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Phenomenological Idiom and Perceptual Mode
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Extract
When phenomenological descriptions of perceptual experience are given it often seems that the distinction between mode and content of perceptual experience is not given the attention it deserves and that consequently certain philosophical difficulties develop which might have been avoided. While it will no doubt be admitted that the distinction between the “how” and the “what” of appearing is of importance in the phenomenology of perception, at first sight the making of such a distinction may seem so simple as to be hardly worth discussing. It may seem to involve a mere matter of distinguishing modifiers of the verb “to perceive” from this verb's direct objects and their modifiers, but further consideration shows the situation is not that simple. In some cases there are alternative ways of phenomenological description such that what one description seems to indicate to be content is what the other description seems to indicate to be mode, and yet the two descriptions are seen to be equivalent in intent. If we analyze one expression in accordance with its grammar then the alternative expression must be considered idiomatic, that is, not analyzable in accordance with its grammar, for otherwise the two expressions could not be considered compatible.
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- Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1958
References
1 Ushenko and Aldrich have both argued that there are indeterminate sense-data. See A. P. Ushenko, Power and Events (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), page 98, and V. C. Aldrich, “Are There Vague Sense Data?” Mind, XLIII, N.S. (December, 1943), page 481.
2 R. M. Chisholm, “The Theory of Appearing,” Philosophical Analysis, ed. by Max Black (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1950), pp. 106–107.
3 J. H. Stirling, Text-Book to Kant (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1881), p. 54.
4 Hans Wallach, “Some Considerations Concerning the Relation between Perception and Cognition,” Perception and Personality, ed. by J. S. Bruner and D. Krech (Durham: Duke University Press, 1950), p. 6.
5 Ibid., p. 6.
6 Gardner Murphy, Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1950), p. 295.
7 G. F. Stout, Analytic Psychology (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Company, 1896), I, 72,
8 Obviously no one could seriously maintain the existence of phenomenal objects without bringing in certain limitations to the overtness of these objects. The entity which is supposed to be completely overt must be related to things not in the same phenomenal field and these relations cannot all be overt.
9 C. Stumpf, Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen, p. 49f, as cited and translated by Carl Rahn, The Relation of Sensation to Other Categories in Contemporary Psychology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1913), p. 8.
10 G. W. Hartmann, Gestalt Psychology (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1935), p. 18.
11 Seven seems to be the largest number of things that can be seen as a specific number of things. Beyond this we see only numerousness. Cf. Wilhelm Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, tr. by C. H. Judd (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmanns, 1897), p. 212; and A. D. Glanville and K. M. Dallenbach, “The Range of Attention,” American Journal of Psychology, 1929, 41, pp. 207–236.