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Contrary to empiricism, perception is never pure, never merely a response to stimulus. That it is is merely a kind of "epistmological dogmatism" (Gadamer), which can only be defended if all instinct and fantasy is removed. In actual life, we never perceive without instinct or fantasy, and so "pure perception, defined as adequacy of response to stimulus, is merely an ideal limiting case."
All our perception is perception-as: We see things as objects with shapes and colors, hear sounds as particular things. We never simply perceive "what's there," but always block out what we're not interested in perceiving. Our experience is always articulated experience. Gadamer says,
"All understanding-as is an articulation of what is there, in that it looks-away-from, looks-at, see-together-as. All of this can occupy the center of an observation or can merely 'accompany' seeing, at its edge or in the background. Thus there is no doubt that, as in an articulating reading of what is there, vision disregards much of what is there, so that for sight, it is imply not there anymore. So too expectations lead us to 'read in' what is not there at all. Let us also remember the tendency to invariance operative within vision itself, so that as far as possible one always sees things in the same way." Perception is never then simply a "mirroring of what is there." Perception is always the product of an interaction of the perceiving person and the world he perceives.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 03, 2007 at 04:11 PM
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