Jefferson S.

Backong

MERLEAU-PONTY'S OBJECTION TO THE EMPIRICISTS ACCOUNT

ON THE ROLE OF THE PAST IN PERCEPTION

The Phenomenology and World of Perception

Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his many writings and lectures emphasized the importance of
perception and how it can affect our human experience in every way. Perception, for Merleau-
Ponty is unknown territory as long as we remain in the practical attitude: that is on how we
conceived perception by the way the world is revealed to us by our senses 1.
The world of perception that is the world that is revealed to us by our senses in our
everyday lives seems to be the one we know best of all. Why do we say this? We say this
because in our everyday lives, we do not necessarily measure or calculate everything, like for
example, what chemicals compose the soil, or what hues are in a particular color in order to
gain access to the world. This is because, as imbued to us by practical or utilitarian teachings
and attitude, we think that we can understand the depths of the world by just merely opening
our eyes and getting on with our lives. But for Merleau-Ponty, this is a delusion.
Perception when viewed in the traditional way is made out of things perceived and since
the things perceived are accessible only through perception, we end understanding neither.
Accordingly, this kind of attitude towards perception traps us in the world and we fail to
extricate ourselves from it, thus, we also fail to achieve consciousness of the world. This results
because we are more concerned with an expressive value of the things we perceived rather
than with its logical signification.
Perception for Merleau-Ponty is the background of experiences which guides every
conscious action. Our world is a field for perception and the human consciousness assigns
meaning to the world2.
Perception may be designed by associative forces and may be focused by attention, but
attention in itself does not create any perceptions. It may only be directed to an aspect of a
perceptual field. Perception is not purely sensation, nor is it purely interpretation. Perception is
a system of meanings by which a phenomenal object is recognized 3.
Accordingly, human body is an expressive space which contributes to the significance of
personal actions. The body is the origin of an expressive movement; therefore it becomes a
medium for perception of the world. Bodily experiences give perception a meaning that is
beyond what is simply established by thought 4.
1
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The World of Perception, Translated by Oliver Davis (Oxfordshire, Routledge, 2004), p. 39
2
Alex Scott.Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, http://www.angelfire.com/mdz/timewarp/merleau-
ponty.html, 2002
3
Ibid
4
Alex Scott, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, http://www.angelfire.com/mdz/timewarp/merleau-
ponty.html, 2002
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Jefferson S. Backong

Bodily experience is a vague mode of existence. This is because the idea of the body
cannot be detached from the experience of the body because mind and body cannot be
separated as subject and object. Mind and body are connected to each other and the
perceptions of the body influence what is perceived by the mind.
Say for example, I am confronted with an angry man. I perceived that he is angry based
on his gestures, the tone of his voice, or the expression on his face. My body perceives through
his gesticulation that he is angry because my body would react the same way if I was the one
who is angry. My body’s perception of the anger of the man in front of me influences the
perception of my mind, and therefore, my mind will receive the idea that the man in front of
me is really angry. I would not be able to discern the anger, or the malice or the violence in the
angry man’s mind apart from his gestures or expressions. In order for me to perceived that the
man is angry, my body must perceived his movement and therefore, my mind will perceive that
the man’s gestures or expressions means one thing: that he is angry.

Empiricism and its View on Perception

Early empiricists and founders of modern science viewed the mind as a blank slate; that
ideas and knowledge come from our senses and experiences.  Locke, Bacon, and Hume helped
to develop the study of the human mind, how it functions, and how we experience
events.  Through the development of empiricism, the science of psychology today is now a
science that studies human behavior through observation and experiment, a key principle of
empiricism5.
            Empiricism is defined as the view that knowledge comes from experience via the senses,
and that science also flourishes through observation and experiment.Francis Bacon first
developed the idea that science can flourish through observations and through experiments 6.  
John Locke, one of the philosophers who continued Bacon’s study on modern science
and adopted the idea of empiricism suggests that certain principles have been thought to be
innate only because men cannot remember when they first learned them.  He believed that
human beings are born in total ignorance, and that even our theoretical ideas of identity,
quantity, and substance are derived from experience7.  In other words, Locke thinks of the
minds as a blank slate, or tabula rasa.  Instead of knowledge being innate, Locke writes “all
knowledge is founded on and ultimately derives itself from sense, or something analogous to it,
which may be called sensation8.” 

