distractions of the outer world and thus accurately assess the state of the self, the only way in which man can truly approach his own consciousness is within the realm of the dream or the imagination, but even this is not considered to be productive because in this state, one is not able to perceive what is truly happening. To try to analyze the dream state is thus to try to touch that element of self that is removed from the rest of the world, but becomes an act of futility because of its removal from the rest of the world. “From that impossibility for the subject to catch up with himself comes his necessity to double up every time he approaches himself … So that a subject who touches himself, divides himself by touching himself, becomes contiguous to himself, finds (and loses) himself alongside himself, being his own neighbor, having taken his own place” (Hollier, 1982). The essence of the individual is therefore reduced to only what he does, his actions within the world and those activities that connect him to the world. He is only able to perceive things when he is standing up, therefore dreaming, which takes place lying down, cannot be part of the essence of the individual as necessarily a window to the soul. From this reasoning, Husserl attempts to discover a reliable path to true knowledge removed from outer distractions. True Knowledge vs. Opinion According to Welton (2003), throughout his life Husserl sought to discover true knowledge, unprejudiced by outer complications, previous experience and faulty symbolic associations. This goal was one that had been established for the field as far back as Plato, who recognized that subjectivity was inherent within everything that we do simply because the self cannot be separated from the experience sufficiently to merely observe while still remaining aware of the nature of the events. “Opinion falls short of true knowledge in two ways. First, certain vacillations which are ‘due to the situation’ always underlie opinions. True knowledge should be free from subjective biases in changing lived situations, and in this sense, it should be ‘objective’ and lasting. Second, whenever we just have an opinion, we are making an unfulfilled knowledge claim” (Welton, 2003: 7). Unfulfilled knowledge claims reflect the assumption of the speaker that the proof of their feeling or statement can be found through a simple process of carrying out the action implicated. An example of such a claim might be that the waters of the coast are too infested with sharks to go swimming. The speaker might make this claim after reading a report indicating that 17 people had been attacked by sharks along the coast in the past year. This claim could then be proved by simply pointing to the article or visiting the coast and seeing sharks swimming in the water. However, this claim does not necessarily reflect true knowledge as the relative facts are not all made clear nor is there any guarantee that one won’t be attacked by sharks should one swim near the coast. For many, visiting the coast and observing a pod of sharks swimming around a small cove may seem sufficient evidence to prove the statement that it is too dangerous to swim along the coast, but it is in this way that perception based upon opinion moves into perception of true knowledge. Husserl indicates, however, that “true knowledge requires first of all that it be lasting and objective – meaning that knowledge must be independent of its respective lived situations. Thus, when we want to determine true knowledge by distinguishing it from opinion, we are faced with a certain tension between the requirement of objectivity and that of getting close to the matter at hand” (Welton, 2003: 7). In exploring the metaphysical nature of perception and the nature of truth, Husserl illustrates the impossibility of separating opinion from truth in that intentional consciousness, or what we choose to focus upon and how we choose to interpret it within a given area, is a prerequisite to knowledge of any kind, yet only by eliminating these perceptions can we arrive at the true knowledge behind the object. Conclusion As Husserl progressed from his early mathematical and logical approach to defining the elements of perception into his more transcendental internal conceptions of perception and how it affects our understanding of true knowledge, he illustrated how the question of subjectivity must consistently remain within the discussion of philosophy. Although he did not seem to feel separating subjectivity out of the equation and finding true knowledge was impossible, he illustrated the extreme difficulty of any such attempts as perception is key to understanding, yet is also founded upon the elements of opinion and past experience. Because we live, we cannot separate ourselves from the experience, yet any attempt to find true knowledge requires exactly this type of separation. Because, as was illustrated in his earlier work, perception cannot be suspended during the experience, the only way of assessing what these subjective elements might be is from hindsight – analyzing the various elements that might have contributed to a particular perception. From this line of thinking, phenomenology was born. References Albertazzi, Liliana; Poli, Roberto & Libardi, Massimo. (1996). The School of Franz Brentano. New York: Springer. Bach, Michael. (July 2007). “Pinna-Brelstaff Illusion.” Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena. Available September 16, 2007 from Follesdal, Dagfinn. (2005). “Ultimate Justification in Husserl and Wittgenstein.” Experience and Analysis. M.E. Reicher & J.C. Marek (Eds.). Oslo: Stanford. Available September 16, 2007 from < http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~jperry//Follesdal-Huss-Witt.pdf> Hollier, Denis. (1982). The Politics of Prose. University of Minnesota Press. Husserl, Edward. (2001). Logical Investigations. London: Routeledge. Krauss, Rosalind E. (December 2001). “Alberto Giacometti: Museum of Modern Art: New York.” ArtForum. Find Articles. Available September 16, 2007 from Moran, Dermot. (2000). Introduction to Phenomenology. London: Routeledge. Mulligan, Kevin. (1995). “Perception.” The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Barry Smith & David Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 168-238. Natanson, Maurice. (1970). “Alfred Schutz on Social Reality and Social Science.” Phenomenology and Social Reality. Maurice Natanson, (Ed). The Hague: Nijhoff. Welton, Donn. (2003). The New Husserl: A Critical Reader (Studies in Continental Thought). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Read More