Perceived objects exceed present grasp and promise future appropriations

Evidence

Merleau-Ponty also followed Husserl and the gestalt psychologists in reminding us that we rarely have these sense experiences ‘raw’. Phenomena come to us already shaped by the interpretations, meanings and expectations with which we are going to grasp them, based on previous experience and the general context of the encounter. We perceive a multicoloured blob on a table directly as a bag of sweets, not as a collection of angles, colours and shadows that must be decoded and identified. The people we see running around in a field are a soccer team. This is why we fall for optical illusions: we have already seen a diagram as some expected shape, before looking again to realise that we have been fooled. It is also why a Rorschach blot comes to us as a picture of something, rather than as a meaningless design. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 729 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The perceived object is always surpassed toward the self’s own possibilities; Perception apprehends objects through the ekstatic unity of past and present; An object as phenomenon includes anticipation, warmth, and felt promise, not just sense data (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• An object as phenomenon includes anticipation, warmth, and felt promise, not just sense data #expands (0.90)
• Perception arrives pre-shaped by expectations and context, never raw #qualifies (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 729