5
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Empiricism.htm
6
Ibid
7
Cranston, M. John Locke: A biography, (London: Longman’s Green & Co., 1957)
8
Ibid
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Jefferson S. Backong

Sensation is the basis of Locke’s argument for knowledge not being innate, but another
main point in his essay is ideas and perception.  Locke believes that we not only have ideas in
our mind, as is traditionally thought, but that we have ideas when we see, hear, smile, taste, or
feel.  Basically, Locke felt that ideas are interconnected with sensation.  Locke defines an idea as
“the object of the understanding, whether it is a notion, an entity, or an illusion. “   There are
two types of ideas in Locke’s view:  those ideas which are simple, that the mind receives
passively and which are perceived immediately through either external or internal senses
(thought), and complex ideas, which the mind produces by exercising its own powers 9. 
Perception is an important part of the idea stemming from sensation model that Locke
proposes. According to Locke, there are three different and distinct elements of perception: the
observer, the idea, and the object the idea represents10.  Locke says that knowledge is “nothing
but the perception of the connection of and agreement or disagreement and repugnancy of any
of our ideas.”  He also believes that perception is a “species of understanding,” so that ideas are
based upon perceptions and what we perceive is always an idea, distinct from a thing. Locke
also believes that there are different types of knowledge, such as intuitive knowledge,
demonstrative knowledge, and sensitive knowledge.
Locke proposes that one’s knowledge is sometimes intuitive, such as when the mind
perceives the agreement or disagreement between ideas immediately without the influence or
intervention of any other ideas.  An interesting caveat of this is that Locke believed that people
have intuitive knowledge of their own existence, “we perceive it so plainly… that it neither
needs nor is capable of any proof11.”  Knowledge can also be gained through the medium of
other ideas that are proposed, which is considered demonstrative knowledge.  The third type of
knowledge that Locke proposes is called sensitive knowledge.  This type of knowledge is that
which is present before our senses at any given moment and at any given time 12.  Whatever
falls short of these types of knowledge is not knowledge according to Locke, but in fact just
faith or opinion, which seems to be inferior to knowledge and the understanding of
ideas.   Overall, Locke believes that our knowledge of the identity and diversity of ideas extends
only as far as our ideas themselves; for our knowledge of their co-existence extends only a
small amount due to the fact that knowledge of any necessary connection between primary
and secondary qualities is unattainable. 
David Hume was a contemporary of Locke’s who adopted his theory of ideas, but
disputed them on the grounds that there was no perceptual experience that conveys the idea
of self.  According to Hume, the common sense certainty of one’s existence that Locke proposes

9
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Empiricism.htm
10
Cranston, M. John Locke: A biography, (London: Longman’s Green & Co., 1957)
11
Ibid
12
Cranston, M. John Locke: A biography, (London: Longman’s Green & Co., 1957)
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Jefferson S. Backong

and calls intuitive knowledge, does not exist, and cannot be proven in terms of Lockean
doctrine.  It is for this reason that empiricism is said to have found its “logical completion” in
the writings and studies of Hume13. 
According to David Hume, causality can never be perceived, it is nothing but an illusion
occasioned when events follow each other with regularity.  This is quite different from Locke,
who believed that ideas were based upon perception.  Hume felt as though there was no place
for the idea of causality within empiricism, if all ideas arise in experience, then the only basis for
causality is the invariable sequentially of events14.  The lasting idea that Hume proposes is that
human beings learn through association and that “truth springs from an argument among
friends15.”
The science of psychology has developed through the combination of the study of
philosophy and biology.  The ideas of philosophy, particularly empiricism have contributed to
the modern theory of learning, and understanding of ideas and the human mind.  The studies of
Francis Bacon and his use of the scientific method have contributed to the importance of
observation and experiment, while the studies of John Locke have investigated and attempted
to discover the origins of knowledge.  Following John Locke in the true nature of science, David
Hume investigated and questioned the principles set forth by Locke.  Thus Hume contributed in
continuing the study of human thought, perception and understanding of ideas, and the
development and origins of knowledge16.  
 
Merleau-Ponty’s Objection to the Role of the Past in Perception
Merleau-Ponty argues that traditional Empiricism is inadequate to describe the
phenomenology of perception. Empiricism maintains that experience is the primary source of
knowledge, and that knowledge is derived from sensory perceptions. Merleau-Ponty says that
traditional Empiricism does not explain how the nature of consciousness determines our
perceptions17.
For the empiricist, sensations are simple which are individuated by their intrinsic
character. They lackmeaning or intentionality, or anything like the structure of
a concept or general type. They are individual bits of unstructured data.But for Merleau-Ponty,
even the most basic and primitive data given to consciousness are intentional or directed. He
posits that "all consciousness is consciousness of something". The most "elementary event is

