[Merleau-Ponty] Structure and Perception [1]
This is an attempt to show what’s going on in the concluding chapter of Structure of Behaviour, and to situate its significance vis-a-vis Phenomenology of Perception. These books were published in sequence – the former in 1942, the latter in 1945 – and together they present the novice phenomenologist with a plethora of mysterious words, phrases, and ideas.
The concluding chapter reads of Structure of Behaviour reads as a critique of reductivist frameworks - empiricism and transcendental idealism in particular - as an approach to understanding the world in which man lives. In identifying where these approaches fail, Merleau-Ponty is also sketching out how a phenomenological framework could be useful - the rendering of embodied experience as description.
In his critique, Merleau-Ponty speaks the language of the subject in which he is concerned. This can initially be confusing, for he spends considerable time tracing the thought of Descartes, Kant, and Husserl, acknowledging their conclusions. For a first read-through, it seems like an affirmation rather than critique. It also presents difficulty to the reader, for one must be fairly comfortable with the style and language of each actor. The move to critique happens when Merleau-Ponty extends their thought to the domain of perception, and finds their thought unsuitable for this grounding factor.
I find Structure of Behaviour difficult primarily due to the rigor in which Merleau-Ponty challenges the “Classical Solutions”; according to their own standards, and with their own language.1 Whereas Structure of Behaviour therefore reads as a critique of solutions which do not account for perception (and with it, the problem of perceptual consciousness), Phenomenology of Perception is his attempt at rendering such an account. It is with Phenomenology of Perception in which Merleau-Ponty stops the critique, and begins anew with a philosophy that “consists in relearning to look at the world”2. With this, he venture out in a language decidedly his own.
It therefore follows that there is a noticeable change in tone and style between the two texts. Since Structure of Behaviour is concerned with psychology, dualism, and transcendentalism, it is heavily intertextual and requires a fair breadth of context. Phenomenology of Perception, on the other hand, seems much more intuitive. Merleau-Ponty seems to take his time, casually directing the readers attention, shifting focus between his ideas, and the immediate experience at hand: for us, the reading, and for him, the writing.
This paper is structured as two sections and a conclusion. Firstly, I will try writing on dialectic, significance, perspective, and Gestalt. The second section is my understanding of the critique of the classical solutions, their limitations, and the necessity for a descriptive analysis of perception and how this informs consciousness. Along the way, I’ll try to give an explanation of ideas that I feel are key, and what I find significant about them.
PART 1: Dialectic: a structure of consciousness in a procurement of significance
Merleau-Ponty concludes Part Three of Structure of Behaviour, titled “Physical, Vital, and Human Order,” with the question “What then is the relation between consciousness as universal milieu and consciousness rooted in the subordinated dialectics?”3 This question is an early offering of “the problem of perceptual consciousness” — a question which seems to motivate Merleau-Ponty’s exploration.
Leading to this question is suggestion that the “physical”, the “vital” and the “mental” are not “powers of being.” I’m assuming that “powers of being” refer to some kind of Truth about being, or the nature of being, perhaps a metaphysical claim on being. Instead, “aided by the notion of structure or form”4, Merleau-Ponty suggests that the developments implied by scientific representations of behaviour are best understood as dialectics.
A dialectic is therefore something that produces meaning. Dialectics operate as planes of signification vis-a-vis the the world. For example, the advent of ‘technology’ was also the advent of ‘thinking technologically’ - seeing the world as available, in some capacity, for technological use. The electrical circuit gains meaning, for it can be used for technology. Interestingly, it is only that one, vague, particular perspective which gives me perception of the particular electrical circuit; it does not seem to have other perspectives. I suppose it is ‘flammable”, and ‘breakable’.
Dialectic produces meaning, but meaning is only significant in terms of something else; for example, money is meaningful with respect to economy. “Gestalt psychology” helps to conceptualize this idea: things stand out from a background; meaning is contextual — things become discernible when we recognize the significance of that thing to an environment. The significance we attribute to a thing therefore depends on the space in which we find ourselves with the thing and the approach we take to the thing; significance is abstracted according to dialectic; “every form of consciousness presupposes its completed form.”5
Perspective is “perhaps the essential property of things”6 because ‘reflective-consciousness’ is constituted by the dialectics, which are indeed the structures of consciousness. Consciousness is therefore “rooted in the subordinated dialectics”, reflective consciousness. But what then is the consciousness as universal milieu? This seems more intuitive – the direct experience of being in the world.
Ideality seem to be dialectical structures we come to know through conscious reflection - perhaps taking a shape of ‘ideal forms’. The ideality of a science comes by way of rational reflection and produces scientific knowledge, or knowledge in some ‘objective’ sense. An ideality is therefore not reducible to a naturalist approach. To study behaviour scientifically is to procure scientific data on the behaviour of a subject, not to explain behaviour.
Behaviour therefore cannot be explained by way of ideality, or dialectic, which is actually a form of consciousness. Behaviour rests with consciousness, and prior to consciousness; it is something which encompasses the scientific, the mental, the physical and the vital; it is the outwards expression, while the other is the inward expression. While the procurement of scientific data of behaviour is reducible back to the structure of behaviour7, behaviour is not reducible to scientific data. From what I understand, this is the major theme in Merleau-Ponty’s critique of the classical solutions.
1. When concerned with empiricism or behaviouralism Merleau-Ponty makes use of scientific data to show the limits of empirical study. Physiological anomalities are used for philosophical reference.
2. PP xx;xvi
3. 184
4. ibid.
5. SOB 201
6. SOB 186
7. SOB 221