13
Herrnstein, R. & Boring, E. A source book in the history of psychology. (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1977)
14
Ibid
15
Myers, D. Psychology (7th ed.), (Michigan: Hope College, 2004)
16
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Empiricism.htm
17
Ron McClamrock. Notes on the Introduction to The Phenomenology of Perception,
http://www.albany.edu/~ron/papers/mp-intro.html, 1990
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Jefferson S. Backong

already invested with meaning", and carries with it a kind of gestalt -- a differentiation of
structure into figure and ground, at least. He takes the empiricists to be guilty of the
"experience error", the fallacy of taking things known as transcendent or external and making
their externality secondary to some imagined internality; the error of silently converting
perceived external properties into sensed internal ones which we then see as prior 18.
Merleau-Ponty also rejects the "constancy hypothesis". This is the claim that the basic
inputs to consciousness have constancy in their correlation with stimuli such that the same
stimulus will produce the same sensation. He claims that the basic perceptual qualities are not
in this way constant with the proximal stimulus to the organism. They are determined by more
than just that stimulus; as he puts it, the sensory (or perceptual) apparatus is "not just a
transmitter19.”
The empiricist comes up with what it is that the mind "adds" to sensation by "building
up from it" by a kind of formula: By subtracting what's actually "in" the proximal stimulus from
what's "in" the structured perceptual information, we're left with what it is that the mind
"adds" to the stimulus. But the prestructured nature of perception for Merleau-Ponty places
this addition not in consciousness, but in the body20.
Not having recourse to pre-structured, intentional perceptual states, the empiricist is, in
Merleau-Ponty's view, forced into the position of having to make everything other than basic
sensation into judgment. Anything that goes beyond what's immediately given in the stimulus
or basic sensation must be seen as some kind of inference, hypothesis, or drawing of
conclusions in the mind which take sensation as premises. This transforms the world that we
actually live in and care about -- that of human action, the social world of everyday life -- from a
reality perceived and acted on to a mere artifact of associations 21.
Merleau-Ponty claims that the perceptual gestalt cannot be accounted for by the
association or projection of memories, but that instead, the structuring of perception as a
meaningful presentation must be prior to the association of memories. He claims that we need
something like a general property or concept ortype to unify the perceptual judgment --
something which makes it into not just a "seeing", but a "seeing-as". But the associations in
memory which percepts get is in virtue of this content they have, and so the unifying content
must be prior to and not derivative from these associations.
He also cites some empirical data for this claim. The example of the "double-syllable
errors" is offered to show that association errors are dependent on the task structure, and not

18
Ibid
19
Ibid
20
Ibid
21
Ron McClamrock. Notes on the Introduction to The Phenomenology of Perception,
http://www.albany.edu/~ron/papers/mp-intro.html, 1990
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Jefferson S. Backong

just on bare co-occurrence. And the case of recognizing a "hidden" figure is given to support the
view that resemblance is more effective when you look for it, but that added association or
training need not make a difference22.
Conclusion
Empiricism relies greatly on past experiences in order to gain understanding of the
world that one lives in. Accordingly, in order to go beyond our sensations and perceptions, one
must rely on past experiences and experimental reasoning.Experimental reasoning as well as
past experiences and observations are the sources of knowledge for Empiricism.Hume states
"That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more
contradiction, than the affirmation that it will rise tomorrow" for the past is not necessarily a
direct causation of a future event. Because of this, science, an empirical tool used by mankind
to explore the world around himself and to learn more about himself, is merely work in
probability. It is safe, based upon a posteriori knowledge, that the sun will rise tomorrow, for it
has for millennia upon millennia, and there has been no event to show that it might not rise
tomorrow. Without this experimental reasoning however, Empiricism is reduced to past
experiences, and yet with it, one is able to make statements such as "The sun will rise
tomorrow" with a great degree of certainty23.
But for Merleau-Ponty this is not so. Merleau-Ponty sees science as making the mistake of
forcing phenomenological or perceptual categories into objective categories; he thinks that the
"indeterminacy of structured perceptions" is not to be replaced by "objective" properties.
Phenomenology of perception must move from the categories of the world to the categories
under which we perceive it. By substituting in its own conception of "objectivity", science and
particularly empiricism, reinterprets the human world of persons, objects, politics, and
everyday life from a reality lived in to an artifact of association. The "scientific" account of
perception takes perception as simply another process in the world to be explained. But this
"relieves it of essential function of `inaugurating' knowledge". It sees the objective reasons for
correct perception as prior to perception, while Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the sense in which
they come after perception -- as knowledge of the world given in its first instance through our
perception of the world24.

22
Ibid
23
Aune, Bruce. Rationalism, Empiricism, and Pragmatism: An Introduction, (University of Massachusetts at
Amherst: Random House, New York, 1970)

24
Ron McClamrock. Notes on the Introduction to The Phenomenology of Perception,
http://www.albany.edu/~ron/papers/mp-intro.html, 1990

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